I haven't posted much lately because of time restraints but I still do read the board as often as I can. In the past few days the subject of demons and personal sanity has come up in a few threads. I would like to add a few thoughts on the subject based on some personal research in the areas of psychology, hypnotism, hallucination, and a basic study of the human brain.
Everything a person has seen, heard, touched, smelled or tasted in their life time has been processed and stored in their brain. What makes some look smarter than others is simply a more developed ability to recall those experiences dealing with their five senses and bring them back into recall. Our five senses are used as a basic receptacle for what they experience but it is our brains that processes and stores those experiences and tries to tell us what it is or is not. It is not our eyes, ears, tongue, nose, or fingers that remember an experience it is our brains. Where belief comes in is when we are told of a certain existence of a particular subject matter and instead of depending on our two most reliable senses of sight and hearing we depend on our brains to develop a picture to process and store the information we are told about. The stories that conjure up images of evil and scary looking demons is process and stored in our brains via the faith in the person or persons that are telling us about the subject. Whether we tangibly see touch or hear ourselves becomes secondary in the fact that the information is still processed and stored in our brains. A belief system attempts to eliminate any tangible personal experience and tries to make the brain accept as fact something we have not personally experienced with our five known senses.
In the case of someone who is suffering from a specific kind of psycological disorder they do experience what they see in their own minds as something tangible and real but in reality what they see or experience is a sophisticated delusion. Certain drugs create hallucinations that during the time the person is experiencing the hallucination what they think they see or experience is extremely real to them but again is nothing more than a delusion. This is something that I myself have experienced. In the same line of thought someone who is under a hypnotic trance and is given a suggestion of something nonexistent being real and tangible to them they do indeed see, feel, touch, taste, and hear what has been suggested to them. I have learned the basics of hypnotism myself and have put people under a hypnotic trance and have given them suggestions that at that particular time was as real to them as anything they have experienced in a non-hypnotic trance. Except for the person suffering from a psychological disorder you can ask yourself if someone thinks they see something that is actually not there are they crazy? The answer is no!
When you look at the incredibly complex makeup of our brain and it's ability to control our entire body on both a conscious and unconscious level as well as it's ability to store more information than all the combined computer hard drives on the planet it makes you wonder about what we do not know about it more than what we do. Are demons or the sprit realm real or are they only real in our minds? If everything we know to be true and real is stored in our brains along with everything we believe or have faith in, where do we draw the line on what is real or not? Is it our two main senses of sight and hearing that are the absolute and final indicators to us about what is real or not? Is belief such a strong human element that it can turn fantasy and myth into reality in our minds? Is a delusion or a hallucinations not real or are they simply not tangible? These are questions I have asked myself many times.
I personally do not believe in demons or the sprit realm, but that again, that is simply a belief. I have no tangible evidence either way on the subject. Until I do have tangible evidence either way the subject matter will stay in the realm of belief which balances to the side of it not being real based on my personal investigations and studies. I do know that under the influence a hallucinogen what I have seen or heard at that moment was real to me. Having known what I saw and experienced was done while hallucinating I can then process that in my brain that the experience was not real. Without the knowledge that I was indeed hallucinating what I experienced might be processed in my brain as something very real. I know when I have put a person under a hypnotic trance what they saw or felt was real to them at that particular moment. When the brain is fed information and it is processed and stored there are many variables that can stimulate and bring that information to recall. Until we know everything there is to know about our brains and exactly how they work it is impossible to have a definitive answer on personal experiences and what brain function or malfunction stimulated a possible non-tangible experience.
Just as in a momentary state of daydreaming which we have all experienced, what is real and tangible in front of us and what the brain is showing us in that momentary daydream exist in an instantaneous parallel plain. If that daydream can be controlled by yourself or by someone else and it continues it forces you to break from tangible reality and briefly accept an alternative reality, what is real and what is fantasy become blurred and intertwined. That is the basis of both hypnotism and self hypnosis in its simplest form. This is how I understand it when people say they have experienced demonic encounters. Their brain simply does not separate the tangible from the belief. The belief becomes tangible and is convincing the human senses of sight, and hearing that what they are experiencing is indeed real. They are no more insane or crazy than anyone who has ever daydreamed or has walked in their sleep or held a real conversation with someone while they are dreaming in the middle of the night. Their experience may not be real to me or to many of us, but, at that moment and dependent on what state of mind they were in, it could be very real to them.
I could go on and on about this subject but this post is too damn long in the first place so I will stop here. I just thought I would add another element to the topic of demons and sanity.
Take care,
Dave