e 3 a s h i g R E F L E C T I O N S

Fairies, Dragons and other Mythical Creatures

A friend of mine few days ago was telling me how he has been having the most bizarre experiences. The conversation started with: “Do you have one?”. I had no idea what he was talking about but had an ere feeling that we were about to talk superstition or flying saucers or something of that sort. “Anything other than your Qareen?”, he continued. Qareen is a supernatural being, [or possibly a metaphor for a supernatural subconscious phenomenon] supported by some evidence in Islamic scripture. “No I don’t.”, I said. My friend went on to tell me that since we met up soon after I came back from UK, he has been seeing visions of a creature that acted and dressed like me, but with a face so fuzzy that he was unable to see it. This creature would look at him in silence, and would only respond by laughter to questions. When verses from the Quran were recited he would shrink from a full adult size to a bottle size. During the same episode, other strange things would happen. For example, in one occasion the laptop stopped playing Quran in the background (He always leaves the Quran on while asleep).

Now, growing up in a small village where things were seen at night, and stories of voices and mythical creatures were a common after-football chitchat topics, my brain was obviously pre-wired to respond with awe and automatic acceptance and sympathy. Even after studying psychology and working in psychiatry and reading numerous book on human consciousness and how it works, I found myself unable to dismiss what was obviously a hypnogogic hallucination. I feel ashamed to say that part of me wanted to say: “How amusing! Could you tell this guy to pay ME a visit next time you see him, I feel certain we would have an interesting conversation” but an other part of me was saying: “What a ridiculous idea. What if this really WAS a creature in the physical sense, would you really want it in your bedroom?”

When I was younger, I used to have what I would classify as similar visions. Sometimes I would hammer my brain cells trying to solve a mathematical equation or find a hypothesis for why something in our body works the way it does - usually with friends, and when we don’t find a solution and resign to our beds - I’d have a dream. Its always the same dream of a guy figure who would approach me and start talking by saying: “Yaaaa thaki” (oh ye smart one) and would then go on to explain the problem and the solution. I’d then wake up, often find it was 3 or 4 AM, wake someone up (my brother and my flatmate were honoured to be subject to such exercises) and explain that I now know the answer. Earlier in my life, the thought that this was some magical creature that was sent to fix my problems was attractive. However, the older and more enlightened I became, it was obvious that when I go to bed, part of my brain still works and, be it by luck or random chance, sometimes I am able to solve mysteries better when I am asleep. I then see a dream or a hypnogogic hallucination that formulate the answer in a specific way. I stopped having these visions some years ago, I think purely by virtue of being able to explain them.

One day I hope, I will be able to hear stories like the one my friend is going through, and suppress the pre-wired superstition circuts in my brain in favour of rational explanations.

“A large part of the history of science, especially medical science, has been a progressive weaning away from the superficial seductiveness of individual stories that seem - but only seem - to show a pattern. The human mind is a wanton storyteller and, even more, a profligate seeker after pattern. We see faces in clouds and tortillas, fortunes in tea leaves and planetary movements. It is quite difficult to prove a real pattern as distinct from a superficial illusion. The human mind has to learn to mistrust its native tendency to run away with itself and see patterns where there is only randomness.”