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

The latter, I'm afraid.

It's a Freudian in-joke. In 'The Interpretation of Dreams', Freud spoke of a dream about an old man (ein Alter) climbing (steigen) the stairs. He interpreted this to be 'Ein Alter Steiger' or dirty old man.

Sometimes Rod Steiger is just Rod Steiger. I coulda bin a contender...

>> The latter, I'm afraid. <<

Fear not my friend! Be not afraid.

But from that can we recognise that it shows
how our unconscious imagination has undefined
qualities we simply cannot duplicate with our
conscious minds. Like the 'trip' sequences in
Peter Fonda's "The Trip".


~jwf~

If I read the 'Sometimes a cigar is only a cigar' reference once more on h2g2 I think I'll scream..

It was also even said on Star Trek once by the counsellor Deanna Troi

An invitation if ever I read one.

"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 think we may be kindred spirits. I don't sleep quite as long as you do, but I do enjoy the dreams. Last night, I dreamed I was in a church choir, and one of the sopranos had been banned from the group halfway through the concert. This threw me into confusion, because it altered the program order. I was supposed to sing a duet with a soprano, acocmpanied by a trumpet.

I've had some weirdness while on very powerful (prescription) steroids that affected my perception of reality, the contents and shape of my own thoughts, and what was going on in my head. But because I was always aware that it might be/probably was the drugs I wouldn't go as far as to call it an altered state of reality.

1. Shopping.
One of the side effects is increased hunger and appetite. In body, I was shopping in my local supermarket. In my head, I was hunting. The hunger was weirdly and intensely visceral - I didn't just want a particular food, I was imagining ripping it apart with my snarly wolf fangs (which I could picture vividly, but knew I didn't really have) and devouring it utterly. Not for gluttony or greed or on an immediate, uncontrollable impulse, but a ruthless and irresistible, cold and calculating predator hunting for food to destroy and consume utterly later on, back in my den. Normally people don't think that way about spring rolls. Hoooooowwwwlllll..........

2. Mind racing
I don't think I'd really understood what it meant to say that your mind is racing before. Trying to sleep, but thought after thought, image after image (particularly weird for me, as I don't think in pictures), idea after idea, all rushing through my head. Making no sense at all, either individually or collectively. Found myself thinking, 'oh for 's sake switch it off'. At work, nothing happened quickly enough, or was interesting enough, and I ended up pacing around the room to try to get rid of excess energy.

3. Elevated mood and mild euphoria
Floating on air, cushioned by an undentable feeling of optimism and well-being. Responded to an outrageous decision at work (short version - dumping a load of work on my and my team without notice or any kind of discussion) by laughing to myself, shaking my head at the stupidity of it all, and drawing a picture of a stick man and a circle on a post-it note. With 'me' written above the stick man, and 'the loop' above the circle, located on the far side of the note. Just for my own amusement. But left it stuck to my computer, where other people saw it.
Out with some friends, knowing I was talking (a) far too much; and (b) mainly rubbish, and not being able to stop.

Well I've done 2 and 3...

I like the Rod Steiger reference. Now, if I'd had that dream, I would have thought he was a 'climber', like maybe a social climber, but hey...

I get visual puns in my dreams, sometimes. They are horribly annoying.

I'm interested to know what people feel think about having strange experiences. I think I'm much more accepting now about taking these things on their own terms..not desperately trying to explain them away. I'm not saying brain chemistry isn't responsible but the subjective experience can give great meaning to your life. I mean if you experience something it's real for you...

I realised that's the case for me.

I noticed in my first post here, 4, I said,

> and I'm not talking the usual suspects of manic psychosis or post operative visions, drugs, etc<

I was being quite dismissive by sticking those labels on such experiences.

Stuff has meant a hell of a lot to me..and despite a lot of mental suffering from being more sensitive I feel quite priviledged sometimes.

I'm taking back those labels I stuck on things. Safe medical language which has nothing to do with the real sense of meaning such experiences can give me.

The honest truth is I'm bored with such labels...that kill things in one way.

I hear you about labelling. Me, I believe the mind exists independently of the brain, but that doesn't mean I can't have a conversation with someone who's using a variant model.

What is important is the interactivity between your experiences and you, don't you think? Not what pigeonhole the experience fits in?

