NationStates Jolt Archive


visions-proof of anything?

Feil
06-07-2005, 19:14
Roughly eight months ago, I was lying in my bed, in the upstairs room of my house. It is located in the corner of the room opposite the door, with the head to the wall, with a skylight above. I was awake, not dozing, though tired from the day; my light was off and I had just closed my eyes to begin approaching sleep. (It usually takes me from ten to twenty minutes to go from awakeness to sleep, regardless of how tired I am.)

In this state, I experienced a very compelling audio halucination.

To explain further: I heard, clearly, through the ears not "in my head", a harpsichord and at two or three strings, playing a (at least) three-part piece of chamber music, beautiful and complex and-more importantly-entirely without me consentrating on it. It lasted perhaps ten minutes. Within the first minute I had analised what was going on and concluded that it was a halucination; even knowing I was halucinating did nothing to the strength of the halucination.

I had never halucinated before that time. I have never halucinated since. At the time, I had no drug in my body save whatever was left of a 10mg pill of Zyrtek (an antihystemine with practically no side-effects) that I had taken that morning. Yet, at that time, I experienced a complex, believable (only able to have reality ruled out because I knew there was no source whatsoever for the sound and because nobody else remembered hearing it when I asked the next morning) halucination in a state of reasonable consciousness and while still able to reason and think lucidly.

I can, and have in the past constructed for myself multi-part melodies. I can construct in my head a song with one instrument with no difficulty; two or three I can manage aswell so long as one is playing a simple harmony. (For instance, drums and bass guitar along with a melody instrument in Jazz or Rock). I cannot manage more than three instruments, nor can I manage more than one line of more complexity than a drum beat or chord changes. In short, the halucination was beyond the capacity of my conscious to develop on its own under optimal circumstances.
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What would I have thought, one must wonder, if I had heard God telling me to abide by the commandments? What if, in stead of a complicated three- or four-part piece of chamber music I had heard a chorus of angels chanting "glory to god in the highest". Would it have been grounds for a miracle? Would I have had any right to claim it was a real experience and not a simple halucination?

I love music. I have listened to hours apon hours of music--mostly classical, a good percentage beroque chamber music.

Some people love the idea of God. They have spent hours and hours praying and listening to sermons.

Some people love their wives, and spend hours and hours living with them until they die.

It is little wonder, I think, that I heared music; or that a man who spent his life with his wife could hear, on occasion, her calling to him after her death?

Is it wonderous, I demand, that someone who spent his life with the idea and the translated voice of an imaginary God would hear him speaking?
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Do I have a right to claim that, rather than it being a series of electrical misfirings in my frontal brain triggering a complex but entirely imaginary audio halucination, there was a convocation of invisible angels playing a harpsichord, a viola, and a cello next to my bed that night?
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Of interest, my father has had a similar encounter with a false vision. He noticed, apon waking up early one morning, that the Virgin Mary, complete with face, arms, legs, robes, facial features, etc. was standing at his bed, arms outstretched in supplication. After a few minutes of rational deduction and gradual waking-up, he placed himself in the room, thought of what was in the direction of the "virgin Mary", realised it was a window with the curtains tied to the sides, and watched the "virgin Mary" dissolve into the trees and grass and sky of his back yard.

Tell me though. If he had not been a rational person, if he had been a tabloid-reader or a blind follower of the teachings of the church (he is a Christian, but a rational one, not credulous), would he have been so quick to discover the true nature of "Mary"? Would he have even noticed at all, or turned quickly to his wife to wake her, turn back, find that "Mary" had vanished, and ascribe some profound religious significance to the event?

Would his report of visitation be any more relyable than my report of invisible ghosts playing 17th century chamber music?

-Feil.
Drunk commies deleted
06-07-2005, 19:18
I've hallucinated voices, "seen" a floating ball of yellow light while wide awake, and had hallucinations associated with sleep paralysis. That's not counting the times I've used drugs. Drugs seldom gave me any real hallucinations.

It happens. Everyone makes what he will of his experiences.
[NS]Ihatevacations
06-07-2005, 19:26
I know I read a dman news article on this but I will be damned if i can find it again
Czardas
06-07-2005, 19:27
Who wrote the piece? It all depends on that.

