Green Oasis

Life with epilepsy is no walk in the park, but sometimes it can bring feelings of otherworldly joy or eroticism which the rest of us may never experience.

The Russian author Dostoyevsky famously said of his epilepsy “I would experience such joy as would be inconceivable in ordinary life—such joy that no one else could have any notion of. I would feel the most complete harmony in myself and in the whole world and this feeling was so strong and sweet that for a few seconds of such bliss I would give ten or more years of my life, even my whole life perhaps.”

I have often wondered if many founders of religion suffered from a form of epilepsy that led to recurrent religious ecstasies. I also wonder if my brain simply isn’t wired to have religious experiences like others, at least not as easily.