Although I like this writer’s style, I don’t like that most of the article is cockamamy bullshit and that he disavows scientific thinking on dreams in one paragraph only to back up a claim a few paragraphs later with “hard, neurological evidence”–which he misinterprets. However, I find that this line:
is a spot-on (and, indeed, the only “Wow! That’s it!”) description for the phenomenon I often observe directly before falling asleep, in a state I now know is called hypnogogia.
I used to dream lucidly on a regular (almost every night) basis in elementary school, and intermittently throughout middle school. By the time I discovered the amazing journeys one can explore in lucid dreaming as a senior in high school, I had long stopped having lucid dreams and indeed still haven’t had another one. Although, again, I find a fair bit of hypnagogia talk to be cockamamy bullshit, I’d like to grab this hypnagogic fantasy stuff by the horns and find out if there’s a way to explore it consciously while I’m in it. I already enjoy it tremendously as it allows me to take myself down winding paths of fanciful logic-deduction that makes no sense whatsoever in the context of waking reality but are quite joyful in the hypnagogic state. However, I’d like for it to be more visual and tactile, and more controllable. I’ve had a very small amount of nondescript visual hallucinations in this state, and one night had a full visual/tactile hallucination wherein I slowly, gently and pointlessly rubbed very foamy, very silky soap between my hands–I enjoyed this quite a bit and was a little annoyed when my phone snapped me out of it by vibrating (signifying I had received a text message from my ex).
So, Dopers, share your hypnagogic experiences and (if you can) any procedural information for how to explore them further.