Closed-eye hallucination | Hacker News Reader

Closed-eye hallucination

en.wikipedia.org

54 pointsgwern18 comments

One of the more interesting things I read about Richard Feynman was his interest in lucid dreaming. His point, which I found quite compelling, is that you have no trouble "seeing" things with your eyes closed when you're dreaming, so the mechanics of that should work regardless of whether or not you are in a conscious or unconscious state.

As a result, the ability to "see" things (or hallucinate) is a function of figuring out how to disable the mechanism we develop at a young age which tells our visual center to stop sending images when the optic nerve is not receiving input.

It took me probably 8 years of trying off and on until I got to the point where I can switch on visual impressions with my eyes closed occasionally. I really have to get other thoughts out of my head (meditation techniques are good for that) and it does have to be in a dark room or with a light tight blindfold as pretty much any light on the optic nerve will switch the visual feed back to the eyeballs.

The best exercise I've managed with what you're talking about, is to rotate shapes. The first exercise I learned was just a silver pipe, with a black interior, and you move it around and try to be accurate with what you would actually see. As I'm sure you're aware, it's breathtakingly hard.

I found it fun to image a blank sheet of paper with closed eyes. It takes a couple of minutes but the result is startling and very realistic.

I really like that idea, I'll have to try it. Generally I spent a lot of time just willing myself to "see". My thesis was that like sensory deprivation tanks eventually your brain will just make something up for you to see. And largely that has been successful, mostly visualizing nominally outdoor scenes similar to places I've visited. Rocky plains, forests, beaches.

I've tried this many times, usually imagining walking "through" an environment such as a corridor. I would "get it" for a few moments, before it slips away. Always assumed that failing was simply due to my mind not being able to "conjure up" or "fill in" enough detail fast enough for it to be believable to me.

In my experience if you keep at it you will be able to stop it from slipping away. It is a naturally unstable state, you're conscious, and you are getting visual input, that you know isn't "real". Your entire life your brain has worked to shut off that situation so that is what it wants to do. Leaving it running is sort of like balancing on a chair, you really want to put your feet down but you have to will yourself to stay up straight by not using your feet.

For me, at first things would just stop (back to black as it were), then they would slowly slide out of my field of view and any head motion would cause them to stop. But eventually, like balancing, once I got to the point where I got it started, I could keep it going for a while. At this point if I can keep it going for several (say 6 or 7) minutes I'll find myself asleep (which I recognize by waking up). Only on a few occasions have remained as lucid as Feynman describes while actually dreaming.

I developed this during my undergrad in structural engineering. I don't even need my eyes closed to do it, the visual feed just changes to my minds eye.

Woah, I experienced this a lot when I was younger. I never knew it had a name. Before I went to sleep I would see all kinds of crazy patterns and colours, sort of like blurry fractals I guess. Level 3 describes it well, but I wouldn't say I spent a long time concentrating and I definitely hadn't taken any psychedelics at that young age.

After a period of time a small spinning... twitch... would appear at the very centre of my vision, the best way to describe it would be a spasm of small lines. Anyone else experienced this?

I never really thought it was odd until now, to be honest it kind of scared me. I assumed it was sort of tinnitus for your eyes, and I was somehow damaging them!

I accidentally invented a pretty cool technique to induce hallucination like patterns. Two ingredients: - sun - two hands

Close your eyes and face the sun. Put your palms in front of your eyes (about 10, 20cm) so they cross each other in 45 degrees. Start to wobble your palms with your fingers stretched quite fast and you should see something like a Moire pattern.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreamachine

Thanks! I love the concept :)

http://lesswrong.com/lw/dr/generalizing_from_one_example/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/17/what-universal-human-ex...

When I have been programming for many hours, up to 14 or so and then I close my eyes I can see code scrolling up. If I look closely at the lines scrolling I can't see the actual text, but I can clearly see "text" scrolling.

I mentioned this to a doctor and he said this was just an after-image. But I don't see how an after-image could clearly show moving text. Wouldn't an after-image be static?

I have also experienced this, and I’m pretty sure it’s not an after-image. It’s not “visual”, but “mental”, so to say. It happens to me not only with code, but also some games; for example after a lot of time playing Tetris, I’ll sort of imagine blocks whenever I’m not more focused on something else.

I suppose it has to do with repetitive patterns. Perhaps some sort of loop takes root in the brain and these patterns are re-experienced in the way you mention; or maybe the brain was so absorbed with the task that it keeps working on it at a subconscious level, with occasional incursions into conscious experience.

I’m wildly speculating, though. It would be great to know of a scientific explanation for this.

When I'm hungover I like to lay on my stomach and press my closed eyes against a pillow. I get similar to what is detailed under level 4 CEV. I see a lot of people's faces, rooms, objects, etc.

ahh, this brings back memories of my shrooming days. I reached Level 5+ (the "plus" = all five senses hallucinating)

Haha me too. But not shrooms, DXM.

I've been there too. I saw a massive machine that somehow represented all of humanity, and myself as a tiny little cog inside of the machine.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com