Hallucinations

[Violet]

I recently watched a discussion between (self-declared) atheists and (self-declared) believers (of religions). On the side of believers there was a man who claims to have seen and spoken to God on a crucial moment in his life, in jail. This experience brought him back to a more sober life, free of the criminal activities he used to engage in.

On the side of the atheists it was said to this man that he had had a powerful hallucination. This was refuted by the believer who said it was as real as "sitting here right now" to which an atheist replied that he too had suffered from a range of very real appearing hallucinations for which he had meanwhile been successfully treated at the hospital. He could now see the difference.

The religious debate itself is not so important for me here. I'd look to use this example, rather, to zoom in on what both sides claim about hallucinations.

The man who spoke to God believes it's true, it was not a hallucination. He had done drugs before, and he knows what a hallucination is.

The atheist says it's not real. It really is a hallucination.

Reality and non-reality.

This, here and now, is real. Right?

And the debate seemed pretty real to me too.

Now, implicitly, the man who had that extraordinary experience was being pushed to consider whether or not he's really there sitting on that chair facing opposition, because that particular occasion looked as real as the one in which he met God. And what that does to your mind.

The atheist who recovered from his hallucinations said that now he knows. He didn't say, however, how.

So, how do you know?

[Ewan]

My concise answer to that would be that you just know. There is not the words to even explain it to someone who doesn't.

A familiar comment that runs through experiencers stories is that it seemed more real than anything else they'd ever experienced. In the case of an atheist, I think it would be fair to suggest that term is interchangable with cynic, (hard-nosed skeptic), they will never come close to understanding because they begin from a position of denial.

That said, Anthony Flew reversed his position on atheism through a process of reason. As far as I know he never had any experience to help him.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=VHUtMEru4pQ

[Agape]

Think beyond the problem . Think 'brain frequency landscape' . I think the answer may be somewhere there .

Medical science do not have this puzzle solved and sorted till now but there's new neurological research going on to phenomena such as OBEs, NDEs and meditative trance , among else .

There's really substantial difference between the 'brain-scape' of someone experiencing powerful spiritual vision , for example and someone hallucinating as a result of drug overdose or worse, mental illness .
Most 'atheists' ( not all ) can not experience 'expanded consciousness' ( not speaking of God for how do you substantiate 'speaking to God' , even in religious terms anyway ) because how their brain works rather than vice versa and there's hardly any way to induce 'spiritual consciousness' in all people/human brains.

Think baptism. Theoretically, all kinds of spiritual initiations serve the purpose of opening your brain centres to 'higher frequency' and thus the option of elucidating spiritual experience .
Whether an experience is 'elucidating' , 'enlightening' or 'hallucination' , notice the root 'lux' = the light is quite the same in all those terms
depends on whether it conveys positive meaning to you , or not . Just as I tried to explain in the notorious 'don't go to light' Simon Parkes thread 3 times at least ,
the 'light' mentioned in all esoteric texts signifies 'meaning' .
Just as when you say 'the article is enlightening' it does not really signify it glows more than other articles .
It rather 'elucidates' meaning of larger context of data that were previously latent or disconnected for you and thus brings an 'aha moment' , for example .
To compare this to computer software what you experience is information upgrade .

For those who are victims of hallucinations and keep seeing things that frighten and confuse them , people who take drugs or are ill otherwise , most of them don't derive any benefits from their experiences at all , the result tends to be more fear and confusion.
It's probable that whole different mechanism of neurological functions is employed for people suffering from hallucinations .

The quality of the two above cases can not quite compare , it's not one to one .

Of course , there are many borderline disorders and the shamanic path and people who like to experiment and so forth , really too many options than two but if you are serious student of yoga, meditation or other esoteric school
the good teacher should always warn you not to experiment with 'visions' till you achieve great meditation stability ( and master degree in that particular subject ) because the road is slippery ,
and people experience 'falls' while trying to force or call in 'divine visions' quite frequently, pushing their brains over the edge ,
similar to what some hallucinogenic drugs can do or what too much of anything can do to brain. After all .






See the dog

[Eram]

I think it is sad that the move toward atheism and also science somehow lead to a belief that the physical material world is all there is.
Why deny certain phenomenon solely because we can't measure them and our physical senses can't sense them?
It's a very short sighted conclusion and the forces of darkness are doing high fives for the success if this illusion.

If the experience that the man had, was really God, is a question that cannot be answered so easily imo.
There are other explanations possible as well, such as a meeting with his higher mind, or guardian angel for instance.

