Thread: new color

hmmm... people keep saying things like you can only dream what you can comprehend, and since it doesn't happen in waking life we don't know what it would be like. Who is to say we don't know subconsciously what it would be like. Our brain doesn't comprehend only the rainbow, it only receive input from that spectrum. To think that there are other colors out there makes perfect sense to me, and so I can easily comprehend seeing a color that doesn't have to go through my eyes. My brain could take that and run with it. My conscious mind can't comprehend having no body because I haven't physically felt it, but I have now.

I feel like people draw conclusions out of half ideas on here. Same with time dilation and splitting consciousness. They say because our brain only can process this much per second we can only experience this much per second, but who is to say that our experience of time is based on how much we process? *not trying for a debate, just putting something up to show my first point.

The main thing that proves that no matter what reasons we say that we can't do things, the problem is that anyone that lucids has felt time dilation, and anyone that has believed has seen a different color. So why are there so many doubters?

I couldnt agree more! As far as split personalities goes although this is getting slightly off topic how do you explain multiple personality disorder clearly peoples brains are capable. What I find would be really interesting which would possibly push the limits on what you could do would be in theory to create a whole new sensation all together.

Originally Posted by Eesiel

I couldnt agree more! As far as split personalities goes although this is getting slightly off topic how do you explain multiple personality disorder clearly peoples brains are capable. What I find would be really interesting which would possibly push the limits on what you could do would be in theory to create a whole new sensation all together.

I believe your ability to comprehend unfamiliar concepts depends on how similar they are to other things that you have a natural inuition for.
Multiple personalities doesn't seem *that* hard to imagine, it's almost like imagining you are someone else in a daydream (or a dream, for that matter) and try to live yourself into a different type of personality.
It's not an utterly unfamiliar idea, because you naturally know what consciousness and personality is.

It becomes much harder to imagine things when you don't even know where to start.
For example, imagine something like the fourth spatial dimension;
all you know about such a dimension is that it must be orthogonal to the three dimensions we already know, but how is that possible?
We can of course imagine that the fourth spatial dimension is the distance between two three-dimensional surfaces (kind of like if you imagine the universe as a plane, then another universe as another plane that can move closer and further away from our universe in the fourth dimension).
But this is still extremely hard to comprehend, because we have no concrete understanding for what the fourth spatial dimension actually looks like.

It's kind of like asking someone who was born blind what vision is - they have never experienced vision, so they don't know what it is like.
But it is certainly an interesting topic, and I'm not saying that it is "impossible" to experience something like a new colour, but I think it would be really hard.
I know I said in my last post that it would be "technically impossible", but I meant to say that it is just very complicated.

I was actually talking about splitting consciousness and going and doing two things at once or more.

Also, I have been to a place with 4 dimensions and I have been to a place with 6. 4 is impossible to explain with words, and six us like our dimension overlapping with another one.

Another sense would be awesome. One as substantial as the 5. I heard someone saying that we have all senses possible and that there is nothing else to receive that would be helpful. Then I heard something else saying saying that there could always be another sense and that we dont need the ones that we have and if we didn't have hearing, we wouldn't know what we we're missing out on, and that trying to explain to someone that lives in an entire world without hearing would be difficult. Just some food for thought. Of course scan is almost like another sense. Hmmm...

Originally Posted by BrandonBoss

I was actually talking about splitting consciousness and going and doing two things at once or more.

Also, I have been to a place with 4 dimensions and I have been to a place with 6. 4 is impossible to explain with words, and six us like our dimension overlapping with another one.

Another sense would be awesome. One as substantial as the 5. I heard someone saying that we have all senses possible and that there is nothing else to receive that would be helpful. Then I heard something else saying saying that there could always be another sense and that we dont need the ones that we have and if we didn't have hearing, we wouldn't know what we we're missing out on, and that trying to explain to someone that lives in an entire world without hearing would be difficult. Just some food for thought. Of course scan is almost like another sense. Hmmm...

My definition of a sense is that it is something that allows us to perceive the world around us - sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell are the traditional primary senses, but then of course we also have other senses, like balance, time perception (the abilitiy to estimate how much time that has passed), temperature sense, pain sense, and even an acceleration sense (which allows us to register any changes in velocity, either of the speed itself or of the direction of the speed).

