Thread: Advanced Vision Control Tutorial

They are really small for me also, but some are bigger. Though it actually seems that I can't control them very well if I focus on one individually, I tried to focus on a red one and then focused on thinking of the color blue, this made the background turn blue, while the "pixel" was still red. It seems like clusters are easier to change, maybe they're made of different types of "pixels" some that are easier to change and some more difficult.

These figures you made are really interesting. One thing I've found is that currently I can hold an afterimage of a colored image in my mind much shorter than that of a black image, so they might be good both for practicing holding a colored image longer and switching between colors and shapes.

It seems like Nikola Tesla had this kind of ability, and his controlled hallucinations made him able to actually see and test new inventions in the virtual reality of his mind, before physically building them. Starting from the bottom of page 3 of his autobiography, he describes some quite interesting things http://теслинавизијаинтернета.срб/wp...Inventions.pdf

Tesla was not able to project any forms onto what he saw behind his closed eyes until he reached a phase that followed after seeing uniform grey, and in this phase there is "billowy sea of clouds, seemingly trying to mould themselves in living shapes".

Another possibility to get this kind of abilities is by using transcranial magnetic stimulation to switch from external sensory input to internal. Afaik there is not any research into exactly this at the moment, but I think it's not too far from what is being done, so someone should figure it out eventually. When that is done a wearable device could be built so you could just sit down, press a button and off you go, the basic technology required exists already, the main thing that's missing I guess is exactly where to point the magnetic coils.

What he wrote is exactly what I thought (a part of, actually).
So I'll write parts of my theory about this thing; if we came to this.

About the magnetic stimulation - it could be the first trigger; but I think that if some, even slight step in controlling the visual cortex is made - we will be able to proceed to higher and higher control of it, by ourselves.

My hypotheses are about what the phenomena is; and what can be done with it.

I read recently a thread similar to this one. I didn't find much useful information in it; so you don't have to read it. But there was one very insightful comment.
How detailed is your mental imagery / mental visualization? - mind visualization imagery | Ask MetaFilter
Read the comment that starts with "I can pretty much visualize anything I want, whether it's something" (use Ctrl+F to find).
(In case someone will read this in the future, and the other thread will not exist) What he says basically is that when we imagine something - it's information about something, and about how we perceive it. So we perceive an imagined image as an image; but really it's not an image at all, because we don't really see it ~ it doesn't form in the visual cortex.

So here's what I have came-up with so far - there's no such thing as knowledge, as in information, stored like on a computer; there's only imagination. There are already the neurons and connections; and they are being invoked by new stimulation.
There are two ways to experience that imagination:
Through the abstract imagination.
And through what we call - experience; i.e., vision, hearing, etc.
Let's come back to vision. When we see something, we visualize it in the visual cortex.
The signals from the eye are triggering what is being seen.
In a lucid dream, we see things exactly in the same manner. It's just isn't being initiated by signals from the eye; but rather from our imagination.

There are two ways that the brain imagines: abstractly and precisely.
The regular imagination is abstract and fuzzy. Everything about it is fuzzy; what you imagine, where it is, it's shape, it's color, it's fleeting easily, etc.
In a lucid dream, what we see is precise; the visual cortex has to make a precise image, because that's how it works. What you imagine, stays there, fixed.
And when you have control in a lucid dream - you can create, either directly or to "summon" things into being. And the brain seems to have all the calculation abilities to make what ever you want, happen.
I think that's the key to savant-like abilities; and even greater ones.
There are some things that our brain have developed to do amazingly; like face recognition; and there are things that our brain haven't developed to do; like mathematical thinking. So we do it in a very poor manner; with an unsuitable area of the brain.
If we'll start to implement other areas of the brain, that will do a much better job in what we need - we'll be able to do what so far was considered to be impossible for a human being to do.
We, compared with the savants, are like a person with "face blindness" (when a person can't recognize faces). Now that I know it's possible - I kinda feel handicapped.
These savant-like abilities, a lot of time have to do with Synesthesia; probably because of this. What Tesla described, was a form of Synesthesia. Those images arose, when he saw something, or felt something.

This of course is not a whole or accurate representation of the brain; just the relevant aspects for our issue.

What we need to do is to find a first step to controlling the visual cortex (or other precise information parts of the brain), so we could continue forward; probably easily.
I think that a lot of different things can be the first step; and it can be achieved by a lot of different ways. For instance, Mylynes started to control the "pixels"; Tesla had invasive images; some people here are great at lucid dreaming, and so on.

