Synesthesia. Where's my number line?

[saffronasha]

Hi everyone, I posted this elsewhere and got an interesting debate going. Although MY conclusion was no one else's hahaha...

First you need to know something about Synesthesia. There's a very interesting bbc documentary ' Derek Tastes Like Earwax" , which encapsulates it quite nicely. Synesthesia affects about 1% of the population and there are numerous types. It's basically a mixing of ones senses. There's a man that actually experiences taste when most words are said...unfortunately the word Derek, tastes like earwax!..ugh.
There's another type of synesthesia that I based my 'thought' experiment on. There are synethetes that have what are called 'number lines'. Some see numbers, or months of the year for example in spacial 3d forms. They actually see 'out there' in the real world a line that has let's say the months of the year, in brightly colored segments that go on into infinity. Each individual with this form of synesthesia has there own unique number line. The present explanation for this, is that their brains have evolved differently than the 'norm' and are 'miswired'.
Now to me this sounds extremely arbitrary? Is reality merely based on a majority rule basis? Who's to say that it isn't the rest of us that has miswired brains and that we 'should' all have number lines?
So back to the question...if the majority of us had evolved with this type of synesthesia would number lines be considered real, or an illusion. I say it's quite obvious that to that world ( maybe it actually exists if Hugh Everett is right) it would be those that didn't have their own number line that would be considered interpreting reality falsely.
Anyway....I find it an interesting question. Charles Bonnet Syndrome could be another example of the "majority rule' reality we conform to but we won't go off in that direction yet.

http://videosift.com/video/BBC-Derek-Tastes-of-Earwax

[Rob Bryanton]

Hi saffronasha,

I talk about a similar idea near the end of this video about forms of synaesthesia - could it be that I have a kind of space-time synaesthesia, and that's what led me to my approach to visualizing the extra dimensions? Since we can't be in each others' heads, how can we know if one person is experiencing reality in ways that are different from the rest of us? In overt examples like Capgras syndrome the differences are obvious, but there are many much more subtle gradations that could still allow us each to believe that the unique patchwork of observed reality that one of us experiences is the same as everyone else's when it really isn't.

You make some great points about the nature of perception and the consensus nature of our shared experience. Thanks for writing!

Rob

[saffronasha]

Thanks Rob. You've given me a few new avenues to check into. This may not at all be your own path of investigation...but have you read Seth?

His writings began in 1963 and one concept I find most interesting is his 'prediction' of an upcoming shift in our understanding of reality. Seth said... "a metamorphosis on a human level (to be completed before 2075)....as man's inner abilities are accepted and developed"....."new areas will be activated in the brain...physically then brain mapping will be possible". Unfortunately we are still in a reductionist materialistic trend, however science IS as Seth said 'physically' validating synesthesia and Charles Bonnet for example. Then, when one combines that with other research areas such as QM, MWI, epigenetics, and the Holographic theory ... http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 130708.htm
we do seem to be smack dab in the middle of a paradigm shift. (Yes a widely overused word but still I think valid in this case).

Probably more relevant to your line of thought is statements like these made by Seth...

"No energy is ever lost. It may seem to disappear from one system, but if so, it will emerge in another. The inward and outward thrust that is not perceived is largely responsible for what you think of as ordinary consecutive time. (Pause.) It is of the utmost and supreme importance, of course, that these CU's (consciousness units) are literally indestructible. They can take any form, organize themselves in any kind of time-behavior, hyphen, and seem to form a reality that is completely dependent upon its apparent form and structure. Yet, disappearing through one of the physicists' black holes, for example, though structure and form would seem to be annihilated and time drastically altered, there would be an emergence at the other end, where the whole "package of a universe, " having been closed in the black hole, would be reopened.

There is the constant surge into your universe of new energy through infinite minute sources. The sources are the CU's themselves. In their own way, and using an analogy, now, in certain respects at least the CU's operate as minute but extremely potent black holes and white holes, as they are presently understood by your physicists. Give us a moment...

The CU's, following that analogy, serve as source points or "holes" through which energy falls into your system, or is attracted to it-and in so doing, forms it. The experience of forward time and the appearance of physical matter in space and time, and all the phenomenal world, results. As CU's leave your system, time is broken down. Its effects are no longer experienced as consecutive, and matter becomes more and more plastic until its mental elements become apparent. New CU's enter and leave your system constantly, then. Within the system en masse, however, through their great and small organizational structures, the CU's are aware of everything happening-not only on the top of the moment (gesturing) , but within it in all of its probabilities."


wiki..The late amateur physicist Michael Talbot wrote, "To my great surprise--and slight annoyance--I found that Seth eloquently and lucidly articulated a view of reality that I had arrived at only after great effort and an extensive study of both paranormal phenomena and quantum physics."

Kind of a disjointed post.. but anyway, as for me...I feel like I'm trapped in a HUGE dot to dot game, trying to connect all the bits and pieces of information I find on the internet to form a cohesive picture of reality. Wow...that's kinda funny, my words "dot to dot" ...Seth's "serve as source points " and yours ..." We start with a point..."
No coincidence is merely a coincidence..hahaha.