It could be an interesting experiment to try "inventing" your own senses, and see if you can experience them in a lucid dream.

By the way, I think I once read something in Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming about a man who had tried some very interesting experiments with his own dream body, like splitting himself in half and passing his hand through his head.
I also remember someone either on DreamViews or LD4All who had tried transforming into a lake.
I wonder what that would feel like.

I've got trouble thinking this is possible.

Of course there ARE other colors out there, outside the visible spectrum, but I can't imagine what it would be. I just don't think it's relatable to the concept of perception. I can imagine what it's like not having a body, despite it being physically possible. I've even dreamt about having a whole extra limb and was able to manipulate it and it was a weird experience, but I can replicate it in my mind if I think about it.

But I can't even begin to imagine a new color. Idk, I just believe dreams are largely based on expectation and imagination and I can't really do either.

Maybe I'm mentally blocking it for myself, but just expressing my thoughts on the subject haha.

Well, technically we can't see new colors. You can't grow cone cells inside a dream. If I tell you to imagine a jsuadha (a big one), what will you imagine? Certainly not the jsuadha, because you have no clue what it is. But you can imagine a monster, or a blanket, or even a big burger.
No one can ever agree or deny with reports of people saying they dreamed with a new color because we don't have access to the experience itself, so in that way go for it ^^ But evidence shows something like this to be impossible, especially because otherwise congenitally blind people would be able to dream with something visible.

Still, fascinating topic, it automatically reminds me that waking life guy with 360 vision ^^

360° vision feels like a very interesting, although slightly bizarre idea.
I have on numerous occasions tried to imagine what that would feel like, but it's hopeless.

@Zoth
Well you don't use your eyes in dreams... so you can't call anything that we do in dreams "seeing" but it is the closest sense we have to the dream idea, so we call it that.

also @Zoth and Laurelindo

I haven't had "360 Vision" before, but I have been able to know everything that is around me. I would like to try 360 vision with actual vision though. Might just have to take my eyes out and point them to the side.

Spoiler for How this might work:

Yeah, that should work.

Well congenital blind people can see in dreams its been reported. People who were blinded later in life have the same type of visual experiences in dreams as anyone else. (I would imagine that this would be one of the biggest motivations for a blind lucid dreamer) Congenital blind people do report seeing shapes and colors of some kind. since theve never seen anything really im sure they wouldn't even have the vocab to describe what they would see anyway. And after all our dreaming brain creates new things all the time. They may borrow things from waking life but lucid dreaming is the ability to control one of the most plastic processes in brain function. Dreaming is where memory is processed by lucid dreaming you exert some level of control on how your brain processes information. Since what we describe as color is the categorization of visual information all we would have to do is create a new category. Not that hard if you think about it. You just have to beleive you are seeing a new color that exists and isnt fake and your brain will create a new category. Color is the language our brain uses to identify and make sense out of wavelegnths of light you would just be adding more vocab. Also this process of memory organization would be what makes things like time distortion and ego splitting possible

This is a fascinating conversation in general, but every time I read another post, regardless of its content, I am dogged by the same image, so I thought I'd share:

Ever been to a paint store, for either artists or houses? Ever seen their selection of colors? There are thousands on display these days; shades of shades, tints of tints, etc, etc. Given that the paint companies seem to come up with a "new" color every day, and all those colors, no matter how unique, fall within the visible light spectrum (as they must, or else they would no longer be colors), then why can't a person find a "new" color in a dream that she has never before witnessed, and perhaps might never have found its way into our common lexicon of "color?" [a quick aside: yes, "no matter how unique" still assumes that all these colors are derivatives or combinations of the primaries, given that the primaries represent the full gamut of visible light]

I suppose this thought is simplistic, which I'm sure you will confirm for me, but I keep having it. Yes, our perception of color is limited to what colors can be drawn from the visible light spectrum. Yes, to call that spectrum the limit for color selection seems correct, because anything beyond that spectrum would be something other than a color. But it seems to me that the selection of different shades and hues of color that can be drawn from that spectrum is practically infinite, so encountering a new color in a dream (or on a painter's palette) seems more like a happy accident to me, rather than an inconceivable or impressive event.

