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By Root 2068 0

called REM sleep, the abbreviation standing for rapid eye movement. (Under the closed eyelids the eyes move, perhaps following the action in the dream, or perhaps randomly.) The REM state is strongly correlated with sexual arousal. Experiments have been performed in which sleeping subjects are awakened whenever the REM state emerges, while members of a control group are awakened just as often each night but not when they’re dreaming. After some days, the control group is a little groggy, but the experimental group – the ones who are prevented from dreaming – is hallucinating in daytime. It’s not that a few people with a particular abnormality can be made to hallucinate in this way; anyone is capable of hallucinations.]

Whatever their neurological and molecular antecedents, hallucinations feel real. They are sought out in many cultures and considered a sign of spiritual enlightenment. Among the Native Americans of the Western Plains, for example, or many indigenous Siberian cultures, a young man’s future was foreshadowed by the nature of the hallucination he experienced after a successful ‘vision quest’; its meaning was discussed with great seriousness among the elders and shamans of the tribe. There are countless instances in the world’s religions where patriarchs, prophets or saviours repair themselves to desert or mountain and, assisted by hunger and sensory deprivation, encounter gods or demons. Psychedelic-induced religious experiences were a hallmark of the western youth culture of the 1960s. The experience, however brought about, is often described respectfully by words such as ‘transcendent’, ‘numinous’, ‘sacred’ and ‘holy’.

Hallucinations are common. If you have one, it doesn’t mean you’re crazy. The anthropological literature is replete with hallucination ethnopsychiatry, REM dreams and possession trances, which have many common elements transculturally and across the ages. The hallucinations are routinely interpreted as possession by good or evil spirits. The Yale anthropologist Weston La Barre goes so far as to argue that ‘a surprisingly good case could be made that much of culture is hallucination’ and that ‘the whole intent and function of ritual appears to be ... [a] group wish to hallucinate reality’.

Here is a description of hallucinations as a signal-to-noise problem by Louis J. West, former medical director of the Neu-ropsychiatric Clinic at the University of California, Los Angeles. It is taken from the fifteenth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica:

[I]magine a man standing at a closed glass window opposite his fireplace, looking out at his garden in the sunset. He is so absorbed by the view of the outside world that he fails to visualize the interior of the room at all. As it becomes darker outside, however, images of the objects in the room behind him can be seen reflected dimly in the window glass. For a time he may see either the garden (if he gazes into the distance) or the reflection of the room’s interior (if he focuses on the glass a few inches from his face). Night falls, but the fire still burns brightly in the fireplace and illuminates the room. The watcher now sees in the glass a vivid reflection of the interior of the room behind him, which appears to be outside the window. This illusion becomes dimmer as the fire dies down, and, finally, when it is dark both outside and within, nothing more is seen. If the fire flares up from time to time, the visions in the glass reappear.

In an analogous way, hallucinatory experiences such as those of normal dreams occur when the ‘daylight’ (sensory input) is reduced while the ‘interior illumination’ (general level of brain arousal) remains ‘bright’, and images originating within the ‘rooms’ of our brains may be perceived (hallucinated) as though they came from outside the ‘windows’ of our senses.

Another analogy might be that dreams, like the stars, are shining all the time. Though the stars are not often seen by day, since the sun shines too brightly, if, during the day, there is an eclipse of the sun, or if a viewer chooses to be watchful