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Lesley

Grey Matter

Lesley is also a columnist for UFO Magazine. Check it out !

8.11.9

Reality vs. Fantasy

There are those who think that UFOs and abduction experiences are hallucinations or some sort of fantasy and not real events. I am not totally against that concept, since sometimes they likely are, but there are things that keep me from thinking that is always the case.

With UFOs, you can point to photos and video (however blurry they may be) to prove the point that there was something in the sky that was real enough for you to take a photo or video of it. There are also multiple witness accounts. Yes, I keep hearing of mass hallucination, but I have never seen any real evidence to support that theory. People don't mass hallucinate other things. If I see large floating pink elephants with butterflies coming out of their asses and ask someone else if they see them, it is likely that they will think I am insane and totally unlikely they will see the same thing.

In fact, except for very rare events, that had to do with certain hallucinogenic molds growing on local food supplies, I can't come up with any cases of mass hallucination. I personally find the theory of mass hallucination far crazier than seeing a UFO. It is right up there with the theory of people not being qualified observers and therefore being wrong about what they saw. You only thought you saw a mile wide triangle that made no sound hovering above your house, but what you really saw was an F-16 that was very loud and flying really fast. Really, that is just a clever way of saying that you were hallucinating, but we all know that you would have to be hallucinating to mistake an F-16 for what I previously described.

With abductions, we have the 'hallucination explanation' disguised as sleep paralysis. Now, I realize everyone probably experiences sleep paralysis differently, but I have never hallucinated anything during an experience of sleep paralysis, other than the paralysis itself. No bright lights, no beings, nothing other than me being pissed off that I am experiencing sleep paralysis and that I can't seem to move. How someone could fantasize a time consuming and detail oriented abduction in the few seconds sleep paralysis lasts -- I am not sure.

All that said, those of us that have experienced things without a camera or another witness can never be sure that we weren't hallucinating.

There is also the question: what is a hallucination? If you see or hear something that nobody else does, is it then not real? What if certain images are somehow being beamed into your mind by an intelligence that is trying to get your attention? Some things, due to lack of understanding, could be thought of as hallucinations when actually they are something much more. And why not? We do not yet entirely understand the human brain, who knows what it is capable of picking up or what messages it may try to send?

We know that many people do not develop schizophrenia until their teen years or later, so they weren't born that way. Possibly some intelligence or something within them was trying to send them messages that they were just not evolved enough to understand and when they can't understand they revert to paranoid state.

I am not saying that is the case -- I don't know. I am just questioning the concept of hallucination. I suppose (without looking it up) that the definition of hallucination would be experiencing something that nobody else can detect with their senses or analyze with scientific instruments and therefore cannot be real. This will drive some people crazy, but I don't believe that just because something can't be seen, heard, felt of measured makes it 'unreal.' I don't think we know enough about physics to say that. I know, we like to think that we know everything, but I don't agree that we do. Throughout history every generation thinks they know everything, but they never do.

I am not the first, nor will I be the last, to wonder about what is really real. It is well covered ground, but still fun to explore every once in a while.

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