There’s actually a theory that back in ye olden times when inner monologues first started, people thought it was God talking to them because it was a new phenomenon and that didn’t have any way to understand that it was some kind of evolution of consciousness, not a god.
If I told you “a pink and brown dog,” you can’t “see” that dog in your mind at all?
Jim Pickens’s cat popped into my head. Sigh.