Otherwise hallucinations can be inculcated deliberately, without bashing one’s biology with drugs. Huxley’s hypnosis experiment in Dr. Tart’s ALTERED STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS presented more of a point than has so far been taken on the whole.

I took it. A second party, a hypnotist, is not necessary. Sitting quietly in a darkened room — generally, any twilight situation will do it — and relaxing the mind freely, the shapes of ordinary objects can take on another shape of one kind or another, and somehow seem alive or with a consciousness of its own.

With a little confidence, one can take it much further, and into the daylight if desired.

It’s important to stress that doing this deliberately makes all the difference in the world. Changes in brain, nervous system and senses can be felt with fascination, but also with a sense of ordinariness not prompting one to rush off to the dictionary of nut-case symptoms to find out what’s wrong. One can cease it at any time. One becomes used to the fact that s/he is using his inner senses, whatever clanky terminology may be laid upon those natural human instruments.

After some time with this, should one persist, it becomes clear that there is a symbolism involved in it — it can be practical.

A nice example from me: every now and then I “see” people out of the corner of my eye, so to speak, though I may be looking a little more directly at a given space, but not fully physically focused.
Paying attention to reality over a period of time within seeing such, it will have turned out to be a precognition of visitors, usually people I haven’t met before.

These occasions are like the consciousness of dreams, briefly imposed on or within ordinary physical perceptions of reality.

I wonder why there’s no discussion of dreams among the threads I’ve searched here. Van Eeden’s essay in ALTERED STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS is why I’ve wound up here 35 years later. It’s been quite a trip, and it continues.

Learning control over the odd stuff actually reminds me of learning to function again after the car accident that resulted in my adult NDE. I remember waking up in the hospital and nothing seemed to work. There wasn’t much of me that wasn’t broken.

I had to constantly think about how to walk at first. I literally couldn’t walk and chew gum at the same time or I’d fall over. I could remember doing things like swimming before the accident, but I still had to figure out how to swim again. It wasn’t enough to just fix the damaged parts. It was like my legs had no memory.

I even had to learn to do really simple things again. Minor annoying things that I was too embarrassed to admit I didn’t know. Like how to open a can. I cooked from scratch for months before I saw a can opener used on TV and I figured out how to open a stupid can. And “yes”, I could have asked someone, but I was so determined to convince everyone that I was still me after the accident that I couldn’t admit to anything that might be seen as evidence that I wasn’t OK. I sure could have used the internet back then if it had been available.

I feel some of the same frustrations with learning to control the anomalous experiences. I didn’t ask for such experiences any more than I asked to be involved in a head-on collision. Although looking back, some of my most memorable experiences resulted from the accident. Not just the NDE, or how my life went in a new direction, but small things that kept me going.

One evening when I was out for a walk, one of my first walks, I was in tears because I hurt so much. But I was determined that I was going to make it to the end of the street. When I got there, there was a Blue Spruce tree all covered in fireflies. It was beautiful, like an out of place Christmas tree all lit up in the middle of summer. It was awesome. I was so glad that I walked that far.

It would be nice if someday I could relax and enjoy the self-aware light shows and ghosts as much as I would enjoy seeing another a bug covered spruce tree.

Sandy

PS: Don’t worry about the grammar. I’m much more interested in your ideas than in your syntax.

Seems like the mindfulness exercises is quite useful for you now. To me it seems like you are progressing with a scientific experiment on you own mind, now gathering subjective empirical data on the mindfulness technique as a method for controlling this type of unusual experiences. So far it’s a thumbs up

The experiences I’ve had while practising my own method have made me think of a newborn baby trying to control it’s body. At first there is only chaotic movements, but slowly, gradually, and backed up by a persistent intention to gain control, our limbs start to obey.. It’s hard at first.. It takes a lot of effort.. But we all do succeed in the end.

I feel it is the same with the mind. It is as we have to do the same as we did as infants. But now the challenge lies more within. And just as we can perfect bodily control to the almost supernatural, so we can do with the mind.

