Medical Anomalous, extraordinary, or otherwise interesting conscious experiences

[hypnagogue]

I've always been interested in unusual phenomena in conscious experience-- events in consciousness that are novel, surprising, sublime, or just plain strange with respect to the normal waking consciousness in which we are usually ensconced. In the interest of exploring this topic, I'd like for this thread to become an ongoing log in which us PFers provide first person accounts of such anomalous experiences.

The recounted experiences can range from the mundane to the profound, the transient to the enduring, the rare to the recurring. They can issue from sleeplike states; states of emotional stress; extraordinary circumstances; psychoactive drugs; meditation; unusual, degraded, or heightened physiological or psychological functioning; extreme sensory deprivation or excitation; or they can be tied to some other factor or simply be apparently unexplained, random occurrences. Essentially, everything is fair game. Please don't be shy; what seems mundane and not worth mentioning to you could be quite interesting to someone else!

Some good, general guidelines to be mindful of: Try to be as detailed as possible in describing the nature of your experience, such that others will have a good sense of what the experience was like for you (perceptually, cognitively, and/or emotionally) and why it was anomalous. Also, it would be illuminating to mention external or internal factors that might have been relevant to the occurrence of the experience (e.g. was conducting so-and-so form of meditation, or had ingested such-and-such kind of drug, etc.).

 

[hypnagogue]

I'll start things off by relating some unusual auditory experiences I've had. I'm somewhat prone to experiencing quite vivid auditory hallucinations when I'm in a hypnagogic state, that twilight region on the border of waking consciousness and sleep. I recall one instance on a lazy summer day when I was watching a baseball game on TV and nodded off into sleep. Suddenly I heard a swift, quite loud and somewhat jarring crack as if a bat had just struck a baseball. The noise startled me awake, but when I checked the game nothing of note was happening.

At the risk of sounding insane, a few times in the hypnagogic state (with no other circumstances of note, as far as I know) I have also heard spontaneously generated voices in my inner ear. Qualitatively, these voices sound similar to my inner speech; they do not sound as vivid or real as speech coming from the environment. The voices assume something of a personality, with a distinct emotional valence and exaggerated, almost caricature-like vocal features and styles of speech to match. When this has happened, I've been fully aware that the voices were just hallucinations occurring on the way to a full-blown dream state, but nonetheless the voices were generated spontaneously and were generally immune to any attempts at suppression. That proves to be unfortunate, since usually the voices have been irritating with a mildly negative emotional charge. The last time this happened, there were two independent voices chirping annoying or undesirable things (the exact contents I can't recall), and it was a bit of a nuisance that I was just trying to ignore and ride out until I fell asleep. After several minutes of this, another voice (spontaneous, not of my own volitional control) chimed in with something like "Oh, shut up already!" I believe it mostly cleared up after that.

I experienced another interesting auditory hallucination one time when I tried out a sensory deprivation tank. In the tank I was assuming an essentially meditation-like mindset, focusing my attention on my breath (which sounds almost thunderous in a sensory deprivation chamber!) and letting thoughts come and go, observing them without becoming absorbed in them. After some time of this (I would guess about 30 minutes), I noticed a faint musical strain coming to me as if from a very distant location. It was a reggae-like tune in the style of Bab Marley. What makes this especially strange is that I'm not a particularly avid fan of reggae or Bob Marley, and the song was definitely not a parroting of some song I had heard in ths past (or at least, I recognized it not to be, with a high degree of confidence)-- it was a novel musical composition being put together by my brain somehow, spontaneously.

 

[Smurf]

At the risk of sounding insane, a few times in the hypnagogic state (with no other circumstances of note, as far as I know) I have also heard spontaneously generated voices in my inner ear. Qualitatively, these voices sound similar to my inner speech; they do not sound as vivid or real as speech coming from the environment.

That's supposed to help you not seem insane?

