A truism from the great Carl Sagan

The Many Universes Scenario (and UFOs)

Our friend Terry the Censor wrote in a comment for my posting about Madness and the Multiverse (wherein I noted that an episode of Global Transient Amnesia I had might be, actually, an intrusion by another “me” from a universe or dimension next door) “that. before we invent exotic, cosmic entities to explain down home medical events, we read up on similar cases in the neurological literature and see what we already know.”

Interestingly, I stumbled upon a review by Andrew Scull in the March 11th, 2016 issue of the Times Literary Supplement, Page 21 ff., Conversion.

The review was a look at neurologist Suzanne O’Sullivan’s book It’s All in Your Head: True stories of imaginary illness. [Chatto and Windus, £16.99].

Dr. O’Sullivan confirms that certain maladies that have no discernible biological etiology have often been lumped into psychological categories, such as hysteria.

But psychological analyses do not really explain illnesses or complaints, yet Dr. O’Sullian writes: “It is possible, of course, that there is some real underlying physical pathology producing symptoms, something that modern medicine has simply not grasped as yet … in many cases the physical findings are so unambiguous, the disconnect between the observed pathology and the patient’s subjective complaints, and the physiological findings so clear, that it is virtually certain that one is confronting a conversion disorder, a product of the subconscious and not a physical disease.” [Page 21, italics mine]

Reviewer Scull, whose book Madness and Civilization I’ll be covering here upcoming, wrote in the review “There are disorders that simply don’t obey the rules, as modern medicine understands them.” [Page 21]

The gist of the book and Mr. Scull’s review is that certain odd physical complaints are neither explained by neurology nor psychology; that is, no one knows what causes people to feel or act in certain ways. Assumed physical illnesses are often ascribed to psychological etiologies because they (the illnesses) have no origin in physiological (or neurological) conditions.

This is what allows me to speculate that perhaps so-called “alien abductions” through walls and partitions of various kinds are actually intrusions by our counterparts in another dimension or universe that abuts ours.

Also, those niggling “beings” often experienced by witnesses to “landed saucers or odd vehicles” (thought to be extraterrestrial spacecraft) may be intruders, not from the Id, as depicted by the movie Forbidden Planet, but rather intruders from a multiverse next to ours.

And UFOs themselves, unreal to some, may be insertions from a concomitant universe (or dimension) which would explain the often ephemeral appearance and subsequent immediate disappearance.

The other-dimensionality of UFOs and all the attendant oddness of such sightings makes more sense to me than the idea UFOs are coming from a spate of extraterrestrial voyagers, linked to civilizations at the outer regions of our galaxy or observable universe.

Terry thinks, I believe, that if we consider all the options, new and old, that supposedly explain mental illness or neurological illness, we shall find an explanation for the plaints of mankind.

I think the plaints of mankind may lie in intrusions by our other selves who sneak into our plane of existence now and then, wreaking havoc in our brains and on our bodies too.

RR