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Seeing With Closed Eyes

Dingo667

Dingo667

Gone But Not Forgotten
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I've had this for a while now but thought it was some kind of illusion or something and therefore never told anyone. Until recently a very good friend of ours told me exactly the same thing. So I thought it may be worth mentioning and seeing if anyone else had a similar experience.

Basically when I lie in bed with my eyes closed (very dark room, curtains drawn). Sometimes I can see the surroundings, everything, wardrobes, chairs, the door etc. I am fully awake as I am trying to look around in amazement. Everything sort of looks as if seen through a night vision camara, detailed but not in colour. It is very strange and just before there is a kind of feeling of lightness in my head.
As I said, our friend told me first and he has the exact experience.

I have studied Neuroscience and come across a wide variety of strange phenomena but this is even new to me.

Anybody else out there with x-ray eyes???
 
I think I know whatcha mean.

I do thissometimes, and I just experimented with it a few times, with the curtains closed in our gloomy attic.

I can see thinks, but I have to have been looking atthem pretty intensley, and the image is sort of grainy and "black and white". It also fades after about 10seconds, and is very "night vision googles/camera".

I imagine that its just after-image/retina burn. At least in my case.
 
I have experienced this very thing a number of times.

It isn't the result of images being burnt on to the retina, as they image is not constant - you can still look around your environment in a fully 3d perspective.

However, and here's the spoiler, if I open my eyes the scene is not quite the same - a chair is in a slightly different place, there's a towel over the wardrobe, that sort of thing. I think it's a trick of an overly tired mind - but it is a cool trick.
 
I work in photo darkrooms a lot -- not just the type with a safe light, but pure pitch dark for color processing and film handling. I always work with my eyes open, as I am worried about light leaks fogging my film or paper. There are times when I am working that I am certain that I can see the dakroom, but I know that I cannot because it is completely sealed off from light. I believe I have an imprinted memory of the room, from working with the lights on, or stumbling/feeling around in the dark. This imprint, which manifests itself physically by eventually affording me the ability to wander around my darkrooms with out using the blindmans bluff style arms outstretched Frankenstyle walk, manifests itself visually be a ghosty image of what is there but I cant really see it. Does that make sense?
 
chicken_toast, that does make sense.

Our minds try to make sense of the data they're given; it's not surprising that they might fill a void of sensory data with something familiar, and if you know where you are, the image you'd expect to see were it light or where your eyes open would be the most likely image, I'd think.

But I'm not a scientist and I haven't had this experience myself.
 
AriahAcapah said:
I have experienced this very thing a number of times.

It isn't the result of images being burnt on to the retina, as they image is not constant - you can still look around your environment in a fully 3d perspective.

However, and here's the spoiler, if I open my eyes the scene is not quite the same - a chair is in a slightly different place, there's a towel over the wardrobe, that sort of thing. I think it's a trick of an overly tired mind - but it is a cool trick.
Click to expand...

...This is exactly it. Its not an afterburn of the image of my surroundings, as it sometimes happens quite a while into the night.
Reading all these experiences made me wonder, because before our mate mentioned it, I thought it never happend to anyone else. Now that I know it does, I can start thinking about scientific reasons (for the "trick"). It is a strange thing though when it happens. You can look around and it is just so weird.
 
Try this whilst lying in bed tonight....

Lay down in bed with curtains closed and lights off etc.

Then close your eyes and hold one finger about 5cm in front of your eyes and wave it side to side in front of each of your eyes (Unless your a cyclops which is useless for this experiment)

You can see your finger as if your eyes are open.

I think it's probably where you perceive things to be that causes these visions. It's most likely one of those things that humans used to do and have lost touch with over time. (More so for Sun readers)

Also, one other thing you can try whilst lying in bed.

Shut your eyes and relax, and on each hand put your thumb and forefinger together. Then apply pressure to one set of fingers only. If you get it right it feels as if the other hand is doing it as well.

Night night
 
Strange, I've been doing this too. When I do it though everything in the room is illuminated like it was mid day.
 
Hexebus said:
Try this whilst lying in bed tonight....

Lay down in bed with curtains closed and lights off etc.

Then close your eyes and hold one finger about 5cm in front of your eyes and wave it side to side in front of each of your eyes (Unless your a cyclops which is useless for this experiment)

You can see your finger as if your eyes are open.
Click to expand...