I feel one thing is important though.. To be playful and relaxed in the practise and exercise of this control. Not stressed and hard. The infant seems quite relaxed, while still playfully intent, as arms and legs are racing. The same can be said for the toddler immersed in play with it’s toys. I think there is important lesson to be learned by looking at small children. It is funny that most of us adults have forgotten what we as toddlers just did by default

Tor

>I tuned out the nerds and enjoyed the movie. < There you go, Sandy, the key to success in life , selective perception when needed. Take ordinary life as an example. If you pick up a newspaper or turn on the radio or the TV, a million bummers come your way. A very few we really should know about as we might be able to do something about them, but the vast majority would only depress or anger us if we paid much attention to them. So just as you can tune out most irrelevant impressions from our ordinary world, ditto for the unusual world.
This sounds inconsistent with my usual emphasis on the importance of developing mindfulness, but the mindfulness I think we should develop is an ability to be mindful as needed, not an automatic overload habit….

I haven’t really felt like writing about the weird experiences lately, but this experience feels kind of important somehow. It isn’t a very exciting experience by weirdness standards, I suppose. But I think something about these experiences may have changed for me. I think that perhaps the mindfulness exercises are helping me be OK.

Last night my husband and I went to see the movie Wolverine. We got there early, so the theatre was completely empty when we went in. My husband went to get popcorn, so I had the whole theatre to myself for a while.

I could kind of notice ghosts in the room. They didn’t seem solid; they were more a feeling of ghosts. But I found out that I could tune them in and see them if I wanted to. They were a bunch of young nerdy guys, the sort of guys that have heated discussions over every discrepancy between the movie and all the old comic books. A happy/nerdy place memory.

There was another young guy who appeared beside them. He didn’t interact with the others; he looked at me and disappeared. I don’t think he was a place memory, but he didn’t say anything to me so I can’t be sure. My husband came back with the popcorn and the theatre started to fill up after that. I tuned out the nerds and enjoyed the movie.

This was really the first time I’ve ever felt like I had any conscious control over seeing the weird stuff. It didn’t even occur to me until afterwards that I could feel the difference in how I was when I could see them, and how I was when they were barely noticeable. Maybe that’s from doing the mindfulness stuff, as silly as that seems. I’m still trying to process what happened. Something is different now.

Sandy

Letting myself be open to odd experiences at times of my choosing has helped quite a bit.

I’m still working on the mindfulness thing as well. That has produced some really surprising results so far. I finally understand what being “grounded” feels like. I’ve always felt a bit disconnected from my body; maybe that’s a NDEr thing. I find that paying attention to what my body feels like when I’m also enjoying colors, sounds and stuff helps me stay grounded. I know where I stop, and the other stuff starts. That’s very comforting.

Sandy

I have these very interesting arguments with my counselor about what constitutes “crazy”. He agrees that I could find information in medical books that would support the argument that I’m certifiable, but he insists I’m just unusually perceptive. “Nuts but OK” is how I describe it.

When I was first trying to figure out what was happening to me, I searched medical journals and found some really scary terms describing the pathology of my condition. Those words have haunted me more than any ghost ever could.

Sandy

>The best I’ve managed is to allow myself to be open to odd experiences at a time and place of my choosing. <
I’ve known a number of people who’ve worked out something like that, and it can definitely help!

>But I got very concerned not just because I had the experience, but also because I kind of enjoyed it at the time. I was pretty convinced that made me certifiable.<
Just returned from a conference where a psychiatrist colleague gave several depressing examples of where certain kinds of experiences were indeed listed as clear signs of major mental illness in psychiatric handbooks – and where it later turned out that much of the population has them! A prime example: feeling of real contact with a deceased love one. Turns out that over half the normal population has had that. Now the criteria have gotten more “liberal.” It’s OK to experience this in the first few months of bereavement, but not later. I think this says a lot more about the narrowness and inadequacy psychiatry can get into that about people’s experiences, sadly…..

Sandy

I think you will get a handle of these things Sandy

Oh.. and if you want to share some of your experiences, I’m one of those that listen with an interest

Tor