It's all in the mind, you know

[dreamer_easy]

I've been reading some of The Science of False Memory by C.J. Brainerd and V.F. Reyna. Their review of research into the implanting of false memories is pretty convincing - it is possible to convince people to remember things that didn't happen to them, to the point where they can tell you details about non-existent events. What isn't clear, from their review, is whether you can actually traumatise a patient by implanting false memories of severe trauma, such as childhood sexual abuse; or whether you can attach incorrect memories to the symptoms (such as PTSD) or a trauma that did happen (eg, the wrong perpetrator). As the authors point out, you can hardly experiment on people to find out; the research they review involves mildly distressing "memories", such as getting lost.

The discussion of self-hypnosis, imagination, etc, brought into focus an unrelated issue for me: what if my spirituality is only a symptom of my mental illness? I'm trying to think this through, even as I type this entry. I don't confuse what I know through spiritual experience with what I know through everyday experience - I can be certain about the latter, but never about the former. To put it more simply, if I see the winning lottery numbers in a dream I'm still not buying a ticket. :-) To put it another way, my thoughts about the Divine are changeable in a way that the speed of light isn't. But what if my entire way of making sense of the world comes from a kind of brain static?

Comments

[antikythera.livejournal.com]

I don't think there's a correlation between spirituality and mental illness. Plenty of 'sane' people have spiritual experiences, but that doesn't prove that the experiences are real; plenty of people with mental illness have spiritual experiences, but that doesn't prove they're not real.

Anyone can have an experience like that, and can interpret it as real or not-real. Brain static exists, in both spiritual and non-spiritual people. Everybody dreams, everybody has those little half-asleep moments where they get jolted awake by someone calling their name (don't they?), so it makes sense that some things that might be interpreted as spiritual beliefs could actually be a result of that stuff. Spiritual people are not exempt from the funny little hiccups of neurology. It's up to you and your beliefs whether you interpret a given experience as real or 'just a dream'.

When I was a teenager, my pony had to be euthanized, and a few nights later as I was falling asleep I thought she was talking to me from ... wherever dead ponies go. I was a pretty spiritual person at the time, but even then I wasn't sure if I believed what I was perceiving. When it was over, I recognized that it could very well have been a half-waking dream based on wishes. I'm even less inclined now to 'believe' in it than I was at the time.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you got a message from your pony.