Third Eye Blind: Aphantasia

[silent thunder]

I recently (just a few weeks ago) discovered in a conversation with my wife... after nearly 30 years of marriage, that my wife has aphantasia.  She cannot form images or visualize anything in her mind.  When I say to her, imagine a red ball.  She does not see a red ball in some manner in her mind.  She has a sense of a ball that is red, but sees no virtual color or shape. 

 

This gob-smacked me... Didn't know this was possible, except in cases of brain damage, which is recorded.  But evidently for as many as one in fifty, folks are simply not able to form pictures/images, sounds, smells... nothing in their mind's eye.

 

Something I didn't even know was a thing in human constructs... It absolutely horrified me and has been weighing on me as I consider how other's meditate and dream... and think or even conceive of ideas and concepts.

 

It came about when I was really pegging her down over a dream she had had and how the building she was in was created... and she couldn't describe it in concrete terms.

 

She then revealed that she does not and has never in her life visualized any sight or sound of anything in her mind... that she indeed cannot and has no idea how to go about visualizing or creating any images in her mind... no sound, no sights, no smells... nada... only feelings of things... the overall sense of them. 

 

She dreams, but only through cognitive intuition... she feels the settings and the events... she does not experience them in the manner I do, by standing in a location, where I see, touch, feel, taste and smell all that is transpiring around me.

We are both utterly awed and stunned by how the other processes images and by how the other's mind works.

 

I told her, no wonder math and geometry were so challenging for you... for me, math is almost all visualization of groupings and relationships....

 

So  anyway there's that... aphantasia... third eye blind. 

 

[Jeff]

Very interesting. I don't mean to be rude, but would you be willing to ask her if I could remotely do an energy body scan on her?  See what I find at that mental translation space?

 

Thanks,

Jeff

[C T]

could be advantageous! 

[silent thunder]

She is extremely private, slow to trust and so politely, but emphatically declines.

[silent thunder]

could be advantageous! 

I have been mulling this over.

Could be an advantage as I know I feast on my dream images and visualizations like a glutton at table full of pork.

[dwai]

A philosopher sage friend of mine, used to teach philosophy at Stony Brook in NY. He described a scenario where when talking to one of his students he asked "what does the word mother evoke in your mind"? She replied "the word - Mother". She did not visualize her mother, a motherly figure or even a woman! Just the word - Mother.

 

According to him, this can also be culturally based.  His website covers this topic -- 

 

http://www.biocultural.org/biocultures.html

 

http://www.infinityfoundation.com/mandala/i_es/i_es_denic_neural_frameset.htm

 

 

I remember a student of mine who approached me after class to question what she called the interpretation of the people of the Rig Veda ( 2500 B.C.). According to her, I had to be wrong for she could not conceive how people could see images with the brain, much less make them. I tried to explain to her that images are something everyone has or makes. For instance, I asked her, what is your image of your own mother when you are not with her and I ask you, as now, about her? Her answer was:

"The only image of my mother I carry with me is m-o-t-h-e-r." Spelling was as far as her brain could imagine. I found this example subsequently repeated by other young people.

Edited May 10, 2017 by dwai

[silent thunder]

is it a left brain, right brain thing?

 

She says she's still very attached to the process so it's not like she's free of the attachment/aversion thing.

 

She just always comes back to this phrase... I don't see things, or hear them... I feel them.  I sense them.. I just know them.

[silent thunder]

This knowingness vs object subject observation of a virtual 'thing'.

 

very curious.

[Zhongyongdaoist]

The condition is not as unusual as you think, nor is it technically a problem with the "third eye", but rather a habitual suppression of the visual part of the brains natural "image stream".  While I had noticed that there did seem to be such a stream much earlier, it was confirmed by reading a book called Your Limitless Inventing Machine by Win Wenger, in the mid to late Seventies.  On the Dao Bums thelerner posted an excerpt from some of Wenger's material here:

 

Image Streaming

 

and I posted a link to his site:

 

Project Renaissance

 

The title of the opening thread in my PPF, Zhonyongdaoist's Limitless Mischief Machine, is, as I point out, a sly reference to Wenger's work mentioned above.

 

You might wish to take a look at what thelerner posted and then Wenger's site, I think it will help you understand what is going on, and even give you techniques for recovering your wife's natural image stream and developing a faculty for visualization should that be something she wants to do.

[C T]

I have been mulling this over.

Could be an advantage as I know I feast on my dream images and visualizations like a glutton at table full of pork.

