For those who looked at this and said what the ham are phosphenes...close your eyes and start rubbing them or pressing on your eye. What you see is known as a phosphene, patterns of apparent electromagnetic stimuli appearing as light when no light is in fact present.

Ive had fantastic immersive visual experiences from just pressing gently with the palms of my hands on my eyes for a few seconds. The visuals appear and I begin rubbing my eyes in different patterns. Id suggest trying to keep your facial muscles relaxed as Ive noticed if I squint or tighten my muscles it can cause a bit of an uncomfortable feeling in the head.

In all seriousness, the patterns I see are very reminiscent of the geometry one can experience during a trip. It's very easy to get completely lost in these patterns, they take on more than just 2 dimensionality. I often get very intricate swirling patterns and shapes that give way to rotating infinite gridlike patterns.

Not much consciousness exploring going on, but still, it really can be very awesome if you actually kind of let yourself go toward these patterns. They become even more intense.

I get this from rubbing my eyes occasionally throughout the week. Not something I'd do often..but its always nice to see some pseudo colors and patterns within the phosphene phenomena. The current information surrounding phosphenes is really interesting.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphene

I lost the book a long time ago, but I remember how Salvador Dali mentioned this in his autobiography: when he was young he and his classmates would do this during lessons to overcome the boredom. They would call them (the phosphene visuals) 'angels'.

It struck me because I used to do the same as a child -maybe all children did, or just the ones that end as psychedelic aficionados

I would ALWAYS, while laying in my room at night if I had my eyes open, see these little colored blobs of faint light that were every where and they would organize into a pattern and swirl around. And that was just laying down with my eyes open, I always used to say to my mom do you see what Im seeing? She didnt though.

I just remember I read about this phenomenon in another book, "Psychedelic Information Theory", by one James Kent. The writer has dedicated a chapter to phosphenes, also known as entoptic hallucinations (You can read the chapter here: LINK )

Apparently, they're also the visions that are caused by strobe lights and mind machines.

The other day I saw an exhibition where an artist had transformed an entire room into a kind of mind machine, with flickering lights in the ceiling- it was quite spectacular (The curator said they called it 'the epilepsy room' ) and it would indeed cause these typical hallucinations. We spent a lot of time there

(I found someone who filmed the ceiling at the expo to give an expression: YOUTUBE)

I was always fascinated by these. Whenever I rubbed my eyes, I always got the same effect: swirling greens and pinks that eventually became a large yellow donut shape, which would be burned onto my field of vision for several minutes.

It was cool.

Blessings
~ND

Shiva's 90th technique from vigyan bhairan tantra, (fomulated into english by osho)


"TOUCHING EYEBALLS AS A FEATHER, LIGHTNESS BETWEEN THEM OPENS INTO HEART AND THERE PERMEATES THE COSMOS"

Rubbing my eyes for a period of time under various conditions is nothing like an intense DMT experience/breakthrough ime, even light DMT dosages.

Thatd have to be one powerful eye rub if it got anywhere near the intensity of even a low dose DMT trip

I don't have to rub my eyes to see the phosphenes since smoking DMT. I can see them with ease by lightly closing my eyes as well. It's my observation, that with eyes open, they seem most prevalent either over a black background, or a light blue background such as the sky. I think the phosphenes may make slight modifications to a trip by the nature of physically beholding them, and how hyperspace reacts and conforms to visual input. I wouldn't say that they're responsible for creating the imagery, or that they are the imagery, but they could have an impact. At lower doses especially, DMT displays its uncanny ability to work with light afterimages as well.

http://www.religiousvisionsoflight.com
I've enjoyed the information presented on the above website regarding phosphenes and other visionary experiences.
The videos demonstrate some common phosphene visuals that I also see while relaxing and/or stressing muscles near the eyes with eyes closed.

After smoalking recently my visuals are generally more pronounced or deeper/longer. Certainly enoyable in its own right though never on the levels of a DMT journey for me. Unless I just smoalked