Mental afflictions resembling a brush with the supernatural range widely, from psychosis to anxiety and depression. The distressed brain makes swift associations between outer/inner stimuli. Ordinary events feel extraordinary, and the afflicted may hear voices or see visions.
The Brain's Ghosts
These apparitions come from the brain. This can be a natural reaction to intense anxiety or the life-altering experience of psychosis, perhaps the most startling and intense conditions a human can possibly endure.
Synchronicity, Euphoria, Illusions
Oddly, synchronicity or meaningful coincidences (popular with the sane) seems to favor the mad.
Famous composer, Robert Shuman (who died in an insane asylum), saw visions of coffins, funerals, terrifying hallucinations, and experienced numerous synchronistic associations.
A patient released from a psyche ward explained her experiences before being hospitalized. “I was aware of synchronistic events occurring rapidly, one right after the other, constantly. Television, the radio, books, anything was a sign of something other than its surface value.” *(1)
A Harvard medical student, who suffered a psychotic breakdown after writing a paper on Spinoza, says, "Going crazy is a symbolic experience. Reality is still there, but you keep interpreting it. Everything becomes symbolic.” *(2)
The belief that such impressions are profound may be part of mania's grandiosity (one may feel in sync with the entire universe, even haunted or demon possessed).
The Paranormal may Exist in Natural Ways
Interestingly, Jung suffered a mental breakdown influencing his theories, including synchronicity (meaningful coincidences). Synchronicity occurs in crisis when fears (or hopes) appear to be symbolically reflected everywhere. It's puzzling it never occurred to Jung that synchronicity is a mirror reflecting human anxiety, which is more logical than believing the universe sends personal messages. To view synchronicity in non-supernatural ways doesn't make synchronicity invalid, it merely inverts Jung's theory.
Dreams, Prophecy, Odds
Several important inventions were dream-inspired, as well as novels Frankenstein and Jekyll and Hyde. Yet dreams are organic functions of the brain produced via neurochemical – not supernatural – processes.
Neurologists discovered dreams are neurons firing in the brain usually without meaning (except to refresh the mind for the next day). Dreams can also be visual symbols of psychological stressors.
Dreams, it appears, are elaborate hallucinations, and likewise, hallucinations may be daytime dreaming; basically, they are the same phenomenon.
Harvard neurophysiologist, J.Allan Hobson, writes, “What is the difference between my dream experience and the waking experience of someone who is psychotic, demented, or just plain crazy? In terms of the nature of the experience, there is none.”
Jung stated, “Let the dreamer awake and you will see psychosis.”
Socrates (speaking on divine madness) regarded psychic prediction as “the noblest of arts” or "the manic art,” but modern science considers it as odds. Someone on earth is bound to dream of an accident that will happen by chance. Since innumerable dreams occur each night, it's surprising how many billions don't come true.
Hidden Messages
When one is in conflict or denial, the subconscious remembers overlooked nuances and seems determined to reveal the truth. It seeks attention when something is potentially dangerous, or helpful. It’s easy to imagine the subconscious as a survival mechanism. What feels like psychic intuition may be feedback pushing through at unexpected moments. Unfortunately, even the subconscious is infallible and not always accurate.
Passing no judgment, the subconscious merely watches and sometimes can almost be felt. It is a haunting and relentless messenger. Never seen, or actually proven, it appears to process problems without ever sleeping.
Logic hides inside intuition because the brain constantly seeks meaningful patterns in life. Sometimes, the subconscious quickly pieces together such impressions of information, appearing as hunches out of the blue.
But when the brain is broken, these patterns are magnified and skewed.
Perceiving the Surrounding World
Conscious beings perceive life through physical means. Not only does an astonishing world exist, but its creatures evolved a capacity – the senses - to experience it. The five basic senses (although there are more, including echolocation in dolphins and bats) are physical ways sentient beings understand the world.
Conversely, E.S.P. involves telepathic channeling of information via the mind, or brain (itself a bodily organ), but the brain is a complex organ capable of generating visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory (smell), and gustatory (taste) hallucinations.
Searching for Wonder
Mankind longs to feel enthralled, but the "magic is science unexplained." *(3) The magic is indeed real, but can be explained by normal processes (or considered to be altered brain states), and should be tempered with scientific literacy.
The natural world is full of mystery and enchantment. Perhaps it's somewhat ungrateful to feel it's not enough.
To date there is no proof anything but natural processes creates paranormal activity, which makes the mind’s chimeras even more fascinating.
Skeptics know it's impossible to prove a negative, meaning only what exists can be absolutely proved. A thing either exists or it doesn’t; what we personally believe does not change it.
The Latin, Ubi dumium ibi libertas means "where there's doubt, there is freedom."
An event may “feel” supernatural, but the mind has so many ways to banter and fool. In The Demon Haunted World, Sagan cautions, “the more we want something to be true, the more careful we have to be."
Normal people occasionally hear or see things not there, meaning hallucinations aren't always pathological, but part of human neurology. Even famous thinkers have been grossly tricked by episodes of insanity. Paradoxically, florid creativity and inspiration all flow from the same enigmatic source and so does, perhaps, what's called Extra Sensory Perception.
Indeed the mind is a haunted house.
*(1) Madness, Heresy, and the Rumors of Angels, 1993, Seth Farber, p.70
*(2) Harvard Medical student regarding a psychotic episode (anonymous)
*(3) The Breath of Night, 1985 (not in print), P. Mari, p.33
Touched with Fire, 1993, Kay Redfield Jamison; Feet of Clay-Saints, Sinners, and Madmen, 1996; Going Crazy, 1977, Otto Friedrich; Anthony Storr; 1996; A Mad People's History of Madness, 1982, Dale Peterson; The Chemistry of Conscious States, 1994, J. Allan Hobson, M.D; The Demon Haunted World, 1996, Carl Sagan
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