So, how does he know?
Perhaps the experience, combined with all the rumors about the existence of God and also the logical deduction that there must have been some form intelligence behind creation lead him to the belief that he had direct contact with God.
Speculation on my part of course, but that's my theory.

[Violet]

Thank you for these valuable insights.

I meant to say: how does the atheist in question know? The one who claimed to have been suffering from hallucinations in response to the believers' extraordinary experience. Adding that after successful medical treatment he had now been freed from the hallucinations. What, do you think, makes him so sure?

[conk]

Atheists are simple ignorant. Adherents to religious doctrine are equally ignorant. so many think those are our only two options. We need no label whatsoever to believe in a divine intelligence. 'Something' is directing the tiny bits of energy and subsequent mass to form into whatever shape is called for at that instant. Things don't simple manifest for no reason. 'Something' tells a cell to become a limb or a toe or a nose. 'Something tells those same cells to stop growing, that the nose is big enough. The DNA or the genes do not contain this information.

[Mark]

I simple understand that there are those who cannot experience gnosis and those who can. It is the only real division in humanity. Every other division that has come up along our human journey has basically been a subterfuge designed by the Elite to draw attention away from this chasm in thought and understanding. For the purpose of continued advantage. Those who realize this who are in control are also a very small minority. Over the centuries, this has been one of the mainstays of their efforts.

But we've always seen it. Always celebrated this difference. It is in our myths, in our movies, in our lives.

I contend that the direct observation of this truth of the human condition is so horrific to those who can experience spiritual gnosis and have the characteristics of empathy and resonance, that they deliberately ignore it or treat it lightly despite the evidence of predation going back to the beginning of human storytelling around campfires.

Surely it is just a misunderstanding. Surely it is not biological. Surely we are all the same. Have the same capabilities.

Such an admission remains subject to vociferous objection.

[Ewan]

Posted by Violet (here)
Thank you for these valuable insights.

I meant to say: how does the atheist in question know? The one who claimed to have been suffering from hallucinations in response to the believers' extraordinary experience. Adding that after successful medical treatment he had now been freed from the hallucinations. What, do you think, makes him so sure?

His own belief system makes him sure, it is what he wants to believe ergo it is the truth. (imo)

[shaberon]

Well, the atheist can easily be on the right track since everything is a hallucination. It will all fade away some day.

It's easy for us to group hallucinate "a chair", which is not a chair to a worm or an ostrich, and it's only a temporary assembly of molecules, whose life and pathways are much greater than this momentary form.

So I would say it's the wrong question (is or isn't hallucinatory). You could talk about why some hallucinations are purely private, or how the shared ones interact. I could say the "converser's" hallucination has been repeated by others, but that doesn't make it what he claims it is, in the same way that the chair isn't quite what we say it is. And I'm having a very non-hallucination of the electro-magnetic sea I am bathing in now.

The viewpoint of: I am not hallucinating, is thus insubstantial. Banging on the chair trying to demonstrate what a simple group hallucination it is, does not "increase its reality" versus: whatever the mind perceives, is real to it.

[Violet]

The terminology used by the debaters was that, hallucinations, and used as such to doubt one another's experience of reality. In your bit of text, I tried (for myself) to replace hallucination with the word reality but I'm not sure if it does justice to what you are saying, so I'll leave it to you to judge that.

Additionally: do I understand it correctly if I read: things that fade are not real? How about what follows, equally unreal?

Posted by shaberon (here)
Well, the atheist can easily be on the right track since everything is a hallucination. It will all fade away some day.

It's easy for us to group hallucinate "a chair", which is not a chair to a worm or an ostrich, and it's only a temporary assembly of molecules, whose life and pathways are much greater than this momentary form.

So I would say it's the wrong question (is or isn't hallucinatory). You could talk about why some hallucinations are purely private, or how the shared ones interact. I could say the "converser's" hallucination has been repeated by others, but that doesn't make it what he claims it is, in the same way that the chair isn't quite what we say it is. And I'm having a very non-hallucination of the electro-magnetic sea I am bathing in now.

The viewpoint of: I am not hallucinating, is thus insubstantial. Banging on the chair trying to demonstrate what a simple group hallucination it is, does not "increase its reality" versus: whatever the mind perceives, is real to it.

[Agape]

Posted by Violet (here)
Thank you for these valuable insights.

I meant to say: how does the atheist in question know? The one who claimed to have been suffering from hallucinations in response to the believers' extraordinary experience. Adding that after successful medical treatment he had now been freed from the hallucinations. What, do you think, makes him so sure?

