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Visual Reorientation Illusions (VRIs)


Hugh

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Thanks for that, I'll give it a try once I get the right tools. One thing that would help me do it by myself is to know something: Do you see anything you can't see in your normal view? Or is it just a feeling that you are in a different position but your actual view doesn't change anything. The main problem I think is that I don't know where to look at when trying to do a "conscious" VRI, I usually just focus on something I can see but nothing happens. Any ideas on this?

What you see before and after the flip is exactly the same in every aspect except one - your viewing direction.

With the mirror flip, one can actually go back and forth between the two opposite viewpoints so that you "become" the person in the reflection looking back at your reflection on the "other side".

It's really, really fun, and once you get the hang of it you can hold the new viewpoint and "explore around" the new, rotated view... it's like exploring a "whole new world".

It's like entering a whole new dimension of space around you...

I really wish I could make it happen for you, and anyone else who is interested.

Once you get it you'll be amazed.

It helps to have a large wall mirror and a flat hand-held mirror to use.

(Please do be careful with the mirrors and don't drop or hit them into each other.)

You just have to hold up the mirror at a 90 degree angle to the wall mirror and look at the intersection where your face is, and move it so that your face is equal on both sides...

In behind you'll see in the double reflection the 180 degree rotated around viewpoint of the room you're in.

You can "go into there" with a VRI, and back and forth... lots of fun. :)

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What you see before and after the flip is exactly the same in every aspect except one - your viewing direction.

With the mirror flip, one can actually go back and forth between the two opposite viewpoints so that you "become" the person in the reflection looking back at your reflection on the "other side".

It's really, really fun, and once you get the hang of it you can hold the new viewpoint and "explore around" the new, rotated view... it's like exploring a "whole new world".

It's like entering a whole new dimension of space around you...

I really wish I could make it happen for you, and anyone else who is interested.

Once you get it you'll be amazed.

It helps to have a large wall mirror and a flat hand-held mirror to use.

(Please do be careful with the mirrors and don't drop or hit them into each other.)

You just have to hold up the mirror at a 90 degree angle to the wall mirror and look at the intersection where your face is, and move it so that your face is equal on both sides...

In behind you'll see in the double reflection the 180 degree rotated around viewpoint of the room you're in.

You can "go into there" with a VRI, and back and forth... lots of fun. :)

Now I understand how it works actually...I was trying to see what was in the direction opposite to the one I was facing, which would be the same as "having eyes on the back of your head" :P I'll see if I can have some peace in order to try it out, as at work I can't and when I get home I'm a bit busy, but thanks a lot for the patience and all the info, one day I'll get it right :tu:

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Now I understand how it works actually...I was trying to see what was in the direction opposite to the one I was facing, which would be the same as "having eyes on the back of your head" :P I'll see if I can have some peace in order to try it out, as at work I can't and when I get home I'm a bit busy, but thanks a lot for the patience and all the info, one day I'll get it right :tu:

Great!

Once you get the hang of it, you can try it anywhere you are.

I like to try VRIs wherever I am, another fun place is when you're a passenger in the front seat of a car.

If there is a long straight road in front of you it's easier to do the 180.

All of a sudden, you're travelling in the opposite direction, again, fun to do back and forth. :)

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I made an updated sketch of the 180 degree mirror assisted VRI.

You end up in the other viewpoint of the same room.

180degreemirrorvri.jpg

Have fun with it! :)

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  • 2 months later...

I saw this picture recently and thought I'd add it to this thread (found at the bottom of this post).

It is an ambiguous room with a couple of different possible vertical orientations.

It kind of gives a VRI type of effect, but one doesn't feel everything actually flipping around as with an actual VRI.

What happens is one gets a sense of a wall and floor changing subjective identities.

The wall becomes a floor and vice versa.

This is only half like a VRI though, because the positions of the wall and floor remain the same with the photo staying in the same position.

If one were to actually experience a VRI within this room, the wall and floor would do an instant 90 degree flip during the process, so the wall would end up where the floor was and vice versa.

Up in space, this happens to astronauts all the time, they see someone floating by upside down and then they think all of a sudden that it is themselves that is upside down and they do a 180 degree VRI where the floor and ceiling exchange their subjective identities.

We normally only get turned around with VRIs here on Earth though with flips around the vertical axis, where the walls, or North/South/East/West directions exchange their identities.

North and South exchange identities with a 180 degree VRI and North and East or North and West do so with a 90 degree VRI.

