Thread: Fourth Primary Colour?

Originally Posted by Howetzer

This has been a fascinating subject to me.
I have an ongoing Research study --> The Color quiz

I have had what seemed to be absolutely unbelievable colors in many of my dreams. I personally do not feel I am truly seeing any colors that are visible outside the spectrum as we know it. I think we perceive it as we would perceive anything else we never new to exist, say an alien. It is manifested and constructed out of our imagination.
Maybe I am wrong. But if we new other colors existed aside from what we see, then maybe I could go out on a limb and say we are possibly tapping into these colors via some realm, plane, dimension etc.

We have to take into consideration that each primary leads to thousands of variations depending on secondary colors, hues, saturation, opaqueness, vividness...all kinds of variables that could lead us to believe we had seen another color.
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hey once i saw another color it looked almost as if it was a mix between blue and yellow, like when you mixed blue and yellow paint... i even thought of a name for it... BLELLOW!

i think i may have seen a new color before. im not sure though. it was extremely hard to describe but the closest color was pink. but it was nothing like it, it just reminded me of pink.

With lucid dreaming it seems most often what your focus is in the dream becomes greatly exemplified. Emotions (good and bad) DCs and of coarse, COLORS!

So next lucid experiences you have take notice of the color and try to exaggerate it.

Then take the The Color quiz

The visual receptors in our eyes are mostly covered by nerves, so our brains have to make sense of what our eyes don't see. We could easily be living in a world distorted from what we know it to be and not be able to see it.

I have also seen a new colour in dreams. It's a very, very intense blue. It's blue-violet and blue-green at the same time, but it doesn't make a blue-grey as it would with paint, and it's not perlescent. I have seen it in three dreams so far. In the only dream in which I have seen it that wasn't somewhat sexual, it was on a river where the sunlight hit it. It was beautiful.

Even if our eyes can't see them, it doesn't mean there aren't other colours. Just because you haven't seen something doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Are you still able to imagine it right now?

If so I'm sure you can see it anytime in your LD.

Originally Posted by xcrissxcrossx

i think i may have seen a new color before. im not sure though. it was extremely hard to describe but the closest color was pink. but it was nothing like it, it just reminded me of pink.
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Originally Posted by xcrissxcrossx

I have also seen a new colour in dreams. It's a very, very intense blue. It's blue-violet and blue-green at the same time, but it doesn't make a blue-grey as it would with paint, and it's not perlescent. I have seen it in three dreams so far. In the only dream in which I have seen it that wasn't somewhat sexual, it was on a river where the sunlight hit it. It was beautiful.[/b]

Originally Posted by GiraffeToothbrush

The visual receptors in our eyes are mostly covered by nerves, so our brains have to make sense of what our eyes don't see. We could easily be living in a world distorted from what we know it to be and not be able to see it.

I have also seen a new colour in dreams. It's a very, very intense blue. It's blue-violet and blue-green at the same time, but it doesn't make a blue-grey as it would with paint, and it's not perlescent. I have seen it in three dreams so far. In the only dream in which I have seen it that wasn't somewhat sexual, it was on a river where the sunlight hit it. It was beautiful.
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We do know what there is to see, no? Red, orange, green, blue, indigo & violet. The spectrum of colors and their subsidiaries that the cones and rods in our eyes allow us.

Originally Posted by GiraffeToothbrush

This has been a fascinating subject to me.
I have an ongoing Research study --> The Color quiz

I have had what seemed to be absolutely unbelievable colors in many of my dreams. I personally do not feel I am truly seeing any colors that are visible outside the spectrum as we know it. I think we perceive it as we would perceive anything else we never new to exist, say an alien. It is manifested and constructed out of our imagination.
Maybe I am wrong. But if we new other colors existed aside from what we see, then maybe I could go out on a limb and say we are possibly tapping into these colors via some realm, plane, dimension etc.

We have to take into consideration that each primary leads to thousands of variations depending on secondary colors, hues, saturation, opaqueness, vividness...all kinds of variables that could lead us to believe we had seen another color.
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This is some more scientic backgrounfd to uphold what we can in fact see.
http://eosweb.larc.nasa.gov/EDDOCS/Wavelen...for_Colors.html

I see what you mean, but in your dreams light doesn't those rules. It doesn't reflect to produce light. In fact your mind can make any color, even if it doesn't exist in real life. So it very could be possible.

