Visualization through concepts

Hey guys, there's been a stampede of people being interested in the underlying theory of visualization so I thought I'd throw my theory in. I'm gonna try to keep this as short as possible considering all that I have to explain in order to make this make sense =P

Conceptual thought

I love one liners so the one line way of explaining conceptual thought is essentially saying "It is".

Lets delve into this deeper.. In your mind you don't "see" anything. You don't "hear" it or "feel" it it's all an illusion. Is it that much more different then when you are awake however? The answer is that it is not really. You make many, many assumptions on a regular basis, it's just a more efficient way to live. Lets say you see a pencil shaped object on the desk, you "know" that it is a pencil and thus you "know"(read as: assume) many things about it. You will "know" that if you start dragging it over paper it will write, if you use that pink bob on the other end then it will erase.... what you have is the concept of pencil. You know what it looks like, what it sounds like, what it feels like, what it can do and so on and so forth. These all make up the concept.

So, when you're seeing something in real life, you're not so much keeping track of the little blotches of color in order to pick up information, you're really paying attention to the concepts which you have inferred from analyzing the visual data.

How does this relate to dreaming? Well, the theory goes that in a dream you aren't really trying to "look" or "see" but rather you keep track of the concepts that make up the world around you. Of course, you know what these would look like so you have the visual aspect... You know what noises they make so you have the sound aspect... You know how they feel so you have the tactile aspect. You also know what each object does and how it should act thus that controls quite a bit of the dream logic.

Lets go back to out one-liner now. To visualize something, all you have to do is place the object (in the form of a concept) in front of yourself. Essentially say "It is". Unfortunately, this is where all my steam runs out and this is why I never made this into a formal tut earlier. =/ I have no idea how to teach you exactly "how" to create a concept. I just do it automatically. My VILD tech, (in my sig) tries to do this by asking you to imagine all the related senses in order to incubate the concept (recognizing the concept as you would in real life) and Kromoh's VILD tries to bring to life concepts that are fresh in your mind. Many of you have seen I h8's 100% thread. This one works by using a familiar scene then hoping the dreamer will automatically or accidentally imagine it conceptually. To his credit, if you ARE able to do it automatically 100% isn't TOO much of a stretch (although I still disagree with the blatant advertisement of it =P)

Lastly, I'd like to mention that if you get down to the biological level, conceptual thought isn't a very accurate representation. It is, however, a very good high level representation of thought and is exceptional for explanation and discussion purposes.

Trying to anticipate the normal questions:

"Where" do you see/place the object?

Same place you do in normal dreams, luv. Call it what you will, mind's eye, visual space... whatever it doesn't matter. The important part is to "feel out" where it is through experience.

When do you do this?

Go look at other tuts such as DEILD/WBTB that target a specific time. I'll leave that up to you. Find a time that's optimal for you to LD.

What should I try to visualize?

Familiar stuff works well. A good practice is to look at something in real life, absorb the concept then close your eyes and try to bring it up.

So, theres the theory all laid out... comments?

"In your mind you don't "see" anything. You don't "hear" it or "feel" it it's all an illusion. Is it that much more different then when you are awake however? The answer is that it is not really."

Not to get off topic but I think IT IS different when you are awake. Yes we make assumptions about things, but the fact is those things really can be seen by us, they can produce sounds that we pick up, and by them existing we can feel them. Yeah we make assumptions but just because the nature and properties of them is constant and well known to us. With dreams nothing is constant, and every "object" is formed by our minds and thus its properties can be anything we decide.

I really dont like using the word "concept" for this matter. But you dont need to try and teach others about how to create them, just like you, we all already do that automatically. We might not be able to accurately describe just where this "mind space" is or how it really works and thankfully we dont have to :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ZmillA

Not to get off topic but I think IT IS different when you are awake. Yes we make assumptions about things, but the fact is those things really can be seen by us, they can produce sounds that we pick up, and by them existing we can feel them. Yeah we make assumptions but just because the nature and properties of them is constant and well known to us. With dreams nothing is constant, and every "object" is formed by our minds and thus its properties can be anything we decide.

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The key word here is "expectation". A concept is a definition of what we expect. The only difference between the waking state and sleeping is that you do have those inputs. Thus, you have a reality composed of both raw input and expectations. Of course, the raw input is analyzed quite a bit before you perceive it by using your expectations. Take text for example. Wrods tht aer scmarlbed can stlil be read. Without being analyzed using expectations, the raw input is just blotches of color.

You can think of it as:

Blotches of color ----> what you think you see (concepts used to help create this)

But in a dream its more like:

Concepts ------> what you think you see

So, you get to the same end result through a different means. Thats why I say they aren't really that different =O

You are right that nothing is constant which is what makes visualization so great =) Using the pencil, you could give it the property that it is a bomb in disguise and then BOOM =P

Anyhow, don't be afraid to critique. I am more then happy to try and explain things, change things or discuss. Tis the point of this thread =)

EDIT: on the above note, I'd like to point out that conceptual thought is essentially just a modular way of talking about mental schemata. Alot of people are more familiar with that so I'd just like to point it out =)

EDIT EDIT: Oh, and I don't want to get into an argument about how much these concepts play a role in real life. They may do less then I say, they may do more but that's unimportant to the underlying theory =P They still reign supreme in the dream world.