Clearly my eyes aren’t* open and I cannot take in external visual stimuli in my dreams, however I experience them similar to the visual experience in my minds eye or imagination or whathaveyou. Similarly I feel like I experience something akin to touch or feel (like the occasional flying or falling dream, or the feel of grass or something).
I don’t recall having anything similar to smell or sound in a dream though (except occasionally hearing a real sound while waking up that wasn’t actually part of the dream) What’s your experience?
I don’t remember my dreams very well in general, so I don’t remember hearing sound in them either but I’m pretty sure I can hear sound. Somehow I’m able to talk with people in my dreams, after all. When it comes to smell, I have no idea, I don’t remember smelling anything in my dreams at all.
I think hearing and smell might just be things we simply don’t remember well from dreams. We get the vast majority of information from what we see, so that’s the first thing we’d remember. The only times I remember feeling something in dreams is when I got stabbed with needles, shot and that one time I dreamed that I smoked when I was a kid (even though I’ve never done that before). The reason I remember those is just that they left an impression of some sort. With hearing or smell, I think it just doesn’t leave an impression or is special in any way, so we simply don’t remember it.