To add a little clarity to what the hallucinations look like, checkout what people describe here: https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/Geometry
The process of hallucinating on LSD feels like you're sliding a window through a higher dimensional structure projected onto a 2D plane. LSD hallucinations aren't "3D" in the same way that mushroom hallucinations are. LSD feels like infinite 2D planes stacked on top of each other, rather than a 3D, if that makes any sense.
If you pause to meditate and quiet your mind, you can get the hallucinations to briefly stall or at least retain their current character. If you focus on one area and let your mind explore the hallucinating you're looking at and just sort of "let it happen", or perhaps change music/environments/stimulus, you can push the hallucinations in a new direction.
The 2D nature of the hallucinations and the lens-like focusing mechanic does give the impression that you're viewing a projection of a higher dimensional space.
I understand it sounds like woo, but the experience is remarkably similar to the feeling of playing with something like http://4dtoys.com/ and I can very much understand what mirimir is describing.
I don't have any science-based understanding of how the brain works, but maybe I've added enough color that you can understand what the experience feels like.
Of course they wouldn't suddenly "get it" entirely like in the movies, but I think it would have to be somewhat interesting to see their reaction to going from absolute confidence in their perceptions and knowledge, to.....well, whatever you call the state one is in after having had such experiences. I know for me, even being fairly experienced, returning to a psychedelic state is rather shocking....it seems like it is literally impossible to store even remotely proper memories of it in one's mind, at least mine. Ineffable doesn't seem like the right word for it.
People also tend to forget that ordinary life is crazy complicated in its own right. We don't have trouble remembering it because our brains have tuned itself to compress and operate on those kinds of experiences symbolically.
But since we don't have appropriate symbolic representation for 'deep experience' it gets shoved out of mind before we can form memories.
This is my armchair theory on it. I imagine someone smarter than I has speculated on it, but I've yet to encounter anything on the subject.
I'd also like to read anything on comparisons of the two from people who are experienced in both, although I suspect interactions between the two may skew things a bit.
I understand experiencing something yourself can be a very easy/efficient way for humans to learn. But the ability to transfer knowledge and understanding in other ways even for complicated thoughts is one of the things that sets us apart from lesser beings on this planet.
Don't get me wrong, I understand there are effects. If alcohol weakens myelin and thus boosts unusual interactions between neurons (my layman understanding based on little education on the topic) it might be a good tool to boost creativity, within reason and with a bunch of asterisks attached. Meditation helping you to understand and control your mental state sounds very useful.
But yeah, for psychedelic I've not yet encountered a convincing elevator pitch of it providing lasting benefits beyond being an interesting experience. At least benefits in areas I consider myself lacking. At the same time I've read enough about the AI control problem that messing around with your thinking should only be done with a lot of caution. And an online personality I follow had a shroom trip, including a limited existential crisis and following panic attacks. Just that seems like a high price to pay, considering I don't see it having made him a better person.
So yeah, I'll hold off on such an experience until I get a plausible lecture from some psychedelic advocate or at least encounter statistical evidence of it being beneficial.
I really did have the sense that I was somehow seeing my thought process. As the wiki says:
> At the lower end of level 8B geometry, the experience manifests itself as being able to perceive the supposed organization and structure behind one's current conscious thought stream. This is typically presented in the form of a complex, multisensory, and fast-moving network that contains innately understood and relevant geometric representations of specific and abstract concepts. The experience of these innately understandable geometric representations consistently triggers one to visualize and physically feel the concept through highly detailed conceptual thinking.
> At the higher end of level 8B geometry, the effect retains its lower levels but expands itself to include the experience of subjectively perceiving, through innately understandable geometric representations, the architecture of subconscious neurological processes which are usually outside of one's normal daily perception or understanding. These processes are often interpreted to include concepts such as the structure of one's neurology, memories, perspectives, emotions, and general cognitive functions.
Er no, we do perceive the third due to having stereoscopic vision.
If you had true 3D/volumetric vision, you would find painting over objects aesthetically pointless, because you see behind not just the paint, but also through every layer and sub-component of the object all at once.
For example, most "3D" video games would seem very strangely empty and hollow to a being that could perceive volumetric space directly, because games are implemented by manipulating (many) fundamentally 2D surfaces in 3D space. This implementation technique works to suspend our disbelief because we don't see 3D volumes, we see 3D surfaces.
I would also be very keen to know if the human brain could directly perceive a volumetric space.
The visual system has evolved in a 3D world, in vision science actually the human visual system is considered "2.5D". I don't think we can "visualize" higher dimensions even though we can reason and extrapolate about them just fine.
Also the concept of perceptual extension is interesting, feed in a bunch of additional information and present it in a consistent way until the brain begins to incorporate it in it's world model. e.g. add additional senses.