Do you "see" or "hear" when you think and/or dream?

Interesting topic! I visualize numbers and letters and scenes exactly like you presented. I also dream very vividly, except for the sense of smell, my other senses seem to become super acute. Emotions and the sense of 'atmosphere' are heightened to an almost ridiculous degree, which I think is a sign of some form of mental problem since while awake, I usually feel very bland and dull, almost emotionless.

I find the coloring of letters most interesting, I don't have synesthesia in the literal sense, but I do assign colors to each letter and number. Hard to explain, but when I see a number or a letter, I see a 'flash' of color in my minds eye, sequences and words appear as a gradient or mix of the individual colors. My favourite numbers, 6 and 9 also correspond to my favourite colors aswell, 6 appears as an electrical, vibrant shade of blue, like the current ATS background, while 9 is a deep violet. Mixed (69 ), they form a beautiful, tranquil gradient.

I've tried to figure why this happens, I presume it's a memory related thing. Tying abstract symbols to something more familiar and intuitive like colors. One possibility, remember the alphabet books? I recall they often had the letters uniquely colored, hmm...

Would be interesting to know how many people experience this too.

You can't read when you dream. Just thought I'd throw that in. And I've had some rediculous dreams.

More effective to activate visual don't think about number 3 driving car in red garden.

reply to post by zonetripper2065


Oddly enough, I thought of the color green as well. I had to stop and think about visualizing the number three to actually see the number in my head though.

I also think in words inside my head when I'm uh, thinking , and I've wondered if other people do as well.

www.synesthesiatest.org...

I thought I was insane...but I guess there is a name for what I do....and what a lot of ya'll are talking about

I have personalities for numbers and to a smaller extent, letters.....weird....didn't know there was a name for that....I just thought I got hit in the head one too many times as a kid.....

Peace, Ya'll!

d(-_-)b

Originally posted by Speckle
You can't read when you dream. Just thought I'd throw that in. And I've had some rediculous dreams.

Hah yeah, it's pretty damn annoying. I've been able to make some things out while lucid dreaming, like a STOP sign or similar short words, but reading sentences get's frustrating very quickly, words and letters jumping around and changing, or if the words manage to make sense the sentence itself is complete gibberish. Clocks are ridiculous too, arms point to 12, turn away for a second and look back, either the clock is gone or the time has changed. Digital clocks are even more fubar, numbers morph into weird alien symbols.

Very interesting OP!

I relate to your description of using your imagination to see in the minds eye. I have an uncanny sense of knowing where things are 99% of the time, even if I have not looked at it in years. I also hear and see as in clairvoyance/ clairaudience. That has taken me many years of practice using energy and aura fields during meditation and Healing Touch Practice through my work, which is very similar to Reiki.

Lucid dreaming I have done since I was a very young child. I think most people are born with the ability to tap into the divine force through practice and intention.

We are all interconnected into a web of energy and information......Sometimes people who are living in the lower realms of Maslows Hierarchy have trouble climbing the ladder to self actualization because they are so troubled by lower levels necessary for survival.....Sometimes people who are living in the lower realms of Maslows Hierarchy have trouble climbing the ladder to self actualization because they are so troubled by lower levels necessary for survival.....

So cool a topic !
Does anyone else feel like their dreams are so very real that it almost surpasses how real life is?
I've had some deeply emotional dreams. So much so , that I was left in a state of near shock for
days over something that never really happened. So much pain that I could not imagine ever
feeling that much pain in waking life . Anyone else?

Lately I have had very different dreams like going from VHS too full on HD.

They do not happen as often as I would like but the clarity is unreal. I mean I usually could tell I was dreaming and have had lucid dreams where I am aware. But they were how would I say more grainy. But now I have had like a dreaming upgrade to see them in a more crystal clearness I did not have before.

I have thought of bring this up or asking if anyone else has had a dream state change...

It would not surprise me if your friend has never been into reading books for fun and you have. Research has shown that reading while you are growing up greatly increases your ability to relate to others, understand where other people come from in conversations and actions. It also helps with compassion as well as curbing selfishness. Children who spent a lot of time roll playing when young also see these effects, by learning how to put themselves in others shoes. It would not surprise me if reading lots of books enhances the ability to have complex and vivid dreams. I sometimes wake up with a whole orchestra playing in the background of my dreams and am completely surprised by the silence in my room. That is only the background to other very complex scenarios that I am dreaming to. I wake up almost every day with a different song in my head, and some dreams are such complex story lines, they are designed just like as if they were an epic fiction novel. I wake up and cannot believe that my head is creating such things subconsciously. If I could create stories like this while awake I would be a rich man.

reply to post by Sci-Fi_entist
Star for you for being able to fly in your dreams! I can't do it yet!


reply to post by almeister 5000
Starred and I think you just need to keep practicing. I never tried to control what I think, until a few years ago. I think your subconcious takes over what you are "seeing", until you put the effort into changing it.


reply to post by Jumbles
Starred. I am much like your friend, I am very visual in my head. Even voices over the radio, I have an immediate perception of what I would "think" they would look like.


reply to post by pasiphae
I also have conversations with myself in my head. When I am reading, if I slow down, I "hear" all the words I reading in my head. The words are always followed by a visualization of some sort, though.


reply to post by Cornczech
Assigning personalities to numbers, letters, months and days seem like a pretty normal aspect of Synthesia. Personification, If I am remebering correctly. I do not do this. But like I have previously mentioned, even if I were to assign a personality to the object, I would immediately change it into something else, or even immediately view it's counterpart.

