Leila Hadley describes her experiences with Brion Gysin’s stroboscopic Dream Machine, from The Chapel of Extreme Experience: A Short History of Stroboscopic Light and the Dream Machine by John Geiger, 2003
Brion came to New York in December 1964. I spent hours looking at the Dream Machine with my eyes closed and with my eyes open. As the Dream Machine revolved at 78 rpm, the large patterns I saw with my eyes closed became smaller when the cylinder spun at 45 rpm and smaller still at 33 rpm, both smaller and quicker to change shapes. At all speeds, the colors were extraordinarily vivid, the patterns ever fascinating in their variety. Waves of color curtaining my eyelids would form into curving bands and spirals, change into wheels of peacock blue, gas jet blue, then scarlet, emerald green, orange, purple drums would roll across my closed-lidded vision from left to right to recycle into panels and trees and hills and waves of color in glowing jewel colors, a sensation that was stimulating, comforting, refreshing, satisfying.
Brion told me that I would see scenes peopled with real-life figures if I looked at the Dream Machine with my eyes open. “Like hallucinating without drugs,” he said. I was skeptical.
It took longer to see images than it had to see vivid patterns, but the first images I saw captivated me. I saw a Palladian villa with black women in white aproned-floral print dresses gliding through a pillared atrium with pyramids of fruit and flowers heaped on trays balanced perfectly on their heads. Years later, I remembered this image when I saw Balinese women in Ubud carrying offerings on their heads to a temple. I saw white horses, red parrots, and a black panther in a field of forget-me-nots. I saw rivers, lakes, boats, castles, people. I never knew what I would see, nor did I ever see anyone I knew, although other people told me they often saw friends, family, familiar faces. After watching images come and go, I would feel singularly clear-headed, aware, serene, and often as though I had 360° vision.
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C.G. Jung, 1954, Mysterium Coniunctionis, Collected Works vol.14 §706
The process can, as I have said, take place spontaneously or be artificially induced. In the latter case you choose a dream, or some other fantasy-image, and concentrate on it by simply catching hold of it and looking at it. You can also use a bad mood as a starting-point, and then try to find out what sort of fantasy-image it will produce, or what image expresses this mood. You can then fix this image in your mind by concentrating your attention. Usually it will alter, as the mere fact of contemplating it animates it. … A chain of fantasy ideas develops and gradually takes on a dramatic character: the passive process becomes an action. At first it consists of projected figures, and these images are observed like scenes in the theatre. In other words, you dream with open eyes.
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Mavromatis, 1987, Hypnagogia: The Unique State of Consciousness between Wakefulness and Sleep
We have also seen that visual imagery, as well as all the other phenomena of hypnagogia, are, not infrequently, experienced with open eyes. Indeed, as noted, in some cultures the hypnagogic period just prior to falling asleep is specifically used for voluntary recall and ‘scanning of the days activities an enterprise usually carried out in the darkness of a room with the imagery projected on to an imaginary screen . . . . In fact, there have been reports in which subjects, who experienced visual hypnagogic imagery with open eyes, found that the images would become faint or disappear on closing their eyes.
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Eugene Gendlin, 2012, Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy
Unless they are in deep relaxation most people see no pictures when they close their eyes. But everyone easily sees images with their eyes open. I say, “Visualize where your bed is, where you sleep. Now walk to the bathroom.” Almost everyone can do this even while they are looking right at me. Then I say, “Now there, in that image space, a picture can come to go with this felt sense you have now.”
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