The Mind's Eye

[austintorn@aol.com]

While using Photoshop one day, I may have stumbled onto an understanding of the faint pictures that we see in our mind's eye of imagination when picturing something.

I also read somewhere about this imagination using parts of the visual system, but, of course, not the retinal part itself, but the portions further in.

It seems that these images in the mind have about 80-90% transparency, as one can do in Photoshop, making them faint, which I suppose is a necessity so that they are not confused with images from the real world.

I note, too, that they have a duration, for if you try to keep seeing them, they eventually fade away.

Also, filling in a wide scene with parts like birds or such seems to have to be built part by part.

What this understanding is good for, I don't know.

If only we could lessen the transparency we could see some great stuff!

But, as usual, tampering with something like that might produce side effects in something somewhere else.

[austintorn@aol.com]

Perhaps video is available in the mind's eye, too, but clear dreaming while awake would be like the nightmare of schizophrenia.

[Mikal]

Austie...I call "clear dreaming" lucid dreaming and I have experienced it when integrating my consciousness and yes it did lead into what seems Schizophrenic states which are just in my opinion fragments of high visionary possibilities. The downside to lucid dreaming is that consciousness can flip into "trance states" which I also had to experience and would tell anyone processing that mental state to obtain absolute knowledge about the state so they can stop fearing the state and allow consciousness to follow its own process to leave the state naturally....


Mikal

[austintorn@aol.com]

I take lucid dreaming in night dreams (yes, very clear) to that of being aware of the night dream as a dream. In waking life it would be more like detachment from one's swirl of thoughts to view them as a spectator.

[Mikal]

Its kind of like, the experiencer, experiencing the experience of the dream experience....sounds wierd but thats how it seemed....


Mikal

[austintorn@aol.com]

Yes, it is like twice removed and grants knowledge of beliefs about beliefs—a second level of personhood.

[Mikal]

I like your phrase..."grants knowledge of beliefs about beliefs"....so its kind of like you become the feeling of the belief and sense new knowledge about that....if that makes any sense to you....smiles


Mikal

[austintorn@aol.com]

It makes all the sense in the universe to me, for many just react to their first level beliefs and run with them alone. It's like Fredrick's view of a chair versus no chair or at least knowing what it means to claim a chair to sit in.

[Mikal]

Austie....do you think the concept of the mind's eye is kind of the explanation that the mind can experience itself....??? hope that does not sound too wierd....


Mikal

[austintorn@aol.com]

This thread's starting comments only scratch the surface, for they spoke only of images (pictures) conjured up in the mind's eye, but surely what also passes there as daydreams tells us of what we wish, for I do think it is the arena wherein the mind/brain puts the results of perceiving itself.