Thread: Is it possible to dream a new color?

Originally Posted by Lëzen

Wow, such a controversial topic.

My main question is: What makes you naysayers think that it's impossible to see a new color in a LD (or even a normal dream, for that matter) simply based on the fact that our brains process a limited color pallet in real life?

No, colours exist outside of the mind, they are not created by your brain. It is not your brain that has a limited colour pallet, it's that colours have a limited pallet. No colours exist outside the ones we know of. That's not to say you couldn't think one up but it seems highly unlikely to me (although I'd dare say impossible).

It's like saying that because a thing doesn't exist (as far as we "all-knowing" humans know), you'll never see it in a dream. And I know that this is most certainly not the case.

But colour isn't like most things, it's not a physical object that you can dream of, it's not a theory that you can come up with it's a result of wavelengths and we know the results of all the combinations of wavelengths that result in colour.

That's why a lot of virgins have had sex in lucids to find that, after actually sleeping with someone, they were pretty spot-on about how it would feel.

If you asked a person who was born blind to imagine a colour what do you think they'll see in their "inner-eye"? I'm guessing nothing because they'll have nothing to base it on. When a person dreams of having sex, even a virgin, they will be able to experience sex because those feelings are a result of chemicals in the brain, it's internal. Colours are external to the person and so if you've nothing to base it on you're not going to get very far. That includes new colours.

Originally Posted by ray

sigh..... i see i didn't explain that thoroughly enough. What i meant by my using existing colors and it not being accurate, is that it wasn't a green or red but something in-between. neither green nor red but if i had to put it on a color wheel i would guess it would go there. because no one has a name for it i can not properly explain what it looked like. just like if we had never seen a cat before and we suddenly stumbled across one we would have no idea what to call it.we would use what we already know to try to categorize it and we may call it a dog.even though it is obviously not a dog.it reminds me of when the spanish came over with horses and the native americans saw the horses but did not know what they were so they called them dogs.we try to find a place for things that we have never seen before in what we already know.that is what the people who have dreamed new colors tried to do with existing colors.hence the 'green/red', 'grey/orange purple', and 'turquoise red'.

I see what you mean but what i meant was like an actual addition to the spectrum would be impossible to imagine because the fact the dreams work off experiences, you must first encounter that colour. Like the colours you spoke of could be located in the spectrum and in physical life.

But because physical life is restricted to our dimension(as far as we know) and everything situated in it, we cannot develop further on something that would be 100% original. I seem to have misunderstood what you said (and possibly what the OP said) and taken the idea of a new colour to far apologies.

colours dont have a limited pallette, there are an infinate amount of colours there that we dont see. but unfortunately im talking about inbetween colours, so even if we could see them (we might be able to in a dream) the difference would be too small to notice.

but even at that, i dont think we could see any new colours because the size of our "pallet" is made the same way as in a computer, exept our computer is our brain.

Originally Posted by Seachmall

No, colours exist outside of the mind, they are not created by your brain. It is not your brain that has a limited colour pallet, it's that colours have a limited pallet. No colours exist outside the ones we know of. That's not to say you couldn't think one up but it seems highly unlikely to me (although I'd dare say impossible).But colour isn't like most things, it's not a physical object that you can dream of, it's not a theory that you can come up with it's a result of wavelengths and we know the results of all the combinations of wavelengths that result in colour.If you asked a person who was born blind to imagine a colour what do you think they'll see in their "inner-eye"? I'm guessing nothing because they'll have nothing to base it on. When a person dreams of having sex, even a virgin, they will be able to experience sex because those feelings are a result of chemicals in the brain, it's internal. Colours are external to the person and so if you've nothing to base it on you're not going to get very far. That includes new colours.

Also i agree with this guy 100%. What some people seem to be saying is, i've dreamt of cats with two heads for example. But we've all encountered the texture of fur the colour of fur, the shape of ears etc etc, so your idea wasn't 100% original, it developed from your subconscience perception of a cat and maybe something else. To dream of a new colour would be to develop something that you have never encountered and haven't been told about wetc etc, and the truth is, nothing internal is truly random. Thoughts always link, some faster than others and some to fast to see the connection, some processed on a subconscience level and others on a conscience one.