Originally Posted by Pyrox

I see what you mean, but in your dreams light doesn't those rules. It doesn't reflect to produce light. In fact your mind can make any color, even if it doesn't exist in real life. So it very could be possible.
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I think what you have to realise is that the brain can only use the information it has to create dreams.. its impossible to think beyond the information that the brain contains.. it just processes and manipulates the data you've already gathered. For instance a blind person (completely blind from birth) could never imagine the colour green as it is to you. As much as you hear it all the time, you cant think outside the box in this case. My opinion is that theres 2 possibilities.. if your born with a condition that lets you see more colours then you could easily dream it, if you've never seen a new colour and you dream it... then... personally id find myself being alot more spiritual in future.

RooJ, when you read a book about a gigantic fantasy landscape, you create a picture in your mind of it. That's what the brain's got. Creativity. We can imagine how stuff will look, from only raw data

what a very interesting subject. of course, this is way above my level; but what I am wondering is, even if one of us discover this new primary colour in the dreamworld - will it even be possible to describe?

It would be impossible to describe in the words we have, because obviously there would be no word to describe something that doesn't exist. You could describe the qualities of the color and how it makes you feel, like how the color red makes you think of warmth or in certain shades, loud sounds. You could describe its saturation and brightness, but there would be no words to describe its particular chroma. It's definitely possible to see "new" colors I would say, just ask any experienced acid tripper, it may be an abstract concept to you, but to them it's very real, and I don't see any way they could be mistaken about seeing a new primary color.

Originally Posted by RooJ

I think what you have to realise is that the brain can only use the information it has to create dreams.. its impossible to think beyond the information that the brain contains.. it just processes and manipulates the data you've already gathered. For instance a blind person (completely blind from birth) could never imagine the colour green as it is to you. As much as you hear it all the time, you cant think outside the box in this case. My opinion is that theres 2 possibilities.. if your born with a condition that lets you see more colours then you could easily dream it, if you've never seen a new colour and you dream it... then... personally id find myself being alot more spiritual in future.
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Exactly RooJ!

RooJ, when you read a book about a gigantic fantasy landscape, you create a picture in your mind of it. That's what the brain's got. Creativity. We can imagine how stuff will look, from only raw data[/b]

Yes. But from the data that is available.
Let's us say we want to create a new color. You imagine it, name it and perceive it to be a "new" color. But it does not exist. Similarly. gravity can not exist in your dreams. But those are fundamental laws of physics.
With color there are parameters regardless of imagination as RooJ stated.

I think it would be cool to have bee-vision in a dream since they can see ultraviolet light.

They can't see red though. "What? RED?! Nooo, that is a made up color, it cannot possibly exist because we can't see it damnit!"

Or, something which might be cool to try in a LD is being able to see radiation. Like, EM fields and stuff, from Cell phones, wires, radio, etc. Wonder what my brain thinks that looks like.. hmmm...
*wanders off muttering*

Okay, great to see all these replies. It really throws light on the whole thing I have a lot to say to everyone who replied, so I'll say it all in two megaposts (I'd make one, but the forum makes the quoting go all skiwiff)

Originally posted by Seeker+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Seeker)</div>

I can absolutely and without doubt say that theory is false. My dreams are full of extremely vivid color.
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That&#39;s cool to hear, and great you remember that too.

<!--QuoteBegin-Marvo
Hydrogene plasma (most useally found in the sun) is a special color. Our eye can&#39;t "understand" it and therefore, it just sends a white color.

Yes, in fact the visible spectrum of light we see only covers a miniscule potion of the entire electromagnet (light) spectrum. There&#39;s tons of room, but even if we could sense some of that other &#39;light space&#39;, that doesn&#39;t mean it wouldn&#39;t necessarily be mapped to our existing cones - red, green and blue.

Originally posted by SKA
I also had dreams of Mystical Islands in an Ocean by night, with a few lights lighting up points where small towns were built. And I remember crazy tunnels that went underwater linking Island to Island....All of that was very colorfull but defenitely had some colors I can hardly define as colors I know in Waking Life.

