Hallucination. People don’t like that word. It suggests seeing things that aren’t there. It is incorrectly associated with madness. Yet I’m convinced it can hold the key to much of the paranormal. However, we need to reassess what hallucination is.
First of all, provided you do not suffer hallucinations all the time, there is nothing strange about them. Further, to occasionally hallucinate is not to lose grip on reality. As we will see shortly, to hallucinate is a natural physiological function.
BELIEVERS CAN BE SCEPTICAL
Believers in classic interpretations of the paranormal offer another misconception about hallucination. They say there is a difference between seeing real phenomena and hallucinating. Is this the case, or do hallucinations come in degrees of severity?
I suppose the best way to understand this point is to make a hallucination analogous to a dream. Most of the time we know we are dreaming, but in the lucid dream we experience something so ‘real’ we cannot make the separation between reality and dream.
Like hallucination, a dream is a mind function, so if we can mistake a mind construct for reality in the dream, then it is natural to assume we can do the same with a hallucination.
WHY WE EXPERIENCE THEM
From the 1950s onwards, test after test has shown a simple reality. Remove, or disrupt, our attention on the real world and a hallucination can easily be the outcome. From floatation tanks to sensory deprivation, this has been the case.
From this we can learn something about the mind. Whilst the senses can be disrupted, the mind itself continually attempts to validate what it sees. Hence, if it has insufficient data from the senses, it will fill in the gaps itself.
The result can often be what we call a hallucination, whereas in reality it is simply the mind completing the picture, and usually based on information from within the mind. Hence, a hallucination of this kind is very much a product of your mood or worldview.
ENVIRONMENT v MIND
In this sense, it is best to see hallucination, not as a form of madness, but a ‘brief moment of decalibration.’ It is a natural outcome of the removal, or disruption, of sensory information. And this can occur for many reasons.
One obvious reason is tiredness or confusion. Seeing something due to the latter can better be seen as an illusion, but is obviously a related phenomenon. But the paranormal is full of instances of tiredness playing tricks with the mind and producing phenomena.
We are now also beginning to see the effect the environment can have on the senses and the mind. From infra-sound to electromagnetism, chemical changes can occur in the brain, causing hallucination. The thunderstorm/ghost is no longer a simple fictional tale.
SEEING THINGS
Sightings of ghosts or demons are usually discounted as hallucination because, not only are they so ‘real’, but they are also accurate to what it is expected to see. But this in itself could find an answer in the hallucination.
Through the phenomenon of cryptomnesia we know that the unconscious retains vast amounts of information you don’t realize is there. The mind gains information by the bucket load by simply scanning a newspaper.
We thus have, in the mind, an encyclopedic memory store that, when prompted by someone’s conviction, or the culture of the location you are in, can spill out accurate information to allow a believable hallucination to take form.
IS A HALLUCINATION REAL?
To summarise, a hallucination is a natural mind state – a brief moment of decalibration – caused when sensory input is disrupted. It is not madness. Further, hallucinations can appear ‘real’, so the argument that a ghost or demon is not a hallucination doesn’t hold.
However, a hallucination can be based on accurate historic information from the unconscious. Does this accuracy give the hallucination a greater foundation in reality than we as yet accept? Does the gap between imagination and a real ‘spirit’ form close?
Such a question would seem pointless because hallucinations of this order are thought to be rare. But is this really the case? After all, if hallucination is as ‘real’ as the real world, how can we be sure that the stranger in front of us is there?
© Anthony North, April 2007
Find dozens more mysteries on my Mysteries page above.
BEYOND THE BLOG 