We normally would not get horizontal axis VRIs like with the posted picture with the wall and floor exchanging identities though, because of gravity here on the Earth. :)

post-45713-126406531649_thumb.gif

Edited by Hugh
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  • 11 months later...

Hi Hugh,

I am glad I came upon your posts re: VRI. I have been writing a book on the subject (for too long), but only recently discovered the term VRI. I had called it "directioning" this whole time. I have always had a very hard time explaining it to people, or getting people to care about it. I am glad there are other people out there who do. I think it's an amazing field of inquiry, revealing much about human perception and more.

I started doing experiments in college (1985) where I would project slides of the same building on four different walls (in four directions) to simulate the experience of sensing a space in four different ways. I don't have a physics background, but an art background, however I, too have speculated that some kind of other dimensionality is involved here. At least it is a way to "re-see" a space as if it were completely unfamiliar (as in mirrors, upside down, or when coming back from a very long absence, etc). Art is often defined as a method to see the world differently, so VRI's seemed a very obvious thing to explore.

One interesting thing I've noticed is that very old memories of my childhood are locked in "turned" modes, and were thus protected from later memories which cancel out the spatial memories over time. This means that VRI's can house and protect memories, and be unlocked with a deliberate flip. The house I grew up in was experienced in a 180 degree flipped mode when I was 3 years old. After that it flipped, so all many memories in the earlier mode are retrievable.

I also found that one can divide the relationship between one's body and the world into five general spheres. The three main divisions are the external reality, and the internal reality, and the body. But the external reality is divided into those aspects that one can sense and confirm (by seeing, hearing, etc) and the rest of the world that is not perceptible. The perceptible aspects are used for orientation. Inside the body, mainly in the mind, are models of the perceptible and imperceptible, meaning an inner model of the perceptible outside, and then all the rest that is imagined as real or not, i.e. all mental spaces. Mental mapping comes into play here, in that one's real current location is matched against one's inner model of it. This location is placed on a mental map which is much larger than the immediate location; it's part of the "inner infinite imperceptible". A VRI can be thought of as a mismatch, or turning of these spheres against one another. As one physically turns, the internal and external models and maps have have to be kept in sync, but when they aren't, dislocation and VRI's occur.

In the attachment below, there is the head (meaning the body, the self) inside a room. The room is in a city. Inside the head is a model of the room, and a map of the city. Only the room and a little of the city (out the window) is perceptible. In the second example the mental map is 180 degrees turned, and the room is then perceived as turned. This actually happens to me in my house. As soon as I walk out of the building, the illusion flips and I am back "in sync" with my mental map. In other words, when inside, I perceive north to be south, etc, I visualize "uptown" in the opposite direction.

post-110968-0-96857500-1294427998_thumb.

Below is what I think would be a great way to demonstrate the phenomenon in a controlled setting, such as an art space or science hall. It is four identical rooms, each turned 90 degrees to the next. The visitor would enter the first room and experience what I call "imprinting", making the room familiar to him/herself. The second room would then be turned and the visitor would experience a simulated VRI, or an actual one. He/she would exit and by that point the exterior space (the exhibition hall) might be turned as well. It would force the issue, I think, by making the turn physical, and hopefully orientationally as well.

post-110968-0-56699600-1294428017_thumb.

Any thoughts?

Max in FL

Edited by mrb
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Any thoughts?

Max in FL

Hi Max and welcome to the forum! :)

It's great to hear of your experiences with the Visual Reorientation Illusion!

Your attempts to explain it are similar to mine, and I like your two pictures that attempt to show it.

The first one of the mental map image being 180 degrees flipped around is very good, yes, I can totally relate to how some places seem flipped around from one's normal orientational bearings.

There is an overall bearing sense we have and an inner one, related to which room we are in, which is fun to experience the VRI with, looking out a window for example, and seeing the sun set in one's "normal" North lol...

The second picture of setting up 4 identical rooms flipped around 90 degrees from each other is one that I had earlier illustrated here:

vritheatreflipexplained.jpg

There are many other threads I have started about VRIs, here are a couple on this forum:

http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=159285&st=0

http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=184561

There are tons of links in all these threads to look through and enjoy.

I'm glad you're writing a book about the whole experience, it has always been very fascinating for me. :)

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That is very cool. However, I think this is one of those things that, because you are able to do it so well, you think that it shouldn't be difficult for others.

Well, there is no way I could begin to perform a "VRI". Whatever chunl of the brain responsible for that ability is missing from my head. But I can picture what you are saying.

