Ph.D. edward russell cole
2025
Eventually, I found myself cornered, a position where I had to consider the likely impossibility of my ongoing survival. On the verge of accepting death as my fate, I remember contemplating my demise just moments before experiencing exhilaration as I entered a state of dissociation. I was abruptly entranced and began unmindfully marching in figure eights around the concrete floor of my parent’s basement, chanting about a former life. The energy with which I had been infused broke me out of the debilitating stranglehold. For the first time in over a year, I was hopeful. The attitude found expression in the dance and chant that I performed for hours. I spontaneously shouted couplets impressing me as too refined to have been improvised. After I returned from my state of alternate consciousness, it was immediately clear to me that my life was the subject of divine intervention. This decisive juncture in my psychosis marked the start of my religious experience.
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