[more fine stuff snipped]
> About how the brain seems to throw out possible meanings, and
> It particularly rings true for me if I ever get any hallucinations
> nowadays:- I feel I can catch the mechanicalness of it in action now,
> it's just me throwing out possible identifications of things, visual,
> linguistic, aural, mental, associational meanings, significances:-
I too can catch the mechanism. I was at the ballet recently and I was
extremely tired. I kept falling half-asleep, and I closed my eyes as
I prefer the music to the dancing (Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty).
Everytime I came back to "normal" awareness I kept perceiving the stage as
a movie screen and the dancers as merely 2 dimensional figures on that
screen. I could almost feel my brain doing this and I could also gain some
control over how I perceived it.
I have only been to the ballet three times in my life, but I go to the
cinema at least 4 times a month. It seems that in a confused hypnogogic
(?) state my brain chose the most obvious (familiar) framework for the
sensory stimulation it was receiving. If I were a ballet freak and only
went to the cinema on a few occasions no doubt I would have seen Ralph
Fiennes and Kirsten Scott Thomas doing a pas de deux, or maybe Woody Allen
doing a few high kicks.
I think these 'slips of the mind' are interesting because they can show us
how our mind really works. Robert Anton Wilson was once walking in a well
known gay district of SF. This fact was on his mind and he saw a sign for
"All-Gay-Cleaners", the slip of the mind gave him an insight into what was
on his mind at the time.
Similarly, my ageing Grandmother only hears what she wants to hear and
manages to ignore anything which might annoy of offend her.
On a personal note my mind-slips have been very enlightening, I always try
to find a cause for them and usually it is some deep-prejudice or anxiety.
Perhaps 'mind-slip', like the Freudian-slip, is a good name after all.
M.
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