Are Hallucinations and Schizophrenia a sign of Mental Illness, or a Window to a Spirit World?
" When spirits begin to speak with man, he must beware lest he believe them in anything; for they say almost
anything; things are fabricated by them, and they lie; for if they were permitted to relate what heaven is, and how
things are in the heavens, they would tell so many lies, and indeed with solemn affirmation, that man would be
astonished; wherefore, when spirits were speaking, I was not permitted to have faith in the things which they
related." - Emanuel Swedenborg 1748, March 20. Spiritual Diary 1621
"I was talking with a young woman who was distressed over her love affair with an unseen lover. He said the
most promising things and claimed great powers. She was found going out the hospital gate, arguing out loud
that she didn’t want to leave. My task was to be a counselor between her and a hallucinated lover. He was
present. At least she could see him. Finally, just for the heck of it, I started talking to him. I asked her to report
faithfully what he said and did. It worked.
By simple expedient a way was found to get inside the patient’s experiences of hallucinations, and a fascinating
story unfolded. Later I was even able to give psychological tests to the patient and his looked much sicker than
the patient on the Rorschach Inkblot Test. What was revealed of hallucinations looked remarkably like ancient
accounts of spiritual possession. My colleagues were generally skeptical about the whole matter, so I described
these findings in essentially religious journals.
The basic procedure was simple. I established a simple contact with the person who hallucinated. I simply wished
to learn of his experiences. I would not judge him by what his voices or visions said or did. I would speak directly
to the “others” and ask questions. The patient would report back word for word what was said, or what they did. I
could record both the question and the answer.
The procedure needs to be made clear because when I tell people of it some invariably conclude I am talking of
my own hallucinations. My own hallucinations are faint ones in the hypnologic state that don’t compare to the
patient’s.
Before I get into what was found, several common misconceptions should be laid aside. A hallucination is a clear
sensory experience of things others around him simply cannot experience. To have hallucinations does not
necessarily mean the person is crazy. A common, normal hallucination is to hear one’s name called when there
is no one around. A person may be visited by a loved one recently deceased.
This is so common it should be considered normal. The meeting is often quite brief, it implies great love between
the persons, and it seals the relationship in a pleasant way. Also, some religions encourage their members to
expect hallucinated experiences, and of course they occur. By themselves these just mean the person is really
participating in the religion. A hallucination can be normal.
Hallucinations should be contrasted with illusions. Illusions are misinterpretations and distortions of real sensory
experiences. When you are guilty, the wind in the trees may seem to be saying something of your guilt. Once I
came into my shipboard cabin at night to find a brilliant plate lying on my bunk. My hair stood on end because it
looked otherworldly. Timidly I approached it to find it was a pool of bright moonlight coming through the round
porthole. It was an illusion. A delusion is a fixed set of ideas that don’t fit with reality. It is related to being
deluded, or mistaken. A vision is a revelation given by something seen. A vision is a visual hallucination with a
revelation component.
There was little time to explore the patient’s hallucinations, even though it was one of the most fascinating
experiences as a psychologist. My aim was to describe phenomenologically the hallucinated experiences of the
patient as accurately as possible. Because the people seen and heard by the patient are almost invariably real
to him, I speak of them as though they were real. It appeared a large proportion of our patients hallucinated
regularly. The staff put these down as crazy or unreal, so the patients learned to keep quiet about them.
I discovered how to tell a good deal about a patient’s hallucinations from his gestures.
For instance, his eyes would momentarily flash to the left in response to voices while talking with me. I would tell
a patient I didn’t know something of my guesses of what he was experiencing. This, as well as my accepting the
voices as real to the patient and my not judging the patient by his hallucinations, helped me to learn more than
the others.
A woman, for instance, could have voices suggesting such dirty things that she was afraid she would be judged
by this content. I made it clear that I respected her morality as separate from “theirs.”
I also learned the voices were afraid of me. They knew I was a psychologist and were afraid I would kill them. It
took some diplomacy to strike up a relationship with someone else’s voices. Some hallucinations never did get
courage enough to talk in my presence, or they would threaten the patient if he repeated what they said.
The patients received no reward for cooperating. Several said they were glad to do it in hopes I might figure out
something that could rid them of the voices. I wasn’t in charge of releasing them from the hospital, so there was
no gain in it for them. I am personally convinced I received a relatively accurate picture except where the voices
themselves demanded some holding back.
