#psychic censor

So, what is a psychic censor?

In Liber Null and Psychonaut, Peter J. Carroll introduces the concept of the psychic censor:

“When people are presented with real magical events they somehow manage not to notice. If they are forced to notice something uncontrovertibly magical they may become terrified, nauseated, and ill. The psychic censor shields us from intrusions from other realities. It edits out most telepathic communication, blinds us to prescience, and reduces our ability to register significant coincidences, or recall dreams. The psychic censor is not just put there out of divine malice; ordinary physical life would be impossible without it […] The psychic censor on the other hand, is a material thing, which protects the mind from magic and from being overwhelmed by the awesome strangeness of the psychic dimension which appears to us as chaos.” (Carroll, p. 162)

While many inexperienced magicians may balk at the idea that something like this is necessary, I (and most psychonauts who experiment with entheogens) can assure you that the psychic censor is absolutely crucial for being able to navigate the everyday. Without it, we would constantly be inundated with an onslaught of stimuli we would not be able to process, regardless if the source is magical or completely natural.

Under regular circumstances, our brains organize the inputs of light, shadow, color, scent, and sound in ways we can generally tolerate and understand. Even in environments that seek to overwhelm our senses, we can still make sense of what is happening (even if it is overstimulating). If we were unable to filter and organize this information into a system we could process, the world would be unrecognizable: we would not be able to experience the patterns we rely on in sub- and unconscious levels that organize our visual, aural, and olfactory worlds into the everyday things we understand. Even normally recognizable shapes and language would be utterly incoherent.

As we grow, our psychic censors generally become more rigid and robust—this comes with the territory of existing in the world and experiencing it every day. I believe this is also why many folks experience more of the magical when they are young: their brains have not developed all of the tools and schemas they need to constantly filter the world into the understandable.

But this is not to say we cannot work to have some control over our psychic censors! With dedication and practice, you can develop techniques that allow you to let in more or less of the weird in at any given time.

Adjusting Layers of Reality

The key to being able to control your psychic censor at will, I’ve found, is to utilize your strengths in how you personally visualize or process information. Note: If you are still figuring out the best ways for you to visualize, whether or not you can produce vivid and complex mental images, I highly suggest that you continue to research and practice until you have a solid toolkit to work with. If you are like my partner and a few of my friends who have aphantasia, or cannot produce mental images, there are definitely other ways to get to a similar place without them by utilizing other senses!

For the highly visual learners and thinkers out there, I tend to think of my mental images and visual inputs as Layers in a photo-editing program. With practice, I have been able to bring certain layers to the forefront or hide them entirely; you can even adjust the ‘opacity’ of the layers or collage elements on top of each other to superimpose different images on each other, regardless if they are visual or mental in nature. This has been extremely helpful in being able to blend the magical into my everyday or as a way to help ground when I am overwhelmed and overstimulated.

Addressing Complications

That being said, there are things that may inhibit your ability to control your psychic censor. While I was not diagnosed with this as a child, I was definitely a maladaptive daydreamer and I was dealing with unchecked anxiety and depression which eventually gave way to anxiety-induced hallucinations. These tendencies were eventually remedied with therapy and medication following a formal diagnosis and that has helped me develop a healthy baseline that I still carefully monitor and treat today.