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Spinoza, Baruch - Letter to Peter Balling - An hallucination
Identifier
001581
Type of Spiritual Experience
Number of hallucinations: 1
Background
Spinoza described this hallucination in a letter to his friend Peter Balling in 1660
A description of the experience
When one morning after the day dawned, I woke up from a very unpleasant dream, the images, which had presented themselves to me in sleep, remained before my eyes just as vividly as though the things had been real, especially the image of a certain black and leprous Brazilian whom I had never seen before.
This image disappeared for the most part when, in order to divert my thoughts, I cast my eyes on a book or something else.
But as soon as I lifted my eyes again, without fixing my attention on any particular object, the same image of this same negro appeared with the same vividness again and again, until the head of it finally vanished.