Allan Snyder at Centre for the Mind is working on making savant-like abilities by TMS. For example he's shown that you can stimulate an area of the brain and get increased visual memory, which increases the ability to draw something, and that magnetic stimulation of other areas can lead to great skills in integer arithmetics. He has some quite interesting publications.

It seems like what we normally perceive is constrained by sensory input, in a dream or hallucination it not contrained and thus seeems completely life-like.

Different mental conditions can lead to different skills that normal people do not have. One of these groups is autists, which is what Allan Snyder is studying. Great skills in visualization or imagining things in a perceptual way seems to be common with people who have obsessive compulsive disorder or schizophrenia, these also often occur together. From Nikola Teslas autobiography, it seems he had obsessive compulsive disorder, but not schizophrenia. I think synesthesia is related to this, at least some forms. From what I've read, it looks like a major part of the explanation for these things is how information is routed through the thalamus. In schizophrenia I think that some chemical imbalance causes information to be routed more freely through the thalamus, but because it not specific, it doesn't only enable routing data from memory to the perceptory systems, to be able to visualize things clearly, but it also send stuff randomly around the brain. In Nikola Teslas case he didn't have completely unspecific disinhibition, causing data to flow around everywhere, but a more specific disinhibition of only certain areas. The chemical imbalance, compared to an average person, made data flow from memory/imagination to the perceptory system easily, so he could imagine anything clearly, but also made data flow between other parts of the thinking brain, causing obsessive compulsive disorder, but not something more serious like schizophrenia.

One thing I've been wondering about is whether someone with less natural visualization skills and more average brain chemistry, might perhaps need to be in a more relaxed state to be able to visualize more cleary. Over the past few days I have studied the patterns and things I see behind my closed eyes at different times of the day and noticed that the patterns are moving in a distinctly different way when I'm on the edge of sleep, or at any time if I wake up in the middle of the night and focus on what I see. After I've had a certain amount of sleep, this goes away, and I go back to more slowly moving patters. These fast moving patterns are when hypnagogic imagery can happen. I think that this state is what Tesla describes that precedes being able to visualize greatly. From Sythix's visualization tutorial (http://www.dreamviews.com/f12/induci...art-2-a-29491/)

What you'll notice is that you cannot properly focus your attention on this image for more than a fraction of a second, as the image will disappear to be replaced by something with a similar pattern, or totally disappear - but that time you will start to notice that darkness becomes three-dimensional instead of flat. As darkness is now 3-dimensional you'll see it start to "boil". By "boiling" I mean that you start to observe sub-hallucinations, constantly appearing and disappearing.

I can definitely relate to this, but it only happens just before I fall asleep, or if I wake up in the middle of the night. If I wake up after sleeping a few hours and then start focusing on what I see behind my closed eyes, this would be a good description. Now I'm thinking that perhaps this state could be a required prequisite for good visualization, that you perhaps may have to relax into a hypnagogic state. In Sythix's tutorial there is a section on inducing hypnagogia without being sleepy (Hypnagogic Imagery/Hallucination Techniques & Tips). Also his first tutorial seems to deal a bit with this (http://www.dreamviews.com/f12/induci...art-1-a-24607/)

It could be that Mylynes is talking about something else though, as I am able to change the color of patterns in a non-hypagogic state it could very well be that it's a different thing, and that there is several different ways to do these things. My plan now is to experiment more with Mylynes's technique in a hypnagogic state and see how that goes.

Sythix seems to have a lot of technics... I suspect that it's because... HE'S REALLY GOOD AT VISUALIZING TO BEGIN WITH!! But tell me if they work for you; if you practice them that is.

These waves in the noise, started to occur more often for me. It's always after I fall into a dream and wake up immediately. I can't do anything with it though.
So it may be connected to certain states.

Yeah, I forgot to mention that some time ago, I came to a conclusion that the regular imagination is like the one in a LD; but something is prohibiting it. But I'm not sure now, because of the fuzziness factor. It doesn't happen in a LD; everything is clear and precise.
So I don't know if it's possible to just enhance the regular imagination, until it's totally vivid.

