Closed Eye Hallucinations

[anagogy]

I have had similar experiences, though they don't usually occur instantaneously when I close my eyes. It takes me a bit of work to get to the place of seeing the ultra vivid hypnagogic imagery. I essentially use it to lucid dream. I'm not sure what else to tell you except to say that your third eye opens every night. The "eyes of your soul" are the eyes of your imagination. You can use this state to explore different vibrational planes of reality, though it is not a completely straight forward affair. And visual translation of vibration is only one manner of translation, there are many other types, though visual translation has a strong directing influence on where you perceive your consciousness 'to be' since it is very powerfully linked to perspective. I've had experiences of controlled lucid dreaming the whole night holding onto this state before, though I doubt I retained full memory of the experience, just the fact that I held onto for a great amount of time. But walking around for hours upon hours through countless dream worlds as a kind of spectator is just an amazing experience to say the least. I really want to get better at painting so that I can capture, with at least some degree of accuracy, some of the things I've seen, for my own satisfaction as well as to be able to show others.

As to whether it is real or a hallucination? That is a tricky question. It is sort of like the debate some people have of whether astral projecting and dreaming are the same phenomena. Personally, I am a believer in the consciousness continuum theory, which basically postulates that they are both related phenomena. One just involves a more concentrated presence of consciousness or 'awakeness' within it. There are an infinite number of realities. Many of them are what I would call orange ray, or personal subjective experiences, whereas others there is a strong perception of communication with 'others' which I would relegate to yellow ray experiences and higher.

The phenomena you are describing I would almost describe as "remote viewing" the astral world. I say remote viewing because like you said, it is not like a regular dream, it feels like you are watching ultra vivid imagery, but the feeling is that you are not quite 'all the way there'. There is a sort of detachment, sort of like watching a movie.