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I love hearing how other people's imagination functions. Your experience sounds similar to mine, but I feel like there's two distinct levels to the mind's eye.

I love hearing how other people's imagination functions. Your experience sounds similar to mine, but I feel like there's two distinct levels to the mind's eye. There's the level you describe, where it doesn't feel like you're seeing through your real eyes but I find it's also possible to have images that feel very much like they're coming in through your eyes – almost as if there's a tap on the optic nerve. For me these images are for the most part only visible with my eyes closed and most visible when falling asleep. I also cannot precisely control them in the same way I can instantly imagine a shape, instead I have to influence them indirectly bit by bit with lots of effort (but I usually get there – I'm practising to see if it can become easier). These images can be much more vivid, they're usually in full color and animated, but with a small field of view. It looks a bit like having a small CRT-style color TV at the center of my vision and it feels like watching a dream while you're awake. To go into more detail on the process: when I close my eyes I don't see black but a sort of vague mix of colored blobs, a little bit like this but darker [0]. As I start to think, I pick out patterns in the blobs that look like the thing I'm trying to imaging, until eventually they sort of become full images that evolve on their own. They become vivid enough that I feel like the muscles in my eyes are straining to try to focus on them. It's not that dissimilar to those deep-dream images (but much less creepy!). Is this something that happens for you too? [0] https://image.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/colored-noise-grunge-rusty-precious-450w-552311992.jpg https://image.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/colored-no...

cartoonfoxes 8y ago
I can also attest to this two-level phenomenon. > These images can be much more vivid, they're usually in full color and animated, but with a small field of view. It looks a bit like having a small CRT-style color TV at the center of my vision and it feels like watching a dream while you're awake. This almost exactly. I have experienced this a handful of times on waking. A stream of photoreal content, in a small round field of view in the center of my vision. The images often have fewer colors than real life, and some kind of artifact not unlike "scanlines" from a CRT. So far, they're also distinctly 2D. It's like watching broadcast from the part of my brain that's still dreaming, through my eyes. It's what I expect retinal projection looks like. As opposed to the "back buffer" of normal visualization or daydreaming, there are separate "front buffer" phenomenon that are as close to hallucinations as I've ever experienced. If they happened at any time other than waking or falling asleep, I would drive myself straight to the ER.

cartoonfoxes 8y ago

I can also attest to this two-level phenomenon. > These images can be much more vivid, they're usually in full color and animated, but with a small field of view. It looks a bit like having a small CRT-style color TV at the center of my vision and it feels like watching a dream while you're awake. This almost exactly. I have experienced this a handful of times on waking. A stream of photoreal content, in a small round field of view in the center of my vision. The images often have fewer colors than real life, and some kind of artifact not unlike "scanlines" from a CRT. So far, they're also distinctly 2D. It's like watching broadcast from the part of my brain that's still dreaming, through my eyes. It's what I expect retinal projection looks like. As opposed to the "back buffer" of normal visualization or daydreaming, there are separate "front buffer" phenomenon that are as close to hallucinations as I've ever experienced. If they happened at any time other than waking or falling asleep, I would drive myself straight to the ER.