If one disagrees or sees flaws (which both will happen because it'd be pretty unusual for me to write something im thinking flawless first time ) please keep a civilised level instead, for example (hypothetically now) calling everyone stupid, or me stupid! I make misunderstandings more than the next guy

i just thought, as i was saying, the size of our pallet is made the same way as computers, well i just remembered that computers can make room for colours it doesnt have in its pallet by deleting other colours, so if brains are like computers, then there is still a possibility of it working

I know, im going a bit off topic. Im talking about outside the palette

yea i know, sorry i just thought id make that point. but my last comment would kind of work for that aswell, only problem is your brain would have to replace all shades of a colour and thats just a bit much, but oh well its still a fair point

God dam. If a new colour was thrown into the mix it'd be awesome Like when a baby first begins to observe.

I don't think it's possible to dream a new color, but dream in different lights.

Our eyes can only pick up Red, Green, and Blue. Some people are color blind, however, and some colors will appear to be different colors. Like red to us could be brown to them. But brown is still in the RGB color scheme.

We have cameras that allow us to see Infrared lights, Ultraviolet lights, and so on and so forth. All these colors that are shown in the Infrared lenses, are still apart of the RGB color scheme.

So, I don't think it's possible to dream different colors, but only in different light rays.

Get what I mean?

no i dont get what your talking about

Slayer, I understand. THis has been an extremely interesting thread.
I don't think it's possible to see an entirely "new" color, because what we perceive as colors are a combination of certain base colors. But a "new" color combination? I know that's possible.
I dreamed of flying out of control once and I ended up inside a cloud. The colors were such that I had never seen them combined in such a fashion in real life. The cloud was a weird combination of gray/white/blue and my Dream Guide was in a hooded cloak that was a bizarre shade of gray and brown.
Those aren't new colors but they were presented in a new way that I had never seen before.

He means like we're able to dream about different colours (invisible to the naked eye) on the spectrum, but this will only be from colours that have been picked up from digital because.... well otherwise there invisible

i THINK

And Zhaylin, you put it all into words! lol

Im gonna make a thread asking if its possible to discover the hidden note inbetween B and C during a lucid dream.

Originally Posted by bushi

Im gonna make a thread asking if its possible to discover the hidden note inbetween B and C during a lucid dream.

I believe that would just be an out of tune B or C. (unless you were joking)

Originally Posted by Seachmall

No, colours exist outside of the mind, they are not created by your brain. It is not your brain that has a limited colour pallet, it's that colours have a limited pallet.

I'm quite sure that colors do not exist outside of the mind. Different frequencies of light waves exist outside the mind but what we call colors are 100 percent a creation of the brain. If colors existed outside the mind then there would be no such thing as different perception of colors like colorblindness. Different frequencies of light have no color outside of the mind.

I don't think anyone on this forum knows enough about this topic to say for sure either way, but it is definitely a reasonable question.

Thank you all for your input, this is really interesting stuff to me!

Originally Posted by tdsand

I'm quite sure that colors do not exist outside of the mind. Different frequencies of light waves exist outside the mind but what we call colors are 100 percent a creation of the brain. If colors existed outside the mind then there would be no such thing as different perception of colors like colorblindness. Different frequencies of light have no color outside of the mind.

As I explained in my first post, yes. Colours do exist outside of the mind but they need to be interpreted by your brain to get what we know as colours, which is the same as anything. What we call colours are as a result of those frequencies, the frequencies are not subjective but our interpretations are which is irrelevant to the topic at hand.

I don't think anyone on this forum knows enough about this topic to say for sure either way

We're not experts (or at least I'm not) but I think we've given reasonable explanations as to why it would not be possible.

I think Bushi has the best analogy, it would be like trying to find a new chord between B and C. In fact it's almost exactly the same.

Referenced from The Mighty Boosh BTW.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1q-LVH_0vI

That's a pretty shit episode though. They're other ones are much better.

