Got this recently in response to an older post about how sometimes when I’m falling asleep - in the hypnagogic state - I experience what seems like the ability to see through my closed eyelids. It’s hard to tell if it’s a dream or the beginning of an out of body experience or something else entirely.

Anyway, somebody left me a link to a page about some experiments which were supposedly done in Russia with this phenomenon. Seems there is a person named V.M. Bronnikov who teaches a program of “direct” or “alternative” vision. According to the article, controlled experiments were done with adolescents who’d undergone this training. Their ordinary vision capabilities ranged from normal, to almost blind. That’s one of the claims of this training, is that blind people can be taught to see somehow without using their eyes or light.

This article doesn’t have much details or scientific information about these studies, and it’s a little choppily written, as it seems to be translated from the Russian. Supposedly the teenagers tested “could read any texts, discern all the characters they were shown and could easily find their way in unfamiliar surroundings.” I know this sounds rather far-fetched to the average person, but I myself am inclined to believe it. Or at least willing to believe that it might be possible. If only because I experience something vaguely similar (but not quite so strong or consistent).