Imagine walking into a room, and instead of objects, you find ideas floating in the air, some of them glowing, some dense and dark, some pulling at each other like planets in orbit. This is not metaphorical, it is quite literally how I experience abstract thinking. This is surely a bit of exaggerated, like Sherlock Holmes’s Mind Palace, version of my real qualia but I am pretty sure if I let myself more free and give more time exploring myself, then it can elevate to this easily.
Although I have not been formally diagnosed with it but, I live and experience a hybrid of synesthetic perception that blends cognitive and semantic synesthesia, and sometimes, these internal structures project themselves into the external world around me. Earlier it was quite intensive even for mundane topics (as I see them retrospectively), but now the external projection is shifted to more advanced topics (hopefully later they’ll be mundane as well).
I decided to write this article not just to share what this experience is like, but also to reflect on what it might teach us about cognition, consciousness, and how meaning becomes tangible.
Synesthesia is often defined as a neurological phenomenon where stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to involuntary experiences in a second. Most people are familiar with examples like seeing colors when hearing music (chromesthesia) or associating letters with colors (grapheme-color synesthesia). But my form of synesthesia doesn’t fit so neatly into those categories. It exists at the level of thought itself.
There are two lesser-known kinds of synesthesia that describe parts of my experience:
Most academic references (see Ramachandran & Hubbard, 2001; Cytowic & Eagleman, 2009) have studied these individually, but very few describe the hybrid experiences that combine both, and fewer still discuss the possibility of these being projective.
Richard Feynman, the legendary physicist, reportedly experienced grapheme–color synesthesia, numbers and equations evoked vivid visual or tactile impressions. He once described algebra as having a “feel” and differentiated letters by their perceived color. Similarly, Charlie Puth, the Grammy-nominated singer, has chromesthesia, where musical notes trigger colors, and also has perfect pitch. He claims he can “see” music, aiding his perfect pitch and composition skills. Vincent van Gogh, though never clinically diagnosed, showed signs of synesthesia in letters and art, frequently describing sound and color interchangeably, “the sound of a note corresponds to the color of a sky,” he wrote, revealing possible sound–color blending that influenced his explosive use of pigment.
In fiction, Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory exhibits traits akin to synesthesia, especially in scenes where he “sees” prime numbers in different color, though not canonically a synesthete, his character amplifies cognitive divergence, often associated with neurodiversity. And surely, Sherlock Holmes (various modern portrayals) in modern adaptations (e.g., BBC’s Sherlock), exhibits synesthesia-like overlays used to visualize his perceptual intelligence, like seeing sounds as patterns or textures. Synesthesia, whether neurologically verified or metaphorically portrayed, can shape creativity, perception, and brilliance. It blurs sensory boundaries, inviting a more embodied and multisensory experience of the world, where a note can be blue, an equation silky, or a starry night might sing.
In my case, around 65% of the time, these experiences are internal. They unfold like a dynamic, multidimensional mind-map: ideas are spatially arranged, linked by luminous tendrils of relation, think of it like an dense elaborated graph. Some concepts are tall and spindly, others flat and wide. This is the cognitive synesthesia at work, my thoughts have shape.
But it doesn’t stop there. About 35% of the time, this internal space becomes external. I actually see these conceptual structures in front of me, projected into real space. They might float in the air, hover over people's heads during conversation, or align themselves spatially in the corners of a room. It’s as if meaning itself walks with me. I earlier used the word “Overclocking Mode” to describe what’s happening to me to my friends.
Layered onto this is the semantic component: ideas exert a kind of emotional or gravitational pull. For example, the concept of "truth" feels dense, like a fixed star around which other ideas orbit. "Hope" lifts, "doubt" creates tension. Meaning, in this space, has mass.
One of the most empowering aspects of living with this hybrid synesthesia is the effortless depth it brings to learning and creativity. When I’m working on subjects that align with my interests, or even those for which I have sufficient foundational and latent knowledge, I can build structured networks of understanding that feel as intuitive as walking a familiar path.
It may take longer to absorb entirely new fields and concepts, because I don’t just memorize, I construct. I need to architect the internal graph, to make the abstractions coherent with my existing structures. But once that phase is complete, the topic becomes native. The intuitions feel so automatic that generating insights, connecting dots, and producing novel ideas becomes almost reflexive.