Many years ago, I experienced an auditory hallucination. A disembodied voice muttered a few sounds about six inches from where my off-duty brain was slumbering in bed.
I might have thought it was a ghost, commanding me to avenge some ancient wrong, except the voice mimicked Eccles from the Goon Show, so I knew it was merely a figment of my imagination.
And besides, in my slumbering state, I couldn't understand what the voice was saying, so if it had been a restless spirit it wasn't being avenged anytime soon. Well, not by dozy me at any rate.
The brain is a strange blob in the skull: part super-computer, part whoopee cushion. It's alarming to ponder how misfiring neurons could entirely change your perception of the world and the objects it contains if indeed the mind can 'ponder' in an alarmed condition.
Were it not for the tell-tale Greenslade intonation, I might have become an adherent of the Ouija board, or made attempts to traverse the cosmic plane of interplanetary consciousness. As it is, I merely borrowed Julian Jaynes' The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind from the library.
No further auditory hallucinations have disturbed me since that first intelligible utterance, which is a shame as their messages might be important if properly heard. Memo to brain: perhaps the voice should adopt the booming elocution of Neddy Seagoon next time it wants to get in touch.
