Quote:
Originally Posted by Open Mind  (2) [b] Are skeptics willing to agree if a hallucination can be shared to any degree with another person simultaneously, we should view these as semi-real or virtual reality type experiences? |
At Medjugorje, a group of kids (at the beginning) said they were seeing the Virgin Mary. At first, we can think it's a good exemple of "shared hallucination", but after investigation, we realise that in fact there is no "shared hallucination" at all. It's only "shared confabulations". See
"Les Guerres de la vierge : Une anthropologie des apparitions" by Elisabeth Claverie.
In the ufo phenomena, we see also a lot of those cases. There is several witness. They see a mondane stimulus, but one of the witness will transform the observation by adding amazing features (very common mecanism in the ufo phenomena, of altering a mondane stimulus and transforming it in a "flying saucers"). The other witness saw the mondane stimulus. But when the ufologist comes and asks questions, he will go for the guy having the most weird testomony. And after that, he just have to say that the others "confim" what the first witness have said.
Well, in both cas, we're far from having a really "shared hallucinations".
But anyway, if people can talk together, it's maybe possible to have "shared hallucinations". Like for exemple when they are takins drugs...
Suggestion is a very powerfull psychological mecanism.