One advantage of my method was that I was given hallucinations word for word as they formed. Moreover, I
could ask the hallucinations specific questions. At best patients report old hallucinations to the staff, which, like
old dreams, have much missing. Most of these patients are simple people in grave distress. Two factors suggest
accuracy. There is much more similarity than difference between each patient’s reports. Also, I had opportunities
to speak on hallucinations to mixed audiences of staff and patients and I was very pleased to have patients I
didn’t know come up afterward and say I had described their experiences too.
A great variety of hospitalized people hallucinated. Some were new, acute schizophrenics. Some were long-
hospitalized schizophrenics. Others were alcoholic, brain-damaged, or senile. Hallucinations are not just the
prerogative of one diagnostic group. There were remarkably few signs of diagnostic differences in
hallucinations, so they are described as a single group.
The first basic thing I learned is that hallucinations are experienced as fully real. Voices are heard as average
volume, even louder than average. I had worked with one woman off and on for four years before I learned that
she saw President Gamal Abdel Nasser. She treated Nasser with the great respect due to a president. He sat in
an empty chair in my office. When I passed my hand behind him down the back of the chair, she could not see
the part of my hand that was behind him.
One alcoholic became mad at the hallucinations that were tormenting him. This fighting man with a long prison
record was mad enough to try to clobber them. He told me of his frustration at seeing one hospital staff member
exactly duplicated on the other side of the room. He knew one was a fake, but he couldn’t tell which one. On
another occasion he was awakened by military officers to do some service for his country. As he sleepily got up
and dressed, he noticed something odd about their insignia. He knew they were the tormentors and struck out,
hitting a wall. The ward staff was surprised at his hand injury the next day.
Voices sound like real voices, not like the faint speech normals heard as they think. After enough experience
with hallucinations the patient may be able to recognize voices from the other world as against voices from this
one simply because they become familiar with the persons in the other world. Hallucinations can produce real
pain that is indistinguishable from normal pain. The only difference is that voices often will threaten pain just
before it is felt.
In no case did patients accept the term hallucinations for these experiences. The term was offensive. It implied
they were not real. Almost all patients had private terms of their own for these experiences: The Other Order,
The Eavesdroppers, etc. A hallucination called ,“ An Emanation of the Feminine Aspect of the Divine” suggested
the terms higher order and lower order to me to distinguish fundamentally different classes in the world of
hallucinations, and I will later use these terms.
Most patients reported that the other world introduced itself suddenly to them. One man was riding a bus and
heard a piercing scream. He pleaded for it to come down in volume, and it did. One woman was just working in
her garden and a kindly man started talking to her when no one was around. One alcoholic heard voices coming
up a hotel light well. When he listened he heard them plotting his death. Another man saw a spaceship land and
green men getting out.
It takes a while for the patient to figure out that he is having private experiences that are consequently not
shared by others. Often they tell their friends only to find that their sanity is doubted. They therefore learn early
to keep quiet about these things. There may be one or several figures. Some familiar ones come around day
after day, such as one an old codger called ‘The Old Timer.’
Hallucinations don’t have names, personal histories, or identities as we think of them. Often they accept and
adopt any appropriate name given them, such as the folksy Old Timer. If it will please or beguile the listener,
they may make one up and discard it a short while later.
For most persons hallucinations ushered in a host of dreadful experiences. They found that people of this world
didn’t accept other-world experiences, immediately doubted their sanity, as we have seen, and lost respect for
them. They found that the voices could easily gang up on them, literally putting them through hell. As one
woman said with great feeling, “You can’t have twenty people screaming at you constantly without going to
pieces in a little while”.
Very often alcoholics who have really been living it up find they are tortured by others. Voices come out of
ventilators and odd places and comment that the person is a worthless bum that should be killed. One man went
through ten days of loud disputes as to how they would kill him. They had a gun--he could hear its hammer fall--
a hangman’s rope, a flame for burning, etc. This condition is experienced by many alcoholics who finally kill
themselves to get it over with.
Some patients were brought into an odd drama. One woman found herself being put through some purification
ceremonies that resembled events in the Book of Revelation. Another woman underwent surgery so doctors in
the other world could do research. Some very inadequate men just went through years of very repetitive
criticism. One was criticized five years for a ten-cent bad dept. Others were just told they were worthless, queers,
etc. In general, alcoholics find people are talking about them. Schizophrenics find people are talking to them.
Most patients were brought into somewhat sinister relationships. Already estranged from society, they hopefully
took up with these promising new friends who talked like kindly helpful people with great powers. Gradually they
found their new friends were liars who were more and more critical and tormenting of them. Sometimes voices
would play on the patient’s guilt. If he didn’t do things right, people would be killed somewhere. The next day the
voices would refer to news accounts of people’s deaths as having been caused by the patient.
