Returning to the...

... subject of the relationship between imagination and pre-cognition, and other non-ordinary states of mind, I uncovered an interesting quotation from the psychologist Robert Baker yesterday, from a book by Jane Goldman. On hypnosis and false memory, Goldman writes:

'Psychologist Robert Baker's 'Lost In A Shopping Mall' study showed that childhood memories could be implanted by the power of suggestion. Patients who had never been lost as children were asked if they could remember such an incident and eventually 'recalled' it clearly, chattering away with details. Baker says hypnosis simply enhances suggestability. 'Hypnosis is nothing but the turning on of the human imagination. And that can be turned on best by getting them in a relaxed state and providing them with suggestions.' [My emphasis.]

It strikes me as intuitively correct that hypnosis activates the imagination; and that imagination, in turn, can activate faculties which are ordinarily dormant. What really interests me, however, is the connection between hypnosis, fantasy and disocciation- as mentioned here. If hypnosis activates imagation, and imagination is the key to non-ordinary experience, then what is hypnosis? From my experience, the light trance (or dissociation) induced in hypnosis is an ordinary state of consciousness which varies only slightly from the waking mind. Indeed, for some people, experiencers in particular, a light trance is almost continual.

If this is the case, those spaces between cognition- the dissociative breaks which may occur several times a minute in some people- are vital for the development and stimulation of the imagination, and possibly for the higher psychic functions too. There are countless examples of intuitive breakthroughs occuring when the recipient is defocused, perhaps engaged in deliberate distraction intended to 'power up' the greater pool of unconscious awareness; and a study by researchers at the University of Stirling confirms that children who 'daydream' actually perform better in class than those who pay closer attention to the teacher- click here.

But what actually happens whilst our unconscious is being activated in these frequent 'away trips' into disocciation? A developing theory of mine is that it is during these cognitive breaks that the real 'abduction phenomenon' occurs; as well as during the more substantial hypnotic bloc experienced as sleep. According to a correspondent on the Open Minds Forum, PKD believed that contact, far from being rare, was a phenomenon which involved all of us at one level or another, most of the time. Could it be that the trance, or dissociative, state is the switch between the ordinary and higher circuits of our minds; that everytime we flip into 'daydream mode' we are actually- in places unseen- in contact with alien forces? There is certainly an anecdotal relationship between dissociation and the imagination; this is why poets and writers are often considered 'away with the fairies', whilst the near absence of any fantasy life at all may be a perverse source of pride amongst highly-functioning professionals in business, law or science. It is also the case that one of the early ('prodomal') symptoms of schizophrenic psychosis is the long, blank stare; and that in many cases, schizophrenics develop very complicated mythologies which often bear a close resemblance to channelled texts. Could the long, blank stare be the mechanism which permits the receipt of such information; and the worst symptoms of this debilitating condition be the result of excessive immersion in alien worlds?

I am aware I sound a little 'schizoid' myself... Are you grokking me?

Tomorrow I'll write something about the deep hypnotic blocks which nearly always descend whenever I attempt to convey thoughts like the above... and what they might signify.