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HALLUCINATIONS

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  It is said that Socrates was guided by singular inspirations and thoughts which on a occasion took the form of audible voices. When he was about forty years old he is supposed to have had trance-like states in which he would maintain a standing posture for hours.   He stood motionless from early morning on one day until sunrise on the next through a whole night when there was a very hard frost. Today this behavior would be considered a sign of serious mental illness, and even in his own time Socrates came to be considered a criminal. Yet mystics through the ages have related the inspirational experience of divine sights and sounds, and they often undertook to open themselves to such experience in intensive and sometimes prolonged periods of concentration and meditation. Hallucinations are imaging of the mind which has become fixed in intensity and interest. When that mental imaging is under control, it can result in the most profound creative thinking. Are hallucinations symptoms of