SEEING THINGS
“The mind is like an iceberg. It floats with typically one-seventh of its part above water.” -Sigmund Freud
Perhaps this tersely expatiates everything that the father of psychoanalysis has to say about the human brain. We are just apprised of the superficial part of this magnificent thing while remaining prodigal proportion is just a dark, tenebrous and arcane labyrinth that almost most of us find impalpable or totally impossible to comprehend. This proportion is the orchestrator of everything from dreams, hallucinations, nightmares, visions, qualms, clairvoyance, instincts and so on. As most of us know, Freud also delineates our mind into three simple spheres: conscious, subconscious and unconscious. Conscious is our state of normal senses, i.e., our wakeful state where we live our lives. It is the visible part of the iceberg which is afloat above water level. The lion’s share of this iceberg is the part submerged. This comprises the subconscious and unconscious. Unconscious is the self-explanatory state of total oblivion when the mind is in a state of impervious torpor. Deep sleep is a state of unconscious. The most sapid part is the state of trance or unconscious, the lingering state somewhere obscurely between unconscious and wakefulness, more biased towards unconscious in my personal opinion. This interesting part has been a cynosure of interest for many experts over years including Freud himself. We find it impalpable, vague, and often something beyond our comprehension and rationale. And this mildly submerged part of the so-called ‘iceberg’ is responsible for all things esoteric that our wakeful mind finds hard to process.
Without being further discursive about all such great intricacies of my interest (I am a layman in this matter time and again!), let me share few recent instances pertinent to myself.
These visions, illusions or dreams can be tantalizing, dramatic, enigmatic, sometimes charming and sometimes unsettling. I do not clearly remember most of them like usual. As always, the subconscious mind, especially during a malady, remains a nebulous haze of infinite droplets trying to coalesce in the most impalpable pandemonium. Often these remain traces in the figments of our recollection which we may try to remember. Reading this at first you may parry it off as a mere apparition of the sickened, obscured and overwrought mind. It was that of a forgettable young face which I still don’t have the slightest comprehension in the manifolds of my memory. When I say forgettable face, I mean the banality of its features. A very simple countenance with nothing striking or remarkable. Something which can blend in a crowd at ease. Not something which can stay indelibly in the niches of the mind. However, the unsettling thing was that it kept coming back to me in subconscious state. I can’t determine whether it was hallucination or dream as both have subtle differences. But it felt more of a hallucination than dream. In dichotomy of a typical dream, where it is a montage of numerous scenes or events which makes it more astonishing, this was more or less of a still perception with nothing dramatic. The backdrop felt more or less like my bedroom scantily lit. And the face surmounted on an equally trite stature loomed without any movement. It appeared nothing sinister or scary. The face continues to appear every now and then sporadically. I wish it conveys to me anything which it has to say. But it keeps ‘comfortably numb’! I rack the niches of my memory to recall encountering it anytime in the past. But it tactfully manages to elope my effort. Is it a ghost or an apparition? I don’t know. Does it have anything to do with my life directly or indirectly? I don’t have any answer or explanation. Then why does it keep appearing? I wish I knew. And I also wish that the ‘face’ disappears for good instead of leaving me flummoxed in it’s esoteric morass.
Another unsettling instance was during the one when I contracted the coronavirus infection sometime back. The fever was rough for the first few days. Oxygen levels plummeted. Had great ordeal breathing. Remained in a tenuous state for days before recuperating (thankfully). Several medical sources expound testimonies of delirium, hallucinations amongst patients with high fever and anxiety. This is augmented by breathing and dipping down of oxygen levels, experienced my myself. So, in medical terms, that was not a surprise. But I faced a great degree of ordeal in determining whether it was a dream, an apparition or a realistic experience medically triggered by my malady. Moreover, and most importantly, I still am unable to expatiate the feeling or visuals cogently beyond my comprehension. It felt like a large ball of infinite mass or a prodigious mass of something unshapely. Sometimes it felt something living, sometimes materialistic. Sometimes anything between the two. But it felt like a solid mass or a shapeless glob of tremendous density which tried to hunker down on me. The feeling was terrific and frightening. I felt my heart had stopped and I was unable to breath. Maybe in subconscious or unconscious state, whatever it was, I started to frantically writhe in trepidation. Somewhere a sense lurked that it perhaps wanted to kill me instantly. It continued to strangulate me to death. But in the nick of time, I broke free of its fetter and heaved a breath of life. In the same instant, I came back to my state of full conscious or wakefulness and continued panting in laboured breaths for several moments, lucky to be alive! In pure medical terms, the episode could have been a point of rapid plummeting of oxygen levels, which were significantly low the night before, in the peak of my ailment. Where the ailing body in tandem with the feverish oxygen-divested mind fomented this harrowing apparition or hallucination. Or maybe it was just a nightmare, in the form of this tenebrous vision disinterred by the overburdened and distraught mind in its own accord. The humongous ‘thing’ pressing down on me was perhaps a psychological embodiment of suffocation, as per Freudian analogy. It may be something else more arcane others may choose to disagree. Or a figment of my imagination exaggerated by some extent of discomfiture. Or just a so-called ghostly apparition broached by my subconscious. But it was something for sure.
Another instance was a recent dream which was quite dramatic. Whatever of it is left etched, it was something like this. There was this large complex hemming a decent-sized courtyard. Either it was a hotel or a hostel where I had put up, not sure. And it was nestled right on a treacherous seashore. I could not comprehend even a vestige where it was or like in the abstraction of most dreams’ content, where it closely depicted. Then the things began to unfold. One morning (could not remember whether it was early or late), the entire property which served as the backdrop for the unconscious became swept in a prodigious deluge of monstrous waves. These waves rose as high as the buildings themselves and everything just got engulfed underneath. No one including myself survived it, that’s for sure. It was a tsunami. In the initial laps of conscious state, could not deny that I was taken by surprise. I have never been to a seaside for ages as far as I can remember. Thankfully, neither had experienced any such catastrophe in life (barring a couple of very severe cyclones which is something different). Nor had I watched any movies or news showcasing any such cataclysms in recent times. So at this juncture, seeking resort to a Freudian point of analogy helped me deduce a plausible answer to this subconscious conundrum. As we all know, there was a recent deadly resurgence of the coronavirus pandemic in India. It was far more debilitating than the first wave of infections claiming a plethora of lives everyday and multitudes getting infected making it the worst spell of the pandemic in the world by far. Ubiquitously, there was a deluge of bad news related to the ravaging outbreak. Hence, it was this ‘deluge’ of negative information reflected as a natural deluge in the dream. And what else, media sources, several authorities and many of us coined the word ‘Tsunami’ to quantify the catastrophic crisis of outbreaks and the infernal debacle that all of us were grappling with directly or indirectly. So, that triggered an illusory climatic tsunami in dream!
Over the years, many have advocated and supported Freud’s magnificent interpretation of dreams while many have scoffed at it. Many experts before and after Freud have given their own versions of the maelstrom occurrent in human mind in all states of consciousness. Some have been dramatically, and often uncannily, been correct. Some have been erred. But our lives in fully wakeful state and thoughts have inevitable influenced our visions, illusions and dreams in some way or the other. Some have a lucid interpretation. Some remain shrouded in unfathomable enigma, often beyond any comprehension and peroration of its occurrence.
