Do you see black or nothing with your eyes closed?

When I close my eyes and try to imagine something, I see black, yet I can sense something hidden beyond the black “glass wall”. Nearly all my dreams are also black, but I can see images during my rare lucid dreams.

I have also seen “nothing” which is not the same as black (which is a color).

Some people that get migraines see “auras”. I have seen several types of auras, but this one only happened once: I lost ⅙th of my visual field, radiating out from the center, like a slice of pie, but the normally straight edges curved downward, sort of like a spiral. Moving my eyes did not affect the position of the missing wedge, but moving my head did. Most of the wedge had no color (or existence) at all. If I were to draw it, I'd use dark gray, but that's just an indicator, since I can't draw nothingness. Inside the wedge were straight lines that moved outward, frantically bouncing between the edges. The lines were red, yellow, or blue and so thin and sharp it almost hurt to look at them. Over the course of about 45 minutes, my normal vision faded back into view. I can still identify the exact center of my vision, at the center point of where the pie wedge was. There's a miniscule circular point there, which is visible under certain lighting conditions, now that I know where to look.

What do you see when you close your eyes?

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Megan Schmidt•recently•edited

Black with whatever my physical rods and cones ar doing. Like reading this text, I close my eyes and get lines of back and white like a negative. Areas of white, yellow, red all depend on what my eyes were physically handling. If I stay closed, It will fade to black. If extreme darkness, I can even make out individual red/green rods or cones, they look like like Marvin the martians.

Antonella Kauffman•recently•edited

When I close my eyes I see black, but similar to what you describe as sensing something hidden, I can sense that my brains forms images. I just can't see them. It's as if I'm missing the connections in my brain to see the images that it's making. Instead I have a description or a feeling of them. So I can navigate through a house in my head without actually seeing the layout. I can rehearse tennis drills in my head and feel warmed up even though all I see is black. I can do these things in my head (add numbers, pick an outfit to wear, find something, replay a scene from earlier in the day) with my eyes open or closed. Sometimes it's easier with my eyes open since the black doesn't distract me. If I'm meditating or calm, I sometimes see colors radiating in the blackness. The intensity and colors can change within a session. Also, if I move my eyes around when I see black, I sometimes see white jagged flashes of light which resemble nerves or lighting.

Neal White•recently•edited

Further thoughts: It's interesting that I can remember all those details, even though it's all black in my mind's eye. My mental anchor for the memory is the room which the aura occurred in. As I was remembering this experience with my eyes closed, I realized that I'm mentally tracing the shape of the wedge and the darting lines with my closed eyes. I see nothing but black, yet my eyes can trace the edges of something I cannot see.

Carol Hay•recently•edited

Black