Are Hallucinations and/or Schizophrenia a sign of Mental Illness, or a Window into the World of Spirit?
Are ghosts residual energy left behind by our soul energy once we take leave of our earth-suits?
Or are ghosts discarnate souls (individuals without physical containers) residing within the lower astral planes?
"A: All events (Wherever you have experienced consciousness) leave permanent (energy) imprints upon aural energy fields. This explains, for
example, some sightings and apparitions. "Ghosts" are sometimes merely spontaneous activations of the aural records of the natural
surroundings.
Q: (L) In a general sense, in the majority of cases, what is the cause of paranoia or schizophrenia?
A: Lizard manipulation of energies.
Q: (L) Why?
A: To feed off the negative results. (The service-to-self orientation is a negative polarity which absorbs energy)
Q: (L) So it isn’t necessarily (discarnate spirit or soul) attachments?
A: No.
Q: (L) Do Lizards use attachments of dark energies to effect their purposes?
A: Yes.
Q: (L) In a lot of cases of paranoid schizophrenia are attachments used?
A: Yes.
Q: (L) Are they perpetuating schizophrenia through genetics?
A: Can. Or mental and emotional. Environmental life experiences.
Q: (L) Do Ann Boleyn and Catherine Howard haunt the Tower of London and Hampton Court?
A: Spirit reflection.
Q: (L) Is a ghost or haunting just an image imprinted in space/time?
A: Sometimes. (As explained above)
Q: (L) Are there some cases where the actual spirit of the person hangs around causing phenomena?
A: Yes.
Q: (L) Can they do this for untold centuries?
A: Yes because there is no time." (Outside of the space/time continuum where we currently maintain conscious awareness)
Q: (L) What is that phenomenon we commonly call a poltergeist?
A: Many causes.
Q: (L) Each situation is different?
A: No. The causes are multiple.
Q: (L) Could you list these?
A: No. There are many causes but some are the same as others. One cause is female pubescent children giving off life force aura
burst.
Q: (L) What or who has been causing the apparitions of the Virgin Mary at Conyers, Georgia?
A: Deceptive field.
Q: (L) What energy is behind this?
A: Lizards.
Q: (L) Why?
A: Confusion campaign part of bigger picture and plan.
Q: (L) What is the bigger picture and plan?
A: Conquest. (Based on wishful thinking)
Q: (L) How will that aid their conquest?
A: By dispersing knowledge.
Q: (L) Dispersing as in breaking apart or scattering?
A: Spreading thin. Confusion does this. You are being bombarded with confusion in this era.
Q: (L) In the Ann Haywood case which is supposed to be a case of demonic possession or obsession, who or what are the beings that
are afflicting this woman and her family?
A: 3rd density section “B” energy anomalies same as “poltergeist.”
Q: (L) The case that is described in the book The Haunted, about the Smurl family, with quite a bit of phenomena occurring in their
house including the sighting of a big- foot type creature, what is the source of the phenomena in that case?
A: Same.
Q: (L) So, neither of those cases are “alien” related?
A: Correct.
Q: (L) Why are there such marked similarities between those two cases and the case described by Karla Turner and other alien
abductions?
A: Similarities are open to interpretation. Turner household was opened to multiple types of phenomena due to interaction with Grays
and others.
Q: (L) Does that occur frequently in interactions with Grays?
A: When there is excessive activity of this sort it leaves open channels or “windows” which allows all sorts of things to come through.
Q: (L) Well, who are these old hags who have sex with people...?
A: Poltergeistal entities.
Q: (L) What is a poltergeist entity?
A: Self explanatory.
Q: (L) Is the poltergeist entity generated by the subconscious energy of the individual to which the poltergeist effect occurs or takes
place?
A: Interaction just like everything else between perceived and perceiver.
Q: (L) And what is, in this case, being perceived? Is it an energy construct or is it an actual being?
A: Both. Remember, Laura, you too are an energy construct.
Q: (L) Tell me about the Om 4th density resident that was in my daughter's room. Is Om an abbreviation for a type of being?
A: No, it is full word.
Q: (L) What is an Om being for the benefit of the whole world which waits breathlessly to discover the nature of this type of being?
A: Poltergeist type being.
Q: (L) Was that Om being brought in because of the dimensional overlap or is it strictly related to my daughter?
A: Former mostly.
Q: (L) So poltergeist type beings can enter our density through these dimensional overlaps?
A: Sure.
Q: (L) Was there something about Ted Bundy, and the fact that his life seemed to disintegrate at the same time a lot of UFOs were
sighted?
A: Yes.
Q: (L) Was Ted Bundy abducted?
A: Yes.
Q: (L) Was Ted Bundy programmed to do what he did?
A: Yes.
Q: (L) What was the purpose behind that programming?
A: We must withhold answer for the present.
(Laura (L) comment) Okay. Bundy described his murdering urges as a "pressure building inside" him that he couldn't overcome, and
it seemed to cause him to stop being "human," as we think of it. That seems to me to be an example of an implant being able to
overcome a person's social behavior, or controls over anti-social tendencies.
Q: The other night (A) thought she saw a ghost. Did she?
A: Yes.
Q: Who was it?
A: Arnold Bailey.
Q: What was Arnold Bailey doing walking through my living room?
A: Exploring.
Q: Does he have any connection with this house or did he just drop in?
A: Connection.
Q: Why did he suddenly decide to explore here?
A: Worked here.
Q: Did he just recently die?
A: No. 1953.
Q: Is he happy with his explorations?
A: Neutral.
Q: Is he going to cause any problems?
A: No.
Q: Is he going to continue to hang around?
A: Maybe.
Q: Is he responsible for making the clock chime?
A: Yes.
Q: Why haven’t we seen him before?
A: Construction. (Remodeling of home)
Q: So the work is what woke him up or disturbed him?
A: Close." - The Wave Series Transcripts
" 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
The following was written by one of my professor's professors during his many years working with, what are termed "mental
health disorders." It is rather entertaining at times, and I hope that it will better explain the dynamics of the spirit world;
"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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