Most of our ancestral advanced civilisations here on earth were natural believers . If you look to life of any aboriginal tribe and man and the way our brains were naturally wired ,
we are all born believers . We have -to believe- to survive . We are rarely born as accomplished gnostics,
gnosis itself evolves in its own pace , its own time-space along the highways of human lifetime.
It may be that the very demarkation line between primitive beast and 'homo sapiens' is not in some sort of technological method or invention but in deeply profound spiritual experience of the cosmos, himself, nature and everything.
Constant awe and search for ever deeper meaning.

So then naturally follows homo a-theist , one who doubts himself , his subtle perceptions and developed methodical brain, gray matter trying to organise everything to cubes and columns, and numbers .
Name 'everything' ..forgetting that no everything can be ever named and then he falls on his own sword trying to count all the stars and contain all the metaphysical complexity of the Universe only to arrive at the same place called infinity ..where he came from..

and there he sits on the sand and watches the tides wash the shore , quite the same way

[DeDukshyn]

 

Re: OP question.


In my opinion, I don't think it really matters.

It's about what you want to believe. Your higher self or soul or whatever has chosen to play it out in whatever way you decide - each will bring experience that at the end of the day is experience. A spirit's job is to experience, as the Creator seeks to, through you - it steps down from Source as the desire to experience focused vibrations, reverberations and resonances of Creation, and it comes through us (human project). We (ultimately) are of the First Cause, the "word" of God so to speak, the initial Tone that spawns Tonal from Nagual (as opposed to the majority of the rest of Creation which are of subsequent Cause - these are reverberations, resonances, that raise form in lower "octaves", so to speak). If one's soul desires to experience a religion, a belief, a non-belief, or whatever, it has absolutely zero impact on anything "real" whatsoever.

[ZooLife]

Sometimes I wonder if many atheist do not believe in 'God' because of the often perverted use of the concept over the course of human civilization. Having said that, the line between "(self-declared) atheists and (self-declared) believers (of religions)" isn't as clear as even they themselves think.

[DeDukshyn]

Posted by ZooLife (here)
Sometimes I wonder if many atheist do not believe in 'God' because of the often perverted use of the concept over the course of human civilization. Having said that, the line between "(self-declared) atheists and (self-declared) believers (of religions)" isn't as clear as even they themselves think.

All the atheists I have been privileged to get to know have had a hatred for religion, and throw "God" into that bucket as well -- "since the religion is obviously BS, the source of them must also be - 'God'". In many discussions, I find many atheists are willing to accept possibly something we don't understand as "God", may actually exist. I tell them that I too find religion as mostly BS that seeks to control people in the name of 'freeing' them, but that I also believe in God because I recognized a distinction between what religion says about creation and logical possibilities; that distinction is required for a better view.

I also note that atheism is a belief, entirely like a religious belief - they are the same. They both require you to 'believe', things un-provable. I get a kick out of when an atheist thinks their belief is the control, merely because of the structure of language that is required for that expression -- "I don't believe in God" is how our language requires us to express it. So it looks like the action is "not" doing something vs "doing something" - believing, in the believer crowd. Our language itself is constructed to program our perspectives. Let me break a piece of that programming for you with a little deductive reasoning:


When one says, "I don't believe in God" - it is a generalization. It indicates TWO possibilities are present, that need to be defined with a distinction as only one of these can exist in a mind at any given time. One of the two possibilities is that you "have no belief on the subject at all", and the other is that you "believe that God does not exist". One of those is a belief, and the other is not the definition of an atheist. Basic deduction based on that distinction dictates that being an atheist is indeed a belief, just as a belief in God is - neither can be proven. Interesting how our language hides that? I wonder if this is the same in other languages?

The lack of existence of something is impossible to prove, just as atheists would say God is impossible to prove. Pretty much the same mindset, the variable is the strength of the belief in both case.


But I still stand with my previous posts perspective - it matters not


As a side note, I'll add that strongly held beliefs are the root of all human suffering, whether secular or religious. Believe Nothing, Consider Everything.

[ZooLife]

Posted by DeDukshyn (here)

Posted by ZooLife (here)
Sometimes I wonder if many atheist do not believe in 'God' because of the often perverted use of the concept over the course of human civilization. Having said that, the line between "(self-declared) atheists and (self-declared) believers (of religions)" isn't as clear as even they themselves think.

All the atheists I have been privileged to get to know have had a hatred for religion, and throw "God" into that bucket as well -- "since the religion is obviously BS, the source of them must also be - 'God'". In many discussions, I find many atheists are willing to accept possibly something we don't understand as "God", may actually exist. I tell them that I too find religion as mostly BS that seeks to control people in the name of 'freeing' them, but that I also believe in God because I recognized a distinction between what religion says about creation and logical possibilities; that distinction is required for a better view.

