[loves_mangoes]

The visuals you get from psychedelics and the visuals from imagination are different. Psychedelics seem to affect your real visual field. You're not imagining textures melting with colors and walls turning into liquid, it becomes what you see.

I normally have aphantasia, at about 2/5 on one those pop scales that show various versions of an apple. I can sort of rotate geometric shapes without the notion of color or texture.

But rarely, while lying in bed I get these full vivid pictures. It feels like a whole another visual field. I can't really control it, but these are fully detailed like a painting.

It's dizzying how fast I can imagine these when my mind decides to switch into this mode, and how it can switch from one painting to the next fully detailed picture in a fraction of a second. I normally have to strain hard to hold just a few outlines of simple shapes in my mind, evaporating the moment my focus wavers.

[drcongo]

I'm quite strongly aphantasic, I can, for a split second, hold the essence of a thing in my brain, but it's not even vaguely visual. I have though, several times, experienced almost exactly what you decribe - also while laying in bed trying to get to sleep. Every now and then I can kind of see a room, sometimes the room I'm in, sometimes not, even though my eyes are closed. I love it. I can't switch what I'm seeing though, but possibly because as soon as it happens I'm just laying there marvelling at being able to see something with my eyes shut, and staring intently at the details.

[bethekidyouwant]

I can also only experience true visualizations when falling asleep or dreaming. I concluded that being awake (correctly?) suppresses vivid visuals and some people when awake simply do not have this (mal?)adaptation.

[kakokiyrvoooo]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia

[drcongo]

I think you're probably right, though sometimes when this happens I feel very awake indeed.

[temp0826]

I do suspect "visions" can come from different sources as well. I've worked at an ayahuasca retreat center and have drank about 500 times so had some opportunities to investigate this. My vision is typically very "closed" (often it is just a massive intuition increase, it takes me a huge dose to get really into the visionary aspects). I have had visions seemingly from the top of my head (these are the most intense, all encompassing for me), in my "mind's eye"/imagination, in my normal visual field, and from my heart space, and sometimes a mix of all of it. My big suspicion is that DMT induces a type of synesthesia, a mixing of all of the senses, plus intuition, thoughts, and memories, plus a big increase in sensitivity (meaning what we see/feel is not precisely a hallucination).