Part of my OCD is pairing. Everything has to be paired, in even numbers. Odd numbers look off to me, and when I was younger I would interpret odd numbers as as "sad" because they have no partner.


reply to post by maryhinge
I always wake up before I die in my dream, very interesting!


reply to post by Kryom
That is something to ponder, as my numbers can be said to resembel the "alphabet book" style.

My words and letters do not. I view them in black, sometimes print, sometimes cursive. The words are written out in my head as I spell them, or read them.


reply to post by Speckle
Oh, how I wished I would have read this last night! I will try to read in my next dream!

I can visualize things pretty well all the time. I dont dream as much as I used to, and, after some incidents, they are usually about the same thing, so I dont seem to have "random" dreams anymore. The are usually not enjoyable. Sometimes I do get the occasional dream about UFOs, and those always excite me, I would throw them in the good basket.
When I was young, my dreams were common, very lucid, I clearly remember feeling like some movie director, being able to change and edit nearly any aspect of the dream.
In my teen years, I had a lot of dreams about flying, and breathing underwater. They both felt awesome, the flying one felt like I was exerting a lot of force through my hands. The other, would start by drowning, and when I would submit to it, I could just breathe in the water with no pain. I miss those.

reply to post by smashdem
Oh! You have reminded of those dreams! I haven't had very many, and they have been a few years ago.

The dream would always be me being submerged into water. I remember holding my breath in the dream and being fearful of the liquid getting in my lungs. The person in my dream kept telling me, "You can breath, just breath." I remember sometimes i would start to gasp and it would wake me up.

But in other dreams, I would start to breath underwater and would be able to go anywhere in the "Liquid".

I had long forgotten about those, but they were amazing dreams!

reply to post by Basilis


Its nuts right

reply to post by NaeBabii

I tend to have more practice dreams even though I have quite an imagination and consider myself an outside of the box thinker. I get mad when have dreams about work. My wife has crazy dreams about suns melting and floods, my dream world is pretty boring. The below two dreams are some of the highlights that I thought relevant.

Seeing Dream.

Believe it or not I had a dream last night that allowed me to control my focus.

I'm golfing. I'm standing on the tee box trying to figure out where the hole is. I can only see a portion of the green through the branches of trees that line the fairway.

I remember squinting my eyes to see if I could make out the location of the flag. My eyes went blurry trying to focus. I was determined so I told myself to focus. I then, like zooming in on an image with my Ipad was able to zoom in past one tree.

I couldn't see clear at first but I focused and was able to make it clear. Once it was clear I would zoom in again and get past another set of trees, re- focusing each time until I got past the tree branches to a place where I could see the green.

In fact I zoomed too close and had to pull back my focus to see the entire green. I was able to see the detail of the hole with the white cup and the color of the flag was red. It was like I had super human focusing powers. It was all in 3D too so the branches zooming by was awesome.

I don't have interactive dreams like this too often, it was pretty cool.

For those that don't golf, visualization is an important part of the mental aspects of the game. To be able to see your target is important.

Hearing Dream

I have also had dreams with music like a soundtrack that accompanied it. (Alice in Chains, Man in the Box). In the dream I was in a gun battle in the balcony of an old theater. I had no gun.

Thanks for your thoughtful post.

Love this thread Nae

Memories and anything else I visualise are all coloured pictures and movies and the same with dreams....I've wondered myself loads of times what others 'see' but I've never asked anyone else about it and could never have explained it as well as you did, nice one

I'm going to start asking some people your question about the number 3, see what they come up with.... Should be interesting, I can't wait to start actually...! When I thought of 3 I pictured a turquoise number 3 with a green background in a picture frame...

For me, I always pictured the days of the week and months of the year as a scrolling picture viewed from above & from the north west, with anything like doctors appointments and parties written in smaller written beside... It's awesome, I don't need a diary or calendar Anyone else view our days in this way I wonder...?

reply to post by NaeBabii


I'm not really good at being creative or imagining complex things, I've always been a simple being, simple thoughts, simple words, simple sentence structure... I'm not sure if that has anything to do with my IQ level... who knows. I can see my thoughts but they are... I wouldn't say hazy... they are clear... but it's almost as if i see them in the distance if that makes sense? I can see the number 3 and I can change it but it doesnt happen like I'm watching a video, it happens in still images. When you said think of a garden, I seen a clear in colour picture of my back garden that I had in the house before the flat I live in now.

