To test synaesthesia, V.S. Ramachandran and collaborators designed a test, the picture (on left). Pick out the twos as quickly as possible.
Most ordinary people can do it within about twenty seconds. (I can do it in about 2 seconds.) A majority of aesthetes supposedly see numbers or letters as colours e.g. five might be green and 2 red. But I feel the differences 5's are closed mouth and 2 are open mouth. In fact 5's are smooth, 3's are sharp and 2' simply slimey.
Here's another quick test:-
Do you hear, smell, feel(through touch), taste? Synaesthesia is a condition where stimulation for one of the senses provokes a response in another whether or not it has been directly activated.
I'm quite interested in the links between physical, emotional, and spiritual. Especially as discernment for me is linked to a semi-physical feeling.
Synesthesia is emotional. The experience is accompanied by a sense of certitude (the "this is it" feeling) and a conviction that what synesthetes perceive is real and valid. This accompaniment brings to mind that transitory change in self-awareness that is known as ecstasy. Ecstasy is any passion by which the thoughts are absorbed and in which the mind is for a time lost. In The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James spoke of ecstasy's four qualities of ineffability, passivity, noesis, and transience. These same qualities are shared by synesthesia.Most spiritual directors, I know are concerned with the symbolic universe and the metaphorical nature of life especially in arts and natural forms. I wonder how many are synaesthetes?
Richard E. Cytowic http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/v2/psyche-2-10-cytowic.html
