Mind Fuck Tuesday: Alien, Demon, God Programming?

It's interesting, the themes that run through the mind in moments of distress like demons, God, aliens... Let's look at some incidences in which people report such encounters -

Schizophrenia:  Voices and paranoia--are very often interpreted by sufferers from this mental illness as God, demons, and aliens.  A Chinese immigrant who beheaded and cannibalized a Canadian bus passenger in front of horrified travelers four years ago spoke out for the first time, saying he believed his victim was an alien. Vince Weiguang Li, 43, after being diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, was found not guilty of murdering 22-year-old Tim McLean on a Canadian Greyhound bus on July 30, 2008. He has been holed up since his trial at a Winnipeg, Manitoba area mental health centre, where he has received treatment and is now eligible for escorted day trips into the community.

Encephalopathy: When my son was a teenager and had a protracted illness, he developed meningitis, an inflammation of the lining of the brain which caused encephalopathy. He was certain someone was standing over his shoulder and whispering and he was terrified out of his mind before he went into seizures and finally recovered from the illness with no long-term ill effects, but those moments when the brain was activated, it was interpreted as something dark and evil hovering around him.

Synthetic drug use: Hallucinations and outbursts by those using synthetic drugs involve visions of demons, evil faces and aliens. Using bath salts, one man reported, "I started hearing and seeing demons. I couldn’t sleep at night.”

Sleep state:  The sleep state produces some weird experiences including night terrors, sleep paralysis, and dream states shifting in and out of different levels of sleep. Visitations from angels, demons and aliens are frequently reported. About once a week, Jean-Christophe Terrillon wakes up and senses the presence of a threatening, evil being beside his bed. Terror ripples through him, and he tries to move or call out. But he is paralyzed, unable to raise an arm or make a sound. His ears ring, a weight presses down on his chest, and he has to struggle for breath. ''I feel an intense pressure in my head, as if it's going to explode.''

Near Death Experiences: One of the rarest types of NDEs includes hellish imagery such as an ugly or foreboding landscape; demonic beings; loud, annoying noises; frightening animals; and other beings in extreme distress.

The Persinger's Helmet or "God Helmet" was invented by Michael Persinger and Stanley Koren. It is an experimental helmet that was constructed to stimulate parts of the brain, along with light and sound deprivation and create the near-death or God presence feelings. Conclusions made by the experiment were that the usually subordinate right side of the brain manages to be "realized" by the left dominant side of the brain, giving the sense of a presence, of not being alone or "interhemispheric intrusions."

What is most interesting about all of this is why we even have installed in our brains, regions that are meant to give us a sense of "other" we interpret in universal symbols and that we have the ability to project from our body. That self-awareness is a wonder. Anyone who has experienced anesthesia knows that you don't come out of it with dreams, but your mind is not dead. So, how it possible that people whose body's show no signs of life can have such acute and accurate accounts of another "place" outside their bodies?

These are only some of the reasons why I search answers in this field. Some theories explain portions of the human experience, but not others. We all have to agree, there is an element to our minds that is extremely mysterious and may never be understandable. Like trying to perceive the size of the universe, man cannot seem to understand how we go from "brain" activity to "mind" activity.