Because if it was by J.S. Bach, it is further proof that Bach = God. ;)
Sumamba Buwhan
06-07-2005, 19:39
Well I wouldn't say it's proof of anything but since you like contemplating this stuff you should look into "Maybe Logic"
New Sans
06-07-2005, 19:49
Who wrote the piece? It all depends on that.

Because if it was by J.S. Bach, it is further proof that Bach = God. ;)

So if Bach = God then Nietzsche is right....God is dead. :eek:
New Genoa
06-07-2005, 20:33
They prove you're crazy!

*first one to say it*
Pterodonia
06-07-2005, 20:48
Last week, under the influence of nothing whatsoever, I awoke after having drifted off to sleep maybe half an hour earlier, while there was still light outside, to see a dark, shadowy spider, about the size of my hand, jump away from me onto the wall near my bed and scramble up the wall toward the shadows in the corner. Something had startled me awake and this is what I saw immediately upon opening my eyes. When I realized that it looked more like a shadow of a spider than a real spider, it occurred to me that it might be a shadow of a real spider crawling up the sliding screen door (although we don't have any huge spiders in our area), so I looked toward the screen door but saw nothing. When I looked back toward my wall, the shadow spider was nearing the upper corner of the room, where it finally faded into the other shadows. Very creepy. *shudder*

This isn't the first time I've hallucinated spiders upon waking, but it's the longest lasting hallucination I've ever had. All the others vanished almost immediately upon awakening. The funny thing is, I've never hallucinated anything else but spiders, and then, only upon awakening.
Dobbsworld
06-07-2005, 21:02
I once, while not under the influence of any drugs, was sitting reading on my patio, in my garden, at night.

We had two vines, some variety of bean, as I recall, and from the corner of my eye, I saw a small, diffuse bluish-green flash of light briefly emanate from the tops of one of the two two vines. This flash was quite like the sparks you can see when crushing a 'wint-o-green' lifesaver between your molars ( the result of breaking the bonds between sugar molecules, if I recall correctly).

My eyes darted over to the source of this flash, just in time to see the curling plant-top twist roughly 180 degrees around the stake it growing around, in less than a second.

I don't know if that's a vision or not. But it was damned weird. I hadn't thought I'd ever see plant growth with the naked eye.
Willamena
06-07-2005, 21:26
I once, while not under the influence of any drugs, was sitting reading on my patio, in my garden, at night.

We had two vines, some variety of bean, as I recall, and from the corner of my eye, I saw a small, diffuse bluish-green flash of light briefly emanate from the tops of one of the two two vines. This flash was quite like the sparks you can see when crushing a 'wint-o-green' lifesaver between your molars ( the result of breaking the bonds between sugar molecules, if I recall correctly).

My eyes darted over to the source of this flash, just in time to see the curling plant-top twist roughly 180 degrees around the stake it growing around, in less than a second.

I don't know if that's a vision or not. But it was damned weird. I hadn't thought I'd ever see plant growth with the naked eye.
It was the aliens!
Feil
06-07-2005, 21:26
I once, while not under the influence of any drugs, was sitting reading on my patio, in my garden, at night.

We had two vines, some variety of bean, as I recall, and from the corner of my eye, I saw a small, diffuse bluish-green flash of light briefly emanate from the tops of one of the two two vines. This flash was quite like the sparks you can see when crushing a 'wint-o-green' lifesaver between your molars ( the result of breaking the bonds between sugar molecules, if I recall correctly).

My eyes darted over to the source of this flash, just in time to see the curling plant-top twist roughly 180 degrees around the stake it growing around, in less than a second.

I don't know if that's a vision or not. But it was damned weird. I hadn't thought I'd ever see plant growth with the naked eye.

I would guess that was not a halucination. Probably t'was an actual movement of the plant, from wind or breaking off the pole, and then swinging around. Sort of like a stack of things can remain standing for hours, then seem to tumble for no reason, when really it was a series of slight vibration or slight breeze that slowly worked it to a critical point. I would guess offhand that the flash you saw was probably light refracted through a dewdrop, that passed over your eye while the plant was moving.