Sorry; I know you guys are talking about bigger things, but I just had a need to share this nagging thought...

@Sageous Well that's a smart explenation. But I have a question to you, Sageous, in your +30 years of exploring dreams, have you never seen a color of which you think is impossible to have in the real world?

Originally Posted by Ginsan

@Sageous Well that's a smart explenation. But I have a question to you, Sageous, in your +30 years of exploring dreams, have you never seen a color of which you think is impossible to have in the real world?

Nope. Never.

Sure, I've seen plenty of amazing colors, perhaps even a novel shade on occasion, but I never once said, "That color doesn't exist in reality." Now, that could be because, per my post above, my mindset prevented me from noticing a color that doesn't exist in reality, or I just wasn't looking. But I don't think so.

Originally Posted by Sageous

Nope. Never.

Sure, I've seen plenty of amazing colors, perhaps even a novel shade on occasion, but I never once said, "That color doesn't exist in reality." Now, that could be because, per my post above, my mindset prevented me from noticing a color that doesn't exist in reality, or I just wasn't looking. But I don't think so.

Interesting!
Have you ever tried?

^^ No, I haven't. I'm not sure you actually can try to invent a new, never-before-seen color. Since it's probably safe to assume your unconscious isn't harboring a file of unknown colors, asking for a new color seems pointless. You can have the greatest of intentions and desire to find a new color, but if there is nothing in the database from which to draw, you would still get no results.

I think that discovering a new color would need to happen by accident, and it certainly hasn't done so for me. Even if it did, given the vast amount of shades, mixes, and hues of the existing primary colors, I would be hard pressed to believe that any "new" color I saw in a dream was one that does not exist in reality.

So I guess I'm not the best person to ask such a question, huh?

I'm going to have to say yes. Reason for this, we are always seeing sensory information that we don't notice. Have you ever thought of certain feelings that you can have but can't describe them? (By feelings I mean "sensing") The only catch: We don't recognize it. Reason for this is because we never see it in our physical reality... BUT, if we can learn to distinguish these feelings and use them constantly within our dreams/meditations, then it is fully possible to learn to recognize it as one thing or another.

For further proof, have you heard of the electromagnetic spectrum? Visible light is a part of it, but it is only a small section of the spectrum. For instance, imagine ultraviolet light or x-rays. Perhaps they can be distinguished into colors if we perceive them naturally. Sadly though, technology hasn't allowed us to see ultraviolet light yet. (we're getting closer though! )

Just my two cents - the colours we see are limited by the function of our eyes. I guarantee you there are other colours that we just can't see. They are simply outside of the spectrum that our eyes allow us to "see". As it is I believe our eyes can perceive a possible million plus colors - but you need a frame of reference for comparison. Just "seeing" a colour would not be enuf - you would have to be able to say "this is a new colour" as a comp to colours that everyone can already see and recognize.

Dogs have an amazing sense of smell - they can smell things we never will. Again, humans have basic senses that allow basic perception - there is more in our universe that we don't understand than what we think we know.

I believe this might be suitable for this thread, to maybe clarifying some questions. If not, it's still mind-blowing facts I think. Enjoy Mantis shrimp - Most Complex Eyes in the Animal Kingdom - YouTube

Originally Posted by DreamyBear

I believe this might be suitable for this thread, to maybe clarifying some questions. If not, it's still mind-blowing facts I think. Enjoy Mantis shrimp - Most Complex Eyes in the Animal Kingdom - YouTube

Yeah the mantis shrimp is where I always put my hope, before reading this article Mantis shrimp super colour vision debunked
Although you can still be amazed at the depth these guys have. We see in 2d with one eye and 3d, those guys see with 9!

I haven't read all the posts on this thread but I have a few things to say.... (may have been said already)

I believe it is entirely possible to see a new color in a dream, but the reason we can't imagine that we can is because the brain cannot truly comprehend infinite.
Our eyes can only perceive a percentage of the color spectrum, but that does not mean that other colors aren't there. Perhaps our brain RECEIVES these colors, but does not truly PERCEIVE them, if you know what I am saying. Our eyes are responsible for for our vision in the physical world, but not the dream world, so our rods and cones can't hold us back. Think about all the materials and things in space or on other planets that radiate shades and hues that simply don't exist on planet earth. There are stories of people activating and deactivating parts of their brain (be it through drugs, or other methods for achieving altered states of consciousness) and sensing entirely new colors. Perhaps our other senses come into play when seeing colors, and perhaps this, and perhaps that... there really is no easy answer. The universe is too complex... yet too simple.... Bah, I'm rambling...