That sounds really cool, I wish I had your dreams. It also sounds like something out of Pop&#39;n Twinbee, though these islands were underwater too

Originally posted by Marvo+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Marvo)</div>

OK, I&#39;ve gotten the email off to my friend inviting him to comment. Maybe soon[/b]

Okay great, look forward to him posting. But if he doesn&#39;t bother, don&#39;t forget to flame-email him my questions

Originally posted by Jalexxi+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Jalexxi)</div>

I&#39;ve had HI that has tried to be a color that doesn&#39;t exist. However, it just shows up as a spot which is distorted and filled with static. I know it&#39;s supposed to be a new color, but it seems my mind can&#39;t imagine that so it shows up as a distorted hole in the imagery of sorts.[/b]

Can you elaborate? What&#39;s a &#39;HI&#39;?

Originally posted by Ardent Lost
You&#39;d have to research dreaming from the perspective of a blind person and see whether or not they manage to create colours within their dreams, let alone shapes and shadows (provided they were born blind).

Okay this is where it gets interesting. I don&#39;t think I&#39;ve ever heard of someone born blind who claimed they could see in their dreams. However, I think I heard of some born-blind perosn who could see while &#39;astral travelling&#39;, and quite a few who were born blind claim they could see during an NDE (near death experience).There&#39;s a book called &#39;Mind sight&#39; which details the latter case.

Originally posted by Pyrox
If someone told you to imagine a smell that didn&#39;t exist on Earth could you do it? Doubt it.

I think I tasted an incredibly tasty chocolate-sweet thing in a dream once which I didn&#39;t recognize, but that&#39;s about it for me&#33;

<!--QuoteBegin-27@
I always thought the primary colors were red, blue, and yellow. You can mix blue and yellow to make green.

Nope blue and yellow don&#39;t make green. However cyan and yellow do. Unfortunately, many people call blue, violet, and call cyan, blue, thus creating the confusion. Interestingly, blue (or violet if you want to call it that, in any case it&#39;s at 4 oclock in the diagram below) and yellow technically make grey/white since they&#39;re at opposite sides of the colour wheel. So the primaries are still RGB.

<!--QuoteBegin-NeAvO

Red, blue and yellow are primary colours when using paints or drawings.
Red, blue and green are primary for making coloured light.

Almost right. It&#39;s Cyan, Magenta and Yellow that are the primary colours for &#39;subtractive&#39; mixing of inks etc. You can see them at 6, 2, and 10 oclock respectively in this piccy again:


Here&#39;s more proof should you need it.

Originally posted by Howetzer
I have an ongoing Research study --&#62; The Color quiz

Excellent stuff. I look forward to reading that.

Originally posted by mountain+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(mountain)</div>

hey once i saw another color it looked almost as if it was a mix between blue and yellow, like when you mixed blue and yellow paint... i even thought of a name for it... BLELLOW&#33;[/b]

Otherwise known as grey

<!--QuoteBegin-xcrissxcrossx
i think i may have seen a new color before. im not sure though. it was extremely hard to describe but the closest color was pink. but it was nothing like it, it just reminded me of pink.

Excellent. Which is it closest to out of this little lot? for example, the hue and tint with the yellow dot is the 5th row, and the 4th column.

Originally Posted by pyrhho

Or, something which might be cool to try in a LD is being able to see radiation. Like, EM fields and stuff, from Cell phones, wires, radio, etc. Wonder what my brain thinks that looks like.. hmmm...
*wanders off muttering*
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I think because modern technology nonionizing radiation from power lines, personal wireless devices, cell phone towers, radio waves AM & FM) micro waves, gamma waves and others is unavoidable. If we could see these, we would be blind to see anything else

Originally posted by GiraffeToothbrush
I have also seen a new colour in dreams. It&#39;s a very, very intense blue.