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That is very cool. However, I think this is one of those things that, because you are able to do it so well, you think that it shouldn't be difficult for others.

Well, there is no way I could begin to perform a "VRI". Whatever chunl of the brain responsible for that ability is missing from my head. But I can picture what you are saying.

Hi Thesantanfan.

You may have actually experienced it before but weren't fully aware of exactly what had happened...

Have you ever come up from a subway and started walking down a street thinking that you are going in a certain direction, but then realize that you are actually heading in the opposite direction?

It's very interesting to study the exact process that occurs first in the realization of the difference in bearing sense, then the "flip" that takes place (where the whole world does a 180 turn around), then the feeling that "everything is back to normal" and that you "now know exactly where you are"...

It happens all the time when people say they got "turned around" and "lost".

They see things that are "turned around" from their normal viewpoint, but after a quick VRI takes place, everything looks "normal" again because their bearing sense and normal viewpoint match up.

It's a fascinating thing to experiment with, especially in a movie theater, where with practice, 90 and 180 degree flips become easy.

It's like visiting 4 different theaters while still sitting in the same seat! Cool stuff... :)

The picture that mrb posted of the 4 identical rooms at 90 degrees from each other would be a great exhibit for people to learn what this whole VRI thing is about and how it feels when you go from room to room. The cool thing is though that if you can do VRIs you can go to each of the 4 room positions while being in only one of them. :)

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Below is what I think would be a great way to demonstrate the phenomenon in a controlled setting, such as an art space or science hall. It is four identical rooms, each turned 90 degrees to the next. The visitor would enter the first room and experience what I call "imprinting", making the room familiar to him/herself. The second room would then be turned and the visitor would experience a simulated VRI, or an actual one. He/she would exit and by that point the exterior space (the exhibition hall) might be turned as well. It would force the issue, I think, by making the turn physical, and hopefully orientationally as well.

Any thoughts?

Max in FL

The more I think about this idea the more I like it Max.

directioningroom3dlowre.jpg

There are extra things that could be done to help the people in the exhibit to experience a VRI.

You could have them imprint their bearing sense in each of the four rooms, and have a big number on the wall of each one, 1 to 4.

Then you could switch the numbers while they are outside of the room, or while their eyes are closed.

You could also have all four rooms on a huge turntable, so that their orientation for each room stays the same relative to each other, but their orientation to the exhibit hall gets rotated around.

You could have one of four different pictures outside the door of each room, which you can have them imprint on initially, then flip them around on them while they are inside each room, so that when they come out they might experience a VRI as well... :)

Charles Oman did studies of VRIs for NASA with a "Tumbling Room".

Here's the outside:

tumblingroomoutside.jpg

Here's the inside:

tumblingroominside.jpg

What was great about this room is that one could allow people to experience ceiling/floor VRIs!

You might experience a sudden 180 VRI flip so that instead of the room being "upside down" it was "you"! :rofl:

Normally we only experience VRIs about the vetical axis here on Earth with gravity, so that only North/South/East and West instantly flip their subjective identities, but up in space astronauts experience VRIs about all 3 perceived axes so the perceived Ceiling/Floor/Walls can all suddenly flip their subjective identities!

Fun stuff. :)

Here's a picture showing how astronauts might see a crewmember in an inverted position and suddenly feel "upside down" themselves and experience a 180 degree VRI.

astronautvri.jpg

It's all the same phenomenon, whether up in space or on the ground:

Perceived surfaces/directions around us instantly flip their subjective identities either 90 or 180 degrees.

examples of 180 degree VRIs:

"east" becomes "west"

"north becomes "south"

"up" becomes "down" (normally only in zero gravity space)

examples of 90 degree VRIs:

"east" becomes "south"

"west" becomes "north"

"up" becomes "west" (normally only in zero gravity space)

Edited by Hugh
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I inverted the picture and put the two of them together to help envision what the 180 degree "up/down" VRI instant flip would be like:

astronautvri.jpg

astronautvri2.jpg

As one can see, everything stays the same relative to each of the astronauts and the walls, but the "whole universe" has been perceived to have "turned around" relative to the orientation it was before the VRI.

The same thing happens with a VRI here on Earth, except the 180 or 90 degree flip turns the perceived cardinal directions of North/South/East and West.

Edited by Hugh
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  • 9 months later...

