Perceptual Domain Summary

The perceptual domain captures changes to any of the five senses: vision, hearing, smell, taste and somatosensory processing (including interoception and proprioception). One common change in this domain was hypersensitivity either to light, sound, or sensation. Visual hypersensitivity often began with increased color vividness (hyperchromia). Related phenomena included a general brightening of the visual field, which was sometimes associated with simple hallucinations in the form of visual lights; these two phenomena have been discussed in detail in an analysis of preliminary data from this study (Lindahl, Kaplan, Winget, & Britton, 2014). Perceptual hypersensitivity was also commonly associated with increased cognitive processing, and tended to be reported as distressing during transitions from intensive practice into daily life. Within practice traditions where concentration on the fleeting nature of percepts is a common approach, practitioners reported the dissolution of perceptual objects; in some cases, the cessation of all visual perception was reported. Other perceptual distortions included distortions in time and space, and derealization—where phenomena appear dreamlike, unreal, two-dimensional or as if in a fog (Simeon, 2009).

llusions (distortions of perceptual objects) and hallucinations (a percept-like experience in the absence of a sensory stimulus) (Blom, 2013) were reported both in isolation from and in conjunction with delusional beliefs. Some practitioners also reported phenomena that were technically hallucinations—in the sense that they were percepts in the absence of an external stimulus—but were interpreted as visions and attributed to an external agent or force. Unlike some other hallucinations, visions tended to be transient and did not appear outside of a formal meditation session. Somatosensory changes included changes in body schema, whether heightened interoception or distorted perceptions of body parts, which could also take on a quality similar to illusions.

read full article

Excerpt from:

Lindahl JR, Fisher NE, Cooper DJ, Rosen RK, Britton W.B. (2017) The varieties of contemplative experience: A mixed-methods study of meditation-related challenges in Western Buddhists. PLoS ONE 12(5): e0176239.

get help from the cheetah house care team

In their own words…

Meditators describe their experiences in the perceptual domain

Somatosensory Changes

I’ve put all of these experiences more in the arising and passing part of the path… golden light that fills the sky and my body feeling like the same nature as that, and the combining and unitive kind of experience, but also there was one night…where my body just was breaking apart into sparkles and like electrical sparks being sent off everywhere in all directions

---- Jared Lindahl, Chris Kaplan, Evan Winget, and Willoughby Britton. 2014. A Phenomenology of Meditation-Induced Light Experiences: Traditional Buddhist and Neurobiological Perspectives. Frontiers in Psychology: Consciousness Research Vol. 4:973: What Can Neuroscience Learn from Contemplative Practices? Religions 8(8), 153

My body was slipping away; my very sense of self was disappearing into a black hole. I had experiences of my body virtually disappearing or dropping through the ground or through the floor—feeling like I was suddenly dropping three or four feet. It would freak me out. And I had an experience like that, went to sleep, but the experience wouldn’t stop. […] And there were other moments where it felt like I was actually, literally coming apart at the seams that night, where, instead of just moving in one direction, I was moving in all directions, as if… I can’t… It’s hard to describe, but it was like something just moving right through the center of myself, as if I was going to come apart. […] And I meditate now, and I have—and, increasingly, my meditation experiences are becoming more and more pleasant, more and more absorptive—just deeper states of no-self, deeper states of my body disappearing. (#11, Theravāda M)

---- Jared Lindahl and Willoughby Britton. 2019. ‘I Have This Feeling of Not Really Being Here’: Buddhist Meditation and Changes in Sense of Self. Journal of Consciousness Studies 26(7-8).Religions 8(8), 153

Dissolution of Objects or Phenomena

So most people see that if they do eyes open meditation [they have] the sense that reality is pixelating a little bit and becoming very very vivid. …

Hallucinations, Visions, and Illusions

[Illusions]

I’ve seen ropes of shimmering… where it’s causing space behind it to shimmer a little bit and move. I’ve occasionally had the visual field get much brighter than normal for no particular reason [and] I’d say that’s attached to concentration of some sort… In concentration I’ve had rays of white light that go through everything. They’re either coming from behind me somewhere or coming out of the object that I was concentrating on. … I saw it with my eyes open and it wasn’t really seeing it was something else, even though I still was perceiving that it was there.

Perceptual Hypersensitivity

Visual Lights

Even with my eyes closed, there would be a lot of light in the visual frame, so to speak. Diffuse, but bright. … My eyes were closed – there was what appeared to be a moon-shaped object in my consciousness directly above me, about the same size as the moon if you lay down on the ground and look into the night sky. It was white. When I let go I was totally enveloped inside this light. … I was seeing colors and lights and all kinds of things going on...Blue, purple, red. They were globes; they were kind of like Christmas tree lights hanging out in space except they were round. They were very distinct; they weren’t fuzzy, they were very clear.

And…I had the lights out, so I had this sensation of lights passing over my eyes, but they weren’t external. … It seemed to be something just happening to my inner eye, or maybe on my retina, or something when you close your eyes and become deeply relaxed and you start seeing these sort of pleasant pulsations of color, of various forms of color. I think it was that, but like times one hundred, it was just all sped up to a ridiculous degree… It created this perceptual distortion which I felt like I was in a tunnel, or in some kind of train, and there were lights passing me as I moved forward. It was almost as if I was being carried forward…lying on my back through some sort of…crazy roller coaster ride.

Sometimes there were, oftentimes just a white spot, sometimes multiple white spots, sometimes the spots, or “little stars” as I called them, would float together in a wave, like a group of birds migrating, but I would just let those things come and go.

time-lapse-photography-of-light-streaks-on-road-during-night-3691336.jpg

I was just bursting with light, I would just close my eyes and it was just brilliant light. I just felt like I was radiating, like there were rays of light coming out of me. … It felt like it was just emanating from my body and my system. But this wasn’t my entire retreat by any means, it was just near the end.