Hallucinations and the Human Consciousness

Hallucinations and the Human Consciousness

The idea of consciousness has been contemplated throughout the course of neurobiology and behavior. When does it begin or end? And what, precisely, is consciousness? Though researchers may only approximate the answers to these questions, a few things may be inferred. Since the subconscious mind is the sleeping mind, the conscious mind can be thought of as the awakened mind, the mind which shows itself to others most often. (1) This is not to say that the conscious mind is reality, because (as will later be explained) reality is quite subjective. (1) It is just that the conscious mind is the one most people associate with reality. For example, people who experience an event while dreaming will refer to it as a dream, because it occurred in their subconscious. Whereas, if the event had occurred while they were awake-in their conscious mind-frame, then it would be considered as an actual experience.

The designation between subconscious and conscious or reality and dreamlike states seem to be cut and dry. However altered mind-sets confuse the line and cause hallucinations. When we dream, our thinking is mostly pictorial and depends on memory. (1) We may hear words, but we understand most of the dream through pictures and people from the past or present. As we awaken, our mind switches from pictorial thinking to word-based thinking. (1) Hallucinations occur when the mind does not completely switch, or switches back, to the conscious state. (1,2)

The first thing to note about hallucinations is that they have long been associated with mental illness because many people become confused as to what they are seeing or experiencing. (2) Though hallucinations do occur in mentally ill peo...

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...ana demonstrates how hallucinations are not necessarily negative events. Though the mind is being distorted to a certain degree, the cause of the hallucination is more important than the hallucination itself. If drug use or a mental illness brings about the hallucination, the causes themselves are problematic. However, if one chooses to hallucinate because of a culture or religion, as in the cases of meditation and peyote, their behavior is justified. There is still much to be researched in this area of neurobiology and behavior. Not only because little is known, but also because it is far more common than most people would like to think, since psychologically and biologically ill people as well as normal people may hallucinate from time to time.

Internet Sources:

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http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro98/202s98-paper1/Ebbitt.html