99 Stories of God

65. Dull

Temporal lobe epilepsy often causes changes in behavior and thinking even when the patient is not having seizures. These changes include hypergraphia (voluminous writing), an intensification but also a narrowing of emotional response, and an obsessive interest in religion and philosophy.

Dostoevsky often wrote of the rapture he felt during a seizure when he was in the frightful presence of the universal harmony.

A Carmelite nun whose visions during her epileptic seizures caused many to view her as a spiritual master feared that her gifts were symptoms of illness rather than grace and submitted to surgery, which was successful.

Life without epilepsy was quite dull, she discovered.

It was as though she had tumbled from a sacred mountain into a ruined village, she said.