Yes, there is "Blindsight", when people loose vision within their visual field due to occipital lobe damage. These people can't make out anything but movement. They can't even see the movement, they report almost "feeling" it and can't explain it.
It is thought that this is due to our "ancient brain", the midbrain, having rudimentally kept the ability to "see" on the most basic level, like our ancestors (way back before the eye had evolved). Therefore it wouldn't matter if your occipital lobes are damaged, you could still have this "old way" of seeing without images. I think that explaines "seeing your finger in the dark".
However what I experience is slightly different but maybe linked to the same thing. I don't "feel" the furniture, I actually "see" them, including shapes, which people who experience blindsight can't make out.
But I guess its something along those lines anyway.
 
When I was a basic recruit in the USAF I had a bad migraine. They gave me a shot of some sort of sedative and had me lie down in a room with curtains dividing off little sections of it. After a while, feeling better I started watching the nurse who was moving around doing her nurse duties. She would straighten a blanket, look at a chart, etc...
Suddenly I realized I was lying face down into the pillow, no way I could see anything, but there was the room, like a black and white tv picture with a green tint. I could see everything going on.
I put it down to a drugged, migraine-addled state. So I turned my head and peeked out.
Everything was as I'd been watching. In a way it freaked me out, but I have developed a theory.
I know the electrical activity in the brain goes wild during a severe migraine, and the hospital doped me up. My mind seemed to have a larger 'zone of awareness' than it normally has. It was like my mind was as big as the room.
Strange, but very interesting. The human mind is still an amazing mystery.
 
I can do this! I mean sometimes see with my eyes closed in the dark. I've always put it down to my brain just 'knowing' what are the surroundings so it produces what you expect to see.

Funny though, I never thought to ask anyone else if it happens to them as well, so it's fascinating to find out that it might be common.
 
This has happened to me with considerable regularity; on occasion I have been able to navigate around and out of the room and into another (e.g. the WC) without opening my eyes. Usually it is a near-monochrome or infrared-camera-looking image as well. On one occasion it looked very strange, almost like a thermal imaging picture with false colour and such.

It can, in my experience, be triggered (rather than caused) by unusual fatigue. But there are other triggers as well. I am inclined to think a big trigger is an interesting combination of secondary and tertiary side effects of medications such as morphine, hydromorphone, fentanyl, the codeine-DHM/C semi-synthetic series, nicomorphine, and the like. It seems that they prolong and modify the process of falling asleep and that the closed-eye seeing phenomenon can take place at a given point in the process. The slow (oral, sublingual, and buccal) routes of administration are most conducive to this, as are the transdermal and other transmucosal routes for fentanyl, which further leads me to the following theory:

The medication keeps a certain intermediate level of declining consciousness going for much longer. This level is where seeing with closed eyes occurs.

Theoretically, sedatives & hypnotics, tranquillisers, and similar drugs could do it, but maybe not as well because the slow-down is more drawn out and more subtle on narcotics.

Additionally, maybe the Closed Eye Visual-like dynamic and other quasi- or semi-hallucinatory elements of the experience are helped by means of activation of delta (and maybe kappa) opioid receptors, and maybe NMDA receptors as well.
 
Can't say I've ever experienced the shut-eye-vision phenomena, but a couple of years ago when I was in school I felt/saw something very similar to this. I was leaving the school building. The road had a slight incline, and as I was walking up to my car I had the distinct impression that I was standing still next to it and facing downhill, facing the opposite direction I was walking (maybe 10-15 feet away from where I actually was). The feeling was very intense and disorienting! I put it down to a combination of fatigue and sense-memory, but it has stayed with me.

I also used to be able to self-hypnotize myself at bedtime, I would visualise a white owl flying above a forest and my arms would spontaneously rise, of their own accord, without my volition. Haven't tried this in many, many years.
 
'Mr Vain'

HI there

I think your the theory on the trigger sounds like your on the right track as I've experienced this at certain times ie. when, erm, lets say certain senses are heightend (and I'm not talking about drugs) :blush:

I see the image as the defined shape with a greenish fuzzy tinge with a fuzzy black background!

I've always thought its pretty cool.
 
Yeah ok, I give in. It was when my senses were "hightened"too. If that is the case with most people that have had that phenomenon maybe we are on to something here...
 
jay72 said:
I'll try Hexebus's experiment if I remember.

This thread reminds me of a story I heard years ago about some teacher or doctor or metaphysician in Mexico who taught all kinds of people to "see" with their hands and even their feet. So that people could even read using their hands. Not in a Braille fashion, by feeling the letters, but by sight, as if with their eyes, but through other parts of their body than their eyes.

I dunno, though. If it was so easy, then why isn't it taught to folks who really are blind?
Click to expand...

How did you get on with it?
 
