4 ms·

To me, the most stunning hallucination, during LSD, was the total confusion of my senses. A specific flower was in bloom at the time, and my mind confused it’s

To me, the most stunning hallucination, during LSD, was the total confusion of my senses. A specific flower was in bloom at the time, and my mind confused it’s smell with the colour purple. It was the strangest experience. Smelling colour... There is no way to describe it in words. Even though this episode was decades ago, I still, kind of, experience the scent of that flower as the colour purple.

meesles 7y ago
Your experience is known as synesthesia [1], and while not common, it can be found in people naturally and under certain conditions (like drugs). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia
- erikpukinskis 7y ago
  There is also the fact that many things we perceive as senses are actually knowledge. We may think we see a red door when in fact we just know the door is red. It’s possible your OP was noticing that a certain smell makes him know a thing is purple. Under normal circumstances he would just perceive PURPLE and think he was seeing. But on drugs he might perceive that his nose was also alerting him of PURPLE in the flower.
perl4ever 7y ago
I haven't tried to meditate in a long time, but my understanding of the process was, setting aside mysticism and tradition, you just take a mental concept and you focus on it and every time your mind starts drifting you return to it. So, I've heard that people make a big deal about choosing a mantra, but my thinking was it can be anything, and somehow I got into the habit of visualizing a blank field of a particular color. The nice thing about focusing on a color was that if my visual imagination distracted me, I could concentrate on "seeing" the color, while if I was imagining words or sounds, I could focus on the name of the color too. So it was like having an object to focus on that had all the different angles available. I'm not sure I've never experienced synaesthesia, but I'm pretty sure I haven't been perceiving smells or sounds as having color recently.

meesles 7y ago

Your experience is known as synesthesia [1], and while not common, it can be found in people naturally and under certain conditions (like drugs). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia

erikpukinskis 7y ago
There is also the fact that many things we perceive as senses are actually knowledge. We may think we see a red door when in fact we just know the door is red. It’s possible your OP was noticing that a certain smell makes him know a thing is purple. Under normal circumstances he would just perceive PURPLE and think he was seeing. But on drugs he might perceive that his nose was also alerting him of PURPLE in the flower.

perl4ever 7y ago

I haven't tried to meditate in a long time, but my understanding of the process was, setting aside mysticism and tradition, you just take a mental concept and you focus on it and every time your mind starts drifting you return to it. So, I've heard that people make a big deal about choosing a mantra, but my thinking was it can be anything, and somehow I got into the habit of visualizing a blank field of a particular color. The nice thing about focusing on a color was that if my visual imagination distracted me, I could concentrate on "seeing" the color, while if I was imagining words or sounds, I could focus on the name of the color too. So it was like having an object to focus on that had all the different angles available. I'm not sure I've never experienced synaesthesia, but I'm pretty sure I haven't been perceiving smells or sounds as having color recently.