Often voices would back the patients into a corner where he was doomed if he did or doomed if he didn’t do
something. Almost all the patients had tried a series of private maneuvers to get rid of voices. I was especially
interested in these because they could suggest effective treatment. Prayer was often tried but to no avail. The
very negative voices didn’t like religious things, and they could manage to foul up bible readings or prayers by
snatching away thoughts.
Patients who tried various ways of placating voices, doing as they suggested, found the voices were taking over
and ruining their lives. Many tried vitamins, a change of scenery, various symbolic gestures (i.e., thick padding
over the heart, keeping crosses around them, ect.), but these didn’t work.
They tried to ignore the voices and visions, but it was quite impossible. As one man put it plaintively, “How do
you feel when you go to take a leak and find someone else’s hand on your cock? There is just no privacy
anywhere!” Apparently voices stop only during sleep. They often reappear at the moment of awakening. If they
decide to keep one awake, it’s good-bye to sleep.
Some thing’s, did help patients. One woman concluded her unseen lover was really crazy. She counseled him
that he really wasn’t Jesus Christ, just sick. He seemed to come to his senses gradually and left her. This chain
of events started when I first met him, (the spirit). He bragged that he could read my mind. This was so simple to
test that I immediately put it to a trial. I would write numbers on a piece of paper and he was to read them. He
was a total flop. She began to doubt all her lover’s big talk and started treating him until he left! Some patients
who had led rather immoral lives found their critical voices gradually came down in volume and left as they
vigorously studied the Bible and lived a very moral life.
For reasons that puzzle me, some patients experiences only auditory voices, some just visions, others a mix of
these. In one man the lower order was voices only, the higher order visual only. It is unknown as to why there
are these barriers. I even tried to get one set of voices to do something visual. Try as they might they couldn’t
do it. Also the “other people” present experience just what the patient experiences.
If I showed a patient an ink blot, the voices could see it too. The voices disagreed with one patient’s perceptions
in the ink blot and chimed in with their own. On repeated tests it appeared they could only see what the patient
saw. Moreover, they could only tease the patients about memories that had been recalled when they were
present. Prior memories were not available to them until newly recalled by the patient. Apparently they are in
definable regions of the mind but don’t occupy all of it.
There are two distinct orders of hallucinations. The lower order appears to be much more common (about four
to one) than the higher order. Many patients only experience the lower order. Some experience both orders,
which must be something like being between heaven and hell. The lower order has less talent than the patient.
The higher order is more gifted than the patient.
There are no hallucinations roughly at the patient’s own general level of understanding. Any explanation I could
give of this would be mere theorizing. The lower order talks a great case but its vocabulary and range of
concerns, ideas, and knowledge are less than the patient’s. The quotation from Swedenborg at the beginning of
this chapter really pertains to the lower order. These hallucinations lie, cheat, deceive, pretend, threaten, etc.
Dealing with them is like dealing with very mean drunks. Nothing pleases them. They see the negative side of
everything. Catching them in a bold lie doesn’t even embarrass them. Their main aim seems to be to live it up at
the patient’s expense. I asked one lower- order man what his real purposes were. He said, “Fight, screw, win
the world”.
They zero in on every fault or guilt of the patient and play on it. Their general aim seems to be to take over the
patient and live through him as they please. The higher order is just the opposite. Whereas the lower attacks the
patient’s will, the higher order acts out of great respect for the patient’s will. One man experienced the higher
order as a sun in the sky at night. When he felt fear of the sun it would withdraw. Even he saw that this was
different from “The Bastards”.
The higher order is highly symbolic. It can produce thousands of complex symbols, many of which have an
ancient historical or mythological base. People in the higher order are extremely intuitive of either the patient or
anyone else present. I know many won’t believe this, but I’ll describe it as I found it. They tend to be non-verbal
and much more internal, feeling related and subtle.
One of the most gifted of the higher order I met was a beautiful lady who referred to herself as “An Emanation of
the Feminine Aspect of the Divine”. She was the hallucination in the head of a high school-educated,
schizophrenic, not very gifted gas pipe fitter. When I first met her she appeared as a sprightly little woman,
described as very small by the patient, though her size could vary.
