I'm not saying that I have the definitive answer. But consider the following from the Wikipedia entry on "Lucid Dreams":
Another theory presented by transpersonal psychology and some Eastern religions is that it is the individual's state of consciousness (or awareness) that determines their ability to discriminate and differentiate between what is real, and what is false or illusory. In the dream state, many experiences are accepted as real by the dreamer that would not be accepted as real in the waking state. Some religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism describe states of consciousness (i.e., Nirvana or Moksha) where individuals "wake up", and discover a new or altered state of consciousness that reveals their normal waking experience to be unreal, dream-like, or maya (illusion).At the very least, don't you think that this could push an already-unstable person over the edge, and induce psychosis?
This is straight-up New Age teaching, which has been known to induce psychosis. See my link to Sharon Lee Giganti above.
I still don’t buy it. By all accounts, this guy has been broken for some time. Again, you’re trying to find a “boogy man” to blame this on, when the guy was just clearly sick.
I can’t even see a normal person going this nutz with drug use. I do know that many psychotics turn to drugs in an attempt to self-medicate.
Dreams may have been the only place that anything made sense in his world.
I’m sorry STA, but we’re only dealing with the rantings of a mad-man. We can blame it on the fact that he read “The Communist Manifesto” or “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”. He obviously felt pretty passionate about the gold standard being left behind.
Oh, I know! He’s a radical member of the “Grammar Police” who was driven mad by my terrible punctuation and spelling! ;-) (I know my husband is.)
I think that we’ll find out that he was insane long before he started college.
The *only* thing that I might see as a cause would be SSRI’s. But even then, we’re talking “chicken and the egg”. Which came first?