Thanks for commenting that it’s already obvious to you.
Would you comment on which parts of my theory (in my comment) are true for you. Feel free to PM me instead if you don’t want to publish that information online.
I have no currently diagnosed irregularities, but I did have an ADHD (Primarily Inattentive) as a teen. I was on medication for a while, then stopped taking it in college when I noticed it wasn’t really helping anymore. In hindsight, I wonder if the issue in highschool was really stress combined with chronic sleep deprivation. Make of that what you will.
I do get surprised looks from doctors all the time, tho. They seem frequently startled at how in tune I am with my body and senses, so I take that as a bit irregular.
I’ve never used any hallucinogens.
On my meditative practice
I’ve been practicing vipassana and shamatha meditation for about two years now. I tend to agree that especially vipassana meditation, which is all about noticing the bare reality of the senses, would make one more likely to notice visual snow and the like if the effects are, indeed, present in most/all experiences.
That said, I have been aware of all three effects (and more) since I was a child, long before I began meditating.
On visual snow
I’ve known about the staticky lights or colors visible in the darker places for as long as I can remember. At this moment, I can also detect the snow in my visual field in full daylight with eyes open. I recall asking about it as a child, but in the absence of the internet my research capacity was limited. At the time, the answer I got was “yeah, that’s a thing”. I came to assume that visual snow was somehow related to the lights I see when gently pressing on the eye. Later, I seem to remember hearing something about cosmic rays or some such. Giving it a quick think just now, I wonder if the phenomenon occurrs in the eye or the brain. Both are consistent with your low-level sensory processing theory.
On afterimages
Likewise, I’ve long been aware of the glowing outlines that can appear when the eyes rest on a place for some time. They are more likely to show up in high-contrast areas of the visual field, and I’m pretty sure they are afterimages revealed by the involuntary movements of the eye.
On breathing walls
I’ve noticed this one forever, too. Usually this happens when I’m staring at the ceiling for whatever reason and I notice a sort of rocking, drifting tendency in the image. Like the afterimage glow, I think this has to do with involuntary eye movements. I seem to recall an experiment where people are placed in a dark room with a bright dot projected on an otherwise reference-free visual plane. Those people will consistently report the dot drifting around despite its lack of actual motion.
Similar effects
If I am still enough I can detect a light tingle in any arbitrary patch of skin. Did not notice this until I’d been meditating for a while.
In quiet environments, multiple changing tones become evident in each ear. I initially assumed this was tinnitus, but they don’t quite fit with my reading on that affliction.
Long ago, I noticed that staring at a fixed point will eventually render the entire visual field gray as the retina seems to get fatigued and kind of just give up. The effect reduces a bit with each involuntary eye movement, but with curious care I can make the visual field almost completely smooth. In this state, I have not been able to perceive visual snow.
I’ve also become aware that if I look at a bright, clear sky (and in a few other situations) I can see what turns out to be the blood flowing through the retina. While looking for a graphic, I just learned that this is called blue-sky sprites and the linked Wikipedia article has a good animation of them.
That’s a really good animation for the blue-sky sprites. When teaching a friend to see visual snow, they could only see these.
Do you see the kaleidoscopic, patterned lines like the picture from slate star codex’s article? It’s not always regular or geometric, but it’s separate from visual snow and blue-sky sprites. Actually, I had never seen visual snow until this morning in low light conditions. I thought the patterned lines were visual snow the whole time!
The short answer is “not like that” and “depends on conditions”.
Although I can perceive the snow simply by inclining my attention toward it, most of the time I have difficulty “watching” it because the eyes try to focus on and follow the lights. This doesn’t work, I assume because visual snow is a fact of biology and not actually made of photons from the environment. In any case, the movement in the eyes seems to trigger some processing subroutine that renders the noise very briefly smooth and I cannot discern any patterns. I expect this effect is related to (saccadic masking)[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccadic_masking?wprov=sfla1], which renders us functionally blind for a few milliseconds every time the eye moves.
Under these conditions, and with eyes open, the snow overlay reminds me most of an old TV with the antenna just slightly out of alignment, or maybe a very slightly grainy photograph. If I were to try to simulate this mode on a graphic I would use HSV color space and add just a little random noise on the Value channel, perhaps with some very transparent noise “clouds” to imply local variations in density. (I’m at work now or I would just do so to make it more clear.)
With eyes closed, I see thousands of tiny blue-white blobs on a dark or red background, depending on ambient light levels.