Originally Posted by Seachmall

I think Bushi has the best analogy, it would be like trying to find a new chord between B and C. In fact it's almost exactly the same.

I'm not saying there are new colors in between existing colors. I am saying it might be possible that our brain could make entirely new colors outside our existing interpretation of colors.

And colors do not exist outside the mind, there are just different frequencies of light waves and photons and such, just as there is no sound outside the mind just vibrations that get interpreted by our brain to become sound. The reason you and I probably see the same colors is because our brains are of the same species.

I still think its possible because some people with near death experiences have claimed to see new colors and Ray claims to have seen a new color in a dream herself.

Its just not possible.

It is very possible however for someone to believe wholeheartedly they are looking at a new color because they are in a dreamlike state.

Like someone said, the other colors simply don't exist.
They become gammy rays, xrays yadda yadda on either side of the visual spectrum.

Theres a bajjillion colors and variations. You probably just seen one you're not familiar with in your dream and thought it was a new color.

Originally Posted by Yume.no.ato

Theres a bajjillion colors and variations. You probably just seen one you're not familiar with in your dream and thought it was a new color.

humans can see approxamitely 16 million different colours, and i think some of us even agreed that in a dream we wouldnt be able to see the ones we dont see.

Originally Posted by tdsand

I'm not saying there are new colors in between existing colors. I am saying it might be possible that our brain could make entirely new colors outside our existing interpretation of colors.

The further we go from the existing colours we know to exist the less likely what you see is a colour.

And colors do not exist outside the mind, there are just different frequencies of light waves and photons and such, just as there is no sound outside the mind just vibrations that get interpreted by our brain to become sound. The reason you and I probably see the same colors is because our brains are of the same species.

It DOES exist outside of the mind, so does sound, texture, smell etc. The brain is only interprets those frequencies, it doesn't make them up.

I still think its possible because some people with near death experiences have claimed to see new colors and Ray claims to have seen a new color in a dream herself.

I never said it was impossible, just highly unlikely. I'm not doubting people have seen colours they interpret to be new and can't describe, I just doubt it's an entirely new colour.

And the reason I find the "new chord" analogy to be fitting is because colour is just a frequency, anything outside that frequency is not colour. In order for it be colour it HAS to be within the defined frequencies and we know all the combinations of those frequencies because they are finite (well they're not but the differences would be so slight it wouldn't warrant being called a new colour).

Seachmall, I understand where your coming from but I think we are disagreeing on what we are defining as a color. I think you are defining color as a frequency of light within the visible spectrum, but I am defining color as the perception our brain has created.

I do not think what we see as color actually exists outside our mind, after all it is not the light itself entering our brain it is the signals from our nerves that is entering our brain (which has nothing to do with light) which becomes what we call color.

Another way to think about it is- Imagine if we surgically put rods and cones in our eyes that could detect ultraviolot and infrared. Our brains would perceive colors that we would never before have seen which would be caused by a new signal entering the brain. What if in our dreams we could create one of those signals?

I hope this discussion isn't becoming too heated, its hard to sense emotions with text, so I hope I am not coming off as an A hole. This is really interesting to talk about for me and really got me thinking.

All colors can be described compared to another color. Blue is just a slower purple. Red is a slower yellow. There are no original colors, so what is stopping my brain from creating an experience to go along with a very slow red or a very fast purple? The fact that we can extrapolate new experiences in a dream leads me to infer that "seeing" new colors is possible because the limited rods and cones in the eye are no longer a factor when you get to make up your own sensory input.

Also, I disagree with the analogy of finding a hidden note in between B and C. This is more like looking for the notes higher and lower than our ears can pick up.

Yea, I'm with licity

but licity, our brain is limited to a certain amount of colours. ive been comparing the brain to a computer because its the easiest way to describe what im talking about, so ill carry on doing that. when a computer is set to 8 bit colour depth for example, if a 24 bit colour image was to come up, it wouldnt show the extra colours, just the ones within its pallet, and the closest to the other ones.
our brain would be similar, our brain is set to around about 24 bit colour depth...(hold on, psp writin limit)