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Seeing patterns

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losthope

Paranormal Novice
I have had and still do have four different experiences mostly in low light conditions.
1. I see a matrix of blue, red, green, and black dots all around me at all times in low light.
2. I close my eyes and I often see scary mutated faces appear and disappear.
3. I see rapidly moving geometric patterns in low light conditions.
4. I rarely see (three or four times) bright colorful patterns with my eyes closed. Once I saw a matrix of icons.

What is going on? Does anyone have any information on these occurrences? Can you help me understand them. I feel like I see patterns all day long, but it's too bright to focus on them. I have rendered some of what I have seen with art.
 
losthope said:
I have had and still do have four different experiences mostly in low light conditions.
1. I see a matrix of blue, red, green, and black dots all around me at all times in low light.
2. I close my eyes and I often see scary mutated faces appear and disappear.
3. I see rapidly moving geometric patterns in low light conditions.
4. I rarely see (three or four times) bright colorful patterns with my eyes closed. Once I saw a matrix of icons.

What is going on? Does anyone have any information on these occurrences? Can you help me understand them. I feel like I see patterns all day long, but it's too bright to focus on them. I have rendered some of what I have seen with art.
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Did you ever take LSD?
 
losthope said:
No, the experiences are never induced, but I do suffer from migraines.
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Hard to say for sure. Could be some underlying medical condition affecting your visual cortex. How long has this been happening to you?
 
The colored dots I have seen for many years. The other phenomena have only started in the last five years. I once saw wrenches spinning in a coordinated pattern.
 
losthope said:
The colored dots I have seen for many years. The other phenomena have only started in the last five years. I once saw wrenches spinning in a coordinated pattern.
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If it has been happening for that length of time it is probably not pathological. Some people with extraordinary mental abilities have strange visualizations. Some people process information differently. Who knows? Could be something paranormal!
 
It does remind me a little of the descriptions in "DMT the spirit moloecule". At the onset of the DMT experience, the volunteers saw brightly colored moving geometrical patterns etc. And I think I read that if their eyes weren't closed these patterns would appear "superimposed" on their normal vision. You don't have to take drugs to have a DMT experience, so maybe your body just produces a little more DMT than usual.

Or maybe it's a form of synaesthesia, if these patterns appear when you are hearing or feeling other (mundane) things at the same moment. But paranormal... I don't think so.
 
i have seen things just like that back in the late 60s early 70s during and well after LSD trips. I have heard that certain mold spores may cause images like that as well.
 
When I was around the age of 5 or 6 I started to experience very bad headaches and included nausea, vomiting, couldn't stand the light or smells. I would see what you are describing when I was sleeping and they were very scary to me, would wake me up in a panic and I could never go bak to sleep. I have always wondered what this was. Anyone have any idea what this is fill me in also I am curious too? I haven't had them for a long time but suffer from headaches more recently and OBE and ringing in my ears and auras around people, but only certain people. Doctors call my OBE's dissocation or mirco epsyctic(SP?) epsodises(SP?) I am a bad speller. So get use to it. So anyone that has any idea let me know. never did lsd or acid and this happened when I was young. Grasshopper17
 
From early childhood and through young adulthood, closing my eyes and concentrating would bring up a scene I still find puzzling. The best way to describe it would be as if thousands of egg shaped helium balloons with white circle centers were suddenly released and floating upwards into the darkness. There seemed to be black numbers or symbols in the circles I could not make out.

Very strange, and I used to often contemplate what it might mean. I have not been able to do this in many years, and still have no idea where or how this originated.
 
When I was a teenager, I experimented with several different hallucinogenics and the same thing would happen when I closed my eyes, I would see different patterns. Mine were more like multicolored lines and geometric shapes and sometimes when I opened my eyes I could see them for a few split seconds but then they would disappear. I used to see tracers sometimes when it was dark and people moved fast. I assumed as a young man that it was some kind of short term brain damage and it's part of the reason I stopped screwing around with hallucinogens. I like my brain and I'm not interested in being one of those old burned out hippies who are unable to form complete sentences without saying uhhhhhhh or maaaaaan. Now that I'm older and haven't screwed around with anything like that since I was in high school, I don't get them at all anymore. The numbers or symbols thing is pretty weird though, I never had anything like that.
 
