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

High temperature (fever) will sometimes cause sound hallucinations. Last time it happened (last year) I could hear people talking and wandering around in my flat which was quite y since I live on my own.

Many years ago, during a rather intense and stressful time of life, I dreamt a whole day at uni. There were some details not completely adding up though - but it wasn't until I saw a newspaper that I was completely convinced that it had only been a dream.

Did you not suspect when you saw the penguin riding the unicycle?

The topic seems to have drifted to a comparison of the dreams people have had. Is a dream an altered state of reality?

Now there's a good epistemological question. On the one hand...dreams aren't Reality - they're just things your head makes up. On the other hand...they're as real to us as anything.

So the answer to your question is...maybe.

We could drift 'as idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean.'

That line was possibly the result of an opium-induced altered state.

(I've seen his opium scales in Dove Cottage, Grasmere)

My friends once recommended me to take Bach flower drops. They concocted a mixture in a little bottle and I tried a couple of drops. I had the weirdest dreams. Chucked the bottle away and never took them again.

These weird dreams weren't nightmares, just slightly more pronounced dreams than I usually have, and of a crazy nature, didn't make any sense. People I never dream about turned up in them.

I had a very strong déjà vu the other day - most disconcerting.

Otherwise, I haven't really had any of this type of experience since I was a kid. I wonder why children are more prone to them?

Maybe because kids haven't got such a complete inventory of things that are supposed to be possible, and things that aren't?

A few years ago, Elektra bought some crazy herbal pills on the internet that were supposed to cure tinnitis. I took a couple. I think they just threw every stray herb they could find into the mix.

That night, I had a weird, vivid dream. It was a seaside resort. I walked into a cafe there and sat down. The waiter brought the menu.

The menu was a list of all the herbs in those weird pills.

I decided that was a bit too close to Castaneda's spirit of Mescalito.

paulh makes a good point about topic drift from
hallucinations to dreams but I like to think, based
on my own experience and some lay understanding
of Jung, that dreams and hallucinations are from the
same levels - if not the same area - of the brain, where
icons and symbols replace real images and both visual
and auditory puns abound and confound.

Chronic alcoholics and pot smokers spend a lot of time
lost in dreamstates where reality is softened and much
interpreted to become something else. The way the mind
stores data and interprets sensory input is complex. The
dreams and the dreamstate are lost upon awakening but a
vague and almost pleasant memory of things being somehow
more comfortable than they are in reality lingers on.

Take Dmitri's father's stool. Was it a visual pun? Was
it a foreshadow of an 'auto-man' who might have run him
down that day and which he avoided by spending some time
in unfocused wonder? Or was it 'stool' in the fecal sense -
his own or his father's that came to mind - perhaps just
the smell of worn socks beside the bed triggered the
symbolism. Too many possible interpretations to ever
be sure - and it is that very lack of any clear reality that
makes dreams and hallucinations so fascinating and easier
to deal with.

I spend a lot time in bed, longer than 8 hours per day,
more like 10 to 12 because I enjoy the dreams one has
in the morning hours and I love slipping in and out of them
with more and more 'understanding' of what my mind
and body are telling me.


~jwf~

I did a QI question last year on a dissasociative seizure - a researcher Rod posted saying they had experienced something very similar. If you can find the thread - he pyt the story in his journal. The QI forum was called "Dead men tell no tales"

Perhaps this is just me but if i my roll my eyes into my head with my eyelids closed it triggers this most amazing array of the vivid blue dots.

>>Take Dmitri's father's stool. Was it a visual pun? Was
it a foreshadow of an 'auto-man' who might have run him
down that day and which he avoided by spending some time
in unfocused wonder? Or was it 'stool' in the fecal sense -
his own or his father's that came to mind - perhaps just
the smell of worn socks beside the bed triggered the
symbolism.

Sometimes a stool is just a stool.

In 'Doors of Perception' Huxley suggests that the 'normal' waking consciousness of the brain actually acts as a filter for 'mind at large' and a drug, in his case mescalin..or just because brain chemistry alters naturally, allows these doors to open, and mind at large can pour in.

It can be overwhelming. I've experienced this..and subjectively it does feel like that until you can get those doors closed up a bit again.

It's well worth reading whether or not you go along with his suggestion.

His description of his experience of taking mescalin is wonderfully written..he did it in a controlled setting in his home accompanied by a researcher, he had a notebook and answered the researcher's questions but found it increasingly difficult to pull his mind into a functioning mode for that..then they go down town to Sunset boulevard, I think it is, and he sees the ridiculousness of all the baubles in the shops after the pleasure he experienced of looking at objects in his own home and seeing meaning.

In the companion book, 'Heaven and Hell' he talks about all the many ways humans have sought self transcendance for millenia to escape the narrow confines of every day consciousness. One of the reasons apparently the Protestants got rid of stain glass windows in their churches..to keep the faithfuls' minds on the one true god..and not slipping off into more pagan states from looking at the incredible coloured glass.

'Altered state of reality' perhaps begs the question 'altered from what'?

Arguably throughout our daily lives we engage with different states of reality. The way we perceive the world when we're walking down a busy street is different to when we sit at the window of a cafe watching the same street.

Have we seen the basketball video? Count how many times the players in white pass the ball:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo

Ref Clive @50: (I'd forgotten that , Clive) The QI post in question is http://wsogmm.h2g2.com/dna/h2g2/brunel/F7180006?thread=8094338&skip=71 and the journal entry is http://wsogmm.h2g2.com/dna/h2g2/brunel/MJ2465093?Journal=2893225&show=5&skip=5 (scroll down to the bottom) The entry two previous previous to that is in not too dissimilar vein and perhaps not far off this thread subject.

We haven't mentioned 'falling in love'. That can be like smack out of the blue..what on earth is it?

I'm not talking love at first sight but someone suddenly becoming the all consuming object of desire..

Good point. That, too, is an altered state that colours all perceptions.

Hassock. Another form of footstool.

It has the word sock in it and completes the 4 dimensional
pun of Dmitri's vision. Yes, I'm now convinced he got a
whiff of his own socks (or shoes). In a comfortable half-
sleep state, where we all return to a child-like mind-set,
the smell of his own adult feet would have to be 'displaced'
with a memory of a childhood experience of his father's
stinky feet.

The image of the 'foot'-'stool' flying at him represents the
way the waves of odor rose toward his olfactory senses.

Glad I could be of help.


~jwf~

I once had a dream about Rod Steiger smoking a cigar while climbing the stairs, if that's any help.

Was he naked? Did he have tattoos?
Had you been, or did you intend, smoking
some of that famous Amsterdam weed? Or,
more likely, are you just making this up?

~jwf~