There is a RadioLab episode called "You Are Here" available at:

http://www.radiolab.org/2011/jan/25/you-are-here/#commentform

In this episode, Sharon Roseman talks about how she has experienced her world getting turned around on her.

In the comment list, others share how they've experienced the same thing too:

____________________

Andrew:

"I tried thousands of times to explain this to my parents and friends when I was a kid but no one else could understand. I eventually trained myself to control it by visualizing how the world would look if I turned it 90 degrees, and lately it doesn't happen to me unless I "turn it on." This is so incredible."

roy:

"I have a very similar problem and have a better way to explain this shift, 90deg or 180. I would like to draw this but will pen it instead. Suppose I was driving to my home horizontally on this board, from the left side to the right (ie heading east), and my home was on the next right turn, facing east, assuming north is up.

I would normally take a right turn and enter my gate, heading in the westerly direction. Lets suppose this is how my brain had oriented my home position.

Now, lets suppose, I was being driven by someone and I dozed off while heading east , prior to taking the right turn. When the car stopped, all i remember is we went straight, as I was not conscious to the right turn. Now when the car stops in front of my home, my house happens to be facing south as I made no turns. Now everything has shifted by 90 degrees. Similarly , if there were 2 right turns, which i was not conscious off, the shift would be 180 degrees.

In this situation, I have to stop and close my eyes and re-orient my self to the 90deg shift and soon, all falls back into place. If you agree and see what I am getting at and if you experience a similar shift, please let me know.

I can also tell you how I deal with this problem and I am now so good at directions. However, I do get disoriented when malls or other places are not sharp 90 degree bends but tend to branch off at an angel."

badenver:

"Wow - this happened to me only once and at age 18. It was terrifying because it happened with my eyes wide open. Walking down the street with 2 friends right outside my house, I suddenly felt lost and disoreiented although I had a clear sense of where I was, somewhere in my neighbourhood and that I was walking. It was just that the scenery had completely shifted...it was a 180 degree turn, where by I knew I was still walking in the same direction I had been before the shift but the path before me felt like it had moved behind me. But not only that, everything felt inverted too. I was completely turned around and terrified. I actually stopped and tried to explain all this to my 2 friends who were just bewildered. I tried to reason out my bearings trying to pinpoint actual landmarks and where they should be, but where they were now... In addition, I had lost all sense of distance and depth, and as I stood on that path trying to understand what had happened, trying to gauge the distance from me to my house and even which way exactly I should be heading, was it forward or backword?....and still unable to feel certain, I was so terrified that all I could do was sit and cry right there on that path. Eventually, I gave in and allowed my friends to lead me home, I just put one foot in front of the other where ever they led me but without any sense of where I was headed, crying with every step. As soon as I reached the gate to our house, and only when I was close enough to touch the actual gate, did I finally feel a sense of place and depth and prespective. What a terrifying experience.....it was like being in the twilight zone, truly, it was like entering a whole new dimension where everything looks the same but feels different and is in a different place.... in my case the terror was from being completely helpless to anchor the scene before me and to make sense of it all...

I just can't imagine how these folks, Sharon as a liitle child....how tough these experiences must have been, and to endure these episodes repeatedly..."

Mike Specian:

"I was listening to this podcast as I was driving. When Sharon said the world "turns 90 degrees" I almost crashed the car. For the first time in my entire life I had learned of someone who has experiences the same thing as I do!

My experience differs somewhat from Sharon's. First, I don't need to spin around to become disoriented. If I close my eyes (or not, I've gotten better at this) and visualize what the world would look like turned 90 degrees, I can open my eyes and see the difference. This is easier in places where I've spent a lot of time. In new places, I have to concentrate harder to visualize the rotation. Sometimes I actively try to avoid this, as it can lead to confusion and distraction.

The best way I've found to explain it is like this. Picture four streets oriented in a square with four identical houses facing in each of the cardinal directions. All of the surroundings are completely symmetric and identical. My understanding is that under these conditions, almost no one would be able to tell which house is facing in which direction. I can.

Here's another example. I would attend church as a kid. The building was perfect for "turning the world around" because I spent long amounts of time there, and my mind would wander a lot. I began to visualize how the church would appear different to me if I turned it 90 degrees. Eventually, I was able to visualize all four orientations. They each represent distinct places for me. Each was a sub-location buried within the original stationary location. Once an orientation had been visualized, with a slight bit of concentration, I could flip between them. Each felt different to me and caused different emotional reactions. I would notice details in one environment that I wouldn't notice in another.