I do alot of meditating and when I'm in that state it's like my brain power is increased ten fold, I start to see clear images at the front of my mind rather than in the distance, it sort of kick starts my creativeness, I get lost in it all as it slowly turns into a semi lucid dream where I can see, hear, smell etc and they also play like a video, not still images, oh and they are in colour! So I guess I have a mixture of both.

There was something else I was going to add but can't remember what it was just now haha, I'll add it in later if it comes back to me.

Peace.

Remembered! I very rarely have supernatural dreams where like I've got superpowers or I can fly... dreams like that only happen the morning after I've been drinking alcohol (Makes me lucid dream like crazy after the 4-5 hour period of blackout sleep). When I dream during a normal non drinking nights sleep my dreams are usually boring and mimic things from real life .


I've been meditating for about 2 years now and because of that, I find it fairly easy to "turn off" my internal dialogue, and just observe the images that come into my mind. If you have trouble sleeping because of your thought patterns and things you might want to try out meditating with your earphones in listening to binaural beats or isochronic tones (isochronic tones are stronger but for some reason binaural beats work better for me). Binaural or isochronic in the key of Theta are good for putting you into a deep relaxed sleep!

Here's something I'd like to hear others comments on. Something that I have experienced, when I do it's always in the morning just as I'm waking but not fully awake yet. I suspect a specific part of the brain is at work and it's brought to the fore or made more noticable or less obscured before full awakening and other parts of the brain have kicked in. The best short description I could give it would be a rapid idea generator. That sounds quite wierd as I read it back lol. Imagine a flick book but blank, that you could rapidly flick in any direction at will and on each page could be some image/thought/concept/idea. There is some control and some level of association linking the content of the pages but the content can be extremely random and bizzarre.

It feels like it's the part of the brain that normally takes input from the senses and then visual versions of content, ideas, views, opinions are generated on a sub conscious level to be then taken on by the conscious thinking mind. Whilst awake we just take these views as our normal daily reality. Whilst semi conscious or just starting to wake and the "thinking/chattering mind" hasn't yet kicked in to obscure (or make "sense" of) this background generator it has no "normal" sensory input and feeds itself like it's in some self sustaining concept version of chinese whispers producing very random and bizzare visions in the mind. I'd actually be interested to see brain scans while this is happening because it must be a specific brain region. What's most remarkable about it is the rapidity and randomness of it.

reply to post by JustLikeSuperman
I appreciate your thoughts!

I am not sure this has anything to do with my IQ, but I have found this is extremely helpful in spelling, grammar and writing. It also wonderful while reading to see characters and situations in my head. It also makes listening to radio talk shows even more interesting.

I have tried to do Hypnosis/Past Life Regression and I think the fact that I imagine so much in detail, that it interferes with trying to Hypnotize me. When the person was trying to hypnotize me, they were given me specific things to think about and visualize.

They would say "Imagine you opened the door to the house." I would imagine the door being opened, and I would see all the furniture in the house to only have them say, "Now imagine the house is empty." I would then have to change the scenery in my mind to match what he said. I think that interferes with the process.

I have asked several people in my family the same questions I have asked you. While one was a normal response, similar to mine, the answer my brother gave was quite strange.

When asked what he "sees" when I say the number 3, he said "I know this sounds weird, but I see a number three in my head with googly eyes on top of it." Now, I wonder what that means?! Would that be a type of personification?

He also said that sometimes he can be thinking of an object and it will be projected in front of him where he can see it with his eyes, similar to that of a hologram.

I thought he was just messing with me at first, until I did some more research on Synthesia. It seems there can be a projection type. Has anyone else experienced this?

reply to post by NaeBabii


When I was on holiday in 2006 A "professional" tried to hypnotise me, my best friend and a bunch of other people on stage for a show and it point blank did not work on me and my friend. Everyone else on stage was going loopy though and actually doing all this crazy stuff the guy was telling them to do which me and my friend found weird cause we were lookin at each other whispering why arn't we doing what everyone else is doing? haha. I have always been strong willed and very "awake" and due to the things I talk about in day to day life it helped my friend to "wake up" aswell. I then later noticed on this site that most people here cannot be hypnotized because they are too strong willed and that is what brought them to this website in the first place because following the sheeple just isn't a good enough existence for us! :].

As for visualising the 3 with eyes on it, it kind of reminds me of something a kid would draw when they are learning to count to ten... not saying your brother is a kid or anything lol.. just i remember in primary school my teacher would make us draw out the numbers in bubble writting and decorate them sort of thing... maybe something like that is influencing your brother to visualise the eyes on the number 3?