He had mean critical voices working at him and she came to cheer him up. She played all kinds of entertaining
jokes. She was very respectable. The patient had suggested a sexual relationship but she felt it wouldn’t be
proper. When I asked her a question, she could nod yes or no, or yes and no simultaneously. Whenever I or the
patient said something very right she would come over to us and hand us her panties. He described her as a
most pleasant companion. I first sensed her gift in the form of all the universal symbols she produced. They
came so fast that few of them could be described. I recall particularly a Buddhist-type wheel mandala made of
intricately woven human bodies that rolled unseen through my office.
Some seemed to pertain to ancient myths. I went home and studied some obscure part of Greek myths and
asked her about it the next time I saw the gas pipe fitter. She not only understood the myth, she saw into its
human implications better than I did. When asked, she playfully wrote the Greek alphabet all over the place. The
patient couldn’t even recognize the letters, but he could copy hers for me.
I first suspected her extrasensory powers from something the patient said. He worked as a plumber’s assistant in
the hospital. Once, when he got a drink at a fountain, he was surprised to find the water was hot. She explained
why. It had something to do with a shower on the other side of the wall, a bypass valve, and differential pressure.
The patient told the plumber about this odd set-up.
The plumber was surprised. He said it took him two years to figure out why the water was hot sometimes. Once I
tried to conceal my mood from the patient and asked her to symbolize it. A very limp penis suddenly turned up in
the room-- a surprisingly accurate representation of my feelings. When I asked the patient how he saw me he
said, “Okay, just average, I guess.”
She was the most gifted person in the area of religion I’ve ever known. She reflected the seriousness of my
query. A light question she would answer lightly. The more serious and deep a question, the more depth there
was in her answer. She was entirely unlike talking to earthly theologians who call on history or doctrine to prove
a point. She knew the depth of my understanding and led gently into very human allusions that reflected a
profound understanding of history.
She left soon thereafter when he was transferred to another hospital. The patient didn’t understand my
conversation with her. He had no religious interests. I remember once his turning in the doorway as he was
leaving and asking me to give him a clue as to what she and I had just talked about.
There is no doubt in my mind that some patients are shown things of great importance in hallucinations, though
they are not often able to use them. I recall a black, alcoholic burglar who was given a very intimate tour of
minority group experiences down through history. Though he was black, he had been shown a very sensitive
picture of what it was like to be a Jew, Black, Indian, or of another minority group in various cultures down
through history. He had seen most of this tour on the floor of the day hall on a back ward. He came out of it
feeling he had to do something for minorities, but instead returned to drinking and more bouts of madness.
I recall one woman who had murdered a rather useless husband. In the hospital the Virgin Mary came and
counseled her. She was to leave the hospital to drive to the southern part of the state and stand trial for murder.
The Virgin had revealed to her that there would be an earthquake here on the day she left and one in the south
when she arrived. I was talking to the chaplain late on the day she left and remembered very well the brick
building swaying. Later I read in the newspapers of an earthquake in the south when she arrived. I wasn’t terribly
surprised, even though the probability of predicting two separate earthquakes is a bit remote. I guess she had
friends in high places. By the way, though the circumstances of the murder could have exonerated her, she
chose to plead guilty. She was on some kind of mission for other women in prison.
I was naturally intrigued by the giftedness of the higher order after wrestling with the mean people of the lower
order. I found some patients concealed higher-order experiences. They assumed a psychologist would be more
interested in the plentiful sexual elements from the lower order. They also feared the power and mystery of the
higher order. Often higher values are more repressed than lower values. I couldn’t tell what was higher or lower
order.
One woman had a group of surgeons doing painful research on her joints for the welfare of mankind. I tested
their knowledge and found it to be far less than the patient’s. They were fakes of the lower order. Still, she chose
to stay with them in case her years of pain could prevent arthritis in later life. One naturally meets Jesus Christ in
this inner world. Fake Christ’s of the lower order are easy to see though. They brag about their powers and
wonders they can do. When criticized they easily become defensive and threatening.
The real Christ-like figures from the higher order are just the opposite. They often say nothing, yet their radiant
presence has an intense effect on the patient. They lead gently with a profound understanding of the patient’s
inner potentials. They do good! I encouraged the man with a sun from the higher order to try to get acquainted
with it. With some justification he had concealed the sun from me. As he joined with the sun he went through a
series of religious experiences that required temporary seclusion and supervision. He had been a prison tough
guy and numinous religious experience was a bit much for him.
He trembled and wept when recalling these experiences even days later. He went down a tunnel in the ground
until he came to doors holding creatures in hell. He was tempted to open the doors when a powerfully impressive
Christ like figure, all in radiant white, stopped him. Just looking into the figure’s eyes had a profound influence on
him. He knew he was understood and loved. He knew this figure was wiser than him. The figure guided him out
into the day light.
