Worlds unseen

Re-reading "Bright Colors, Falsely Seen," I am noticing how synaesthesia isn't just about making involuntary sensory associations, but for many, it's about transcending the material world. It's an almost supernatural power to leave the material world and experience worlds unseen. The first time around, I ignored this emphasis, because I didn't think it was relevant; but going through it a second time, it's all over the place.

I am particularly struck by a passage, I think I quoted before with a different meaning.

"synaesthesia can occassionaly be experienced by nonsynaesthetes, during altered states of consciousness.  Though the most notorious of these states is the LSD trip, synaesthetic perception commonly accompanies intoxication with other hallucinogens, including mescaline, hashish and dimethylrtptamine"

Originally, I thought this either supported the public's view that synaesthesia is nothing more than a high or that by altering frame of thought, normal people can also experience synaesthetic ability. Now, I keep thinking of Kubla Khan and how Coleridge was high when he wrote it.

Dann- the author of Bright Colors- dwells on a few Romantic poets and their quests to "express sublime moments of expanded consciousness poetically" by employing "intersensory metaphors."  His examples include another Coleridge poem: "The Eolian Harp." "A light in sound, a sound-like power in light." It's not synaesthesia, but it's an attempt to get there. But it's true synaesthetes like Nabokov, who have the natural ability to perceive beyond material boundaries.  His abilities (synaesthesia and eidetic imagery) have been "viewed as a 'next step' in human cognitive evolution," a step which gives off a feeling of sci-fi/mystic, and I don't know what to think of that.

Reading through Dann's examples, I gather that nonsynaesthetes, who are looking for answers and means of expression beyond this one, have to alter their consciousness in order to acquire the necessary traits (though they don't always come). But is it possible to look through synaesthetic frames of mind without drugs?  To make multisensory observations or to see the imagined worlds truly?  I think Wallace Stevens might be one. Lewis Carroll.  I guess that's one of the questions my paper is trying to figure out.