Oliver Sacks

[waffles]

I remember reading this and getting excited, then realising that it wasn't quite so good. He does hallucinations, not anything to do with tulpas. If he was interested in this then it would only be on the imposition side of things.

 

>What is the difference between hallucination and imagination?

I think you recognise that what you imagine is your own, whereas with hallucinations there is no sense of you having produced them. One feels, "What's that? Where did it come from?"

I didn't get this. The difference between (visual) hallucination and imagination is seeing it in your true field of vision, rather than your mind's eye. It also contradicts something he said later; when the interviewer asked him something about personal experience, he mentioned looking up at the ceiling and seeing (?) shapes or patterns. He knew that they were not real and yet still called them hallucinations.

 

Just because he is a neurologist, it doesn't mean that (a) he would be interested in tulpas, or (b) that he could give us credibility. Remember an example he gave of the neurosurgeon: that just discredited the neurosurgeon, and didn't actually give NDEs scientific credibility.