Psychology of Ghosts

Halloween is lurking around the corner. The shadows grow long and the evening breezes are cool and smell of autumn leaves and adventure. Now is when you might sit around a fire and whisper stories of ghosts to children, taking impish delight in their shudders. After the children go to sleep, though, and you are alone in the still of night, your hackles rise slowly for no discernable reason. You begin to doubt whether the warm light of reason can forever hold back the dark abyss of chaos. The candle sputters out and you are enveloped suddenly. Your quivering hands reach out to find the matches. As you bring light back into the room, you ponder thoughts that are ominous and foreboding.

Nearly all cultures around the world have ghost stories and strange ghostly beliefs. One is faced with the possibility that either ghosts are real, or the idea behind them goes back so far in cultural history that they originated before cultures separated, or the stories migrated across cultural barriers, perhaps not so impenetrable as they appear to be now. Are ghosts real? If not, why do we fear them?

Before answering that question, think about the people, the living people, in your life. Think about the person next to whom you wake up in the morning, or the person you say "hi" to on the way to work. That person is not the person you think he or she is. Quite literally, that person is a stranger. Well, not completely a stranger, but someone that you ultimately cannot know. What you can know, and what you do know, is not the person per se, but the representation or image of that person in your mind. Even when you are looking right at your wife, you are not thinking about her, but that model of her in your mind. Your eyes deceive you into thinking that you are thinking of her, but all your eyes do is provide constant updates about her position, the color of her eyes and hair, what she's wearing. These details, this information, goes into your brain, your memory, where it updates the model of her that you have in your mind. You think about this model as if it were exactly the same as the unknowable woman in the room with you. You can use the model to predict what she will say, what she will do, given your actions or choice of words. To some extent, everyone is partially predictable because of these models we build of them without even realizing it. However, sometimes, the real person surprises you. She does something you did not expect. These surprises force you to update your model. Sometimes, she delights you with an unexpected kiss or kind word. Sometimes, she shocks you with an unwarranted accusation. In either case, the fact that you were surprised means that you do not really know her completely. What you know is the model of her in your mind. The person that you love is the image of the person you think you love.

So, what happens when a human being dies? The real person is gone, but that model remains. When you close your eyes, you can still see her. When you remember times together, you can smell her. When you sleep, she enters your dreams and tells you things you did not know. She is still with you. She still surprises you. Her presence is still there, because in a sense, she was always there. That mental representation, that image, is all that you have left. It's not just memories that remain, but a kind of conscious entity. If you picture her in your mind and ask her a question, you can imagine how she would respond. She is a complete conscious entity, but missing a body, and of course, an independent existence. When you are awake, she is invisible, hiding in the subconscious. When you go to sleep, though, she comes forth, to be with you again, sometimes as a beautiful incarnation of love, sometimes as a vengeful nightmare, depending on circumstances. Knowing that she is there can be comforting, but knowing that it's not really her, but a fabrication, a duplicate, that you created in your mind, maybe not so much. The main point is that although you think you are alone in your head, beneath the surface, beyond the veil, there are other personalities, personalities of images of people that you know or knew in real life, personalities of gods and demons, personalities of entirely fabricated beings that exist only in dreams. They are you, and they are not you.

The conscious mind, the part of you that you call "you" is a kind of tyrant. It clears away a space for itself in order to run itself, and it is indeed a resource hog. We have learned to run the  consciousness program from waking to sleeping because it helps us to focus our thoughts and to communicate our thoughts to others. We are not at a loss for words, because we think in words, and those words dictate our thought patterns. However, in order to do this, the conscious process must suppress outside influence. That means that all the personality patterns that exist in your mind, except for the dominant personality, are pushed underwater, so to speak, into the subconscious, where they can swim around harmlessly, but have little direct impact on our actions. Carl Jung believed that we dream all the time, even while we are awake, but that our dreams are subconscious.

One way to look at consciousness is as a kind of fortress. What is inside the walls is rational, linear, logical. It is the world that we know, that we piece together. It is the world of consciousness, and it is familiar. We built this fortress over a lifetime, so that things make sense to us. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. There are seven days in a week. Plants grow from seeds. Wood comes from trees. If you turn on a faucet, water comes out. All these little things that make up the conscious realm make sense. Causality is an endless string of events from before we were conscious, and we make sense of things in our present circumstances by making guesses or remembering the past events that caused things to be the way they are. We understand concepts like object permanence - if you put a coin in a box, then close the lid, the coin is still in the box. The world works in a predictable and rational manner. We, as rational beings, can make inferences about cause and effect, and so we can make choices and predict the outcomes. We can share our plans with others and work cooperatively to achieve our ends. We plant crops, knowing that they will grow to be harvested, and we can grow more food with less work than simply finding it lying around here and there. This is what consciousness brings to the table. This is what has allowed us to create the great civilizations that we have today.

There is a price, though. A vast amount of processing power is locked out of the fortress. We regard it as noise - distraction at best. The subconscious processes, though, do possess a certain amount of insight, of intelligence. They notice things that we neglect. We are constantly filtering out noise from our attention so we can focus on our tasks. Meanwhile, these other entities or beings that inhabit the dark waters of the mind, watch and learn. They see things that we do not, and so they are able to help us, if we let them. The problem is that we seldom do. We regard their intrusions as interference at best. The only time we allow them to communicate with us at all is when we are asleep, dreaming, while the conscious process is down. The walls of the fortress are down, and the armies of the subconscious can swarm in. Whether we have pleasant dreams or nightmares depends on how we conduct ourselves. Do our other selves need to warn us that we are on the road of self destruction? Our dreams might be troubled. We see and meet all manner of beings in our dreams, and when we wake up, the fortress walls are up again, and we easily brush them out like vagrants or uninvited guests, to dwell once more outside the walls, so easily forgotten. One might imagine that our other selves get a little envious of the conscious process, hogging up the mental power, walling itself off, and suppressing all non-conscious processes, for that is how it works. The conscious mind actively suppresses subconscious thoughts in order to maintain the boundaries of sanity.