I wonder if it&#39;s as intense as the colour you see from this website. The strength of cyan you&#39;ll see is beyond anything you&#39;ll see in normal life, due to the filtering effect on the red cone. Look for the Eclipse of Mars illusion on this site. Follow the instructions, and I think you may be impressed&#33;

Originally posted by GiraffeToothbrush+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(GiraffeToothbrush)</div>

It&#39;s blue-violet and blue-green at the same time but it doesn&#39;t make a blue-grey as it would with paint, and it&#39;s not perlescent[/b]

Not perlescent. Interesting. I can take that to mean it wasn&#39;t a range of colours, just &#39;one&#39;. Just like silver, which is in essence, not one colour, but a range from black to white.

<!--QuoteBegin-theyearthreethousand
what a very interesting subject. of course, this is way above my level; but what I am wondering is, even if one of us discover this new primary colour in the dreamworld - will it even be possible to describe?

Basically no. We can compare it to the existing colours we have, and perhaps give an indication of how naturally bright it is (blue is naturally darker/deeper than green), but that&#39;s about it. The fact that we can&#39;t desribe colours is one of the main reasons I belive in qualia, and hence a soul.

Originally posted by John Updike

It&#39;s definitely possible to see "new" colors I would say, just ask any experienced acid tripper, it may be an abstract concept to you, but to them it&#39;s very real, and I don&#39;t see any way they could be mistaken about seeing a new primary color.

I very much doubt they would see anything outside the visible spectrum. I think, as with the Eclipse of Mars illusion shown earlier in my post, that it&#39;s just a stronger saturation they&#39;re really seeing. Still, you&#39;ve got me curious.

Originally posted by OpheliaBlue
I think it would be cool to have bee-vision in a dream since they can see ultraviolet light.

That may map to an ordinary violet colour for all we know though. We don&#39;t know what it&#39;s like to see as a bee does, but I believe we know for sure that some people perceive orange more red or yellow than other people.

Originally Posted by Twinbee

I wonder if it&#39;s as intense as the colour you see from this website. The strength of cyan you&#39;ll see is beyond anything you&#39;ll see in normal life, due to the filtering effect on the red cone. Look for the Eclipse of Mars illusion on this site. Follow the instructions, and I think you may be impressed&#33;[/b]

It wasn&#39;t that intense. I have seen that colour in the evening sky before (late March, near Toronto, just after sunset), and that wasn&#39;t anything like what I saw. (By the way, that site is great for proving that auric sight exists.)

Not perlescent. Interesting. I can take that to mean it wasn&#39;t a range of colours, just &#39;one&#39;. Just like silver, which is in essence, not one colour, but a range from black to white.
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Pretty much.

Howetzer posted this link before (without the target) and it may have explained it.

http://eosweb.larc.nasa.gov/EDDOCS/Wavelen....html#invisible

Read the first sentence under the second heading. While I can&#39;t possibly say that I have seen this "bluer than blue" energy, there is a possibility that I have witnessed it, and my brain caught it while my eyes didn&#39;t. I would assume that the people on these forums know that dreams are not a creation of the eyes.

I think I saw a new color in a dream once. It was a very vivid, different dream and I wonder if it was a dream at all. Quick version: I was greeted by an alien who took me on a "ship" to another planet. The people were having a celebration, something to do with a celestial event. When I looked up at the sky, it was amazing. There were so many swirling colors. It was nothing like the aurora borealis. I commented to my alien friend that we don&#39;t have this color where I live now and I miss it. He said to enjoy it while I can because I wouldn&#39;t be able to see it in my mind when I got back. I was semi lucid, so when I did wake up, I tried very hard to keep this color in my head. It was the strangest thing. As I was waking, the mysterious colored parts of the sky that I was concentrating on started to get staticky and fade away. There was an awful static crackling sound, different from other auditiory hallucinations I&#39;ve had while dreaming or falling asleep. When I opened my eyes, I got a piercing headache that lasted the whole day. It was truly a strange experience, and I was a child at the time so the memory is quite surreal. When I try to remember the sky, there are grey staticky holes where that color was. I also can&#39;t remember plants that I made a mental note of, and I can&#39;t remember what the aliens looked like, even though I remember seeing them in the dream. This experience made me wonder if our brains are capable of seeing the colors outside of the normal ROYGBIV. I think while dreaming, perhaps we are able to make new combinations. I&#39;ve seen a blue/green/violet color in my dreams too, but I can recall that one in waking memory. The color in this dream had no elements of any of the color we normally see.

