The Brick Tunnel and the Desert of Particles
By Eugene Raphael · Waking Gaze Report · Liminal Light Lab
Technique: chair silence with an eyes-open fixed gaze, after Zuleica's exercise in The Eagle's Gift. Mask: two blindfolds. Outcome: a brick tunnel opening onto the stars, and a week later a desert bound together out of particles.
The setup
I got into my chair, the one I use to practice silence, and put on two blindfolds, sufficiently blocking out the light. Following Zuleica's exercise from The Eagle's Gift, I kept my eyes open with my gaze fixed straight ahead at eye level, and I raised my right knee as high as I could on the arm of the chair, as close to the solar plexus as I could. The goal was to turn the purple dreaming color into orange-red.
Session one: the tunnel
Almost immediately I saw the purple hue, scintillating and swirling, with a yellow band around it. I concentrated on altering it into orange-red but only saw tiny specks flickering to life inside the purple.
Suddenly, eyes still open, the purple expanded and then coalesced into a coherent perceptual view. I was staring down an intricately built brick-and-mortar tunnel that four or five people could easily walk down side by side. At the end of the tunnel was the vast expanse of endless space, its emptiness lit up by thousands and thousands of flickering stars.
I felt like I was on the brink of an abyss, but this abyss was full of endless possibilities. The tunnel followed my vision. It moved with my gaze, panning across an infinite expanse, effectively dividing my perceptual view.
I was too surprised to act or do anything but witness it. Later it crossed my mind: what would have happened if I tried to traverse it?
Session two: binding the particles
About a week later I tried again. The purple did change colors, though not for long. It went to orange-red, to a very deep red-purple, and then back to purple.
I let my assemblage point drift. I began to see tiny pinpoints of light in various hues, everywhere, superimposed over my visual screen in uncountable numbers. I focused my will on grabbing a handful of them and bundling them together.
My first attempt caused perceptual shifts, something like lines of light taking abstract shapes and then fading as I lost my focus on holding them together. Then rectangles and circles merged out of the dots, made of "whitish light." Suddenly I found myself looking out across a desert.
I went from holding together bundles of particles to holding together items in a dream scene. The more I moved my eyes from object to object, from shrub to boulder, while focusing my silent intent on acquiring cohesion, the more real the view became. It was quite remarkable to follow the process and notice the intricate steps of the dream emerging.
What changed for me
What I had originally described as phosphenes, I now view more as emanations that can be bound and clustered together, in some indescribable way, to practice the acquisition of cohesion.
"The clearer the view of our dreams, the greater our cohesion." (Carlos Castaneda, The Art of Dreaming)
Takeaways
The purple is a doorway. Gaze into it long enough and it can become a place.
Bind, don't just watch. Gathering the pinpoints with will turned noise into a scene.
Move your eyes. Shifting from object to object made the desert more real.
Related
Community: Has your visual noise ever organized itself into a scene? What did you do?
Liminal Light shares personal practice, not medical advice. Read About & Safety first.
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