Basically once again, yes I think we can see new colors in dreams. Try asking it to show you one.

Well I don't really care about seeing new colors. I am sure that even with 1/10th of the colors we have now, in our dreams we can go to places with views that have 10 times the beauty of anything in the real world

Originally Posted by LucidJungle

If you are only limited by your imagination in a dream. Is it then possible to create a new color?

If so that would be a brainexpolotion.

What do you all think?




BTW first post ever

In a dream, May be possible because imagination world can't end... you can imagination any thinking whether it is bad or good thinking or here it's just about color so you can imagination only in your dream....

I was actually talking to an art professor the other day and he said that we didn't have a name for a color until we had a pigment. So the Egyptians had a concept of blue because they discovered a pigment to make it with but other cultures didn't have a name for the sky. So when you look at it that way the concept of what makes a color is formed is very vague. I mean to get one thing straight its more than possible that there are other types of spectrum of light we don't see its a fact. There's infrared and ultraviolet for example so that's established. This issue really is a matter of how visual processing works.

^^ I think that art professor might need to take an etymology class, Eesial...To assume that we could not know that the sky was blue until some artist produced a pigment for it is absurd on a lot of levels. If the Egyptians didn't know the sky was blue, how did they come to make a pigment for it? Why bother?

Colors were probably some of the earliest descriptors we developed as we learned to communicate, and I imagine that even the most primitive of cavemen cold note that the sky was blue (or threateningly gray), and could communicate that condition to his friends, just as he could know that a big patch of brown in the distance might be a bear. Color is an integral part of our existence -- including communication -- and to say that a color does not exist until an artist mixes it on his pallet simply makes no sense. I think your art professor is making an attempt to elevate his profession; you might take what he said with a grain of salt!

Also, keep in mind that infrared and ultraviolet exist outside the visible spectrum; if a "new" color cannot be seen by the naked eye, could it really be called a color?

Originally Posted by Sageous

^^ I think that art professor might need to take an etymology class, Eesial...To assume that we could not know that the sky was blue until some artist produced a pigment for it is absurd on a lot of levels. If the Egyptians didn't know the sky was blue, how did they come to make a pigment for it? Why bother?

Colors were probably some of the earliest descriptors we developed as we learned to communicate, and I imagine that even the most primitive of cavemen cold note that the sky was blue (or threateningly gray), and could communicate that condition to his friends, just as he could know that a big patch of brown in the distance might be a bear. Color is an integral part of our existence -- including communication -- and to say that a color does not exist until an artist mixes it on his pallet simply makes no sense. I think your art professor is making an attempt to elevate his profession; you might take what he said with a grain of salt!

Also, keep in mind that infrared and ultraviolet exist outside the visible spectrum; if a "new" color cannot be seen by the naked eye, could it really be called a color?

You are right, using the word 'concept' probably wasn't a good idea. The concept had to exist because as you said it's an integral part to communication.

The reality of the situation is that we have no real idea on how ancient civilizations distinguished and named colors. Any information you find on how greek's perceived light you will see that there are only three main texts being referenced, the main one's being written by homer. The theories are from understandable to completely wacky, some think that the greek's eyes were literally unable to comprehend certain colors, which contradicts our knowledge that they called the sky copper, the sea (greek seas being quite bright blue in places) a dark purple, yet they had a name for the color of lapis lazuli. Another theory states that they based their etymology of a colour system devised by empedocles which revolved around metallic hues, but this again can be questioned as to why they would round to the closest colour they could think of (naming that is).

That's the problem when you try to make an assumption based on a scripture that's over 2 millennia old. You can't decipher something as intricate as how they perceived colors by reading on their society, much less so when it doesn't even explicitly mention what color system they might have used.

As far as I'm concerned the notion that the Egyptians would only identify a color once they had a pigment for it, is just another weak hypothesis among the other dozen of them.