Synesthesia, trait Openness, psychic perception

[HowToBe]

Having just read "The Siren Call of Hungry Ghosts" by the late Joe Fisher, relating his trip down the rabbit hole of "spirit guides", mediums, and the channeling movement, an impression has stuck with me that channeling and psychic perception seems to make use of the brain in ways that may be analagous or the same as synesthesia. The following article mentions an interesting study:

http://www.referencepointtherapy.com/blog/2012/05/science-proves-psychic/

excerpt:

People with synesthesia see the world in a different way. Often they go insane. But with time and treatment they learn to use their gift to see the world differently. Many of the world’s greatest artists have been synesthetes. These includes painters David Hockney and Wassily Kandinsky, musicians like Billy Joel, and great inventors such as Nikola Tesla.

According to the University of Granada study, published in the prestigious journal Consciousness and Cognition, healers can in fact see auras because of their emotional synesthesia. Here is a summary of their findings about one of the famous healers in the study:

Many people attribute “paranormal powers” to El Santón, such as his ability to see the aura of people “but, in fact, it is a clear case of synesthesia”, the researchers explain.

El Santón presents face-color synesthesia (the brain region responsible for face recognition is associated with the color-processing region); touch-mirror synesthesia (when the synesthete observes a person who is being touched or is experiencing pain, s/he experiences the same); high empathy (the ability to feel what other person is feeling), and schizotypy (certain personality traits in healthy people involving slight paranoia and delusions).

“These capacities give synesthetes the ability to make people feel understood, and provide them with special emotion and pain reading skills”, the researchers explain.

I get the personal impression from Jordan Peterson's lectures that there is almost certainly a correlation between "creativity" (high levels of "big five" trait Openness) and psychic phenomena, and the following study indicates that grapheme-color synesthetes tend to be higher in trait Openness (as well as Neuroticism, interestingly).

Overall, those who are biologically wired to have more far-reaching interconnections within the brain seem to be more likely to be creative, have synesthesia, and/or experience psychic phenomena.

 

[Palinurus]

Interesting proposition, HowToBe.

A famous example would be the French composer Olivier Messiaen:

_http://www.rowan-hull.com/the-man-who-heard-colour/
_http://www.musicandpractice.org/volume-2/visualizing-visions-the-significance-of-messiaens-colours/
_http://oxfordindex.oup.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199685851.003.0020

video 5:21 min.

https://youtu.be/qM4WvF_PikI


Another famous case is Alexander Scriabin:

_http://www.wqxr.org/story/99054-synesthesia-scriabin-and-seeing-music/
_https://www.researchgate.net/publication/271695291_Synesthetic_Perception_Alexander_Scriabin%27s_Color_Hearing

video 25:40 min.

https://youtu.be/SCXyssz_eXg


Cannot say how this would pan out regarding their psychic abilities but the influence of this condition on their composing methods and results is well established, although still rather nebulous and vague to outsiders like me.

 

[SummerLite]

Interesting articles thank you, How To Be. From the first link.

the link between trauma and psychic abilities is actually well established.

The best example I can think of comes from my former healing teacher (VS), who was quite open about her childhood trauma caused by having a mother with multiple personalities. As my teacher said, “I learned to be psychic to protect myself, I needed to know who my mother was going to be when she came home so I knew whether to hide.” (it would be funny if it weren’t so sad.) That’s one good anecdote but I’ve heard the same basic story from countless people including my wife. (Read about her story here.)

The fact that trauma can rewire the brain producing psychic abilities (subtle perceptions) for protection is interesting and more so since I can relate on a personal level. I've had a similar experience as the quote above but fortunately not so traumatic. When I was 18 I lived with my brother and sister-in-law and she was not pleased with me being around and could be quite mean at times. When she was coming home, I could feel her driving up the road and knew to rush around picking up anything that might set her off, a dirty dish for example. This lasted for 9 months, 5 days a week and ended when I left home. Children growing up with alcoholic parents are another very common example of this. They become finely tuned to whatever is happening in the home.

In thinking about this more, I see this likely resulted in a link/bond with her that lasted for several years after leaving home and showed itself in my nightly dreams. When she was pregnant and giving birth I was on the other side of the country and had a dream she was delivering. The birth was long and very painful in the dream which turned out to be the case I discovered the following day when my brother called. The baby was breech. For about 2 years after, I was then connected to her infant son and was aware of events in his life through my dreams.

Maybe I should thank her for helping to rewire my brain? Has this experience aided in my creation of works of art which I've done for most of my life? The only thing that comes to mind at first is, I'm aware of subtle impressions arising which I follow and guide my work along.

I get the personal impression from Jordan Peterson's lectures that there is almost certainly a correlation between "creativity" (high levels of "big five" trait Openness) and psychic phenomena, and the following study indicates that grapheme-color synesthetes tend to be higher in trait Openness (as well as Neuroticism, interestingly).

Overall, those who are biologically wired to have more far-reaching interconnections within the brain seem to be more likely to be creative, have synesthesia, and/or experience psychic phenomena.

Its always interesting to me what the traits of creative people are and I welcome studies on this. Surely, there is a particular process occurring within the mind that assists or produces the creation of works of art.

