Mild-Mannered Physicist or Interplanetary Hero?

"This is the incredible true story of a physicist who believed he could project himself to another solar system and live as a swashbuckling interplanetary adventurer. When he was a teenager and living on a Polynesian island, he had read a series of "strange and adventurous" science fiction / fantasy books by an American writer. The protagonist shared his name, and eventually the physicist started thinking he really was the character. But he was still able to maintain a dual identity -- he sort of "astral projected" into that fantasy world while keeping the appearance of a skinny-tie wearing physicist." [via boingboing]

What strikes me as incredible is that this man brought to his court-ordered psychiatrist over 12,000 pages of painstakingly detailed stories, histories, architectural and sociological facts, all gathered from what, if not madness, was the product of an immensely hyper-active imagination. The physicist actually lived in that sci-fi world, to the extent that his psychiatrist feared curing the delusion might kill him. As someone who has intentionally created a complex and interwoven internal reality/story from dreams (which leads me to say that I have lived twice as much as those who don't dream, and the second life much wilder), I am fascinated and a little horrified, knowing very well the danger that lies in taking your fantasies to be more real than the normative reality, just as real, yes, but when our ability to take care of ourselves or others is threatened by just not paying enough attention, or acting out from the wrong attention: that way does lie madness. But not because you see things, that's still a real experience, communicated as best it can be.

I am reminded of the outsider artist Henry Darger (best depicted In the Realms of the Unreal), creating an elaborate mythology of armies of little girls till he died unknown in his attic and his neighbors found the bizarre 15,000 page illustrated manuscript. Talk about tomes. To some degree great works seem to take actually existing in these fantastic other places for extended periods of time, whole lives, yet we still have to do what we have to to be here, because living is a great work as well.