Hallucination Perspective of Psychiatry and Yoga-An Outlook in Indian context

Abstract

Hallucination is a word used to describe perceptual disorder. The term psychiatry was first coined by the German physician Johann Christian Reil in 1808 and literally means the ‘medical treatment of the soul’. Psychiatry field of medicine describes hallucination in a different perspective when compared to yoga. According to yoga concepts, an individual is considered to possess, karana sarira, (casual body), karya sarira (gross body) sukshma sarira. This sukshma sarira is again assumed to have outer coverings on physical body (annamaya kosha) called pranamaya kosha, manonmaya kosha, vijnanamaya kosha & anandhamaya kosha.  As mentioned here, third of the five koshas is manomaya kosha—the mind sheath. It acts as a messenger, from outer world as an intuition or thoughts. Hence this manonmaya kosha give clarity through dreams of mind, hallucinations occurring in meditation. But nowadays the theory & treatment revolving around yoga is less followed in Indian culture. This article describes, the identical views about hallucination & practical aspects of variance, for hallucination relating to Psychiatry & yoga.