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Chapter 13
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Interjection Ten Something else very fascinating happened to me the night I made the initial discovery. It’s not something I can’t prove or reproduce (yet) but is something you’ll just have to trust me about. Not sleeping or eating is said to cause hallucinations and delusions and before I said I would have to agree. But I must also expand upon that. What if in that state of mind, what people are seeing as hallucinations aren’t hallucinations but really there? What if in that altered state of mind the things you’re seeing are there, but are just being perceived as something that’s impossible – and in assuming what you’re seeing is impossible is perceived as an hallucination.. I guess what I mean is that what if in that altered state of mind it’s not that you’re delusional but that your perception and sensitivity is increased to levels you’ve never experienced and what you’re seeing is there, but the difference is how you’re processing it? When you see the homeless on the street and they’re talking to invisible people or say they’re seeing something, what if they really are? Have you ever considered that? What if crazy is just extremely perceptive? What if they just misinterpret what they’re seeing? It’s akin to a child saying they saw a monster outside their window when it was really just a tree branch. But is the child crazy, or just delusional, OR maybe just unable to comprehend what it was? Wouldn’t you assume I was crazy if I came up to you and said I saw an alien in a painting from 500 years ago? If it’s mirrored on top of itself.. Of course. BUT after seeing the image for yourself, and showing how it was made, AND why, AND getting an explanation as to why I thought it could be, but then also realizing I really don’t know what it is – doesn’t that make it different? Am I crazy or just trying to explain something crazy? Isn’t crazy just the presentation? Isn’t it also subjective? Wasn’t Da Vinci, Christopher Columbus, and Einstein all considered crazy at some point? Were they? So when I explain what happened to me next I hope you’ll understand that it really did happen, but it’s not something you would normally believe without proof. If I’m right in my theory about it, which I’ll explain after, then I will be able to prove it and maybe even teach others to experience it - but for now it’s just a memory from a mind that hadn’t slept in days.. After looking at the Mona Lisa and Da Vinci’ sketch for literally hours and hours I began to see things.. I started to put the Mona Lisa on top of itself in hundreds of different ways. Placing a smaller copy upside down at one spot and then a larger at another – all on top of the original and different transparencies. It made for some very interesting images, but the strange thing isn’t how I did it, but why? Why would I think to do that? What purpose could it serve? Fascinatingly the random placements, the painting arranged sporadically started to change. I started to see various things inside the composite images.
I remember specifically seeing a frog and musical notes and other things I could see but not recognize. I could only see them when I wasn’t focused and out of the corner of my eye. Now there are two different things this would make you think.
1. I was delusional and just seeing things that weren’t there. 2. I was seeing something that was there.
I admit the possibility of not really seeing anything. But let’s think about what it means if I really was seeing something that was there. Frogs and musical notes are something possible for Da Vinci to paint. If I would have seen cars, or monsters, or “the devil”, I would be inclined to believe my mind was making stuff up. BUT since what I was seeing was drawn in Da Vinci’s style and similar to his other content it makes me think what I thought I saw was actually a possibility if there was something there. Next I would wonder why I would have thought to put the painting on itself like that. If I really was seeing something that was there, then it makes sense that I put the painting how it was TO see something. If I would have been seeing these images in the wall, or something random it would make me think I was just seeing things. But since I was seeing things inside of a painting that I had re-arranged in a specific way then it makes sense that I was seeing something that was there. Why I arranged the painting like that is answered by the things I saw. Now you would wonder, as I still do, HOW? If I really was seeing something that was intended to be seen, how could I? Why did positioning the Mona Lisa, how I did, create new images? How could that happen?
My current explanation is seemingly very far fetched but helps to explain a lot of my other theories about this painting and human perception. It’s not impossible and most everyone has seen the very same thing done before. Like I’ve said Stereograms weren’t discovered till the 1800’s. They’re those images that seem to pop out when you cross your eyes at them. Stereograms are images that become three dimensional if you look at them in a certain way. There are also Stereo Pairs which are two similar images next to each other that change when you combine them with your eyes.
(Tthey literally form a single cube that lifts off the page) If you combine the two images above with your eyes you’ll notice how it appears to turn 3 dimensional. You’ll notice they are only slightly different from each other – changed in such a way to make our eyes perceive them differently once combined together. You might realize that there is something strange that must have to happen for our eyes to do this, right? It has something to do with the distance between your eyes, how our brains perceive objects, and how they process depth. All you really need to understand at this point is that the simple lines above can be turned into a 3 dimensional image just by crossing your eyes- Simple but extraordinarily complex. You’ve probably also seen the even more complex images that look like a collage of colors but when you cross your eyes different shapes pop out. Isn’t that weird?
How can these dots seem to pop out at different distances from the page if you cross your eyes when you look at them? Pretty interesting if you ask me. There are even newer illusions that appear to move without even doing anything with your eyes. There is one that appears to go clockwise or counterclockwise which changes direction with only your own concentration. How can that happen? What is the mental processing that is happening for this to be possible? Or even more interestingly, this is something fairly easy to produce but difficult to describe. I would assume that Da Vinci knew about this and used this knowledge in his paintings, especially the Mona Lisa. I would also think that if I really was seeing something that WAS there, then something like stereo grams had something to do with it.
“These are the miracles, images so close together that they can be reconstituted by the dilation of the eyes” – Da Vinci’s own words. This quote, which I didn’t read until wayyyy after the fact, makes me realize that I wasn’t “seeing things” but seeing things that were really there.
If I really was seeing something that was suppose to be seen, then it would make sense that putting the Mona Lisa in different positions on top of herself might make enable a stereogram like effect.. It would be like having the dots in the wrong space above and then putting them in the correct place. BUT · You couldn’t see them unless you knew to look for them. · You couldn’t see them unless you were looking from the right angle and distance. · You couldn’t see them unless you knew how to look for them. Not to mention that there are people who are not able to see them no matter what, like being color blind (but depth perception blind) I think that staying up for so long enabled me to see things in an either less, or more focused way – whatever way it took for me to see something that really was there. Something else that happened that was even more fascinating was how I was seeing everything else while in that state of mind.
When I would look at Da Vinci’s drawings they would LITERALLY rise off of the page as if they were stereogram themselves. I couldn’t explain it in any other way than actually seeing his drawings in 3d. My brain was actually processing his sketches like they were sculptures. You can imagine what I’m trying to explain by looking at his drawing on the next page. It’s just a drawing but it looks more like a photograph because it is so detailed and realistic. When you look at it, it’s not just 2 dimensional but 3. It could have been the lack of sleep, or maybe looking at the Mona Lisa for hours, but for whatever reason I was seeing things as I never had. I remember walking to 711 and being absolutely fascinated by how everything looked; it was as if I was in a totally new world or seeing this one for the very first time.. But while my eyes were intrigued, my thoughts were frightened. I had discovered, experienced, and thought about things that most people wouldn’t in their entire life time in a couple short days... It was too much to handle, I finally cracked.
Notice how, although it’s a flat drawing, it shows depth and you could potentially create a 3d model of it just based off this image.
If you understand how shadows and light work you can use them to create something not just realistic, but photographic.
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