[Brian]

I don't visualize, either -- except in dreams, which are entirely robust and sensually complete. I intuit things and I construct language-based models. (It is possible, of course, that my dreams are language-based models, too...)

 

Much of my "waketime" sensory perception is language or cognitive oriented, too ("now that you mention it, I do smell something burning..." -- that sort of thing).

 

Jeff, you are welcome to check in and tell me what you find.

 

EDIT; Probably worth mentioning that I generally observe emotions rather than experiencing them (a "yeah, I guess I do feel kinda sad -- how curious" sort of thing)

 

EDIT 2: I should also mention that my emotional awareness has been slowly increasing in conjunction with my expanding awareness of "self" (pick a word). Kinda like I found a volume knob set on "1" and have learned to selectively turn it up to "2" or "3."

Edited May 10, 2017 by Brian

[Jeff]

I don't visualize, either -- except in dreams, which are entirely robust and sensually complete. I intuit things and I construct language-based models. (It is possible, of course, that my dreams are language-based models, too...)

 

Much of my "waketime" sensory perception is language or cognitive oriented, too ("now that you mention it, I do smell something burning..." -- that sort of thing).

 

Jeff, you are welcome to check in and tell me what you find.

 

EDIT; Probably worth mentioning that I generally observe emotions rather than experiencing them (a "yeah, I guess I do feel kinda sad -- how curious" sort of thing)

 

EDIT 2: I should also mention that my emotional awareness has been slowly increasing in conjunction with my expanding awareness of "self" (pick a word). Kinda like I found a volume knob set on "1" and have learned to selectively turn it up to "2" or "3."

 

 

Checking on you I found that you have high levels of energy flow at the crown.  In your case it is probably just that the flow is so great that it is hard to form such mental conceptions.  Think of it like you are flowing in a fast moving river, and do that broader (local) mind imagining you need to be closer to the shoreline with a little bay.

 

If you ever want to try any experiments on it, just let me know.

[liminal_luke]

Whether or not it´s advantageous I don´t know, but it´s for sure interesting.  I´m wondering if her feeling sense is especially acute, in the same way that some blind people are extraordinarily sensitive to sound?

[Brian]

Checking on you I found that you have high levels of energy flow at the crown. In your case it is probably just that the flow is so great that it is hard to form such mental conceptions. Think of it like you are flowing in a fast moving river, and do that broader (local) mind imagining you need to be closer to the shoreline with a little bay.

 

If you ever want to try any experiments on it, just let me know.

Very interesting.

 

Thank you, Jeff!

[Brian]

Whether or not it´s advantageous I don´t know, but it´s for sure interesting. I´m wondering if her feeling sense is especially acute, in the same way that some blind people are extraordinarily sensitive to sound?

I can tell you that mine is not. None of my physical senses are particularly acute. Shen rules, I guess? Or something...

[Aetherous]

Funny, I had the same conversation with an ex-girlfriend once while we were seeing each other. She didn't ever visualize or picture things, but when imagining things she would pay attention to words. So I guess if we told her to imagine a pine tree, she would just think of the words "pine tree" but not actually see one.

 

Dear Women Bums...are you able to picture images in your mind? Is this a gender difference thing?

[allinone]

i can't vizualize too from scratch, there is no third eye. i evoke real thing what i have seen or dreamed before, so if i want to image red pall then i need to remember where(place) i have seen it before and take it from there.

 

maybe there is other possibilities but currently at this moment don't know, as seen the knowledge is also remembered trying to squeeze it out.

[Cybele]

On 5/10/2017 at 4:13 PM, Aetherous said:

Funny, I had the same conversation with an ex-girlfriend once while we were seeing each other. She didn't ever visualize or picture things, but when imagining things she would pay attention to words. So I guess if we told her to imagine a pine tree, she would just think of the words "pine tree" but not actually see one.

 

Dear Women Bums...are you able to picture images in your mind? Is this a gender difference thing?

 

This is an interesting thread! It would never have occurred to me that there are people who cannot see things in their mind's eye. Speaking as a female (but not for all females) I can most certainly see images in my mind - entire worlds, in fact. I've had numerous conversations with women (and men) after group meditations and other sundry gatherings where we discussed what we 'saw', and it was very clear that they were also seeing images.

 

I don't think it's a gender thing...