 

[honestrosewater]

I've had something similar happen, but it's familiar music playing. It will be a song that I have recently been listening to and usually happens after using headphones. It isn't my inner voice singing the song; It sounds just like the normal song - whoever's vocals and the instruments, only much fainter and a bit fuzzy. It seems like the sound is coming from the environment (the first time it happened, I thought the radio was broken), but I don't experience the same sensation in my ear. It usually keeps repeating the same short snippets. I'm not in a 'special state' when this happens; It just needs to be quiet enough for me to notice the faint sound. I figure my brain is just doing something funny. And who knows how often it happens without me noticing. Could you be experiencing the same thing, only conversations instead of songs? You're sure the sounds are entirely new and not just memories?

 

[gurkhawarhorse]

I've had something similar happen, but it's familiar music playing. It will be a song that I have recently been listening to and usually happens after using headphones. It isn't my inner voice singing the song; It sounds just like the normal song - whoever's vocals and the instruments, only much fainter and a bit fuzzy. It seems like the sound is coming from the environment (the first time it happened, I thought the radio was broken), but I don't experience the same sensation in my ear. It usually keeps repeating the same short snippets. I'm not in a 'special state' when this happens; It just needs to be quiet enough for me to notice the faint sound. I figure my brain is just doing something funny. And who knows how often it happens without me noticing. Could you be experiencing the same thing, only conversations instead of songs? You're sure the sounds are entirely new and not just memories?

i have experienced this too. the songs of Pantera, Metallica, Linkin Park come again and again in my ear. the sound is ditto to the song.
just listen to dave mustaine's guitar and go to sleep and there it is. tinng. zzzing. and buzzing and, skdl;hfdgoreeorh;uf.

sometimes when my migraine headache starts i listen chinnn...ing sound in either of my ears.

 

[matthyaouw]

I've had odd experiences when drifting off to sleep. I've been known to dream, but be conscious enough to incorporate things I hear or in one case see into my dream. I can't remember any specific examples of what I was dreaming however.

 

[Smurf]

Sometimes I hear little beeps like it's coming from just outside my ear (usually left ear). This hasn't happened in a while, it doesn't seem to happen at any paticular time or state of mind though.

 

[Grizzlycomet]

I've been trying to teach myself Lucid Dreaming, conciously perceiving that you are in a dream. A common way to try to induce a lucid dream is WILD, Waking induction of lucid dreaming. Basically you try to keep your mind awake while your body goes to sleep. The key is the hypnagogic state, which often induces both auditory and visual hallucinations. So no, I don't think you're insane for hearing things before you go to sleep

 

[Locrian]

The other night I woke up and couldn't remember anything. It was just like when you arm goes to sleep and you have to just flop it around until it wakes up again, but it was my memory. I had no idea who I was, where I was or what to do. For the first few moments I just sat there, perplexed, but I gradually began to feel a little afraid. This was exacerbated by the fact that I slowly became aware (a strange phrase indeed) that I was not alone in the building, but that there was someone upstairs.

In the course of another 60 seconds I remembered that I was downstairs, that I had fallen to sleep on the couch, and that it was my wife who was upstairs, asleep.

It was a rather uncomfortable experience.

 

[Smurf]

I'm often aware that I'm dreaming but don't have perfect control. Whenever I change something I wake up a little bit until it's at the point that I'm just lying with my eyes closed making pictures in my mind. Not really dreaming.

 

[Smurf]

The other night I woke up and couldn't remember anything. It was just like when you arm goes to sleep and you have to just flop it around until it wakes up again, but it was my memory. I had no idea who I was, where I was or what to do. For the first few moments I just sat there, perplexed, but I gradually began to feel a little afraid. This was exacerbated by the fact that I slowly became aware (a strange phrase indeed) that I was not alone in the building, but that there was someone upstairs.

In the course of another 60 seconds I remembered that I was downstairs, that I had fallen to sleep on the couch, and that it was my wife who was upstairs, asleep.

It was a rather uncomfortable experience.

I've done that too! A couple times, it seems to happen when you fall asleep ... Or rather, it happens when you wake up in places you don't usually wake up in or are unfamiliar to you. I think they're quite cool.

 

[gravenewworld]

I experiene Deja vu all the time. For example I will be walking some place I have never been before, but before I even go around the corner I already know what I am going to see and where I am going to walk because I experienced it in a dream before. I know it sounds far fetched to believe but I have had things like this happen to me many times.

