Anatomy of Hallucinations

Claude Rifat (Claude de Contrecoeur) Introduction Since the beginnings of mankind hallucinations have had an important role in human behaviours. The destiny of man has been guided by three forms of hallucinations: 1. Oneiric hallucinations 2. Cortical hallucinations 3. Cortico-limbic hallucinations Oneiric hallucinations are those hallucinations in which all of us, regularly, penetrate each night. These are the dream hallucinations. Cortical hallucinations are those induced, experimentally, with hallucinogens or experienced by mystics and schizophrenics. For instance, the vision or the hearing of a non-existent stimulus is called a cortical hallucination. Cortico-limbic hallucinations are emotions which are experienced without concomitant exogenous stimulation. All these forms of hallucinations have played a major role in the evolution and survival of man. Oneiric and cortical hallucinations have played an important role in the evolution of man until recently where these forms of hallucinations have been recognised for what they are: virtual perceptions. Cortico-limbic hallucinations are the stuff of every days life! They go on, unrecognised, and unidentified. This is why I, sometimes, call these potentially dangerous hallucinations "non-identified hallucinations" (N.I.H). We spend a lot of time in cortico-limbic hallucinations without ever knowing that we are hallucinating. A man or a woman devoid of these unidentified hallucinations would be quite similar to what we imagine a robot should be! All of these hallucinations gave rise to the different religions of men including, of course, the main present-day religions. Man has never been able to confront the exogenous reality (also called "exoreality") without hallucinating. Even scientists who try to get rid of their hallucinations are, very often, still plagued by NIH. Oneiric and Cortical Hallucinations These hallucinations do not proceed randomly with time as non-experienced observers usually imagine. They obey to some fundamental laws regarding the organisation of biological memories. One of the major laws of how one hallucination develops itself through time is the law of "homologies motifielles", in French. This could be translated as the law of "homologous patterns", in English. This law states that a hallucinatory object transforms itself non-randomly with time. Hallucinations follow a law of pattern transformations. This law is useful in analysing alleged hallucinations like in the case of flying saucers, for instance, or any other reported unusual phenomenon.

What is interesting in analysing flying saucers cases, is that one cannot find, in the vast majority of cases, any track of hallucinations! So these reports can be only faked or true but certainly not hallucinated. We can observe on ourselves hallucinations in two ways: 1. Focusing our visual attention, in total darkness, on something. It is very easy to observe faint hallucinations and follow them if one has not slept for many hours. 2. Taking hallucinogens. Those hallucinations induced by hallucinogens or by focusing our attention on some kind of thoughts always follow a sequence of events: a. First we start to see changing colours. Violet-blue and red are prominent. b. Suddenly, ROTATING REITERATED objects appear. They rotate mostly in one direction, slowly, perhaps one rotation per 5 seconds. While rotating, these informational objects can change themselves into other rotating and reiterated objects. Reiteration seems to be the prerequesite in order for the nervous system to synthesise more complex hallucinations reminiscent of the "real" exogenous reality. Reiteration is also something commonly found in arts. I think, especially here, about Siamese patterns of traditional painting and about drawings like of those of Escher which have a strongly hallucinogenic flavour. Some of Escher's drawings are certainly hallucinations observed in this state. c. Reiterations, suddenly, disappear to be replaced by complex images. In fact, this sequence of hallucinations is a bit more complex but can be disregarded here, for clarity and simplicity. Rotating reiterated objects can also easily be seen in daylight under the indolalkylamine psilocine. It is a very enjoyable thing to scientifically observe and describe hallucinations, because with such observations, you are penetrating deep in the functioning of biological memories. And, of course, biological memories do not work at all like man-made memories. For instance our memory is an "intersecting memory", something which does not yet exist in man-made memories. In fact, intersections are what make the rise of intelligence possible. Without such intersections no flexibility can develop and without flexibility you cannot have thoughts. The study of hallucinations gives us new ways of imagining novel computers which could give rise to artificial intelligence. To that effect, we should one day create intersectional computers working as pattern analysers because biological memories are, basically, pattern analysers, and not sequential numerical analysers. What is an "intersection"? An intersection is a small reiterated memory zone which connects different sequences of stored information. For instance, a simple sound like the sound of the letter "A" is an intersection. In an artificial memory sounds are stored sequentially and the same sounds are stored many times. In an intersecting memory one sound is stored only once (in a reiterated form) and is then recalled each time needed. This is a form of natural compression. I have been thinking since a long time about the reason why reiterations precede the appearance of complex hallucinations. One intuitive reason seems to be that reiterated objects are the first informational procedure in order to be able for the brain to synthesise complex hallucinations.