Roald Dahl's tale about Henry Sugar learning to see with his eyes shut comes to mind here. This was achieved through ye olde ancient Indian meditation techniques which had to do with visualistation training in phases of increasing difficulty. I'm not sure whether Dahl researched this from Indian history, or just made it up, but it's a point of related interest nonetheless.
 
I used to have a lot of dreams similiar to that. Although (in the dream) my eyes were closed, I could still see what was going on...it wasn't as clear as normal sight (it was like someone had put a filter over it), but I could still see everything around me. I remember in one dream I read a book while doing it, and thought to myself "How on earth can I read this while my eyes are still closed?!"

Sadly I've yet to experience it in real life. Unless that's what my nightvision actually is :shock:
 
Nightvision

I've experienced this as well.

One time, I was even able to move my arms and "see" them drift into my field of vision. I was able to perceive the outline of my arm as a shimmering band of green, while the actual inside of the outline was black.

I can also at times see auras on people and objects, and I think this is a related thing.
 
i have to say ive been here too and its very odd...
most of the theories mentioned seem to fit though.
it cud be as simpel as ur eyes adjustin to the dark, if ya facin out...
however if ur not lookin at what ur seein, i dunno... imprinted memory.
humans can truly be part of things once they really know it, you cud be remembering ur room from 2 days ago before it was tidied.
if ya wanted to be lazy, ya cud put it down to the 3rd eye actin up...
afterall if ya seein things but ya aint seein it with ya 2
standard eyes, id say its ur mind openin up another...
for some reason.
 
Having linked this, I did some searching and it is interesting that there are more people than I thought who have experienced this. This Wiki article was quite an 'eye opener' [pun intended]:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-eye_hallucination

Below they listed what is 'not' a CEV [closed eye vison?]. It is very interesting that calm states and certain drugs bring it on.
 
I "saw" with my eyes when I had sleep paralysis, but I don't think it was real seeing and more like a sleeping hallucination.
 
Stage 1 I get the moment I close my eyes, and late at night when I'm tired I sometimes get, the pointillist effect with my eyes open, I've have the stage 2 effects from time to time, with no attempt at inducing or controlling them. The stage 3 effects I've had every night of my life as I'm trying to get to sleep. The stage 4 are pretty common too. I thought everyone experienced them..... :?
 
I get this too - had no idea it was so common. It only happens with me when I'm extremely over-tired - a state which also sometimes brings on an unpleasant bit of sleep paralysis.
 
Yep, I have experienced this too.(but apologies if i go over topics already placed here)

Just thought it was imagination based around a familar place.

But one night i had gone to bed early and left the landing light on. A few hours later i awoke, my eyes still closed. To my right i discerned a light. I turned alittle towards this light source - my eyes still shut. Strangley, i could see the bedrooom door with faint light coming through the gaps. The wallpaper, the carpet etc but all slightly fogged.

In my youth one of my friends told me to try staring at my hand, a foot away from your face in dim lighting. If you stare long enough, your hand begins to fade away revealing the scenery behind it. Ive tried this and it seems to work to a certain degree.

Has anyone tried the stare at your reflection with out blinking thing? Your image in the mirror slowly begins to deform, change and look frightening.

The same kind of result can be achieved with photographs - just stare at them without blinking and watch them animate.
 
Let's not forget that a goodly amount of light gets through closed eyelids. Thus most of us upon awakening with our eyes closed know immediately whether it is nighttime outside or daylight.

And as for sealed chambers supposedly devoid of light (such as photographic darkrooms), don't photons still penetrate? Some photons are said to penetrate the entirety of the Earth, so why would plaster and wood lathing pose a problem?
 
OldTimeRadio said:
Let's not forget that a goodly amount of light gets through closed eyelids. Thus most of us upon awakening with our eyes closed know immediately whether it is nighttime outside or daylight.
Click to expand...

If that is indeed the explanation to the phenomenon and it is so obvious, everyone who has experienced it is either very stupid [considering that for all other people in the world who must have the same experience, it is such a natural occurrence that it is not worth even putting on a forum], or they know the difference between 'light through lids' and 'something that seems strange'.
I'll go with the latter.
 
OldTimeRadio said:
Let's not forget that a goodly amount of light gets through closed eyelids. Thus most of us upon awakening with our eyes closed know immediately whether it is nighttime outside or daylight.

And as for sealed chambers supposedly devoid of light (such as photographic darkrooms), don't photons still penetrate? Some photons are said to penetrate the entirety of the Earth, so why would plaster and wood lathing pose a problem?
Click to expand...

OldTimeRadio I agree with you on the photon theory.
 
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