Go Retire Psychiatrist

The title of this post, “Stop the world,” is weird and it’s an exhortation by the fictional Yaqui brujo, Don Juan Matus, a character in a book by Carlos Castaneda, “Journey to Ixtlan.”

I don’t want to get hung up on the personal history of Castaneda, a fraud who got mixed up in some kind of cult after he wrote the books about the perception of reality and included made-up accounts of a relationship with a so-called sorcerer.

So, the other night I as I was watching one of those relaxing TV shows which show gorgeous scenery of the natural world synchronized with peaceful music, something weird happened. I was very relaxed and fell half asleep for a few seconds.

But my eyes stayed open and I saw a number of jagged bluish-purple images which didn’t make any sense. The outlines were irregular and often ended in sharp edges. I quickly snapped awake and saw the “correct” image of a pond with many large green lily pads scattered on the water.

I figured out what I saw at first (only for a second or so) was just the surface of the water. For a fleeting moment, I didn’t know what the jagged images were. I didn’t see the lily pads at all.

Of course, when I woke up, I could explain why the bluish-purple images looked jagged. It was because there were circular lily pads creating the appearance of sharp edges. I just didn’t see the image as a whole. I think it might be similar to tricky visual illusions like the portrait showing simultaneous images of both an old woman and a young woman. It’s called a Gestalt switch.

So why drag Don Juan into this? What if the problems we have communicating with others and understanding their points of view about the world could be clarified by trying to hone a perceptual hiccup into a skill we might think of as stopping the world?

What if we could stop the world whenever it seems like we’re all stuck interpreting events just in our own way? If I could see just the water’s jagged edges or just the lily pad circles for a moment, would that help clarify my conflicts with other points of view?

It sounds crazy, so it’s probably wiser to treat it as a metaphor. On the other hand, there are several paranormal TV shows that include episodes of what seem like (but probably are not) glitches in the matrix. And just for the record, I think it’s a good idea to keep hallucinogens out of this.