If the mind is sufficiently concentrated that the eyes don’t try to focus and follow, I often begin to experience (create?) patterns in the noise. When I was younger, the noise would produce random large blobs of higher density (still made of tiny blobs) that would continuously change position, shape, size, and to a small degree color. Since I began meditating, instead of the blobs I sometimes get a swirling blue pattern that reminds me of water going down a drain at the center of the field of vision.
As for any sort of patterned lines, I’m afraid I can only report strong afterimages from reading on lit screens for long stretches. Nothing like the diffraction-grating-looking awesomeness in that image.
I also especially liked the saccadic masking, specifically
This can easily be duplicated by looking into a mirror, and looking from one eye to another. The eyes can never be observed in motion, yet an external observer clearly sees the motion of the eyes.
Which I remember trying and failing to do a few years ago. I recently lost my vision in one of my eyes, so it seems impossible to try the mirror test now (Although I still don’t notice movement in my peripheral switching from my good eye to my nose, so maybe?).
Compassion for the loss of the use of your eye. Out of curiosity, do you think the loss of vision in that eye affected your perception of these effects?
I don’t think it’s affected it, though I don’t have an easy way to compare. I lost most of that vision last August, have been meditating for a year, and have learned to see these perceptions in the past week. The vision in my left eye is definitely much, much noisier!
You can sort of recreate it by covering one eye and checking, though the difference is my left eye has no lens, no iris, and some retinal detachment.
Was my comment too casual? Sorry for that. My intent was to express surprise and I didn’t have much time. I’ll be happy to elaborate when I get a proper chance to sit down and write sometime in the next couple days.
I appreciate that, but really your comment was fine and provided useful information. I’m just excited about this currently and want to talk about it more.
Also, the recommended reading I linked was more for your own curiosity’s sake as opposed to a pre-req, in case it came across that way.
After a quick look I actually remember reading Scott’s article when it posted, but for whatever reason it didn’t rise above the level of “momentarily interesting” at the time and I forgot about it. Must’ve been tired or something. In any case, I’ve made some time to gather my thoughts (which I found to be much more organized and detailed than I expected) and should have a few paragraphs for you, probably by the end of the day.
There are people who don’t experience (or, perhaps, notice) these things? Huh.
Thanks for commenting that it’s already obvious to you.
Would you comment on which parts of my theory (in my comment) are true for you. Feel free to PM me instead if you don’t want to publish that information online.
Also, if you haven’t already, I recommend reading the linked post (Lot’s of People Going Around with Mild Hallucinations All the Time).
On my neurotype
This question is a bit complicated.
I have no currently diagnosed irregularities, but I did have an ADHD (Primarily Inattentive) as a teen. I was on medication for a while, then stopped taking it in college when I noticed it wasn’t really helping anymore. In hindsight, I wonder if the issue in highschool was really stress combined with chronic sleep deprivation. Make of that what you will.
I do get surprised looks from doctors all the time, tho. They seem frequently startled at how in tune I am with my body and senses, so I take that as a bit irregular.
I’ve never used any hallucinogens.
On my meditative practice
I’ve been practicing vipassana and shamatha meditation for about two years now. I tend to agree that especially vipassana meditation, which is all about noticing the bare reality of the senses, would make one more likely to notice visual snow and the like if the effects are, indeed, present in most/all experiences.
That said, I have been aware of all three effects (and more) since I was a child, long before I began meditating.
On visual snow
I’ve known about the staticky lights or colors visible in the darker places for as long as I can remember. At this moment, I can also detect the snow in my visual field in full daylight with eyes open. I recall asking about it as a child, but in the absence of the internet my research capacity was limited. At the time, the answer I got was “yeah, that’s a thing”. I came to assume that visual snow was somehow related to the lights I see when gently pressing on the eye. Later, I seem to remember hearing something about cosmic rays or some such. Giving it a quick think just now, I wonder if the phenomenon occurrs in the eye or the brain. Both are consistent with your low-level sensory processing theory.
On afterimages
Likewise, I’ve long been aware of the glowing outlines that can appear when the eyes rest on a place for some time. They are more likely to show up in high-contrast areas of the visual field, and I’m pretty sure they are afterimages revealed by the involuntary movements of the eye.
On breathing walls
I’ve noticed this one forever, too. Usually this happens when I’m staring at the ceiling for whatever reason and I notice a sort of rocking, drifting tendency in the image. Like the afterimage glow, I think this has to do with involuntary eye movements. I seem to recall an experiment where people are placed in a dark room with a bright dot projected on an otherwise reference-free visual plane. Those people will consistently report the dot drifting around despite its lack of actual motion.
