h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Have you ever experienced unexpected altered states of reality? We all know they can be achieved with drugs, sleep-deprivation, trance etc, but what else is there?
I ask because I had a very strange and unexpected experience after seeing a 3D film. When I came out into the daylight everything looked hyper real. It was as if my brain had come to think reality lloked like that not-really-3D effect which you get with such films, and was therefore amazed by 'real' 3D.

I don't know if this counts, but once I was driving my taxi, quite late at night at the end of my shift on the way home from somewhere on the M25 and I thought I saw an enormous white lorry at the side of my car on the roundabout.

It wasn't there. I put it down to being tired...

Computer game addiction can lead to it, apparently.

I think I'll see what a few more admit to first..and I'm not talking the usual suspects of manic psychosis or post operative visions, drugs, etc

But yes. And I never mentioned them on the Dawkins thread either.

I regularly get hallucinations when I'm very tired - these can be voices, but they are more usually strongly repetitive geometric patterns that I see superimposed on my normal vision.

A recent report said that some huge proportion of children up to age 12 experience hallucinations of hearing voices - something like one third, I think.

I often hear voices when tired, and say not long before falling asleep, or in reverse, when I'm not really quite awake, but waking up...
They seem to form from background noises colalessing into 'ordered' sound, which then kinda gets picked up as being voices... But my dreams often merge seemlessly with reality and visa versa, its not always easy to tell one from the other sometimes, except after the event
The only proper proper hallucination type things wer as a result of drugs, (mainly medical when I was in hospital), or combinations of alcohol and drugs and tiredness in some form or another

The auditory one is kinda weird... thinking about it, I often find I'm hearing things which arn't there, but which on careful listening I can determine are a kinda 'brain filling in the gaps', with various quiet background noises, your not really aware of, being interprited as a more organised, and previous known sound... (say into teh sound of a cat neaowing outside, or of a car engine, or phone ring tone, when its only really just the noises of the central heating system, wind, creaking floorbaords etc...) I think...
I assume the constant sound of a vacuum is just normal and itsn't a hallucination

>> I assume the constant sound of a vacuum is just normal...<<

Most certainly so at night.


~jwf~

I started wearing glasses. That was an experience. Who knew that the world wasn't made solely of blurry smudges?

Right I'm going more normal

I read the novel, 'Remembrance of Things Past' many years ago. It had a deep effect on me.

The sentences are very long and amazingly convoluted and by the time you get to the end of the sentence you've forgotten what the start was..I went with the flow..Many sentences are a bit like a labarhynth. The book goes on forever..and I read a lot late at night often falling asleep...and my dreams became an extension of the book..it went on for about 3 months.

I loved it.

After long sessions on the computer I get that sort of hyper-reality quotes talks about after 3D films when I go and do real things. It can be quite unsettling.

On long, steep inclines (escalators on the London Underground are perfect for it) I get this weird thing where my brain kind-of skips and starts telling my other senses that the incline is actually horizontal and the rest of the world is wrong. Then I fall over when I step onto truly flat ground.

2legs' sounds ring a bell... I imagine quite a few people find that.

For me it was at sea, bunk near a punkah louvre and I heard s then found I could manoeuvre the broadband sound (white/pink noise?) into tunes - symphonies even.

Nowadays it's tinnitus, but not so easily manipulated.


Also, as for 2legs, on the way to or from sleep - not voices as such but occasional revelations of a deep and important nature.
Unfortunately, the only remembrances are 'Wow! that was deep and important'. Except once, a message came over bright and clear 'It doesn't matter'

'strue.

Rod

Hl has reminded me of stairs, when I think that I have one more step to go down but I am at the bottom, it feels like my foot is going through the floor

I was sitting on a mat and put my hand behind me and expected that to be on the mat but missed and my hand went to the floor, it felt a long way down, like I was going to topple backwards over a cliff

I was standing at the edge of a parking lot one day, and saw a black dog sitting next to a car. The door was open, and someone I new was getting out.

"Nice dog," I said.

"Dog? There's no dog," the person said.

I looked again, and the "dog" was a black leather briefcase.

oops

I saw an emu throught the trees someway off, turned out to be the arse end of a horse and nearly pooped myself when I was cycling by a garden and thought there was a bear, massive dog

Thanks to the 60s and 70s I can readily cause a wall or ceiling to undulate but it is an act of will, not a random thing. It actually can be quite soothing since it is easiest in low light, like when I am falling asleep.

First panic attack. That was pretty unexpected..happened at Assembly at primary school in the middle of a hymn.

Went incredibly hot suddenly and into a funny speeded up state inside. Outside world receeded. Had to struggle mightily not to run out. Lasted a few minutes.

Happened regularly after that. Didn't have a clue what it was until I was an adult. I was scared to tell anyone about the experience for some reason.

I used to take Xanax for panic attacks. They were horrible.

I'm always impressed when I have a déjà vu moment - haven't had one for quite a while though.

End with a song:
http://www.goear.com/listen/8a4957a/crosby-stills-nash-and-young-deja-vu-crosby-stills-nash-and-young

(The ultimate unexpected altered state in all literature.)


The Madeleine cake moment in Remembrance of Things Past...that was the start...and then unexpected happens every few hundred pages or so...but just when lost..it finally returns and he understands at last.

Wow. You mean you sane people see things, too? And have deja senti?

Have any of you experienced false awakenings? This is when you think you're awake, usually until you see the weird thing that isn't supposed to be in your room. Then you really wake up, cross.

I remember one time, years ago. I was napping in my room in Bonn when I 'woke' to find an utterly inappropriate piece of furniture there. It was my dad's footstool, and I knew it to be thousands of miles away in upper-state New York. When I got mad about it, the thing flew at my head.

It disappeared when I woke up completely. I knew better than to write my dad and ask him if his footstool was behaving oddly.