[Taomeow]

On 5/10/2017 at 1:13 PM, Aetherous said:

Funny, I had the same conversation with an ex-girlfriend once while we were seeing each other. She didn't ever visualize or picture things, but when imagining things she would pay attention to words. So I guess if we told her to imagine a pine tree, she would just think of the words "pine tree" but not actually see one.

 

Dear Women Bums...are you able to picture images in your mind? Is this a gender difference thing?

 

1. Yes.  2. It is to an extent, statistically speaking.  With some interesting peculiarities.  It has been found that on average men are better at visualizing than women (a statistical difference that can disappear if you compare random individuals), except during the time in the woman's monthly cycle right before her period, when her female hormones are at the lowest.  This makes a lot of sense to me, because female hormones tend to take her out of her head and ground her in the (whole) body, while visualizing stuff is an in-the-head endeavor (except of course in trained cultivators, but that's a different subject).

 

This is a trainable skill (in both genders).  I know because I went from zero to hero years ago when I decided I needed to learn to visualize.  I.e. I had to start with very simple objects and by now I can visualize in higher-than-3-D spaces.  I can visualize a tesseract, or a 4D Minkowski space which is a bit more complex than Euclidean, or do arcane taoist alchemical work where you have to keep your inner visual awareness on (sometimes) a dozen moving points/processes all at once.  However, when I just started, all I did was follow very simple instructions from a book.  Took me a while to visualize an ordinary white egg.  But then I gave it polka dots.  Then let it sprout chicken legs, and made it dance.  Then I came across a book on raja yoga and learned some Hindu visualizations.  It was a lot easier from that point on.       

 

Edited May 20, 2017 by Taomeow

[Spotless]

One of the post profound clairvoyants I have know explained to me several years into knowing him quite well that he did not see any pictures - zip. It was nearly inconceivable given what he "saw".

He explained that he did it all from "knowing" and "certainty".

 

I have taught people who do not see pictures well to start by imagining things they love - like a car or a food or a place - to recognize that many of them do see but have not transferred the ability to regular use. It can be learned by many and certainly honed and increased exponentially.

 

it is not a "third eye" ability - but it transfers to this and it was surprising to even conceive of the concept of no visuals in the mind.

[Apech]

I used to have a friend who told me they could not see any images in their mind.  She had to build images with words, describe them to herself.  I was quite amazed when I found this out because I visualise quite strongly.  It's not all head stuff either - I find that images spring from different places - for instance images which spring from the heart centre are fully formed and have a life and energy of their own, images which spring from the LDT are shockingly direct - like real things - while head generated images are more abstract.

[cheya]

When younger, I read a lot of fiction, and could actually see the story. When asked if I had seen a movie of the book, I would not be sure until I saw an image from the movie.... and then I would realize "nope, not my movie. Must have just read the book."

[dwai]

Third eye imagery is different from mental imagery though, in my mind experience. Mental imagery has to be evoked, 3rd eye imagery appear, as they are not imaginary.

 

thoughts? 

[Jeff]

7 minutes ago, dwai said:

Third eye imagery is different from mental imagery though, in my mind experience. Mental imagery has to be evoked, 3rd eye imagery appear, as they are not imaginary.

 

thoughts? 

 

I am not saying that there are not such things, but how do you know that it is not simply your subconscious mind making up mental imagery? At the level of conscious mind, it would just appear to you.

[Taomeow]

1 minute ago, dwai said:

Third eye imagery is different from mental imagery though, in my mind experience. Mental imagery has to be evoked, 3rd eye imagery appear, as they are not imaginary.

 

thoughts? 

 

In taoist subtle anatomy several structures are involved that would roughly correspond to the concept of the "third eye."  In cultivation they are activated in an orderly fashion and in sequence.  Some of them, however, can get active spontaneously and out of sequence in some people...  some, in many people.  E.g., we have subtle organs in the brain known as "slanted mirrors," which for all purposes might overlap with modern science's recent discovery of the "mirror neurons" (same location in the brain), and these can and do work with images that can be both -- real and imaginary.  You can empathize with a book character, "mirroring" his or her emotions if they are accurately and artfully created by the author.  Just recently I came across a previously unpublished poem by a great (and my favorite) Russian poet, about a cat.  It made me cry.  I don't cry easily from imaginary things, I'm not sentimental.  But that poem-derived cat materialized, became tangible, and stayed with me for a long time.  I could feel his paws go numb with the bitter cold of winter, I could feel how weak and unloved and hungry and...  oh no, I'll cry again.  That's the "third everything" getting activated.  Real or not?..  You decide.