I don't thing that those are the same things. I think that HH are sort of like LDs; in that they come more or less naturally, when you fall asleep.
MyLynes's technique I think is about starting a connection between the imagination that we can control ~ our will, and the visual cortex.
But the HH seems to be the least controllable thing; from all I read here about it. But with MyLynes's technique... may be a good experiment.

Another interesting thing that I forgot a few times to mention here is that once I had a lucid; and after it ended, I slipped into another (observation -- when my body doesn't exist), of a pattern of lines and some other things attached to the lines; like something you can see on a sofa. And it was just a static picture. It ended after a few seconds; and I saw the noise, naturally because my eyes were closed. And there was an afterimage of the pattern. :-)
Have no idea what you can do with this information; but... let it be.

Sythix's tutorials seems to be based mainly on various techniques on this forum and other forums, and the article Conscious Dreaming and Controlled Hallucinations by Claude de Contrecoeur. He has added some more info though, so it looks like he's quite good at these techniques and I guess that could be partly because of being good to begin with.

The daytime visualization technique of looking at something at then keeping the image in mind after closing the eyes seems to work, at least if it very light. I close my eyes I can see things clearly, things which was illuminated by strong sunlight, I can see as clear as with my eyes open, but just for a split second, however the time I can hold it has increased, now for maybe a second or so. According to Sythix's tutorial, this should increase and when you can hold quite long, you should try move the images you see and eventually you should be able to visualize things as clear as if you're seeing them. This visual memory might be what is called iconic memory, or actually the specific component called visual persitence and is supposed to basically just keep an image of what you see for less than one second. It persists in V1 of visual cortex, and I think maybe Sythix's tutorial teach you how to keep it there for a longer time. Visual persistence normally lasts for 150 milliseconds, but with some practice I've been able to keep it for as long as a second.

I think that normal imagination can get really good, but that you can imagine things conceptually and perceptually. If I look at something and close my eyes, I can first see a visual imagine, like the one I saw with my eyes open, this is like perceptual imagination, this is followed relatively quickly by a negative after image. This is then what I see perceptually, but I can still imagine what it looks like, initially my conceptual imagination is really vivid, and I can imagine all kinds of small details, but this fades quite quickly. Anyways I think that imagining things perceptually has many possibilities that conceptual imagination just can't do, because it won't get detailed enough, even if you get really good.

The thing I'm wondering now if it's perhaps is it easier to do that connection of imagination to the visual system in the hypnagogic state. The things that makes it seem easier is that it seems this connection is partially there in this state, but what makes is a bit harder is I'm really sleepy in this state and have problems concentrating well, so let's see.

I tried moving "pixels" around in the hypnagogic state and it didn't seem like it was easier than otherwise. I'm able to have some control of the hypnagogic images, but it seems to be more like what I think about appears as images and thinking about different stuff changes them, while the background and noisy "pixels" stay the same. I tried focusing on the color dark red as I've done some times before and what happened was that the background changes to dark red, while the hypnagogic images stayed the same. I also tried in a lucid dream with similar results. I guess this technique doesn't really help with controlling hypnagogia or lucid dreams until you're already good at just doing it in the dark while awake.

I never managed to move any pixels really. The day I saw the square; I just tried moving the pixels, and just forming shapes; probably mostly - a square. And eventually because of that light spot happened - I managed to influence it directly. Some other white spots appeared; but I wasn't able to influence them.

It's pretty frustrating now that I know much more about how the brain works.
I know that all I see in a waking state - my brain creates by itself. And I know that if I see toothpicks that fell on the floor (like in "Rain Man") - my brain have created the image; so the information about the number of them, is obviously already there; but I can't reach all that.

About the states:
in the waking state, when you see light - your visual cortex creates the image according to the information from the eye.
Mylynes's way is probably relying on the fact that you're in the dark. So it's the same waking state; but you get minimum signal from the eye. Maybe it can also allow you to get into some kind of an hypnotic state; which may be what we are missing.
In a dream or HH - your subconscious naturally gains control over the visual cortex; and then you can remain your consciousness; and gain control, mostly over the subconscious, while it remains in control over the visual cortex. Maybe in a LD, you eventually can start having control more directly; but I never heard that the people who are good at LD, continue to have control, after they wake-up.

So I think these are different states; and different achievements can be made in them.