My first memories as a child, I recall trying to explain to my mother what I could only describe to her with my limited vocabulary, as tiny bugs. Really, while indoors, I was watching tiny dots rushing downward, like pouring rain- at times they would sway as if "wind pushing rain" -Before this would vanish with age, I had an encounter related to these "particles" -My mom put me down for an afternoon nap, about the age of 4. I was watching these particles while lying in bed, and they started to take form, just a mass of them swirled up- the form started at the foot of my bed and moved around towards me, just when I heard a female voice say something like "ah, look at the little boy" -I leaped out of bed and ran into the living room where my mom sat in front of the TV. I don't put a whole lot into that specific incident because of my young age, but that is a memory I have. I am sure of seeing these particles during my pre-school years.
 
I doubt I am the only kid to find out if you press your closed eyes long enough with your hands, you will start to see patterns stretch out into the blackness. These patterns never stay static and slowly change and move.

I've no doubt if I did it right now it would happen. I think it is just weird pressure on the retina that in absence of light causes 'invalid' input to the optic nerve and your brain gets stimulated along the same path it usually does (don't know if I'm losing anyone....)

Anyway, my point is that I reckon just some very normal random process in the brain is sometimes causing these strong images to be seen when only what you are actually taking in via your eyes should be what you see. That might have been poorly explained....um.
 
goggsmackay said:
I doubt I am the only kid to find out if you press your closed eyes long enough with your hands, you will start to see patterns stretch out into the blackness. These patterns never stay static and slowly change and move.

I've no doubt if I did it right now it would happen. I think it is just weird pressure on the retina that in absence of light causes 'invalid' input to the optic nerve and your brain gets stimulated along the same path it usually does (don't know if I'm losing anyone....)

Anyway, my point is that I reckon just some very normal random process in the brain is sometimes causing these strong images to be seen when only what you are actually taking in via your eyes should be what you see. That might have been poorly explained....um.
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Sometimes I wonder- being so young and new to this world, perhaps I was able to see the "sticks and glue" that hold this reality together. I have kept close listen for one of my two kids to mention something similiar- with nothing reported by them.
 
Stagger Lee said:
I was watching these particles while lying in bed, and they started to take form, just a mass of them swirled up- the form started at the foot of my bed and moved around towards me, just when I heard a female voice say something like "ah, look at the little boy"
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Probably right when you were falling asleep, I guess. Sounds like a "hypnagogic hallucination" to me, somehow "inspired" by the "particles" you were seeing while awake (which might have been some purely optical/physical phenomenon). Kinda like the old hag syndrome. That said, I'm not totally sure if these hypnagogic states only lead to non-sensical illusions or if they don't actually open up some "channels" which can be used by outside agents...
 
goggsmackay said:
I doubt I am the only kid to find out if you press your closed eyes long enough with your hands, you will start to see patterns stretch out into the blackness. These patterns never stay static and slowly change and move.

I've no doubt if I did it right now it would happen. I think it is just weird pressure on the retina that in absence of light causes 'invalid' input to the optic nerve and your brain gets stimulated along the same path it usually does (don't know if I'm losing anyone....)

Anyway, my point is that I reckon just some very normal random process in the brain is sometimes causing these strong images to be seen when only what you are actually taking in via your eyes should be what you see. That might have been poorly explained....um.
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Your first statement was right, I think what we achieved
At the time was a poor mans sensory deprivation tank. Perhaps deprived of what must make up the majority of our sensory input, the brain tries to fill in the gaps the best way it can. I took some pretty good (and cheap) trips this way and had interesting visions, who needed drugs?
 
They are not hypnagogic, I saw this stuff when I was a kid and just started to see this stuff again, especially when under extreme stress. I suffered migraines when I was a small child. I think what you have is "Synesthesia" like said above. But with Synethesia you have to have some kind of hearing things that go along with that to see stuff. I don't totally understand it , as I am still learning about this myself. I am now under stress and am experincing this again. Having headaches with Aura, no migraines. Keep telling your experience amd learning from others like us.
 
I was going to say LSD but hey thats been put out there already, but the hypnagogic effect is what it reminds me of most as Polterwurst has already said.
 
trustnone said:
They are not hypnagogic
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Right, losthope's patterns surely weren't. Like Stagger's "particles" I'd say these have medical explanations like synaesthesia, DMT or maybe just the eyes coping with the processes of growing up. If you say, your experiences are somewhat like synaesthesia, that has nothing to do with the old hag at all.

What I think was hypnagogic is Stagger Lee's experience of his "particles" gathering to form a shape and seemingly uttering words, as this experience occured when he was about to fall asleep. I guess, when he was awake, they just swirled around without doing anything "unusual" (like showing intelligent behaviour). The physical (optical or medical) phenomenon of the particles lead into a kind of old hag experience when he went into "hypnagogic mode". That's how I would explain it.
 
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