That&#39;s amazing. Are you 100% sure that the colour you saw was outside the RGB range? See the colour wheel earlier in this thread to see what colour it may be closer to. Was it a deep colour like blue, or a &#39;bright&#39; colour like green? Did you see one hue of this colour or many? Was the strange colour at full saturation (intensity), or was it greyish/pale? How bright was the colour? Finally, what shape was the colour formed in. Any recollection of the details you may have, please say&#33; I&#39;d love to hear.

Originally Posted by AdAstra

I think I saw a new color in a dream once. It was a very vivid, different dream and I wonder if it was a dream at all. Quick version: I was greeted by an alien who took me on a "ship" to another planet. The people were having a celebration, something to do with a celestial event. When I looked up at the sky, it was amazing. There were so many swirling colors. It was nothing like the aurora borealis. I commented to my alien friend that we don&#39;t have this color where I live now and I miss it. He said to enjoy it while I can because I wouldn&#39;t be able to see it in my mind when I got back. I was semi lucid, so when I did wake up, I tried very hard to keep this color in my head. It was the strangest thing. As I was waking, the mysterious colored parts of the sky that I was concentrating on started to get staticky and fade away. There was an awful static crackling sound, different from other auditiory hallucinations I&#39;ve had while dreaming or falling asleep. When I opened my eyes, I got a piercing headache that lasted the whole day. It was truly a strange experience, and I was a child at the time so the memory is quite surreal. When I try to remember the sky, there are grey staticky holes where that color was. I also can&#39;t remember plants that I made a mental note of, and I can&#39;t remember what the aliens looked like, even though I remember seeing them in the dream. This experience made me wonder if our brains are capable of seeing the colors outside of the normal ROYGBIV. I think while dreaming, perhaps we are able to make new combinations. I&#39;ve seen a blue/green/violet color in my dreams too, but I can recall that one in waking memory. The color in this dream had no elements of any of the color we normally see.
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Very interesting topic - I&#39;ve thought about this before, and I think it&#39;s possible.

By the way, does anyone know what wave-lengths "Black lights" produce?

Can the blind dream in color?

First, I must postulate why and how colors are brought into dreaming:

Colors are typically utilised to amplify images within dreams. Every colors has a certain empathy associated with it and certain objects and scenarios in the world are always associated with a certain color (ie. The Red Cross). Thus, when we see certain depictions within our dreams, our memories will immediately impart the colors into the dream because we believe that they should be there. When the colors are empathetic, it is to portray a certain feeling (ie. Red = anger). Also, colors are implemented into dreams by our memories of the colors, they are not received or projected visually, they are simply memories. The best way to elucidate this is to ask this question, "When you remember things you did years ago, do you usually remember them in color?" The answer, typically, is no - unless the color played a significant role in the memory. This is the same case with dreams, as dreams are the manifestation of thoughts and memories (in the psychological aspect...).

If the individual had sight before the age of five, it is possible to have the rare experience of seeing a color or even a visual dream. Otherwise, if the blind individual was born blind - they will not even have visual dreams.

In the research conducted by the University of California, the participants in the study were 15 congenitally and adventitiously blind men and women, ages 24 to 73, with 11 of them between the ages of 44 and 60 (M=46.2; SD=12.5). The ten women and five men in the study were chosen from a larger pool of 16 women and nine men gathered by Hurovitz (1997). They were selected because they contributed at least six recent dream reports that were not labeled as "earlier," "recurrent," or "childhood" dreams over the two-month period they recorded their dreams. In all, they provided 372 dream reports, 236 from the women, 136 from the men.

Participants whom are congenital blind and totally blind claim that 0% of their dreams were visual, and that 52% of their dreams consisted of taste/ smell/touch (gastatory, olfactory, tactile). There is not even a question whether or not they see color because they do not see at all.

What about the colorblind?