I was just being honest about where I've got to now...It's use of language I feel comfortable with for myself..I know I'm being dishonest sometimes and embarrassed about describing things other than in certain terminology.

I prefer poetry, art, music etc as a way of really describing such experiences...I find the contemporary western world increasingly alienating though in general..especially in use of language.

I don't think mind is independent of the brain. Matter itself *is* mind for me, and we are connected to everything through stuff/matter.

It all comes from forever struggling to find a way out the labarhynth...

And no I can't properly explain it. But I really did waste far too much time and energy on the Dawkins thread..god I get flashbacks every so often..

A thread that causes flashbacks...my, h2g2 has a lot to answer for.

I like that, 'a way out of the labyrinth'. I think that's well put.

I'd rather use art, poetry, music and fiction as a way to describe, as well. I suspect the clues are in the process, not the 'answers'.

"I'm interested to know what people feel think about having strange experiences. I think I'm much more accepting now about taking these things on their own terms..not desperately trying to explain them away."

Well.... although given the choice, I'd rather not have been on that medication, I think it was an interesting learning experience. I think it would be entirely wrong of me to say that it was any kind of insight into what it might be like to have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or to have a manic episode, or perhaps even synaesthesia - even though I'd say my experience may have had tiny elements in common on a very time-limited basis.

What it did do, though, is give me at least a taste of how the experience of being 'me' might be different in ways that I couldn't have imagined or even thought possible. The level of vividness of it all, the pictures and sounds and thoughts in my head.... I would never have thought it possible (NB - I don't drink or take drugs, so perhaps I lack comparators and experience).

And from that, I take it that other people's experiences of being them may well be (and I'd say surely are) radically different to my everyday experience of being me. And so.... I should (and we should) take great caution in our judgements and assumptions about other people, and what it's like to live inside their minds and to walk in their shoes.

I think our society lacks rituals for expression of certain subjective things. I can't relate to going to church or that stuff or new agey rituals either.

I mentioned the labyrhynth. At one time there were labarhynths cut in the turf all over England. People performed dances on them and sung. Many of these places were called Troy town..supposedly it has some connection with an idea about the walls of Troy being labarhynthine..There's one in Peckham just off the Rye..an ancient piece of parkland that's been there for hundreds of years...Now it's a grotty little side street..with a small road sign saying Troy town.

But maybe such rituals had some meaning to do with psyche that the community could express. I can't feel much catharsis from Christmas or Easter..it's all about capitalism. or some plastic Morris dancing thing...I don't get anything from that either.

These rituals would have been embedded in the culture itself.

Yes I maybe romanticising..but what the heck..we need more input from ~ jwf ~ here.

This whole discussion reminds me a bit about Jill Boote Taylor's TED talk about what it feels like to have a stroke:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyyjU8fzEYU

The neat thing about the human mind is that it can watch itself think. I think.

I agree about the rituals. It's sort of like what Wordsworth said:

'Great God! I'd rather be
A pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn...'

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15878

I've been at many types of ritual and celebration, where I understood (a bit) what it was supposed to be about, but was not part of the experience. Everything from a concert where the music didn't speak to me, to a form of religious observance that I didn't identify with (such as evangelicals armed with Powerpoint, don't ask), to a football match.

Or watching UK Proms Night on the television, where everyone appears to find deep meaning in the shared singing of 'Jerusalem'. I like that song. It just couldn't possibly mean the same thing to me as an outsider observing this bonding ritual.

Brilliant quote Dmitri. The Romantic poets understand these things.


William Blake poet, painter and radical thinker, who wrote the words to Jerusalem, had his first vision of angels in an apple tree on Peckham Rye. This area was all market gardens and small farms..Man what I wouldn't give to go back and see it then.

Peckham gets a bad rap..but it has a cool history.

Effers, is Peckham where Blake and his wife played Adam and Eve in their backyard?

OK. Hypomanic states. They're certainly altered reality. And a pretty false reality at that. To some extent they're on the continuum, to the left of 'happy'. But they're way, way down the line from that. Other distortions of cognition - and sometimes perception - are going on too.

Don't go believing the tosh about 'They make up for the down times.' Even at the time they're 'kin scary.

Good point, Edward. Mood disorders are also a changed state of reality, I guess.

I didn't know that about Peckham, Effers. Any place Blake liked must have been a good place to be.