Idea from Pedro

pav I think the brain is an organ that is capable of sensing other things… in that case we have way more than 8 senses… sense of time is just one example of another sense.

I think a more useful question would be how can I better use my sense of insert sense here.

‘Smell’ fear like dogs?
‘Feel’ danger as humans already can (stare at someone, and they will feel it and look round)
‘Hear’ colours?

I had to put commas round those words, cos we have no other words for them (as far as I know).

Perhaps we can use our dreams to enhance our ability to use psychic powers… i.e. read peoples’ thoughts, feel the presence or communicate with a ghost, improve our intuition… but this is still of the unknown. I don’t even know if these abilities really do exist in human beings. I guess I’ll have to experiment around a bit. :wink:

Sureal, there’s actually people that can hear colors. When they see a certain color they hear a tone and so on. I read an article about it a few months ago. It can also happen with other senses.

It depends on how our brain interprets our senses. For example, feel could be made into (and is made into) two. Temperature and touch. (Or is pain seperate).

Also, can someone explain how to see extra colours. I want to try it but don’t know where to start. How do you see 4D vision as well?

I bet a lot of you guys watched the movie Waking Life. If you remember, a character in there who supposedly was a guide to lucidity said that he’s been working on 360 degree vision. I’d really love to try that in my LD… but sadly i dont get very many…

A tip: Light is in the electromagnetic spectrum. That is, there is a spectrum of colours, and if you go “off the scale” you reach infrared or ultraviolet.

In an LD, you could use a technique to increase your vision to these colours similar to the one you would usually use to grow an extra arm or turn into an elephant (and if you can’t do those, you should start with that!)

So you could say to yourself, “I will see infrared”. If it works, you will see this new colour over hot objects (light bulbs, people). Also, try shining a remote control into your eye.

You might say, “isn’t that just adding red to hot stuff?”. Well, if you can tell the difference between normal red and infra-red… it isn’t! Congratulations. :smile:

I remember once in meditation I experienced an new emotion I don’t have in normal life. Don’t ask me to describe it cos I can’t unfortunately.

There’s probably heaps of sensations or emotions that we haven’t or can’t experience. I don’t believe the human body can reproduce them all. Animals have some that we don’t (sonar for example) and we have some that they don’t.

synesthesia is the experience of hearing colors, tasting sounds, hearing colors… etc

drugs often induce this.

I was actually just thinking of this today in BIO class. Our brain has the ability to interpret the senses of touch, taste , smell, sight, and sound, and analyze it as sensory information. What makes us think that there is other senses that our brain cannot interpret. Think about it, if nobdy ever smelt anything they would never concive the sense of smell. Therefore, since we dont have experience with any other senses, they dont “exist.”

I just remembered. I had a very vivid HI one morning after waking up where I was moving through a sort of tunnel where the walls were made of rings of light. The rings were the most beautiful colours and I remember see the most amazing florescent red in some of them. This colour I have not seen in RL. I kid you not, I have seen reds but none like this.

Just for fun here’s some speculation. Lets say there is such a thing as reincarnation and in some of our past lives we have been other creatures or even aliens from other planets. Imagine in one life we are some kind of being that has probes on it’s head that can see and hear radio waves. This is their form of communication.

In waking life we can’t experience that but suppose that in the dream state without limitations to the body we can access that “memory” from our soul. What if we were creatures that lived and experienced the 4th dimension? Etc.

Just a thought.

About seeing different colours…

I think we should be very clear about the distinction between detecting different wavelengths and percieving different colours. Let me explain…

Some people can detect ultraviolet, something to do with not having a natural lens I think, as this blocks ultraviolet light.

Anyway if it does get through to the retina, UV stimulates mainly the blue cones, and appears as a bluey purple apparently. But obvuously this isn’t actually a new colour.

However I’ve heard of people having cones for 4 colours instead of the usual 3. I don’t know much about this, but our TVs and monitors synthesise colours by mixing red, green and blue, which looks fine to most of us but to people with the 4 colour system doesn’t match the colours of the world around them.

It would seem reasonable to assuem that these people do actually have a different range of colours that they can percieve. But I can’t imagine it.

Oh, and if there are any Terry Pratchett fans out there, can you imagine what octarine looks like?

So when you see a picture of ultra violet light you don’ think it is a different color? It looks diff to me. The inside it purplish the outside it blue and it is more solid than most lights.

Isn’t that, that UV lights give of purple and blue wave lengths as well. You can’t actualy see the UV light itself.

No, most people can’t see the UV. I suppose it would be possible to make a bulb which only emits ultraviolet… then you would see the filament heat up, but nothing else happening. Would be cool :smile:

Octarine is a greeny-purple. Don’t ask.

Detecting different wavelengths and percieving new colours is the same thing - if you can tell the difference between ultraviolet and violet. Then you are really percieving them as two different colours.

However, what may happen in a dream is that your brain maps this apparently “invented” colour to a certain shade of purple. Of course, you always know what’s going on in a dream - when you have enough control to add a new colour. So you can’t create a normal violet and an ultraviolet and test your skill to see them apart. They’re creations of your brain and you know which is which :sad:

How about interpreting all colors as integer values? Measured in TeraHerz or NanoMeter, I think. Red would be around 700, UV would be a whole lot more. That way, you can see all possible colors witht the help of interpreting them numerically. Just an idea.

Octarine? I know octarine only from Pratchett’s books, as a color of magic :happy:
If some people can perceive slightly wider range of spectrum (and there are some that hear ultrasonic) I think is that because of their limited physical senses or mind? If it’s because of organs, everyone can do it in dreams (and what are the limits…?) And if it’s because of brain (unlikely) you could train yourself in LD’s to widen your range!

Hi everyone. I’ve been wondering about the new color subject, and as far as I can tell, we are probably not capable of seeing any NEW colors. Blends, of course, are possible, but in the event that we created a new color, it would most likely appear to be an absense of color rather than color itself simply because our brain is unable to measure it. :sad: I would test it out myself, but I sadly can’t recall ever having an LD. Maybe tonight, after hearing about Pedro’s technique. :smile:

-Lokk, Awaiting his warm welcome :happy:

Lokk - doing stuff along these lines takes lots of practice. Your results on the first successful night of LD-ing are not going to be helpful here.

: / You’re probably right. shrugs

Even better a reason for someone else to try it. :slight_smile: