Hey! What’s that Gorilla Doing over There? On the Illusory-Hallucinatory Nature of Everyday Living

Abstract

Our experiences, through day and night, are not as clear-cut as might seem on first thought. Considerable aspects of life comprise illusory phenomena, some of which are realised, while others are not. Moreover, the boundaries between illusion and hallucination can be very blurred. This essay considers specific situations exemplary of these aberrations – the phantom limb phenomenon, the effects of migraine and temporal lobe epilepsy, sleep disturbances, out-of-body and near-death experiences, conjuring, and the technique of pick-pocketing. Life is never as certain or as sure as we think.