HowToBe, can you give links to explain, "high levels of "big five" trait Openness"? I've done a search without results. Thanks.

ps. as I was writing Palinurus posted some interesting examples of artists and synesthesia.

 

[HowToBe]

Interesting experiences, SummerLite. It also makes me wonder about "hooks" or "cords" a-la spirit release therapy, but I presume there are multiple ways a psychic connection could be established? It's interesting that becoming "dialed in" to her seems to have created a connection with her son.

HowToBe, can you give links to explain, "high levels of "big five" trait Openness"? I've done a search without results. Thanks.

Here's a Wikipedia page about the Big Five personality traits:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits

Here's the page specifically for Openness:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openness_to_experience

There is an interessting section in the above page correlating Openness to how easily one is hypnotized:

Absorption and hypnotisability[edit]
Openness to experience is strongly related to the psychological construct of absorption[25] defined as "a disposition for having episodes of 'total' attention that fully engage one's representational (i.e. perceptual, enactive, imaginative, and ideational) resources.”[26] The construct of absorption was developed in order to relate individual differences in hypnotisability to broader aspects of personality.[25][27] The construct of absorption influenced Costa and McCrae's development of the concept of openness to experience in their original NEO model due to the independence of absorption from extraversion and neuroticism.[25] A person's openness to becoming absorbed in experiences seems to require a more general openness to new and unusual experiences. Openness to experience, like absorption has modest positive correlations with individual differences in hypnotisability.[27] Factor analysis has shown that the fantasy, aesthetics, and feelings facets of openness are closely related to absorption and predict hypnotisability, whereas the remaining three facets of ideas, actions, and values are largely unrelated to these constructs.[25][27] This finding suggests that openness to experience may have two distinct yet related subdimensions: one related to aspects of attention and consciousness assessed by the facets of fantasy, aesthetics, and feelings; the other related to intellectual curiosity and social/political liberalism as assessed by the remaining three facets. However, all of these have a common theme of ‘openness’ in some sense. This two-dimensional view of openness to experience is particularly pertinent to hypnotisability. However, when considering external criteria other than hypnotisability, it is possible that a different dimensional structure may be apparent, e.g. intellectual curiosity may be unrelated to social/political liberalism in certain contexts.[27]

This excerpt from Jordan Peterson's interview titled "Exploring the Psychology of Creativity" gives some insight and is perhaps the most wide-reaching description of creativity/openness I've seen him give:

https://youtu.be/x6v6PVyqhMY

Here is the full talk if you are interested (about an 1 hour and 15 minutes long):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxGPe1jD-qY

 

[Cleo]

Found this thread today, reading about synesthesia. Thanks for sharing the links.

Another famous example might be Vincent van Gogh:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sensorium/201308/vincent-van-gogh-was-likely-synesthete

The following interesting video also seems to imply that van Gogh was a synesthete:

https://youtu.be/PMerSm2ToFY

 

[MusicMan]

I'm not sure how to categorise this one, but here goes: For mine, it was High Strangeness.

I was searching using the internet for accommodation in Blackpool, England with my wife (who is not a Cass person), for a planned holiday. While looking at photos of various hotel rooms, she would say no, I don't like that, or that looks good, and so on.
Then she said: "I don't like that one, it smells awful", and then on the next photo of another hotel, she turned away from the monitor, gagging.
It was as if she was 'remote viewing' the rooms.

This was highly unusual for her, and we've been married fifty years, I have never experienced that with her before.

We gave up for a while, and when we came back to it later we finally decided on one.

For those who are not familiar with me, let's just say that we are on the other side of the planet.

 

[3DStudent]

Then she said: "I don't like that one, it smells awful", and then on the next photo of another hotel, she turned away from the monitor, gagging.
It was as if she was 'remote viewing' the rooms.

This was highly unusual for her, and we've been married fifty years, I have never experienced that with her before.

What was your and/or her reaction to that? I would be surprised and think it strange and wonder why I was able to smell a place by looking at it.

 

[Palinurus]

Then she said: "I don't like that one, it smells awful", and then on the next photo of another hotel, she turned away from the monitor, gagging.
It was as if she was 'remote viewing' the rooms.

This was highly unusual for her, and we've been married fifty years, I have never experienced that with her before.

What was your and/or her reaction to that? I would be surprised and think it strange and wonder why I was able to smell a place by looking at it.

Moreover, why assume her reactions have any bearing whatsoever on the objective reality of those locations in the first place ? How would you ever know for certain without going there to investigate ? Or without reading extensive visitor reviews on those places ?

Just saying...

 

[EFJH]

Hello!

Overall, those who are biologically wired to have more far-reaching interconnections within the brain seem to be more likely to be creative, have synesthesia, and/or experience psychic phenomena.

Your thoughts on this subject, in addition to the source material, seems quite logical to me. However, I may be biased in this regard because I am a synesthete (chromesthesia). From what I have researched, much like any individual's perceptions, the way a synesthete experiences their particular type of synesthesia is unique to the individual. For example, in addition to perceiving a color when experiencing a sound, I perceive textures as well.

I have also had several psychic experiences. I am hesitant to discuss psychic phenomenon though. I am not sure it would be received well.