Hallucination

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The Temptation of St. Anthony, detail, Isenheim Altarpiece, Mathias Grünewald, 1515, hallucinations caused by ergot

Hallucination (from Latin: (h)alūcinātio "thoughtless talk, reverie"; from Greek: ἀλύειν halýein "to be out of one's mind") is a perception of a sensory area without a stimulus basis. This means, for example, that non-existent objects are seen, or voices are heard without anyone speaking. Hallucinations can affect all sensory areas. In an illusion, on the other hand, a real object is perceived in a different way: An actually existing fixed object appears to move or faces appear to be recognisable in irregular patterns.

By definition, a hallucination has the character of reality for the hallucinating person or cannot be distinguished from reality. In contrast, in a pseudohallucination, the person realises that it is not a real perception. Pseudohallucinations can also occur during overtiredness and half-sleep.

Causes

Causes of true hallucinations can be:

  • Neurologically caused perceptual disorders
  • Mental disorders such as psychoses, for example caused by
    • Withdrawal from intoxicants, e.g. delirium tremens caused by alcohol or mostly by withdrawal from it
    • Pathological changes in the brain, but according to Rudolf Steiner especially in the liver or kidneys
  • Chemical compounds (hallucinogens such as diphenhydramine)

Causes of pseudohallucinations can be:

  • Sleep deprivation
  • Chemical compounds (hallucinogens such as LSD or DMT)

Rudolf Steiner pointed out the connection of hallucinations with a disturbance of the liver function. This is especially the case with calm, pictorial hallucinations. Very agitated, emotional hallucinations are connected with the renal system.

„By imagining, my pre-natal being lives after, resonates after, and my body is an after-image of this pre-natal being. - If it now itself begins to develop such an activity, as it should actually only be developed through the resonance of the pre-natal existence, what then? Then the body in this physical existence, because it is once an after-image, unjustifiably develops out of itself something that is similar to the imaginative activity. And this can indeed occur. When we stand in normal life and think and imagine, our pre-natal life resonates in us, and as the human being is threefold, the nervous-sensory life can be switched off and every other part can begin to ape that activity out of the purely physical which should actually resonate out of the pre-natal existence. When the rhythmic man or the metabolic man of the limbs unjustifiably develops such an activity out of himself, which is similar to the justified imagination that resonates from the prenatal life, then hallucination arises. And if you look at the matter from a spiritual-scientific point of view, you can make a clear distinction between the justified imagination, which at the same time, by being recognised as a justified imagination, is a living proof of pre-existent life. You can distinguish it from hallucination, which, because it can be there, because it is the imitation out of the body of the power of imagination coming out of the eternal, is a living proof, because it is an imitation, that the original which it imitates is also there, but which is absolutely cooked out of the body and which therefore stands there as unjustified. For in physical life the body has no right to ape out of itself that mode of imagination which is to be born out of the spiritual life of the pre-natal human being.“ (Lit.:GA 205, p. 17f)

Literature
References to the work of Rudolf Steiner follow Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works (CW or GA), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach/Switzerland, unless otherwise stated.
Email: verlag@steinerverlag.com URL: www.steinerverlag.com.
Index to the Complete Works of Rudolf Steiner - Aelzina Books
A complete list by Volume Number and a full list of known English translations you may also find at Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works
Rudolf Steiner Archive - The largest online collection of Rudolf Steiner's books, lectures and articles in English.
Rudolf Steiner Audio - Recorded and Read by Dale Brunsvold
steinerbooks.org - Anthroposophic Press Inc. (USA)
Rudolf Steiner Handbook - Christian Karl's proven standard work for orientation in Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works for free download as PDF.
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