I also note that atheism is a belief, entirely like a religious belief - they are the same. They both require you to 'believe', things un-provable. I get a kick out of when an atheist thinks their belief is the control, merely because of the structure of language is required in that expression -- "I don't believe in God" is how our language requires us to express it. So it looks like the action is "not" doing something vs "doing something" - believing, in the believer crowd. Our language itself is constructed to program our perspectives. Let me break a piece of that programming for you with a little deductive reasoning:


When one says, "I don't believe in God" - it is a generalization. It indicates TWO possibilities are present, that need to be defined with a distinction as only one of these can exist in a mind at any given time. One of the two possibilities is that you "have no belief on the subject at all", and the other is that you "believe that God does not exist". One of those is a belief, and the other is not the definition of an atheist. Basic deduction based on that distinction dictates that being an atheist is indeed a belief, just as religion is - neither can be proven. Interesting how our language hides that? I wonder if this is the same in other languages?

the lack of existence of something is impossible to prove, just as atheists would say God is impossible to prove. Pretty much the same mindset, the variable is the strength of the belief in both case.


But I still stand with my previous posts perspective - it matters not


As a side note, I'll add that strongly held beliefs are the root of all human suffering. Believe Nothing, Consider Everything.

Well said, DeDukshyn. That was along the lines I was thinking. The reason I brought it up was that this should be kept in mind when considering the question in the OP.

[Innocent Warrior]

So, how do you know?

Sometimes I don't know, but I don't know that I don't know until my reality and the outer reality collide and clash. I can't recall experiencing hallucinations, none that I wasn't aware were hallucinations anyway (I was ill) but sometimes I confuse my reality with the outer (collective/other people's) reality.

A couple of times I've seen ghosts that look exactly like living people and didn't realise they weren't living people until I made a comment about the ghost, to the living person I was with, who told me nobody just walked by us (or whatever the case may be). The moment I realise the person I saw was a ghost, anomalies quickly rush to my awareness, like how the ghost didn't make any sound as they walked, for example. At times I've heard a news story on the radio as I was waking up, about something that hasn't happened yet, and I don't know it hasn't happened yet until I make a comment about it to another person and they correct me.

In my experience, I cannot always rely on the experience itself to know whether the reality of something within my experience will be considered real to others. I can know by association, comparing with others, or testing it in some way.

For myself personally, I can't recall questioning whether something I was experiencing was real or not, unless I was in a confused state. I think knowing the nature of the reality of something is as effortless and automatic as breathing, unless we doubt, hence confuse ourselves. If I don't understand something I'm experiencing, I simply ask, "what is this?" and immediately the answer follows (at least a pointer), that's how I know. Where the answer comes from and what determines what the answer will be, often largely remains a mystery to me, but I know to trust it because it feels clear and perfect and it comes with a sense of realisation.

I think the fact our brain demonstrates not knowing the difference between what's real or imagined is a reflection of the truth that what's considered real or not is our choice.

Update: Violet, I just saw your post clarifying your question (apologies). How does the atheist know? I'd say (mostly a guess) he knows because that's what he chose to be real for him, in this life experience.

[Violet]

That's profound, Innocent Warrior. I've had some undefined strangeness visiting me myself when I was younger. It lasted for a while. And because of the repetitive occurrence, I'm very sure that I heard what I heard. However, since no one else could at the time, I'm still left to wonder: if I decide this really happened, what then becomes reality for me?

There's a saying in islamic literature, as reported by the (nowadays) Uzbeq scholar al-Bukhari, which quotes God as saying: "I am to my worshipper* who he thinks I am."

I've always found that intro very powerful.

[kirolak]

ZooLife, you are onto something. . . .many self-professed athiests are good, kind people who revere all of nature, while many god FEARING (Why??) people are mean spirited, ungenerous, ungracious & speciesists, as well!

[Morbid]

being a little bit experienced with hallucinogenic substances i came to conclusion that once the medicine is administered, the senses go off the charts, therefore its possible to perceive things that are not there in this thick material realm, it doesnt mean that when we go about our business in here things are not happening in the background.. so yeah! - definately hallucinations, and absolutely real at the same time. depends from which perspective one looks at it. personally, it just takes my consciousness into the higher levels of perception where lots of learning is happening outside of ego self.

[Hervé]

Studying this "Third Man In The Room" experiment might help some understanding what's what?