Similar effects
If I am still enough I can detect a light tingle in any arbitrary patch of skin. Did not notice this until I’d been meditating for a while.
In quiet environments, multiple changing tones become evident in each ear. I initially assumed this was tinnitus, but they don’t quite fit with my reading on that affliction.
Long ago, I noticed that staring at a fixed point will eventually render the entire visual field gray as the retina seems to get fatigued and kind of just give up. The effect reduces a bit with each involuntary eye movement, but with curious care I can make the visual field almost completely smooth. In this state, I have not been able to perceive visual snow.
I’ve also become aware that if I look at a bright, clear sky (and in a few other situations) I can see what turns out to be the blood flowing through the retina. While looking for a graphic, I just learned that this is called blue-sky sprites and the linked Wikipedia article has a good animation of them.
That’s a really good animation for the blue-sky sprites. When teaching a friend to see visual snow, they could only see these.
Do you see the kaleidoscopic, patterned lines like the picture from slate star codex’s article? It’s not always regular or geometric, but it’s separate from visual snow and blue-sky sprites. Actually, I had never seen visual snow until this morning in low light conditions. I thought the patterned lines were visual snow the whole time!
The short answer is “not like that” and “depends on conditions”.
Although I can perceive the snow simply by inclining my attention toward it, most of the time I have difficulty “watching” it because the eyes try to focus on and follow the lights. This doesn’t work, I assume because visual snow is a fact of biology and not actually made of photons from the environment. In any case, the movement in the eyes seems to trigger some processing subroutine that renders the noise very briefly smooth and I cannot discern any patterns. I expect this effect is related to (saccadic masking)[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccadic_masking?wprov=sfla1], which renders us functionally blind for a few milliseconds every time the eye moves.
Under these conditions, and with eyes open, the snow overlay reminds me most of an old TV with the antenna just slightly out of alignment, or maybe a very slightly grainy photograph. If I were to try to simulate this mode on a graphic I would use HSV color space and add just a little random noise on the Value channel, perhaps with some very transparent noise “clouds” to imply local variations in density. (I’m at work now or I would just do so to make it more clear.)
With eyes closed, I see thousands of tiny blue-white blobs on a dark or red background, depending on ambient light levels.
If the mind is sufficiently concentrated that the eyes don’t try to focus and follow, I often begin to experience (create?) patterns in the noise. When I was younger, the noise would produce random large blobs of higher density (still made of tiny blobs) that would continuously change position, shape, size, and to a small degree color. Since I began meditating, instead of the blobs I sometimes get a swirling blue pattern that reminds me of water going down a drain at the center of the field of vision.
As for any sort of patterned lines, I’m afraid I can only report strong afterimages from reading on lit screens for long stretches. Nothing like the diffraction-grating-looking awesomeness in that image.
Thanks for the info!
I also especially liked the saccadic masking, specifically
Which I remember trying and failing to do a few years ago. I recently lost my vision in one of my eyes, so it seems impossible to try the mirror test now (Although I still don’t notice movement in my peripheral switching from my good eye to my nose, so maybe?).
You’re very welcome!
Compassion for the loss of the use of your eye. Out of curiosity, do you think the loss of vision in that eye affected your perception of these effects?
Thanks, and curious questions are welcomed.
I don’t think it’s affected it, though I don’t have an easy way to compare. I lost most of that vision last August, have been meditating for a year, and have learned to see these perceptions in the past week. The vision in my left eye is definitely much, much noisier!
You can sort of recreate it by covering one eye and checking, though the difference is my left eye has no lens, no iris, and some retinal detachment.
Was my comment too casual? Sorry for that. My intent was to express surprise and I didn’t have much time. I’ll be happy to elaborate when I get a proper chance to sit down and write sometime in the next couple days.
I appreciate that, but really your comment was fine and provided useful information. I’m just excited about this currently and want to talk about it more.
Also, the recommended reading I linked was more for your own curiosity’s sake as opposed to a pre-req, in case it came across that way.
After a quick look I actually remember reading Scott’s article when it posted, but for whatever reason it didn’t rise above the level of “momentarily interesting” at the time and I forgot about it. Must’ve been tired or something. In any case, I’ve made some time to gather my thoughts (which I found to be much more organized and detailed than I expected) and should have a few paragraphs for you, probably by the end of the day.