Despite this, I think that I have a pretty good sense of direction. When I would bike around my home town as a kid and the world flipped on me, I became momentarily disoriented. It was no longer clear which path was the best way home. In those circumstances I could either rotate the world back to its standard configuration or try to map out a "new path" in the other orientation.

This still affects me everyday, but I've gotten so used to it that I'm barely consciously aware of it anymore. I'll sit at my desk, type, the orientation will switch, I won't miss a beat, and I'll return to typing. Sometimes I purposefully change the orientation just to make things more interesting."

Rayna:

"I was amazed to hear about Sharon -- I've experienced something similar to her condition since I was a little girl. Many of my first memories about the house I grew up in seem as if they're experienced from a skewed or rotated angle.

As I got older, I realized that if I concentrated, I could turn the disorientation on and off. I remember lying awake at a friend's sleepover, entertaining myself my switching back and forth between points of view.

____________________

It is interesting to hear more about how others experience the VRI flip phenomenon. :)

Edited by Hugh
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  • 3 months later...

Hello..

A friend just told me about VRI's.

I had explained my strange world flipping illusion to him a while ago, and he came across it.

Reading your threads relating to VRI'S i clearly am experiencing this, whilst also inducing it at will..

Very interesting; i thought i was crazy while growing up, because noone bloody understood what the hell i would be talking about when trying to explain the flip that i would of just experienced.

I stopped thinking about it for ages, and just accepted it as a pathway that my brain had created when i was about 5 years old spinning on the spot..

As the years went by, i learned to induce it by becoming aware to it.

I told many people, but noone could ever offer me anything valid, till reading about Visual reorientation illusions.

So astronauts felt this in 0 gravity..

hmmmm, my mind has just discovered this new information about this, so gonna do some more research; but nice to see there are others..

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Oh my!!!

There are many that can do this!!

This is insane..

There was a time that i could only do it if i shut my eyes first, then opened, which wouldn't always work.

Then i realised that you can flip with your eyes open, but it was difficult making the transition at first.

Once there; it's easy flipping anytime, anywhere now..

I don't think i concentrated too much on the four different view points, as i did with the 2.

90degrees to the right or left was always more significant a shift.

The default setting as Hugh mentioned, i can relate to.

There's always a default that feels comfortable, or sometimes not... hehe.

I'm so excited that i finally found some info and other people that have this.

I have tried experimenting with this everywhere to take it to it's limits..

It's definitely fun.

It's not just a flip in viewpoint though, it feels completely different too.

Very hard to explain....

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Hi imagination, welcome to the forum!

It's so great to find another who has experienced VRIs!

They are fun and enjoyable to control for me too.

I agree about the different feel part... Each viewpoint is like a parallel world isn't it?

Is each memory that you have linked to the viewpoint that you saw it in? It is for me and others that I've talked to that experience this...

I look forward to discussing it more with you.

I'm also over at the Getting Lost Forum, where I've started a Blog about my VRI experiences...

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  • 3 months later...

I've attached a drawing of how Visual Reorientation Illusions are created in one's mental map of one's surroundings.

I included an actual map of the neighborhood, including the house that I grew up in and the school I attended as a child.

You can see that many of the streets are not at 90 degree angled intersections, some are at around 60 or 120 degrees.

My mind, and others who experience VRIs, only map the surroundings as if on a straight line grid. So a 60 or 120 degree turn gets mentally mapped as a 90 degree one.

What this leads to is a discrepancy between what is actual and perceived.

The top portion of the drawing contains the actual map of the neighborhood.

The bottom portion of the drawing contains the four perceived worlds that are experienced as a result of the difference in mapping using a percieved grid.

The top left map on the bottom portion contains the School 1 world. House 1 was my normally perceived orientation of my house on the School 1 map. When I left my house and went along street A to street B, I perceived a 90 degree right turn, even though it was actually about a 60 degree right turn (which added 30 degrees to the actual). When I arrived at the school, it was perceived to be actually oriented exactly how it is in that diagram, relative to my house 1 position. When I walked home from school along street C to D, I perceived it to be a 90 degree right turn, even though it was actually about a 60 degree right turn (which added 30 degrees to the actual). The turns from street D to E to F to G to H were close to 90 degrees, and that's how I perceived them. The turn from street H to A was actually about 60 degrees to the right, but I perceived it as a 90 degree right turn (which added 30 degrees to the actual).

