Hi guys,

I too have had this experience, though only once.
I was lying in my sofa with a slight hangover. My mind drifted freely from thought to thought when I realized I could see my room... With my eyes still closed. There where no colors, eveything was in black and white.

I thoght to myself that maybe I'm dreaming, so I opened my eyes to check... And there was my room. I closed my eyes and there was my room again, from the same angle and everything. So I did that a couple of times and the only differens was the color. I could look around with no problem and I thoght to myself that this is realy weird but after five or ten minutes I fell asleep.

I regret that I didn't try to stand up and walk around. I don't think it was a dream because I've never been able to control my dreams like that, and I've never had a dream where I was lying in my sofa looking at my room for five minutes.

So, there it is. What do you think. Weird huh.

Btw, I'm from sweden if that makes a difference. :-)

While we are on this subject I have a question for you guys. When I lay down to sleep and close my eyes acouple minutes later I see myself using my labtop computer. Then after acouple minutes I make myself snap out of it and open my eyes and my labtop isnt even on and my room is completely dark. I doesnt happen that very often but when it does it scares the #### out of me. Its like im looking up things on the computer and then I force myself to open my eyes and the room is dark and im laying there thinking WTF just happened. Any Ideas?

I'd like to know which direction each of you were facing if you were sitting, or if you were lying down which direction was your head aimed at and which direction your feet were aimed at? Also the state and/or country you live in, also your blood type if you know it and the color of your eyes, and if you wear glasses or not and are you near sighted or far sighted by any chance?

Your stories are very intriguing, especially the fact that most of you have suddenly had this happen to you, instead of it happening most of your lives. There must be something that triggers this bizzare seeing ability that all of you have accidentally stumbled upon and we should try to pin point what it is that is causing this sudden bizzare ability to see your surroundings when your eyes are closed. Maybe all of you might be able to experience it more often and be able to discover something important.

Did your experiences take place in the evenings only? Next time it happens please write down the exact date and time it occurs and put it in this post. There must be a connection here amoungst all of you, for all of you to have experienced such a strange occurance. What kind of fabric and fabric colors were you wearing? What is the color of the room you were in when it occured? What was the weather like at that specific time? The Phase of the Moon can be ascertained by the dates you supply in the future.

I'm interested in finding out what the common link is between all of you that lets you obtain such fantastic visual oportunities. I hope all of you are interested in finding it out also, because if you can figure out why you can do it at specific times, you might be able to use it for things we don't know about yet. You might be able to teach it to others in the future. Stars for all of you.

Hi this is my first post on ATS; I have been on here as a guest reading for the last few months and i bloody love this place, spending my lunch at work reading then getting home reading the last few month have just been about ATS and time has flown.
I want to try this it sounds interesting, this will be my first thing I have tried with the mind.
So what’s the environment like you are doing it in? Quiet or do you have music playing?
Cheers :-)

Last week, I had an experience where I was taking in my surroundings with my eyes closed. As I began to drift off, I began thinking, why can't I keep my eyes shut, but then I realized they were shut. It sort of startled me, and lead me here. I am a high school student who plans to go on to do theatre, and at the half day art school I attend, we do movement and yoga on Fridays. Today, we were doing heavy relaxation exercises and I went into a dreamlike state, but was still completely aware of my surroundings and it was like I was in two places at once. Can anyone shed some light on this for me and give me any way to further my abilities I've recently discovered?

There was a book written some years ago by the name of "Eyeless Sight" (at least I think that was the title). The guy (a Frenchman if I remember correctly) wrote a book about what he went through to develop the ability.

Basically he said that certain portions of skin have the ability to pull in light and process it...like your forehead, the forearms, and the neck. The interesting bit was that he tried all sorts of ways to produce the affect but he finally found that it was a calm, inner sense that produced the ability.

I've tried it...never had any success.

This happens to me, but I know that it's not any kind of visual retention or residual vision because what I see when my eyes are closed is not my immediate surroundings or the room that I'm in.

Every once in a while, I will see some places that I recognize, like some friend or relative's house. I recognize these places because I've been there at some point in the past, maybe even years ago, but I still know the place that I'm seeing because at some point I was there before.

But usually, probably 9.9 times out of 10, what I tend to see are distant places, and mostly they are places that I don't recognize, places I've never been, so I don't know where they are. lol

I don't take any medications, so it's not any kind of a medication reaction. And it always happens when I am totally relaxed, either sitting quietly and meditating or just before I drift off to sleep at night.