I haven't been able to move any single point of light by itself either. If I focus for a long time I can focus my attention on a single point of light, such that the others kinda fade a way a bit and it becomes stable, but I still can't move it. What I have been able to do is to move large clouds of light, to the left, right, up or down. Sometimes it has happened that clouds of different colors have filled different parts of my visual field and the whole thing started rotating, then I've been able to change switch the rotation direction between clockwise and counterclockwise. These clouds I can also change color of, mostly between blue and dark red. It seems really difficult to create any shapes though, it seems like by focusing on kinda pushing them in a particular direction, I can give these a nudge somehow, causing the overall movement to go in a particular direction, it's like changing the direction of the wind blowing on a cloudy sky. It seems I get better the more I do this, albeit really slowly, so maybe eventually I can create stable shapes.

But yeah, could be that what's needed for going further is something like an hypnotic state, maybe it's all about being able to sit in the dark without any internal chatter for a long enough time to get to right state and this is what you managed to do when you saw the square. If you do it enough, then you can get to the right state quicker and quicker.

Sensory deprivation can definitely cause hallucinations. Many, but not all, people who get blind develop something called Charles Bonnet Syndrome, basically hallucinations caused by sensory deprivation as part or all of the visual field is no longer constrained by sensory input, internally generated vision can take it's place in the conscious experience. These hallucinations could likely be completely controlled also, just it requires quite a bit of training to do so, and most never realize it's possible or don't figure out how.

Scientific studies of people with Charles Bonnet Syndrome show that different types of hallucinations occur in different types of the brain. Data from the retina flows through the visual cortex through different regions, the first ones dealing with more simple processing of the image to detect lines and edges etc., as data flows through the regions the 3d images we experience consciously gets built up from simpler parts. Hallucinations caused by activity in lower areas are geometric, while hallucinations caused by activity in the higher areas can be of objects and scenes [1][2]. This TED talk about Charles Bonnet Syndrome is quite interesting and explains more about this. In Charles Bonnet Syndrome, the patients say that the hallucinations are not related to what they think, but they do in any case sometimes blend into the environment, so it could be a mix or random brain activity causing random hallucinations, and subconscious brain activity that associates what is currently seen with something, causing an hallucination of whatever it's associated with.

Maybe in dreams your thought and expectations directly change the activity in the higher visual areas, thinking about or expecting particular object or things to appear triggers corresponding higher visual areas (or maybe simultaneous activity in some visual area and a brain area containing the thing which is thought about), generating an image of these things. On the other hand, maybe Mylnes's technique start by manipulating activity in lower visual areas, constructing the images from the bottom up.

In one LD that I had a great control - the control still was achieved by "summoning" what I wanted; and either I got something similar to the exact thing I wanted, or it came in a different manner then I expected.
So in the dream, I had my usual abstract imagination; I just could somehow influence reality (of the dream). So you probably influence the subconscious; which still controls the reality in the dream.
In this method I think it's direct control of what you see, through the will.

Interesting material; checking it out.

I have finally found an article on Subjective Control of Visual After Images, and not just forum posts. It's written more than a century ago, but seems to contain a lot of interesting information.

Back to sensory deprivation, it also seems that most people will experience hallucinations after being blindfolded for something like 24 hours of being blindfolded.

The article Visual Hallucinations During Prolonged Blindfolding in Sighted Subjects has some interesting reports of these hallucinations. Some had simple geometric hallucinations, while others more complex dream-like ones and for some they progressed from simple to complex throughout a period of several days in which they were blindfolded.

Subject 4, a 23-year-old man, reported seeing images as well as flashes of light within a few hours of being blindfolded.
He saw outlines of puzzle pieces that, while moving, “warped into other amorphous shapes” and transformed in color from white to orange to red. He saw these perceptions “when I think about my sense of sight.” On day four, he reported seeing a triangle with bold dots at each vertex of the triangle and “a large X with a light shining underneath it.” Immediately before the report, the subject was engaged in a tactile stimulation task in which he was asked to discriminate five raised dots arranged in the form of an “X” on a domino piece.

The complex hallucinations seem in many cases to pop up because of an association to another perception. For example the above quoted person saw an X after feeling an X with his fingers.

According to that article tactile stimulation would cause the hallucinations to disappear, and previous fMRI studies have shown the visual cortex to become more easily stimulated after just a few minutes of complete visual deprivation.

None of the people in this study figured out how to control the hallucinations, except that the complex ones tended to correspond to their expectations or associations to things they felt or heard.