There he saw a gigantic golden trumpet that signaled that he was to become musical. He did. He wrote about
four songs a day and kept two other patients busy writing down the music, since he didn’t know how. He
appeared to have recovered and left the hospital. I would have some reservations about how well he would be in
the future. It was a bit of a jump for a tough crook to suddenly change so much. The values of the higher order
require some time to really integrate into one’s life.
Many patients complained about extrasensory experiences in their hallucinations! They served merely to
frighten the patient. A man was about to go to a dance and a giant cut class punch bowl descended from the
ceiling. It was later at the dance. Voices described what other patients were going to do and the patients
proceeded to do them. A man was given a written order for some pipe fittings. Later the order disappeared. A
few minutes later the same stranger came with the same written order. This time it stayed. One patient
complained bitterly about voices reading off her opponents cards in a card game. It spoiled the game. She had
to quit cards.
ESP in the realm of hallucinations seems quite variable. Lower-order figures often claim to have the power and
don’t have it. Higher-order figures seem to have ESP powers. Unfortunately ESP just seems to frighten the
patient further. I’ve not heard of any instance where a patient could make any constructive use of it. Apparently
it is quite possible for a person to have sexual intercourse with hallucinations. One woman described it as being
more inward and much nicer than having a real man.
Also, hallucinations can get sick just as a person does. For several days the “Old-Timer” had a bad cold he
couldn’t shake. The patient could hear it in his voice. At the time the patient himself felt fine. It is of course a little
puzzling to find hallucinations themselves can get sick.
Hallucinations were very clearly the basis for delusional ideas. As the patient dealt more and more with the
“other world,” even his vocabulary would change. Symbolic phrases that were learned there became a part of
the patient’s vocabulary. A whole set of ideas from the other world would be adopted, leaving the person
technically delusional. It is hardly possible for an individual to experience a strange new world of experience
some sixteen hours a day without it gradually coloring his whole view of reality.
Occasionally I could see some relationship between the individual and his hallucinations. Persons who had
violated their own conscience seemed to be mercilessly tortured by conscience like lower-order figures. A figure
from the higher order suggested to me that the function of the lower order was basically to illustrate one’s faults.
One couldn’t help but feel that ten or twenty years of illustration was excessive.
Repressed, people were often tormented with sexual fantasies. One woman seemed almost saintly in her
behavior. She had the dirtiest voices I had ever known. She didn’t feel comfortable even repeating the language
they used. Conversely, some people who had been criminals had spiritually elevated hallucinations from the
higher order. One man had religious visions in solitary confinement that many ministers would give their left
hand to have.
Inadequate people had even more inadequate hallucinations, such as the man who just heard “Hey” for years.
One man who was plagued by radiation from other people’s eyes clearly needed to be close to others but couldn’
t handle tender feelings.
Rarely could I break through a hallucination. A man came in complaining that he had a woman’s breast for
several days. It flopped around and got in his way as he worked. I asked for a description of this breast I couldn’t
see. One teat was pendulous and poorly shaped. The other had a youthful, more impressive shape. He
associated an old girlfriend with the pendulous one and a new girl friend with the more pointed breast. I asked if
he were caught between girl friends. He was.
He felt obligations to the old one and desires for the new one. I suggested that he make up his mind between
them. It’s easy to guess he chose the new one. With this decision the hallucinated breasts disappeared. The
breasts seemed to represent his being plagued by an ambivalence that he hadn’t faced and worked out.
I also found patients that frequently misunderstood what their own voices were talking about. One man had
voices purporting to come from Washington, D.C. They also printed U.S. on a lot of things. At first I quizzed them
on their knowledge of the city itself. They didn’t know anything about it. Finally I asked if they were from the city
in the eastern part of the United States or did they mean they were at the seat of government of the patient.
They said they were at the patient’s inner seat of government.
Hallucinations are symbolic of inner states and experiences of the patient. The higher order is clearly aware of
this. The patient make the same mistake everyone else would make of thinking that ordinary language has
ordinary referents. When voices say something is poisonous, they mean it is bad for the patient, but not literally
poisonous.
One woman had voices saying that she should suck her son’s pickle (penis). This went on for months. She was
very upset at this insulting suggestion. She became violent and broke windows trying to stop the voices. It took
some talking with them to get the message translated. The message gradually clarified and the voices faded.