So, what does this have to do with ghosts? Imagine that while you are awake, you see someone who should not be there. You see someone that you know to be dead, for example, or you see someone in your house who is not a family member or guest. Someone is there with you. First of all, this seems like it could be a physical threat. If there is someone with you who should not be there, this could be a home invasion, so it is time to get out the firearms. However, after the initial assessment, maybe the apparition fades away, or walks through a wall. You realize that there is no physical person there, in which case, you should feel relieved. Do you? I imagine that the hackles rise even higher after you admit that you have seen a ghost. What is the ghost? It is a sign that your mental structures are breaking down. Your fortress of sanity has a crack in it, and the entities from the outside threaten to swarm and overwhelm. Such might be the case if your consciousness is weakened to some extent, from exhaustion, depression, or other mental health disorders. Whatever the reason, there is a very real phenomenon of hallucinating when this happens because the barriers between the rational conscious mind and the irrational unconscious are breaking down. The dreams that we have but do not consciously perceive begin to impinge upon our awareness. We are afraid of ghosts, but the fear is the fear that consciousness is failing, and that we are possibly going insane. We might not consciously register that our true fear is insanity, but the brain knows. Somewhere, deep down, we far ego dissolution, which is what happens when the fortress completely crumbles and the subconscious processes are allowed free reign over one's being. They swarm in like demons, subverting, belittling, attacking the conscious process, which they deem a tyrant for keeping them locked away in the cold, outer darkness. If you treat your subconscious processes this way, they will wreak havoc and destruction if they get the upper hand, and if your will is weak enough, it might be displaced by a usurper, as a new conscious pattern takes hold and dominates the rest into submission. Such is the case with multiple personality disorder.

So, how does one protect oneself from ghosts, goblins, demons, and things that go bump in the night? The organization of the subconscious is largely out of our hands. Many people have practices, however, that help put them in touch with the entities in the outer darkness, helping to integrate them into the personality. Rather than push them away, you make a little room for them, spend a little time with them. Do not treat them as hostile alien creatures, but as part of yourself. They must understand that there is a hierarchy, and that you are the kind and benevolent ruler at the top of that hierarchy. However, they must also be made to understand that, though they may not be at the top, that they still have a place, and their place is to serve as part of that kingdom of the inner world. Instead of an invading army, they should be more like knights and serfs who willingly serve their master. Thus, when we sleep, and the walls come down, these beings offer to show us things, to play with us, to guide us, rather than seek to tear us down. A benevolent ruler has loyal subjects. A tyrant, on the other hand, has fearful and hateful subjects. The tyrant must always be on guard and wary of backstabbers, whereas the noble and just ruler has nothing to fear from his subjects. The "little people," however, do have memories, just as you do, and so trying to change your rule instantly is bound to fail. Only after establishing a long history of benevolence can your rule become accepted respected.

There are several methods that people have used throughout the ages to help you become aware of the creatures in your mind. For example, there are magical rites, meditations, rituals, and so on. Most of these have a common theme of suppressing the conscious process. In a sense, rather than breaking the walls of your mental fortress, you are opening the gate and lowering the drawbridge, and stepping out to get to know the people of the kingdom. When you do this, you become aware of the personalities in your mind, and by becoming aware of them, you give them some acknowledgement, and this simple acknowledgement is a sort of food for them. They crave it, and they will try to get more of it. By giving them some processing power, they become a little stronger. Like a dog, though, you feed it to gain its loyalty, but you must not allow it to bite your hand. In all dealings with these beings, you must ensure that you never allow them to question who is the king, who is the master. You can be a benevolent master, but none must forget who is in charge. Failure to follow this rule sets the stage for a psychic coup, as ruffians might decide to take the castle.

Without these rituals, which can be a bit hazardous to your ego, there are other ways that you can befriend your ghosts. When weird thoughts pop into your head, you might think about them, consider them. Do not immediately throw them out, but really ask yourself whether they have merit, or can be of use. Let your denizens know that you love them, and as long as they respect you, they will be heard from time to time, if only for a moment. Then, perhaps you will get muses to visit you with song ideas instead of demons trying to lock you into a prison of misery.

Finally, to end, there are magical rituals that one can perform to banish ghosts or other entities that creep around the periphery of your awareness. These rituals are designed to help your rational mind rebuild and strengthen the walls of your fortress. They often involve drawing a circle around yourself and strengthening it with magical wards, words. The ritual is very conscious-demanding, as it involves words and gestures that must be performed in a specific sequence, and visualizations that must be maintained. All these factors work together to strengthen the conscious process, and to help repair the cracks in the walls of sanity. However, doing so puts you into a position of acknowledging that the fellows outside are hostile, which is sometimes the case, and thus perpetuating the psychic and civic conditions that lead you to huddle in fear within your walls, praying that they hold up just a little bit longer while you are besieged by chaos.

Just remember: you are the king of your kingdom, and those outside, whether hostile or not, belong to you. They are your people. Make peace with them. Do not fear them, but do not trust them entirely either. Be regal, commanding, and benevolent, and order will rule.