[The Hierophant]

First off, Luvian, I want to apologise if I came across as being hostile. I read over my post and I certainly doesn't 'feel' the same written down as it did in my head.

Also, to Yorick and Chewbacca, I assume your faiths involve the interaction of incorporeal entities with 'physical' bodies? Does being 'possessed' or 'ridden' by the spirit/daemon involve a suspension of 'rational' thought in your opinion? In which case, if brain damage also results in such irrationality, can any distinction be drawn between brain damamge spiritual transcendance?

Chewie, where you say you treat schizophrenia as schizophrenia until it is evident that it is not, how do you make the distinction between the two? I'm asking that seriously, how do you personally decide?

Yorick, my point was that I don't believe there to be such a thing as 'health', whether it be bodily or spiritual. There are just different states of existance. Without the hypothetical (and I daresay illusory) ideal against which to compare one's physical state, there can be no degradation or improvement. Just alteration of form. I think that body is constantly in flux, with proteins entering and leaving and cells birthing and cells dying. And in turn, the individual body forms merely a smaller 'protein' within a larger ecosystem, which is also in constant flux. Thus, this constant flow, this constant metamorphosis, is not conducive to a notion of 'the ideal' or 'health'. Nor is it conducive, in my opinion, to the idea of 'life' and 'death' as polar opposites....