Yeah, like if I look at a shag carpet or something with lots of small details in it, and block most everything else out of my field of vision, the details will kind of ebb and flow. Actually the details almost appear in different "layers", and one layer will float around on top of the stationary layer.

Kinda like my eyes are trying to lock in on one of those "magic-eye" 3D images, but they don't quite make it. In fact, seeing as how it took me a year or two to "get" those images, that's prolly what fucked up my vision in the first place. :)

...or maybe it's a side-effect of your recent Lasik surgery! ;)

No, mine is more vivid than that. Happy thoughts, I see:
http://abes-celebrities.com/Milla/milla.jpg

Bad thoughts, I see:
http://www.stomptokyo.com/otf/Asylum...ylum-satan.JPG

Literally. Told you it was freaky!

If I could "see" happy thoughts like that, I'd never leave the house!

Here's my thoughts how what i'm doing actually works.

Some people theorize that the human brain creates a copy of the outside world inside itself, based on information gleaned from our five senses. So, when we think about things, we use our internal copy of the world. Sort of like a database.

When you dream, your five senses are cut off, and you are left to swim around in a virtual world inside your head. You have complete control over your internal representation of the world (see lucid dreaming). I suspect that there is a lot of interplay between our internal representation of the world and the real world. When you're awake, you still have access to this virtual world. You're just putting more trust into your senses than what's already in your internal world. If you perceive something with one of your five senses, you change your internal representation of the world to incorporate that.

If you start to trust your internal world more than your own senses, you have what occurs to me sometimes. When this happens, you can basically invent anything you want to perceive and you'll perceive it. In this case, your internal world is actually overlaid over your real senses, and you perceive both at the same time. It all depends on the degree of trust, of course.

Anyway, the old maxim, "People believe what they want to believe" is true. If you believe in a daydream more than what your own senses are telling you, you will start to believe it enough to actually "see" it.

I have no proof for any of this, of course. So I could just be completly wrong. This is just what I suspect based on what I've seen.

I did a bit of googling, and apparently in the field of Cognitive Neuroscience they call it "Mental Modeling".

Man, those Neuroscience articles are terse reading. Where on earth do scientists learn to write? I think that they could spice their essays up a bit. Oh well. I have a feeling i'm not in their target audience. :)

YES!! I *completely* agree with the "virtual model" idea. You can never interact with the Objective Universe directly, but only through your virtual model. I dunno why that's a hard concept for people to grasp.

By extension, The Matrix or Vanilla Sky is completely feasible, once we have the processing power to generate a convincing world and the ability to interface with all five senses. This WILL HAPPEN, assuming we don't blow our collective selves up first.

Funny: "People believe what they want to believe" is WORD FOR WORD the first line of a song I wrote eight years ago, but I came up w/ it on my own -- thought I was being original! :D