I'm sure most know what i mean. The visual patterns that comes at the early stage in a trip. They appear first very transparent and look like a watermark on top of whatever you're looking at. Then they increase in intensity.

So, what i realized is that they are in fact always there. Just very low intensity if you're not tripping. Focusing on my gypsum ceiling for a while i can see a fine transparent film of these watermarks. And even the slight pulsation of them which i think is just my heartbeat and the blood-flow in my eyes.

There are other cool effects you can get while staring and focusing intensely but this seems more important some how. I didn't see this until i knew what to look for, thanks to dmt.

Many visionary artist use this stuff like seeing auras etc. , which i struggle with. It's actually insanely hard i think.

Any thoughts on this? Do you think i'm nuts or is anyone else doing the same thing?

I see the patterns too.I took a walk at night and the shadows from tthe moon were displaying the pattern.has a mayan type look to it.

yeah, the organic mathematics of the subconscious is always just an iota away from physical reality. it also bubbles up (in a subtle way) into my waking reality from time to time...

I'm very glad to hear that. Thanks, that answers my question.

I honestly have no idea what you're referring to.

Have an example image?

Geometrical patterns from simple like chessboard or flower of life kind of shapes.

Sometimes patterns which can be seen in the structures of gothic domes.

Different objects have different patterns.

Never seen this "watermark" effect being specific to certain objects. Must be related to some sort of expectations of the experience.

I've had entire visual field overlays (kaleidoscopic effect from DMT, or a huge grid of rotating shapes on shrooms), but nothing like you're referring to...

For me it's usually the same pattern no matter what surface i look at. Of course it's slightly changing but still keeping the same style. Although i have seen different ones while tripping of course. But at low doses, 90% of the times it's the same pattern for me. And always the same if i'm not tripping, but then it's so low intensity it's hard to see more than just a few edges..


these ones are pretty close but not spot on.


My trips almost always starts with these type of patterns if i look at surfaces like wood or fabrics and also faces. They don't appear if i just look across the living room at many objects. To have that scene changing i need pretty high dose and then the whole reality starts vibrating while the sound starts building up.

Back to the watermark effect, what type of patters do you have? is it the same?

The shipibo reflect this with their textile work.

I think it has something to do with the cymatics of whatever spectrum hyperspace is operating on.

The shipibo also see these patterns as some form of embodied tonality. In what way they reflect their sacred songs is still not clear to me, but there is a strong connection beween icaros and the sacred patterns. They use them to heal ...to defend...to strengthen.

I think I know exactly what you're talking about; I see these patterns in cement, grass, plasterwork... Anywhere there is a chaotic texture or pattern. Especially on the "slower" psychedelics like LSD where you have time to focus on things. The stronger the dose, the clearer and more animated the patterns are. They seem to consist of various sizes of curved, interlinked asymmetrical arrows.

I think you are right- these patterns are always there but we normally don't see them. When visible, they make perfect sense because they describe the mathematical reality of the pattern you're looking at. Basically, it's a clarified organizational map. Psychedelics brioaden our awareness enough that we can see things this way.

In dark rooms or closed-eye on spice, I often see tile patterns like what you posted above- but far brighter and trippier.

Guyomech, yes, you're spot on.

Beautiful!

Yes, Guyomech

There are two seemingly distinct kinds of patterns I'd like to talk about. I'll start with that which Guyomech skillfully identified above. I see these too, as noted especially on LSD. What amazed me about this effect as opposed to some of the other visual effects that you can get among the "lesser" visual effects is that (for me at least) it's not simply an overlay of a pattern onto a surface. So let's take cement as an example. It doesn't seem to me that the patterns seen behind the eyelids for example is simply overlaid on top of the cement, but rather it appears as if the particles of the cement itself have rearranged themselves as to display the pattern. This always struck me as being rather significant because I've felt that it implies something a little deeper as compared with wavering or size distortions. On DMT, the same chaotic textures that are ideal for creating this effect such as cement, sand, snow, etc...appear to me as more flowery, natural and organic where it the pattern appears to be a bit more synthetic with LSD. I might note that this could be a dose issue as I've never taken a heroic dose of LSD, so I think it might be likely that at the higher dose, this discrepancy might not exist.

