What exactly are you seeing when you trip?

The book, "Hallucinations : behavior, experience, and theory." Edited by Siegel, R. K. and West, L. J is pretty good although slightly dated being published mid 70s.

I'll probably post a more detailed version later but they seem to suggest that the imagery of the mind goes from recollection, images concocted of memory and imagination, i.e. recall the last time you swam in the sea. is this figure actually you, how much is memory how much is what you expect to remember. Through to day dreams, sequences, actual dreams and full blown hallucination which involves the 'fibonacci' spirals. they have a term for them but again I can't really recall right now, form constants perhaps.

At the point where there is too much sensory input the mind allocates information to outside of the person himself who acts as a projector. The patterns overlaying your vision indicate information, memories etc.

This is what I took from the text when I woke up out of a weed induced food coma and read the chapter at like 4am. If anyone is interested I will give a more accurate account later on maybe.

 

Did you find this book online or actually in analog form? (actual book)

This is an interesting subject as well...

Short story, I recently went to get my eye prescription updated (just old eyes, no real disease or ailment) and the guy I see is an opthimoligist, an actual doctor. His exam consists of crazy state of the art equipment, like a machine that looks inside your eye and photographs your retina, stuff like that. Quite amazing.
So in conversation, I led him towards discussing the nature of psychedelic hallucination, not as much like DMT gnomes and what not, but tracers, changes in color, shape, etc. As in shrooms and lsd. I said that I had "heard" layman theories like an increase in the pressure of occular fluid in the eye, etc.
He told me that in order to hallucinate from such a thing, you would literally throw up and pass out before you would see things, that hallucination or changes in perception from psychedelics is 100% your minds processing of visual signals from your eyes, that there is no physiological alteration in the functioning of your eyes other than pupil dialation. He then went on to mention a rare disorder called CBS. In patients that have significant loss of vision, or loss in just certain spots like blind spots, the persons brain fills in the blanks in the form of hallucination, seeing objects, patterns, etc. But again, entirely generated in the mind and as you said, from memory, experiences, etc. Fascinating.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Bonnet_syndrome

 

Have to agree with you the same book basically debunks any theories relating to the physical structure of the eye. The eye is not structured uniformly anough to even be the basis of such hallucinations. Apparently LSD increases pressure on the iris, and such pressure does lead to some visual phenomena, just close your eyes and press on the lids, but not enough to account for actual hallucinatory patterning.

That said there was a considerable section discussing whether the physical structures of the eye could be responsible for hallucinatory experience. but as I'm sure we all know hallucinatory experiences only become more intense in the dark and light is needed to experience the eye related phenomena (can't remember the exact word).

What I said before. I reread the chapter, and they say that the geometrical petterning are form constants which appear in all kinds of human experience, migraines, stress, hynagogic states etc. but that they are much much more defined with psychedelics. once the hallucinations reach second stage (beyond just geometric patterning) information from within the brain is projected onto the geometric overlay.

Information being thoughts, feeling, memories, simply rather than being the image of a memory held in your head it is projected outside of yourself.

p.s. It was in actual form, university library for the win.

 

i have recently visited the other side for the first time, I agree with your veil of maya comment and would like to talk more such things, could you point me in the right direction? thanks

 

You look inside yourself. Horrifying to some.

 

on the national geographic channel they said it allows you to process more visual information

 

I'm doing my masters on this and my phd on something similar but a little more wild...I call my body of work perceptions of the unconscious. keep in mind there are 5-ht 2a receptors in the visual cortex...if you want to know more about what I do hit me up. I can't have people stealing my work before I publish it lol.

 

It seems to me(without talking receptors,& brain function that physically enables hallucinations,ect) ,that some of the confusion about all the various and differant types of hallucinations that people have,comes down to the millions and millions of significant and insigificant data that enter our brains on the conscious and sub conscious levels during each waking period of our lives. There is so much of it that we are unable to remember most of that which we have seen. Much is probably accepted and stored in our brains with not much more than split-second glances, as sensory input is ongoing whether active thought takes place or not. All of this input,no matter how slight and much of it virtually unknown to one's self, contributes to the phantasmagorical scenes that seem to make no sense at times. In other words--nothing can come out that wasn't somehow-some way-- put in. It follows then that each individual having seen all he/she has seen from their own perspective ,that each and every trip taken by anyone will differ from each and every trip taken by anyone else. I think this is why it seems so mysterious at times. It's like--"what in the hell was that about?" ---------not a very scientific way to look at it.--oh well.

 

^^^ That's not very far off from what I understand. Yes, we take in huge amounts of data that we are unaware of. Much of this is due to "filtering", through years of evolution and our own unique conditioning the mind filters out data that is "unimportant" to our cognitive functioning.
An example I read would be, being in a party in a room with lots of people, talking to just one or two but still hearing a roomful of people talking. If you're paying attention to the person you're conversing with the rest of the conversations are in the background, not processed or in your awareness. Then, you hear someone say your name and it jumps out at you and you turn to look. Suddenly your mind said "this is pertenant" and you dial in on it.
Access to much of this "insignificant" stored data is difficult or impossible most times. With many psychedelics though the filter that seperates these two realms of the mind dissolves, allowing data to flow that wouldn't normally.

On the nature of hallucination...

The word conjures up an idea of seeing something that is not there. Do give some thought as to what it is you're seeing when you're not tripping. How much can you trust your "normal" perception? If you think that everything you see normally is real, predictable and accurate, take a look at this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9Sen1HTu5o&feature=player_embedded"]Incredible Shade Illusion! - YouTube