speaking to your gut?

I was quite recently in a psychiatric hospital, and I often meet people of great interest whilst I am there. Anyhow, the last time I was in, I had a kind of re-awakening, well I suppose I would prefer to call ii a mystical experience. Everything in terms of paranormal or even spiritual experience had completely stopped for some time previous, and then suddenly one day everything changed. I felt the most awesome euphoria (definitely not to be mistaken with mania); I was so empathic with others that it was very nearly telepathic (I consider there to be a fine-line between the 2). My senses were so heightened that music, light, colour, smell etc were so vivid. Being an ex music student, I guess it's not all that surprising that I literally felt as though I was hearing music and sound for the first time - it was so beautiful and captivating and a million more adjectives..in fact-language is inadequate to describe it. Actually, that reminds me that it is often said that 'music is the voice of god' - how apt a description!

I'm rambling again!...Anyway - I felt that everything was perfectly synchronised and that I had formed oneness (what a cliche!) with EVERYTHING (the oceanic experience?). This all sounds so corny, but it's true. I felt that I could feel the pureness (or lack of it) of the essences/souls of people. I was very emotional, but I just felt soooo fantastic. Incidently I could also tell the time to the exact minute (probably 80% of the time) which interests me as isn't 'time' supposed to become more irrelevant as profound experience takes over? I could go on for ever about all the different spiritual/paranormal experiences I had, but that's not really the point of this post.

Enough of the background stuff. One thing that I noticed during this time (it lasted roughly 2 weeks from onset to 'come-down'), was that I could only drink water and tea, and eat absolutely no meat (except fish). Also I couldn't take very much sugar in my tea, whereas I had been a big sugar-addict before.

Well, I got chatting with people in the hospital - 2 in particular that were going through, or had been through a similar experience and we all had similarities in out diatary changes during these times. We discussed the relationship between pregnancy cravings and dietary alterations, and the 'natural' changes in diet during mystical/spiritual experiences. It's as if the body has become conscious and is almost literally 'telling' us what we need, and don't need of course (bizarrely enough, one person I talked to was convinced that his gut ACTUALLY spoke to him through it's groans and sounds, and even more bizarrely enough, I met someone else who said exactly the same thing!). Also we all noted that we had suffered with diarrhoea during these times, which we put down to natural cleansing of the body, disposal of unwanted/un-needed substances. I guess it makes sense when you look at shamanism and the dietary rituals that take place prior to ingestion of hallucinogens etc...Still, I was amazed that we all seemed to have had almost identical dietary needs during and slightly previous to our experinces.

Any thoughts on this would be great
eye34

Hmnnn - am I the only one that has noticed these things???

Organs, not having a central nervous system aren't able to elaborate anything except what the brain tells them to. Thus they cannot speak or plot anything by themselves. The only organ capable of such function is the brain.

Yes, I was really referring to the shared dietary changes that we all experienced without consciously deciding to change our diet; and also the shared symptom that occured in all of our individual 'awakenings': diarrheoa. I wasn't actually suggesting that our guts really speak to us, it was more of a metaphor, despite the fact that some ppl I met LITEARLLY heard their guts talking to them...but I acknowledge that they were all suffering from schizophrenia.

I recently read a book called The Second Brain by Michael D. Gershon M.D.
The gut is pretty amazing thing. Its not able to think like the brain but the nervous system in the abdominal organs is fascinating in what it can and does do.

The body "talks" or comunicates in many ways. For instance when a new mother hears a baby cry her breasts can begin to leak.
Also there is the disorder "pica" where a person will get cravings for
crazy things like maybe dirt, or chalk. Many times it is because the person has a deficency in a certain mineral present in these things.

Then of course there is the blending of senses called Synesthesia,
which is a possible explanation.

In the past couple of months I"ve stopped craving meat which is really weird for me because I pretty much only eat fish and eggs anyway. So I"m not sure why and its not like I've been substituting other meat instead but I do feel fine and haven't gotten a cold in ages. Although on the flip side, I've been having some other pretty odd cravings..like the other night I felt compelled to run out to the grocery store to buy a jar of sundried tomatoes and I proceeded to eat the whole thing. It didn't make me sick though and I totally expected it would. I guess the body knows what its doing.