When you see that I mentally added a total of about 90 degrees from actual within my mental grid map, it explains why I arrived back home to find that it had changed 90 degrees into house 2 position, which is 90 degrees rotated from my normal house 1 position!

The School 2 map world shows how if I went to school from my normal house position 1 along streets H, G, F, E, D and C, that I would find my school in position 2, and if I came home along street B, that I would find my house had flipped to position 4, which was a really cool position to experience. :)

The 2 lower maps show school position 3 and 4 world maps, with the associated House positions 2, 3 and 4. They were less experienced, because there had to be an extra flip in there from my normal house position 1 maps, but they were still experienced on occasion and were also fun to visit. :)

post-45713-0-07714000-1338960738_thumb.j

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How is that possible? It sounds really interesting, but I'm still trying to wrap my mind around it.

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How is that possible? It sounds really interesting, but I'm still trying to wrap my mind around it.

Hi Ashleen. It is really interesting, and fun to experience too! :)

I'm not sure exactly why it is possible, but I've come up with many possible explanations over the years.

What it feels like is that you actually instantly get transported to a parallel world that is turned 90 or 180 degrees around from how you normally experience it.

It's so weird because everything is in it's same place relative to each other within the new world, but the whole thing is flipped around from normal.

I think that scientists have traced it to the firing of cells in the brain that deal with orientation... head direction cells, grid cells etc...

It's kind of a reset mechanism that our brain has to reorient our perceived directional bearings so that we don't feel lost.

What I find the most fascinating though, is that once one becomes competent at cognitively inducing VRIs, one can consciously fire those same cells in the brain so that one can choose which one of the four world positions that they want to experience!

For me, the world around me can be experienced in four different orientations, which always kind of felt cool, because there were four parallel worlds to travel to at will.

Each one has it's own feel...

I've also thought that it may be possible because there are higher dimensions of space and ourselves that we can experience through VRIs...

I mean, you hear of all these theories like string theory that say that there might be higher spatial dimensions but here is an actual experience that we have that shows that those higher dimensions of space could possibly be accessed with VRIs.

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Here is a mental exercise to further understand the VRI flip...

Imagine yourself floating weightless in the Space Shuttle, in a perceived upright position, with the floor beneath you. You look out the windows and you see the Earth above your shuttle, and you perceive that you are passing "under the Earth". All of a sudden, you think that you are actually floating "over the Earth", and you and your shuttle are actually "upside down"!! You will have just experienced a VRI. Your perceived axis of "up/down" will have just done a 180 degree rotation, and you will feel that you are looking at the same world, but that it just got turned around 180 degrees from where it was!

The exact same thing happens to us here on Earth, except that our perceived axis of "north/south" gets turned around 180 degrees, so we feel that we are looking at the same world, but that it just got turned around 180 degrees from where it was! :)

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  • 2 weeks later...

Here's a link to Oman's article about the experiences of astronauts and cosmonauts.

http://dspace.mit.ed....pdf?sequence=1

Thanks for that link linttrap, Oman does a great explanation of VRIs in there...

Here's a link to another thread about VRIs here on this forum as well:

http://www.unexplain...howtopic=159285

I've included a picture of a 180 degree VRI that shows how astronauts experience them in space.

Here is an explanation that goes along with the picture, to help one understand what happens:

Put yourself in the spacesuit of the astronaut on the right in the bottom part of the picture.

You would think that you are floating under the Earth, which is above you, the space shuttle is below you, and the astronaut in front of you (the one on the left in the picture) is upside down.

Actually try to feel this... feel every aspect of being in that position... really try hard...

Feel and see the Earth above you, look at the shuttle below you, look at the astronaut in front of you and see him as being upside down from how he should be. You are right side up. Feel that position with everything you can. Feel that you couldn't possibly fall up, and you are safe.

__________

Now, suddenly you experience a 180 degree VRI.

You are in the top portion of the picture, and the astronaut on the left.

You now feel the Earth is below you, the space shuttle is above you, the astronaut in front of you is actually right-side up, and you are the one who is upside down dangling precariously over top of the Earth! Feel this position with everything you can! Think to yourself, I might fall down!

__________

Do you feel the difference in how each position feels?

It is the exact same relative positions between you and everything else in each picture, but the difference between the perceived picture orientations themselves is what changes.

They are totally opposite, and that is what a 180 degree VRI does to you perception... it turns the world around 180 degrees in an instant.

Even though this is likely harder to envision here on the ground, it should be a lot easier to imagine up in space, because the Up/Down axis and gravity are so naturally felt already.

post-45713-0-28365100-1340077521_thumb.j

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I believe I had replied to the first time this was posted.