Also, I should first postulate that the colorblind are this way because of alterations within their retina - their cone photoreceptors, which are responsible for receiving color from the visual hemispheres. For people whom have alterations within their photoreceptors from birth, it is likely that these individuals mix up certain colors for other colors, that we normally see, ie. seeing blue instead of red (please ignore all philosophical debates on whether or not one color is determinate and blah blah blah.. shut up).

The colorblind are still able to dream in color just as much as any other individual, just their colors will be altered. Of course, if the individual was born without any cone photoreceptors, then they will not dream in color for they have never seen a color. The mind is not capable of spontaneously creating such environments within the dream world becuase dreams work entirely on cognition and recent memories. I have yet to find any experiments on the colorblind, but I will post immediately if I do.

What about the visual cortex of the blind?

In a study at the deparment of anatomy and neurobiology at the University of Washington, subjects took part in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and were required to generate a verb to nouns. In one experiment, blind subjects read the nouns through Braille (Braille task); in a second study, blind and sighted subjects heard the nouns (auditory task). The principal finding from both studies was that blind people had activation foci in visual cortex that corresponded to visually responsive regions noted previously in sighted subjects (3).

Two-dimensional, flattened views of z-score statistical parameter maps for visual cortex BOLD responses in early and late blind subjects.

In blind subjects, both tasks evoked extensive bilateral excitation in the lateral visual occipital lobes and Brodmann areas of the brain. This ment that when the blind heard a word, it was not only received through the auditory complex but also precipitated excitatory activity throughout the visutopic areas. The results are significantly more active than those of subjects that had vision.

What does this mean? I&#39;ll eluciate this very easily:
Your mom screams at you from behind you and you look at her immediately. How you know that she is behind you is the activity of the brain which is drastically increased within the blind as they not only received auditory information, but assimilate a milieu within their mind of their environment. Try picturing what Daredevil see&#39;s... only, no vision at all, it is more or less "empathetic". Hopefully that explains it well..

No way, blind people can imagine what vision is like&#33;

This argument is dialetically arguable.

Dream about Heliotrophics. You probably can&#39;t because it is not real, it is just something I made up while writing this. This is how blind-born individuals perceive vision. Replace heliotrophics with vision.

Can you please tell me what heaven looks like? (Ignoring the argument of it&#39;s existance..) Imagine all you like, you don&#39;t know what it actually is - same concept applies to blind people and imagining vision.

Also take into consideration that the majority of you reading this thread have no clue how it is like for blind people to dream like - invert that thought, because that is the samething that blind people think of you. Can you dream what a blind person dreams? How can you, if you are not blind and never have been?

Another point (from CT) is imagine what the color tryuipe is like. Don&#39;t know what I&#39;m talking about? Can&#39;t do it? Exactly.

Furthermore, the meyer&#39;s loop (the information line responsible of relaying information received from the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) from the retina, to the occipital lobe) of the blind are nearly, and sometimes completely, inactive. If this loop is not utilised within the youth of the blind individuals life-time, the pathway becomes "lazy" and loses strength as the mind see&#39;s (no pun intended) that the loop is not necessary and truly gives no information to cortex. This is the reason why several blind people have a "lazy eye" or their eyes are simply not aligned whatsoever. My point in this is that blind individuals with an inactive visual pathway begin to utilise their visual cortex in association with other senses, primarily auditory. (See 3)

From O&#39;nus&#39;s totorial. You cannot imagine another primary color, because it simply looks like another color. Any sort of "description" of the color proves that the color is NOT a new color. If you say "it was an intense blue" or "it was like a pink new color." Neither was "new." The first is just a highly saturated blue, the second is a .... pink color. By being able to describe it... it is not a new color. The only way a new color would exist would be that there has to be an entirely new wavelength of light... but I believe we already know the entire spectrum of light? And many of these wavelengths we cannot see. You might see a "new color" if you were able to see ultraviolet, infrared, radio waves, etc. However, these might just manifest themselves to look like another color. Furthermore, I don&#39;t think our eyes can even perceive other colors. They only perceive the combinations of the 3 primary colors.

Originally Posted by Seeker

I can absolutely and without doubt say that theory is false. My dreams are full of extremely vivid color.
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I second Seeker...ALL of my dreams are in color. And I am AWARE of the colors during the dream. the theory is false