I think this supports that if you want the highest possible control of hallucinations, you should learn to control simple hallucinations, the eigenlicht, and the way to do this is to minimize all sensory input as much as possible, sit or lie completely and relax into a state of trance where some of the patterns, points and clouds of light can be controlled. In the after image article they change colors of after images, and it sounds like the way they did it was by gradually "filling" in the wanted color on the after image, afterwards the color would switch between the natural color of the afterimage and the "filled in" color. I suspect the way they filled in the color is pretty much the same as Mylynes' technique

In the article "Subjective Control of Visual After Images", does he explain the actual method of controlling the afterimages? I got to page 31 and gave-up.

Not very directly, but based on their description of how it happened I guessed it might be the same way as I'm able to change to color of clouds of light that I sometimes see behind my closed eyes so I tried this and it worked.

Basically what I do is to look at the afterimage and at the same time focus on a color, try to imagine that color, what it looks and how the afterimage would look if it had that color. After a little while the color of the afterimage changes. It seems though that the color sorta appears independently of the afterimage, and if I don't focus enough on the afterimage I get a colored blob that just overwrites the afterimage.

Here's another interesting thread:
Seeing with eyes closed - Topic

I found another description by George Ladd of his method:

Very frequently I have only to choose some simple schema such as would serve as a frame-work for a corresponding object, fixate it in idea with closed eyes and will steadily to have it appear, and in due time it will more or less completely construct itself in the retinal field.

This does seem to fit how I'm able to make colors appear. I think of a color with my eyes closed and try to imagine it in front of me and it appears after a while. I still have difficulties with shapes, though now in the same way I can make a color on an afterimage. I still have problems to create new shapes and objects from this, but I think it's just about practice.

Alright, Thanks.

Andreas Mavromatis says in the book Hypnagogia that hallucinatory activity and hypnagogia both result of the following general conditions:

1) Psychophysical relaxation
2) Shift to 'passive volition' (marked by quantitative reduction of thought processes)
3) Shift to parasympathetic predominance (accompanied by receptive mode shift, that is, paying attention, but not scrutinizing stimuli)
4) Reduction of external perceptions and perception of the physical body
5) Psychological withdrawal (marked by inwardly turned diffuse absorbed attention and qualitative thought changes)
6) Decreased arousal (marked by shift to high amplitude low frequency EEG rhythms, mostly theta)
7) Being close to sleep. This is, however, not strictly necessary. A relaxed state of mostly theta rhythms is reached when one is falling asleep, but can be reached at any time by physical and mental relaxation.

When I first read this thread, I thought it was either a bunch of BS, or a skill unique to a select few. I then battled Mylynes in a shared dream, and let me tell you, he's a fuckin' freak. He turned into a large cell around me in outer space covered in giant eyes.

Anyway, I have practiced this technique, and was able to change a computer screen from a light green tint to a pink tint and back. I also altered the shape and color of the afterimage of the sun reflecting off my cannabis while doing solar hits at noontime on a volcano. I now believe it is possible to do exactly as he said he does and have full-blown self induced hallucinations.

Basically meditation as we know it.
Alan Watts - Meditation - YouTube
(mostly the first part)

WakingNomad - What Mylynes describes is simply doing what you do in a lucid dream; just when you are awake.

No, I don't do that in lucid dreams.

WakingNomad:

When you change the computer tint to pink, do you focus on how the screen would look if it had the color tint and just look at it and concentrate on this until it starts changing?

When changing an afterimage do you think about the concept of the shape, for example did you just focus on the concept of the shape, e.g. think about the concept of a square or did you imagine the shape being a square and think about how it would look if it was a square?

I've been able to change color of some afterimages by just focusing on thinking really concentrated about the color I want to change to, but I haven't been able to change the shape yet.

WakingNomad - in a lucid dream, you don't see, hear, feel the touch, smell, taste - things that are not real?

Mr. Accident, what Mylynes is describing is a technique for self induced hallucinations. I do not do this technique in dreams.

When I changed the colors and shapes, I didn't concentrate too hard, I just thought of only the color or shape I wanted.

To answer your second question, Mr. Accident, I differentiate between waking hallucinations and dreams. As far as reality is concerned, that's a philosophical question.

Would mylynes technique for sense control work for 'curing' tinnitus? (high school pitched permanent noise, google it)

It can make the symptom go away; not the actual cause.