Synesthesia in a Lucid Dream. Have you?

Synesthesia - A condition in which one type of stimulation evokes the sensation of another, as when the hearing of a sound produces the visualization of a color.

Some people naturally experience this their whole lives. Also it has ocurred while some people are under the influence of various hallucinogenic substances. I was curious to find out if anyone here has ever experienced it in a dream or in real life. Personally I think it would be amazing to be able to see a color when a sound is heard. Imagine listening to a symphony perform and seeing colors corresponding to the different blend of sounds.

Would this be something similar to the "visualizations" option in the Windows Media Player? It displays all kinds of moving colors and shapes in the window as you listen to music.

I really don't know for sure what it is like. I think its different for everyone that experiences it. It doesn't have to be seeing colors when hearing sound either, it could be tasting colors or hearing shapes or any number of combinations of the senses.

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Would this be something similar to the \"visualizations\" option in the Windows Media Player? It displays all kinds of moving colors and shapes in the window as you listen to music.[/b]

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Good way of putting it; I guess that's similar to it.

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Synaesthesia (also spelled synesthesia); from the Greek (syn-) “union”, and (aesthesis) “sensation”; is the neurological mixing of the senses. A synaesthete may, for example, hear colors, see sounds, and taste tactile sensations. Although this may happen in a person who has autism, it is by no means exclusive to autists. Synaesthesia is a common effect of some hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD or mescaline.[/b]

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Two of the most common forms of synaesthesia are seeing sound or seeing letters and numbers in color.[/b]

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article @ wikipedia

As a musician, I'm very attuned to music and sound. I sometimes have visually related "impressions" of certain sounds. For example, when hearing something like violins playing in a higher register, I think of of the color yellow, and sort of imagine ribbon like shapes. Again, it's more like an impression, not an actual image perception. It's hard to explain. I think people may experience the phenomena to varying degrees.
I guess in the LD state, your mind could model what you expect it would be like, but not necessarily what it is really like.

Awake and in a high state a few years ago...................

Crickets caused swirling purple

human talking caused crackling, zapping yellow

silence was calm swirling green

(alcohol and gange were the only offending chars)

I sw a kind of a visual trick one, where you see two dots moving into each other and continue moving .. you watch them several times, and you interpret them as moving into each other, not as colliding.
But then, if you toggle a special button, a tick sound gets played when the dots move into each other, and this time you feel like the dots have collided into each other and where bounced back by the collision. (if you know what I mean).

I don't remember what it was or where it was, but its purpose was to show how the senses work together. I don't remember whether they used to term "Synesthesia" or not.

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I guess in the LD state, your mind could model what you expect it would be like, but not necessarily what it is really like.[/b]

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Firstly, some people who don't experience synesthesia naturally have experienced it while under the influence of hallucinagens (including myself). That suggests synesthesia does not require a "damaged" or "differently built" brain, but that we all have the capacity for it. Secondly, some people who have once taken hallucinagens have reported dreaming they were on drugs, and some people have reported being successfully hypnotised into feeling under the influence of drugs. That suggests that hallucination does not require altered brain chemistry (or that we can alter our own brain chemistry). Taking those to facts together, logically it must be possible to dream synesthesia (though I've never done it).

The argument that you just experience "what you expect it would be like" rather than "what it is really like" only applies to objective reality. For instance, you could dream you saw a yet to be released movie, but your dream would not be the same as the real movie. However, synesthesia is a subjective experience, whereas a movie is objective. If you experience a smell that is also a color, no one can say that wasn't "the real" experience.

The argument has been made elsewhere in the forum in regards to sex and the passage of time. There was a discussion about sex in dreams, and one member claimed to be a virgin, yet claimed that their experience of sex in dreams was just like the real thing. Now that I don't agree with. That member experienced some kind of orgasm for sure, but it could not have been the same as the objective physical sensation they had yet to experience. I dreamed of having sex when I was a virgin - great dreams - but the real thing certainly turned out to be quite different!

Another thread discussed whether or not dreaming very long spans of time within a few minutes is "real". In this case, it can't be proved to be not real. The sensation of the passage of time is completely subjective. A year dreamed within a minute is for all intents and purposes as real to the dreamer as a year of waking life.

As far as my own experience with synesthesia, I was on a hallucinagenic drug. I saw falling yellow leaves that were ALSO loud ringing bells. I didn't imagine a soundtrack to go with the image - the color and the sound were a single sensation. It's like if you look at a blue object, you don't imagine a blue on it. You know that that sensation could not be anything other than blueness. The synesthesia was the same - the falling leaves were as much the sound of ringing bells as they were the color of yellow to me.

Wow. How stimulating life would be. I usually am only intuned to one sense at a time. And if I focus on that in itself can become very intense. But it never invoked other sensory organs.
I wonder if this is something you can somehow aquire without hallucinagans or having it come to you naturally?

I have heard that with meditation many things are possible. One being intuned to all of your surroundings at once.
I can't sit still long enough to achieve anything while meditating. Except frustration maybe.

:rainbow: = :coolspot:

I have experienced this before actually a few times. Yeah one time it was influenced by a drug, but this drug is classified as an entactogen and not a hallucinogen...and it only really works by overloading your synapses with serotonin.

But I have been in a room...dancing...alone, listening to music loudly. When all of a sudden I SAW and FELT streams of rainbows coming from the speakers and the colors surrounded me and as I danced around I could almost manipulate the color streams with my hands and feel them at the same time. Kinda hard to explain.