It used to be that, as soon as I would start "seeing" some other place like this, I guess it would surprise me and as soon as I'd say to myself something like, "wow, look at this, what is this place I'm seeing here?!" That's when I'd abruptly snap out of it and stop seeing whatever I was seeing. With practice though, I've been getting it to the point that I can hold it in my vision a lot longer than I used to.

I sure I knew what this is and why it happens. I don't know what causes it, but it sure is intriguing when it does happen.

This happened to me just this morning... i stumbled accross this post just by pure chance im never in this section. I lay in bed early about 7am first light.. I woke up by my phone ringing so i cancelled the call and lay back down.. I lay there for a second and realised I could see with my eyes closed.. I know i was not dreaming because i was able to think wow 'I can see with my eyes closed this is crazy.. I was drifting off because i was asleep soon after but I know it was a concious tought. Everything was visable in my room but a kind of blueish hue The same colour as the light outside, I have no blinds in my window and there was a huge full moon just outside. There no full moon tonight. I could look around but did not try to move my body.

First off I apologize, I know I should take the time to read all the posts and get a good idea of everyone's input before I put my two cents in.

OK, so having said that, here's what I think about what you're describing.

It helps if you have a basic understanding of how the eyes and sight itself function. It goes something like this, light hits your eyes and the retina converts the light into an electrical impulse that is transmitted down the optical nerve to a part of your brain known as the visual cortex. The visual cortex receives these electrical impulses or messages from the eyes and inturprets them, and tells us what we are seeing. This is just a basic, very basic breakdown of sight, there's a lot of complicated stuff that goes on between the eyes and the visual cortex but you get the basic idea, the basic idea being that the visual cortex is critical to sight. This is bound to be difficult for most people to understand because all this stuff happens 'out of sight'. For most people they think that the most critical thing in eyesight is the eye itself. Until one experiences a sever psychedelic hallucination, this kind of thinking is logical. I mean, cut the eyes out of the equation and logically speaking you would think that no eye, no electric impulse, no visual image in the visual cortex. But if you've ever experienced a psychedelic hallucination you'll know that some times the visual cortex doesn't always see whats in front of the eyes. Sometimes the visual cortex goes berserk and we see things that aren't actually there. Or sometimes the visual cortex gets its input from a source other than the optical nerve. Input from the ear is transmitted into the visual cortex, The visual cortex will take this information and inturpret it visually, which results in one seeing the color of a sound. Experiences like this show you that you don't neccessarily need the eyes to see. Take for example dreaming. Yes, in REM sleep your eyes are moving but the eyes are closed and there is no sight perse in the strict sense of the eyes taking in light, and images appearing in your visual cortex. Now I'm sort of getting in over my head here as I don't really know the scientific explaination for dreaming so I'll leave it here.

Some other people mentioned seeing with the astral eyes. Yes, good point and most likely the explination to all this. But once again, this is just another instance of the visual cortex receiving input from a source other than the eye. Which results in one seeing without the eyes or seeing with the eyes closed.

It happens to me alot also, I usually find myself walking down lonely roads I don't recognize. It's usually an enjoyable experience, till I realize what I am doing.
The first experiences of this weren't so enjoyable though. They started after my mom died. I started seeing faces of men and women that seems to be dressed in a manner that would suggest they were from the past. Then I was looking through some of the old pictures that my mom had, and recognized some of the faces. I really don't have no idea what that one was all about...
if anyone would care to take a guess?

Yeah had this quite often and found this thread useful. Mainly that's to do with fact about meditation. I haven't for a while, but this except for a couple of time when drunk is when it happened.

The ting I have though is I was never able top do it anywhere where I didn't already know. I know when I used to mediate tat would be in a comfortable environment so usually a well known spot at home. When drunk once I walked for a very long time with my eyes closed and opened them and knew where I would be. Every corner was taken at the right time etc. So I do think this is a memory thing.

To test this I did a few courses on Mario Kart Wii of all things with my eyes shut. I got points on each one on online races. Sad I know but I did it as a test and to impress my kids who laughed at me.


The other thing I've had for a long, long time that I never come across is when I close my eyes I see images in very vivid detail but almost in negative but if long enough become almost colour. These are images I have no idea of in my life so cannot explain them. I guess they are probably from dreams I don't remember or for the countless images our eyes see on a daily basis that we don't even register. These are strange though as they are so clear and vivid. But I guess easily explainable too.

[edit on 19-2-2010 by The Teller]