My perception of it is you are actually using a type of CRV but because you have not acknowledged the reverse effect that is caused from your conscious and subconscious not being completely aware of eachother. Therefore your subconscious sends the information to your conscious "inner mind" in a reverse effect. Think of it like the lenses in our eyes, were seeing reflections of anything we see, in fact, for all we know all of our "reality" is actually completely oposite of what we percieve, but because we evolved "seeing backwards" from our motor skills to brain development we percieve it as being "normal".

Being able to control that effect may be a different story, then it would logically be an enhanced daydream, kind of like a lucid daydream.

Having the sensation again is another matter, many experience it and attribute it to a type of vertigo. Except it is more of a Deja-vu-vertigo-daydream.

If it has nothing to do with your eyes, such as dialation, straining, etc. then it is a completely mental effect which takes into concideration your active imagination, perceptions and how well you grasp three dimensional geography. Most likely people who can do VRIs are good with math, trig, music and design such as 3D modeling.

Just my 2c

EDIT

The best way to experience this is walking up a bridge, as you are walking up the bridge watch the ground, and as you are walking up look up fast at something, not just the sky. Doing this several times gives you the feeling nearly every time. Make sure when you do it there is not lots of traffic lol, because you might stumble.

Edited by G3N0M3
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I believe I had replied to the first time this was posted.

My perception of it is you are actually using a type of CRV but because you have not acknowledged the reverse effect that is caused from your conscious and subconscious not being completely aware of eachother. Therefore your subconscious sends the information to your conscious "inner mind" in a reverse effect. Think of it like the lenses in our eyes, were seeing reflections of anything we see, in fact, for all we know all of our "reality" is actually completely oposite of what we percieve, but because we evolved "seeing backwards" from our motor skills to brain development we percieve it as being "normal".

Being able to control that effect may be a different story, then it would logically be an enhanced daydream, kind of like a lucid daydream.

Having the sensation again is another matter, many experience it and attribute it to a type of vertigo. Except it is more of a Deja-vu-vertigo-daydream.

If it has nothing to do with your eyes, such as dialation, straining, etc. then it is a completely mental effect which takes into concideration your active imagination, perceptions and how well you grasp three dimensional geography. Most likely people who can do VRIs are good with math, trig, music and design such as 3D modeling.

Just my 2c

EDIT

The best way to experience this is walking up a bridge, as you are walking up the bridge watch the ground, and as you are walking up look up fast at something, not just the sky. Doing this several times gives you the feeling nearly every time. Make sure when you do it there is not lots of traffic lol, because you might stumble.

Hi G3N0M3, great to hear from you again.

I looked up our previous conversation on this in the other thread.

Were you able to try out the methods we discussed here?

http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=159285&st=15#entry3006796

I looked up the CRV acronym and do you mean computer robot vision?

I will try the "look up fast" method you've described to see if it helps to induce a VRI, thanks!

From what I've found out about VRIs, they seem to be linked to head direction cell firing in the brain...

Researchers have done tests on rats in space with regards to VRIs...

Here's a sample explanation from one site:

____________________

Rat head direction cell responses in zero-gravity parabolic flight.

Taube JS, Stackman RW, Calton JL, Oman CM.

Collaborators (1)

Oman CM.

Source

Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Center of Cognitive Neuroscience, Dartmouth College, 6207 Moore Hall, Hanover, NH 03755, USA. jeffrey.taube@dartmouth.edu

Abstract

Astronauts working in zero-gravity (0-G) often experience visual reorientation illusions (VRIs). For example, when floating upside down, they commonly misperceive the spacecraft floor as a ceiling and have a reversed sense of direction. Previous studies have identified a population of neurons in the rat's brain that discharge as a function of the rat's head direction (HD) in a gravitationally horizontal plane and is dependent on an intact vestibular system. Our goal was to characterize HD cell discharge under conditions of acute weightlessness. Seven HD cells in the anterior dorsal thalamus were monitored from rats aboard an aircraft in 0-G parabolic flight. Unrestrained rats locomoted in a clear plexiglas rectangular chamber that had wire mesh covering the floor, ceiling, and one wall. The chamber and surrounding visual environment were relatively up-down symmetrical. Each HD cell was recorded across forty 20-s episodes of 0-G. All HD cells maintained a significant direction-specific discharge when the rat was on the chamber floor during the 0-G and also during the hypergravity pull-out periods. Three of five cells also showed direction-specific responses on the wall in 1-G. In contrast, direction-specific discharge was usually not maintained when the rat locomoted on the vertical wall or ceiling in 0-G. The loss of direction-specific firing was accompanied by an overall increase in background firing. However, while the rat was on the ceiling, some cells showed occasional bursts of firing when the rat's head was oriented in directions that were flipped relative to the long axis of symmetry of the chamber compared with the cell's preferred firing direction on the floor. This finding is consistent with what might be expected if the rat had experienced a VRI. These responses indicate that rats maintain a normal allocentric frame of reference in 0-G and 1-G when on the floor, but may lose their sense of directional heading when placed on a wall or ceiling during acute exposures to 0-G.