The final message was: love and take care of your son. She had an inadequate husband who was jealous of a
new son. She chose to neglect the son to try to preserve the marriage and ended up shooting the husband in
the midst of madness. The voices were trying to reestablish her love relationship to her son. When she
recognized and accepted this the voices stopped and never returned. I don’t really know why the inner is so
symbolic. The problem is similar to the question of why dreams are symbolic.
Many patients indicated that the voices were trying to gain control of a part of them. In one the voices worked for
years to get control of an eye. They did, and the eye actually went out of normal alignment. Several had voices
trying to get their hearing. If they did, the patient would become noticeably hard of hearing.
I’ve seen voices seize the tongue and speak through the person. All this was rather startling. The patients were
speaking of what is described in ancient literature as possession. Often there was a long battle, with the patient
gradually becoming possessed. There were many very psychotic patients around who looked like they had
become totally possessed.
I recall examining one man who professed to, being moral and upright. In a few minutes the dirtiest talk would
come from his mouth, mostly about assholes. I would remind him of his morality. Yes, Yes, he would say, he was
very careful to always think clean thoughts. In the next minute he rambled on about menstrual cloths. It looked
as if he were possessed and there was just a fragment of the original man present.
The talk about possession led me back into the ancient literature. Could modern patients totally remove in time
and experience from the ancients be describing essentially the same terms? There were mostly fragments in the
Bible and in later old texts.
The most careful and detailed description of the spiritual world was to be found in the works of Swedenborg,
written about two centuries ago. Swedenborg was a noted scientist who explored inner states until he broke
through into the spiritual world. His careful findings were set down in detail. I carefully compared what he and
these patients had to say.
Separated by two centuries and with very different backgrounds, the patients and Swedenborg were describing
the same realm. The lower order he called hell and the higher order heaven. Swedenborg’s description threw
light on several puzzling aspects of hallucinations. Spirits in hell are more limited and for spiritual reasons they
don’t have identity as we know it. They do want to possess and control persons. Angels in heaven are very rich
in their understanding and perception.
The common contemporary explanation for hallucinations is that they are eruptions from the unconscious. This
doesn’t quite explain the giftedness of “An Emanation of the feminine Aspect of the Divine” nor does it explain a
lot of other aspects. We will come back to this later, but for the present my guess is that the explanation via the
unconscious and the spiritual world are essentially the same thing. The spiritual world is normally unconscious.
Swedenborg implied it was very dangerous to break into this realm, and my patients would agree with him.
I don’t wish to imply that hallucinations are fully understood. There is probably much more that could be learned
from this realm even though I believe the above is a roughly accurate phenomenological map. Moreover
hallucinations are not easy to treat.
The whole treatment of hallucinations could perhaps be summed up in a few words. When the patient was
coming to have an abnormal dependency on hallucinations, I would try to break the relationship. This occurred
when I showed a woman her lover didn’t really have ESP.
In general the lower order hallucinations are the most difficult to deal with. When the patient is really tormented it
pays to relieve the pressure by administering ataractic drugs (i.e., thorazine). Drugs don’t stop the hallucinations
but they do lessen the patient’s reaction to them. But when the patient is working out material in psychotherapy,
drugs should be stopped or used in limited amounts. The painful struggle is more help to psychotherapy than a
drugged detachment.
There should be some use in the patient learning from the lower order as an illustration of his individual
weaknesses and tendencies, though I have not yet seen this work. Higher-order hallucinations do appear more
treatable. The patient can be helped to overcome the fear of these higher values and be guided in exploring
and integrating them.
The therapist may well be surprised at their power as they approach consciousness. On a few occasions I was
able to get a patient to unite with the higher values. The person became grossly disturbed for several days as
the higher values blasted through his consciousness. Then he needed help to understand, accept, and live by
these new values. The more capable the patient, the easier the task! It is very like new wine in old bottles.
Where the bottle is too limited, it is best to keep new wine out of it.
For the most part this is a relatively little-known realm. In its symbolism and gross contours it doesn’t look too
strange to those who have explored fantasy, the hypnogogic, full psychotic hallucinations. They are not
equipped to be plagued by more than even gifted normals could really understand.
If nothing else, I would like to leave you with some feeling of sympathy for people faced with unseen, doggedly
persistent torturers, people who lose all privacy and refuge, who are shown wonders that simply frighten them. I
would also like to leave open the real question of what it all means, even though I am plagued the similarity of
this realm and what has been described as heaven and hell.”
From: “The Natural Depth in Man”
By Wilson Van Dussen
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