Psychotic episodes of the illusion of reality

I am coming out of a bout with bronchitis and have had some extremely interesting, nay, over the top experiences -- one I think was brought on by a fever and others which are almost definitely related to taking Prednisone. I am not quite sure what to make of these experiences. While I'm sure some of them were drug-related or drug-induced, I still feel that there is something "real" about them. Perhaps the fever and drugs simply opened a door through which the "truth" was able to finally penetrate into my consciousness? In any case, they have given me an experiential hook into ideas and theories with which I have previously only had cerebral contact. Where it all leads and whether I can continue to probe these ideas now that I've almost weaned myself from the Prednisone remains to be seen.

So, here goes ...

About a week before I started the Prednisone, I was having trouble falling asleep one night. I felt feverish but I did not take my temperature so I have no clue how high a fever I had. How much of what follows is dream, lucid dream, or for how much of it I was awake is unknown to me. Here is the "dream":


In order to fall asleep I had to arrange these energy packets in the correct order. The packets were all different shapes and colors and they pulsated with color. But I did not know what the correct order was. It had something to do with the anatomy of an animal and I thought it unfair that I should have to know this type of information. I could see my energy packets arranged but they stopped pulsating and went dark. I kept thinking that it really shouldn't matter what order they were in and that I shouldn't be punished for not knowing. All I wanted was to go to sleep but I couldn't and was very frustrated. I then began looking for what could not get to sleep. I probed the dark energy packets and the space around them searching for "me", the "I" that could not sleep. But I came up empty. The energy packets were there but nothing else. This probing was an intense scrutiny, very deliberate, very directed. It was as if I was turning everything around looking at from all angles to find "me" but nothing was found. I then turned this fact over and over in my mind trying to find out what it meant.


I've been doing some meditation off and on and sometimes fairly regularly for several years. I recently went to a hypnotherapist and she showed me a technique for putting myself in a trance which I've used recently in addition to the other meditation. The following are brief excerpts from three days of going into trance on my own -- which I've been doing a LOT more while on the Prednisone. There is a whole lot more to my experiences on these days (and others) but I'm not ready to share all of it.

I'm looking at what appears to be a normal, everyday scene. A man stands up on the right side of my field of view as if he wants to leave. Then it was as if a strip was torn out of a picture. The scene froze and a strip was torn from the middle and it went right through the man. Then another strip from behind that was torn. It was as if the scene which I considered to be real was made up of later upon later of images.

Another time I had the sensation that something akin to camouflage was responsible for creating reality. There were all these bubbles on a flat surface but if you moved your head slightly, a shape would appear to emerge. The sensation was that the shape was taken for reality but it wasn't really there.

Another time I felt like I was flying through layer upon layer of a paper mache sculpture and on each layer there was a picture that was taken for reality. Then I seemed to get to the last layer and it was all dark but around the edges I saw some green (I think) light and I felt that there were beings back there watching but I could not see them. They were not really human and seemed to be either in control of "the show" or the audience for "the show." "The show" being our everyday reality. I then started trying to figure out if ken is just an actor who doesn't know he's an actor? What would it mean for ken to be an actor and who is the audience?

Another time I felt an immense, wide-open, empty space. It was so empty immense that it was scary

Another time I was looking at a hole in the ground and it was a whorl pattern. I was then instantly transported to space where I was viewing a galaxy of the same shape. (This one really has me interested in fractals now as that was the feeling -- same shape, different scale.)

And that's all for now. Thanks for letting me share.