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Chapter II Continued
Our beliefs about the world and ourselves
have profound ramifications, affecting all that we
embrace around us and all that evolves within us.
During the last decade, the National Institute for
Neurological and Communicative Disorders and Stroke
(NINCDS) conducted in-depth studies of people exhibiting
multiple personalities. Some facts catalogued as part
of the research leaped out at me and tickled my imagination.
They demonstrated clearly the impact of our convictions
and attitudes.
- One woman, who had the capacity to display three
distinct personalities, had three menstrual periods
each month, one for each personality.
- A man exhibiting multiple personas required completely
different eyeglass prescriptions for each. In the
morning, after assuming one personality, he was
clinically nearsighted. At noon, after becoming
the next person he wanted to be, he needed new glasses
to compensate for farsightedness. Each subsequent
persona required yet another prescription.
- Another man, whose repertoire included nine distinct
personalities, suffered a severe and, at times,
life-threatening allergic reaction to citrus fruits.
Any ingestion of citric acid would cause eight of
his nine personalities to have hives, convulsions
and seizures. His ninth personality, however, had
a fetish for citrus fruits. While assuming this
persona, he could consume enormous quantities of
oranges and grapefruits without the slightest bodily
disturbance.
If any one of us decided to see ourselves
as many people within one bodily structure, then we
could apparently create personalities so distinct
that each would have its own physiology and could,
perhaps, transform in seconds on a molecular as well
as a cellular level. Such bits and pieces of information,
as those from the NINCDS study, dance like excited
children in my brain. I am awed by the wondrous possibilities
they suggest!
Chapter
2 Continued - The Way We Look at Life Determines our
Experience »» |
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