Here, I would like to share my current theory on the type of people who are more prone to see this and why. Definitely inspired by Scott Alexander’s previous writings.
I believe these hallucinations are just low-level processing information. I believe that being neurodivergent, taking psychedelics, and meditating all help more naturally see low-level sensory information.
I think Psychadelics causing these hallucinations is already agreed upon, so I won’t defend it here.
Regarding meditation, I’m neurotypical and haven’t taken psychedelics. I wasn’t able to see these hallucinations until meditating consistently for a year, although I can’t say I ever tried very hard to do these things. Like, would I have seen them if I tried the tests in this post a few years ago?
Regarding neurodivergence, I tried this with my neurodivergent friend. They could see all of them beforehand and was confused because they thought everyone could see them (but that everyone just ignored it and didn’t talk about it).
Overall, this is weak evidence, and I’d like to hear other people’s experiences and models of this.
I’m not sure how neurodivergent I am, but I have seen visual snow since I was a little kid (I used to tell people I could “see the air” and they’d be like “wut????”; can’t remember a time I didn’t do this) and of course after images, and since meditating more I see glowing effects (not auras), flickering/vibrations, breathing, and even tracers, both during and not during meditation. I also have “tinnitus” that looks like hearing a tone mostly only when other sounds don’t drown it out although vary occasionally something “clicks” and I temporarily notice it for a few seconds when things are noisy.
By “glowing effects” do you mean something like the light rays coming off the street lamp in this picture?
Regarding “tinnitus”, in the Mind Illuminated, it claims that master of “stage 8″ is...
When the eyes perceive only an inner light, the ears perceive only an inner sound, the body is suffused with a sense of pleasure and comfort, and your mental state is one of intense joy.
Do you think this “tinnitus” is the same as this inner sound? I can hear this ringing “inner sound” when I “let go” of hearing. Same with the inner light when I “let go” of seeing. And to add, bodily sensations feel like very fast vibrations when I “let go” of sensing them. (note: I don’t claim to have “mastered stage 8″). I think the “click” for me is “letting go”, like relaxing a muscle but with sensory information. Is that similar to your experience or not at all?
No, that’s not quite what I had in mind for glowing, although I do experience something like it in some circumstances. What I meant was more like things feel bright, like they have an inner light shinning out from them.
I do think it’s something like what you are describing from The Mind Illuminated. After all, I practice shikantaza, and before it picked up that name it was known as the method of “silent illumination”, so it doesn’t surprise me to see someone else talking about this as “inner light” (some traditions talk about this as “luminosity”; it feels to me like sensing perfection).
Probably not? It’s a thing that started happening to me after ~500 hours of meditation, and it happens in any environment. There’s not even a thing to look for exactly because it doesn’t feel like a normal visual hallucination. Things look basically the same as they did before but it feels like they are bright. Maybe the closest thing would be something like what happens when your eyes are artificially dilated.
Yeah, that’s a decent approximation. Same effect at twilight. Although it’s missing some really important aspect of the experience that’s hard to explain, like it’s just visually similar and lacks the aliveness that fills everything when I experience them as glowing or bright or self illuminating.
One perceptual effect I happened to read on somewhat recently is that night vision and dayvision have different color balances which makes hue contrast inversions at twilight where the relative strenghts of night vision and dayvision smoothly vary.
The hypothesis I have in mind is that experience is the result of being aware of the nightvision information channel also at day. In effect “white “is now 4 colors which is “brighter” than 3 colored white.
Here, I would like to share my current theory on the type of people who are more prone to see this and why. Definitely inspired by Scott Alexander’s previous writings.
I believe these hallucinations are just low-level processing information. I believe that being neurodivergent, taking psychedelics, and meditating all help more naturally see low-level sensory information.
I think Psychadelics causing these hallucinations is already agreed upon, so I won’t defend it here.
Regarding meditation, I’m neurotypical and haven’t taken psychedelics. I wasn’t able to see these hallucinations until meditating consistently for a year, although I can’t say I ever tried very hard to do these things. Like, would I have seen them if I tried the tests in this post a few years ago?
Regarding neurodivergence, I tried this with my neurodivergent friend. They could see all of them beforehand and was confused because they thought everyone could see them (but that everyone just ignored it and didn’t talk about it).
Overall, this is weak evidence, and I’d like to hear other people’s experiences and models of this.
I’m not sure how neurodivergent I am, but I have seen visual snow since I was a little kid (I used to tell people I could “see the air” and they’d be like “wut????”; can’t remember a time I didn’t do this) and of course after images, and since meditating more I see glowing effects (not auras), flickering/vibrations, breathing, and even tracers, both during and not during meditation. I also have “tinnitus” that looks like hearing a tone mostly only when other sounds don’t drown it out although vary occasionally something “clicks” and I temporarily notice it for a few seconds when things are noisy.
By “glowing effects” do you mean something like the light rays coming off the street lamp in this picture?
Regarding “tinnitus”, in the Mind Illuminated, it claims that master of “stage 8″ is...
Do you think this “tinnitus” is the same as this inner sound? I can hear this ringing “inner sound” when I “let go” of hearing. Same with the inner light when I “let go” of seeing. And to add, bodily sensations feel like very fast vibrations when I “let go” of sensing them. (note: I don’t claim to have “mastered stage 8″). I think the “click” for me is “letting go”, like relaxing a muscle but with sensory information. Is that similar to your experience or not at all?
No, that’s not quite what I had in mind for glowing, although I do experience something like it in some circumstances. What I meant was more like things feel bright, like they have an inner light shinning out from them.
I do think it’s something like what you are describing from The Mind Illuminated. After all, I practice shikantaza, and before it picked up that name it was known as the method of “silent illumination”, so it doesn’t surprise me to see someone else talking about this as “inner light” (some traditions talk about this as “luminosity”; it feels to me like sensing perfection).
Do you think you could write your own type of test for seeing that type of “glowing”. Like what’s the ideal environment and what should one look for?
Probably not? It’s a thing that started happening to me after ~500 hours of meditation, and it happens in any environment. There’s not even a thing to look for exactly because it doesn’t feel like a normal visual hallucination. Things look basically the same as they did before but it feels like they are bright. Maybe the closest thing would be something like what happens when your eyes are artificially dilated.
Is it similar to when colors are more vibrant on a cloudy day? (When the blue glare of the sky is gone)
Yeah, that’s a decent approximation. Same effect at twilight. Although it’s missing some really important aspect of the experience that’s hard to explain, like it’s just visually similar and lacks the aliveness that fills everything when I experience them as glowing or bright or self illuminating.
One perceptual effect I happened to read on somewhat recently is that night vision and dayvision have different color balances which makes hue contrast inversions at twilight where the relative strenghts of night vision and dayvision smoothly vary.
The hypothesis I have in mind is that experience is the result of being aware of the nightvision information channel also at day. In effect “white “is now 4 colors which is “brighter” than 3 colored white.