Messages that can only be understood under the influence of psychedelics

Interesting, thanks! I can't make out anything resembling a lion, but I imagine I need to be higher for that.

Haha yeah it's harder for me to see now also. Two of the leaves of the lotus are darker those are his eyes, the white flower & female buddha are his tongue. The white skin of people are his hairs. When sober it feels farfetched, but it's all much clearer on a substance :)

Ahhh I kind of see what you mean! Very interesting, I wonder if this was on purpose or if the mind is just great at seeing things in shapes when on drugs.

Thangka's are always filled with symbols.

And the Tibetans have a strong culture of visions in dreams and real life.

For instance they often meditate long times without food & water, and they speak about how to protect against "demons" persuading you to jump of cliffs.

Although most or much more positives, projections of buddha forms appearing next to teachers etc.

There are also some shamanistic leftovers from the Bon Tradtion before buddhism took over. And some claim substances where used in certain traditions.

So I wouldn't be surprised if certain painters could see things like this, since it was so vivid while on truffles I think someone knew what they were doing, but who knows.

Any chance you can draw on top of the image? I don't really know where to begin to look from your description.

It is easier to spot when the details become blurred. So either zoom out of the image or look at your screen from afar. Because I am shortsighted, I am also able to see it easily when I remove my glasses and move back somewhat from the screen. I get the best result when I am just a bit outside the range were the image is sharp. Then I still have something like a 3-D effect from the potest. -- So no substance needed to see it.

People throughout time and culture have described the experience of seeing auras, and I believe that's a result of peeling back inhibitory responses to really "see" what the eye and mind see without too much heavy filtering.

Like today there are people who experience things like psychedelic flashbacks or HPPD, many report being able to trigger those experiences willingly, and sometimes uncontrollably.

I think you can train yourself to see this way, and meditation is a great way of peeling back your brains' pattern matching and assumption making to do it. It's similar to learning to "see" as an artist, or the artist's eye. When you first start out, you have to learn to look past the generalizations your mind fills in for what you think you're looking at to actually "see" what needs to be seen to capture what you want in art. It's a different type of perception.

For that reason, I don't think drugs need to be involved at all to make art like this, just a different way of perceiving things.

I see it better when my head is really close to the screen.

Yeah that's how I try to see the image again now. But it's not as vivid.