However, I think that I have always sort of been able to actually feel (and I'm not just talking emotionally) music, and see music. Like I will be driving, listening to a song that I really love and suddenly the road and everything around me changes. I can't explain exactly how. It's like all I can see is the road in front of me, usually a bright color, and everything that I pass by are just streams of colors. It's sort of like when Neo gets up after being shot in the Matrix and sees the code instead of what is actually there. It can be really distracting sometimes.

When I first heard about synesthesia a few years ago and did some research on it and found out that people with synesthesia have a hard time doing things like driving because it is so distracting.

Were you eating skittles?

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Originally posted by Aquanina
When I first heard about synesthesia a few years ago and did some research on it and found out that people with synesthesia have a hard time doing things like driving because it is so distracting.

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So all woman must have synesthesia! :lipssealed:

Just kidding. :wink:
Nina,
Is this something you have been able to tap into if you try or does it just happen?

Just like lucid dreaming, I wonder if it could possibly be a skill that we have once had and lost over the years. Or on the other hand, something we are evolving into.?
That's pretty definitive. :P

Yea its not necesarily common so to speak to experience synesthesia on hallucinogens but lots of people are blessed to get to experience it. I wish I could.

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Originally posted by Howetzer
[Nina,
Is this something you have been able to tap into if you try or does it just happen?

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Sometimes it just happens...other times I will close my eyes for a sec and listen to the music and then when I open them again everything around me is...well...honestly I don't think I could explain it even if I tried. But it's amazing. And it makes me feel really ALIVE.

I have experienced this only when using hallucinogens. One time I was already tripping and ate a mushroom. I can't explain it like I was trying to explain it to my friends, but it tasted purple to me. Also, this doesn't really qualify but I just remembered something. Ever since I was a child, I always pictured each of the numbers 1-10 as a certain color. I just associate a number in my head with being a certain color. Maybe from a coloring book of numbers when I was in preschool and it stuck with me? I told someone this recenlty and they were amazed and said they did that too, and some of our numbers were the same color.
1=white
2=green
3=brown
4=purple
5=red
6=blue or green
7=yellow (this is the strongest number/color association I have...I don't always think of colors and sometimes they change for other number but 7is always yellow.
8=brown
9=dark color, like black, grey, or dark purple
10=white

any of the teens have the same association and twenty is green just like 2, 70 is yellow, etc.

Does anyone else do this???? I know I'm weird but would be curious to know if I'm not the only one who is weird in this way (besides my friend).

Another weird thing I"ve always done is when I see a written word, I immediately think of the pronunciation of the non-word that is spells backwards (example: I see a shampoo bottle that says SUAVE and automatically think "evaus" and say it outloud in my head). I'm not dyslexic I just do it. I remember telling my mom when I was about 9 and I thought I was crazy. She told me I'm not crazy and she does this thing where when she looks around a room she thinks in her head the color of everything her eyes land on as she looks around. Also I guy I dated a few years ago did the backwards word thing too.

I know these things don't really fit the topic but I just thought of them and didn't feel like looking for a good spot for them. Anyone else do any weird thing like that? (maybe we will have to start a thread if so?)
Selena

This is semi-related to Selena's comment - I don't have any number/color association, but I've always had gender and personality associations with all of the numerals and letters of the alphabet. The associations have faded in adulthood, but they used to be strong - as I looked at each character, I saw it as having a complete personality. I remember that 8 hates 5, for instance. Some characters were mean, others nice, some proud, some sneaky, some friends, some enemies, etc. It could be kind of distracting!

I have no idea why but to this day:

0 = male
1 = male
2 = female
3 = female
4 = male
5 = male (favorite #)
6 = male
7 = male
8 = female
9 = male

I guess as very young kids we anthropomorphise everthing. Like our stuffed animals and toy cars. Probably making associations with colors and earlier concepts helps us learn.

I wonder if its possible to have enough control in a dream to induce synesthesia. Someone should try it.

While I was falling asleep last night, a door was slammed shut by the wind and made a very loud noise. At the moment I heard the sound, a sharp whiteness appeared very briefly in the blackness of my eyes. I've had this happen before, with many different colors. Is this the same as what your talking about?

Well I'm not 100% sure since I don't know anyone who has it, but it could be. Does this only happen every now and then when you have your eyes closed or does it happen all the time?

It happens whenever there is a loud noise and I'm about to fall asleep. It almost always happens whenever these two conditions are met.

Oh ok. I think synesthesia is always happening to people who have it naturally. Its basically how they see every day.

It happens occasionally with me. I see it as a form of higher visualization, nina put it best the way that I have experianced it. I've not experianced it on drugs at all, but I've experianced it after eating alot of shrooms in a dream one time.

That's really interesting how drugs in a dream can have the effects that they do. Especially when people do drugs in a dream and they have never done them in real life before. How would the reaction be if you didn't know what the drug felt like? Yet from all that I have read here on the forum, the drug being taken always seems to have SOME effect that is easily noticed. Maybe if I get this lucid dreaming stuff down I'll be able to try some acid or shrooms in a dream so find out the effects in a dream.

I don't know if this is the same thing, but In real life, when thinking of bright/shiny colours, I get a sharp sour taste in my mouth.

I have had synesthesia since I was, I guess, born. I didn't find out until I was ten that this was not something everybody experiences. It is impossible for me to not associate a sound with an abstract visual image, not that I don't want to, except a few times when I have meditated on sounds. I have tried to meditate on sounds and just experience the sound, but when I do so I seem to come closer to seeing that my sensation of the sound and my experience of the associated visual image are exactly the same experience.