Now I'd like to start talking about what I initially thought the OP was referring to as the watermarks. It seems I was wrong after reading Guyomech's post, but I thought that the kind of pattern I was thinking of bares mention. On a sufficient dose of DMT, the patterns that may start off as those noted above which presents itself (to me at least) as rather 2D, with a little bit of focus (i.e. simply looking at one place) begin to amass energy which they use to form themselves until the surface being studied becomes "supersaturated" with this energy as the patterns begin to erupt into the 3D/4D plane as holograms. Sometimes they're delicately translucent, sometimes they're packed with color, bordering on seeming radioactive. Sometimes they manifest into holographic machinery, sometimes it's vectors flying through the air and bounding around the room, and just the other day while I was still holding a hit in, before I could close my eyes, I was staring at my closet door which two tall and slender Egyptian statues formed and then began to rotate and part as to open a gateway of some kind. If it's the ceiling that's being focused on, then the hologram will usually begin to descend from the ceiling, unfolding in layers such that the pattern is still on the ceiling, occupying the area between myself and the ceiling and being right in my face eventually all at the same time. It really gives a fine appreciation of space and depth. It's this open-eyed interactable holographic phenomenon that I find to be so magical and interesting in regards to the DMT experience, and I believe that further study of this phenomenon will lead to some further interesting discoveries.

I am a big advocate of the heroic LSD dose, 800ug or more... I got up to 1600 but had poor recall, sweated a lot. 1200 will take you to DMT like places. Have a sitter around if you do this! I am a person who has broken bones while tripping (7g powdered psilocybin preceded by 100mg Syrian rue- amazing combo, shoulda had a sitter)

Back to the cement patterns: I think that these patterns are always there, but our conscious mind fleshes it out into what we interpret as a random surface. I like Huxley's description of the brain as a "reducing valve" that glosses over the deeper truths so we can get on with day-to-day survival.

As far as your spice OEV descriptions, I don't necessarily see the closet doors having hidden Egyptian statues in them, waiting to be revealed- this is a different phenomenon. I could see how the subconscious would see the door, and build on that metaphor to this pair of guardians flanking a cosmic gateway, as you describe. I believe that DMT visuals consist if dense, multidimensional language, and the story that unfolds in each journey is based on your specific moment in spacetime, where you are at mentally. So seeing the room build up into dense visual language makes sense in a way.

Ok, I'll play a little DEVIL's ADVOCATE here:

There is an assumption that these substances help us see MORE of what is really there... what if it's actually the opposite?

Our brains thrive on pattern - it's how we make sense of the world around us: thoughts, dreams, stories, music... Our brains NEED organization and pattern to function and progress. WHAT IF:

What you see on psychedelics, and what smerrel is reporting to see all around him while not under the influence, are not our brain RECOGNIZING pre-existing motifs, but rather IMPOSING pattern on irregular surfaces as a means of forcing the impression of comprehension.

Of course I realize what I am proposing here - that what we see, and hear (and feel) on psychedelics is a material response to a chaotic barrage, the brain's way of organizing the random, or the minutely organized, into larger chunks of recognizable pattern. I am not espousing this theory, but merely observing it as an alternative way of looking at this phenomenon. It fits in with a larger view of one aspect of what I believe these substances may be doing to our consciousnesses.

Incidentally, I don't see these patterns, but I do, on largish dose of DMT, see letters: mostly chunky golden-hued capital E's flying by, sometimes reversed, sometimes with an extra bar in them - a child's way of describing them, but words, of course, fail...

JBArk

You misunderstand me. I don't mean to imply that I think that there are Egyptian statues hidden in my closet doors. If I had been looking at the ceiling, they probably would have been on the ceiling. Or if I had been looking at another surface, it would have appeared on that surface. The thing is that they don't simply tend to manifest out of thin air (as far as I've seen), but rather it's an amount of energy buildup on a surface that breaks into extra-dimensional planes - not that it's hidden or obscured by waking consciousness.

jBark- perhaps you are right- while tripping, we do see less (hence the simplified structural maps) and in the process of seeing less, we are able to understand more.

Global- I agree, I wasn't suggesting that you thought that- just emphasizing that this is different from the cement pattern phenomenon. Mundane objects can make for a great scaffold on which to hang a psychedelic vision. I was also pointing out the correlation between the door and your vision, which was essentially a pair of guardians flanking a cosmic portal.