____________________

Charles Oman pointed out in another article:

"Actually, it is possible to have a VRI right here on Earth, as when you leave an underground subway station labyrinth, and upon seeing a familiar visual landmark, realize that e.g. you are facing east, not west. On Earth, gravity constrains our body orientation, and provides an omnipresent "down" cue, so we normally only experience VRIs about a vertical axis."

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No I didn't try the mirror trick but that is just playing with mirrors, when you do that for illusions it's quite fun, you can play with your friends and weird them out.

Being able to transit through the mirror with your mind is another story, that is actually a very, very old technique called "walking through mirrors" when talking about CRV and astral projection, when you transit through a mirror you are in one of our "reverse dimensions" like you said in another post, yes, it is like a copy of our dimension just in another perceptual angle. Things like that though are not usually experienced while being completely awake, without meditating, etc. to just DO IT is a whole other ballgame.

In this case I'd have to reffer back to my other post as it being some type of enhanced daydream or even over active stimulation of your "creativity".

On the other hand, anyone who has to deal with being high up would experience this vertigo effect. The illusion part is what baffles me, to experience that your perceptions themselves would have to believe that they are actually 180o backwards, in which case it would account on the individuals grasp of their perceptions... if you know what I mean.

Otherwise though I am no medical research scientist or anything but from my knowledge of the head/brain I would attribute this "perceptual flip" to the water inside of your head next to your ears, when you are in space that fluid inside of your skull floats like you always see in movies. Therefore your brain has nothing to point it's "perceptual bearings" at the ground, it's completely dependent on your own motor/skill functions and memory of where you are...

Think of it like this; when do you ever think... which way is up? or which way is down? we don't need to really think about it because of gravity and the fluid in our skulls, this determines balance and many other functions, even sense of direction (which way is straight).

So, in my example of walking up a bridge you are kind of experiencing that feeling you get going over a bridge fast in a car, you do that with your head by looking over the rail at the ground as you walk up and the look up at another object. Now you are experienceing a perceptual effect which will give you the same kinda feeling. As you look up at the object the fluid in your head and your perceptions of being on the ground but then all of a sudden seeing something way high up right near you throws off your perception of where you are in 3D space. You most of the time lose your footing thinking you are either on the ground or where you were looking forgetting you are on the bridge still.

Warning!

If you are afraid of hights don't get too afraid remember, you are just standing... I hope I don't make anyone afraid of bridges if they try this lol. I also say again make sure it's not too busy because you might stumble.

ALSO

CRV - Controlled Remote Viewing

It was first popularized in recent times by Hitler at first because of his fame for the occult, then after he fell the russians back in the cold war started to study it and it's scientific effects, they were then able to understand that you are able to gain enemy intelligence without ever entering the building. By that time the cold war ended and there were no more threats and the program was probably more held in secret from what intelligence they released.

It then became popular around the 70s-80s in America through several different roots and since then several schools within the US and India teach you how to accomplish CRV.

Before then the more enhanced version of CRV called Astral Projecting had proven many things in space before we had even searched those planets. There have been several renowned "Astralastronauts" which would leave Earth with only their minds and the energy of our planet to go and travel on these moons and planets, generally within our solar sytem.

Myself the furthest I projected myself willingly was between the earth and the moon. The stars are MUCH brighter I have to say when you are in outter space. You think there is a big difference with going out to the country... no, no... it's actually very intense.

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wow ok this is hard to wrap my brain around. i've read through this whole thread so here are my questions: you mentioned it's like a whole new world, yet the same when you flip. how do you mean? are the objects in the room the *exact* same? or are there a few new ones you've never seen before? have you ever done this on purpose while with a friend and tried to talk to this person while you are flipped?

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