Once on truffles I shouted out there is a snow lion in the painting.
Very vividly the pattern of the composition turns into a snowlion in 3d on truffles.
Sober I can now see the patterns in there, but not the strong visual representation.
They defintely put it in there on purpose. Not sure what tools they use to alter their vision.
Not sure the rest saw it, not everyone recognizes Tibetan 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.
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.
