According to one version, hallucinations are not the product of a sick imagination. Perhaps, in a certain state of consciousness, we see what, in general, a normal person is not supposed to see.
There is control
Researchers at Yale University Albert Powers and Philip Corlett decided to test whether there is still any difference between the hallucinations of mentally ill people and those who are considered mentally healthy.
Scientists managed to gather a group of volunteers, which included people who called themselves psychics. All of them were selected according to one criterion: the subjects claimed that they receive daily audio messages from their interlocutors from the subtle world. All selected participants were tested, which showed that none of them lie or suffer from a mental disorder.
Then the testimony of psychics was compared with information obtained from people suffering from schizophrenia or manic-depressive psychosis, as well as mentally healthy members of the control group.
It turned out that psychics are more likely to perceive voices in a positive way and believe that they help them in life. On the other hand, mentally ill people are afraid of voices (or their intended carriers) and believe that these entities are going to harm them.
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A typical example: voices tell a psychic some reliable information about a person or event, suggest how best to act in a given situation. For a schizophrenic, a voice can "recommend" to harm oneself or even kill oneself, attack someone, frighten, or mock.
In addition, a sick person usually cannot "turn off" the hallucination at will. But a healthy individual with psychic abilities is quite capable of controlling his voices and turning them to his advantage.
“These people have a high degree of control over their own inner voices,” says Corlett, one of the study's authors. - They are also much more willing to come into contact with them and see them as positive or neutral forces in their lives.
We believe that people with similar psychological characteristics can provide us with new knowledge in neurobiology, cognitive psychology and, as a result, in the treatment of such a symptom.
Look at the double and die
A separate category should be allocated to stories about people who saw their own counterparts. In psychiatry, such cases are well known as autoscopic hallucinations, which can be observed both in mental illness and in those who are mentally healthy.
Experts identify common features of the appearance of twins. As a rule, they appear unexpectedly. Most often, the double is located facing the original, and it is impossible to reach it.
Although the phantom is usually the same size as the original, it is not uncommon to see only certain parts of the body, such as the head or torso. In this case, the details can be clearly visible, but either the colors are dull, or the twin is generally colorless. It is transparent and appears to be composed of a jelly-like substance or as a reflection in glass.
Very often the double repeats all the movements of the original, copies the expression on his face. Mentally ill people often complain that their double is mimicking them.
The phenomenon of doubles has been repeatedly described in fiction. In Heinrich Heine's poem "The Double", a typical description of the phenomenon of one's own "copy" to a healthy person is given. And the story of the same name by Dostoevsky tells about the hallucinations of a mentally ill hero.
In the old days, there was a belief that a person who is destined to see his own double will soon die. Meanwhile, the textbook "General Psychopathology" for medical students says that autoscopic hallucinations are often associated with severe forms of brain disorders. Indeed, in many cases, doubles are seriously ill people.
A clinical case is a story that happened to the famous French writer Guy de Maupassant. In 1887, Maupassant was working on the novella The Eagle, which was about an invisible creature who settled in the hero's house. Suddenly, a man entered the room where the writer was, sat down opposite him and began to dictate the continuation of the work. Not immediately Maupassant realized that before him was his own "reflection"!
The double, however, quickly disappeared. And soon the writer fell ill with a mental disorder, which ultimately led to death.
A classic example of autoscopic hallucination is the case of Dr. Berkovich, which was described in detail by the outstanding Russian poet Vasily Zhukovsky in his article "Something about Ghosts." Zhukovsky, in turn, heard about this from his friend A. M. Druzhinin, who held the post of chief director of schools in Moscow.
According to Druzhinin, he was briefly acquainted with Dr. Berkovich and once, together with a certain Mrs. Peretz, went to visit him. Everyone was cheerful and had a pleasant conversation. At 10 o'clock in the evening, Berkovich's wife asked him to go and see if the table was being set for dinner. The doctor went into the dining room, where a door led directly from the living room. He returned a minute later, pale as a sheet, and until the end of the evening hardly spoke. All his former gaiety vanished as if by hand.
After supper, Berkovich went to see off Mrs. Peretz and evidently caught a cold. The next day, Druzhinin was sent for with the news that the doctor had fallen ill and asked him to come. When he appeared, Berkovich told him:
- I will soon die, I saw my death with my own eyes. When yesterday I left the living room and into the dining room to see if dinner was coming soon, I saw that the table was set, that there was a coffin on the table surrounded by candles, and that I myself was lying in the coffin. Be sure that you will bury me soon.
Indeed, after a while the doctor died.
Zhukovsky himself gives this explanation: "It is very likely that in his body there was already an embryo of the disease, the cold developed the disease, and the disease, with the help of the imagination, frightened by the ghost, produced death."
In 1907, a book by the writer and journalist V. V. Bitner "Into the area of the mysterious." In it, he also examines the phenomenon of doubles.
“Of course, this phenomenon is abnormal,” the author writes, “and indicates a serious illness of the whole organism, indicating a deep disorder of the nervous system; therefore, if it happens to someone, in most cases it happens shortly before his death or even at the very moment of transition to another world. Thus, the appearance of a double can serve only, so to speak, as an ominous diagnostic sign, but of course there is nothing prophetic in it."
Sick or hypersensitive?
Meanwhile, parapsychologists are in no hurry to attribute various kinds of voices and other hallucinations to the realm of the non-existent. They hypothesize that there are indeed some astral entities near us, but in the normal state we are not able to come into contact with them.
If a failure occurs in the human psyche - as a result of an illness, traumatic brain injury, or, say, delirium tremens - then he begins to perceive the subtle world, and, as a rule, in its darkest hypostasis. As for psychics, it is not for nothing that this word means "supersensitive."
Apparently, there are people who have a higher sensitivity than others, they can enter an altered state of consciousness and perceive otherworldly realities, but at the same time are able to filter their perception and weed out destructive entities.
It is possible that such "hallucinations" may be simply a property of the psyche. That is, the psychic does not talk with the otherworldly entity, but with himself, connecting to the information field of the Universe. By the way, the phenomenon of twins fits perfectly into this hypothesis. But the information comes to the clairvoyant in the form of phantoms or voices.
Let us recall the famous holy fools and blessed ones who really often said sensible things, predicted the future, but since their psyche was disturbed, information came to them often in a chaotic form. If all this had an exclusively pathological nature, it is unlikely that the information obtained in this way from clairvoyants would have been any reliable.
In a word, we have something to think about. And you shouldn't declare a person who sees and hears something unusual crazy. Perhaps he just has access to things that most of us are not able to perceive.
Irina SHLIONSKAYA, magazine Secrets of the XX century, No. 12 2017