 

[honestrosewater]

I've done that too! A couple times, it seems to happen when you fall asleep ... Or rather, it happens when you wake up in places you don't usually wake up in or are unfamiliar to you. I think they're quite cool.

Yep, me too. The first one I remember was when I was 6. We had recently moved to a new house, and I fell asleep on the floor in the livingroom watching TV. I woke up in the middle of the night and panicked immediately, didn't know where I was or how I got there for several minutes. This happened other times when I used to go out partying with friends and we would end up passing out at someone's house (alcohol, marijuana). I didn't forget who I was - just massive confusion and panic.

 

[Smurf]

Yep, me too. The first one I remember was when I was 6. We had recently moved to a new house, and I fell asleep on the floor in the livingroom watching TV. I woke up in the middle of the night and panicked immediately, didn't know where I was or how I got there for several minutes. This happened other times when I used to go out partying with friends and we would end up passing out at someone's house (alcohol, marijuana). I didn't forget who I was - just massive confusion and panic.

I remember the first time I went to a punk show. I got so smashed, first time I tried marijuana too. Crashed at someone's house, in their attic, in a hammock, surrounded by 4-5 other people laying in sleeping bags and on inflated matresses. I had no idea where I was. Not sure how much of it I should attribute to the alcohol .

I don't panic though, I'm not the panicky type.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Just a few weeks ago I was at stop light and noticed the truck in front of me had a flat on the right rear tire. I couldn't believe the driver was ignoring it, and was baffled. I thought I might see if I could pull up next to her at the next red light and warn her.

Strangely, as we took off and proceeded to the next intersection, her flat tire "disappeared".

I think what happened was that the sun was at such a position, and at such an angle that the first tire I looked at cast shadows on each side of it that resembled the bulging folds of a flat tire.

Having "observed" that tire was flat, though, I saw it's counterpart on the left as fully inflated, despite the fact it had about the same shadows. In other words, I saw what I expected to see: if the first tire I noticed was flat, the other must not be.
I discounted these shadows as shadows, and "saw" the left tire as fully inflated, despite having been fully persuaded by the illusion of flatness on the right tire.

A short way down the road, with the sun at a somewhat different angle, they suddenly both revealed themselves to be fully inflated.

I was over tired, having only gotten about four hours sleep the previous three nights. What bothered me the most was that I had almost warned someone about a flat they didn't have.

 

[hypnagogue]

I've been trying to teach myself Lucid Dreaming, conciously perceiving that you are in a dream. A common way to try to induce a lucid dream is WILD, Waking induction of lucid dreaming. Basically you try to keep your mind awake while your body goes to sleep. The key is the hypnagogic state, which often induces both auditory and visual hallucinations. So no, I don't think you're insane for hearing things before you go to sleep

Have you had any successes yet? Anything interesting happen?

I was fairly dedicated to trying to induce lucid dreams during a summer several years ago. I was using WILD techniques advocated by Stephen LaBerge, including the rather cumbersome process of arranging to wake yourself up before getting a full night's sleep, staying up for about 20 minutes and then going back to sleep using some of the mindfulness techniques you mention. I didn't have great success inducing lucid dreams (I managed to start them off several times but they never lasted very long), but I did have some strange things happen.

In the most vivid and remarkable occassion, I was lying on my bed doing WILD, and had a subjective sense that I was making good progress. Suddenly, out of nowhere, I felt an enormous sensation of energy pulse through my body. The best way I can describe it is to say it felt something like a great current of electricity shot through me, although it wasn't unpleasant at all, except perhaps for the sheer intensity of it. My memory gets a little fuzzy here, but I believe this event precipitated the occurrence of another interesting event-- possibly a lucid dream or a brief, subtle out of body-ish experience (see below)-- but it didn't get very far. I think what happened was I got too excited that something extraordinary was happening and I lost my mental concentration, and with it went the experience.

Using WILD I've also had experiences where my body subjectively feels like it has sunk deep into the bed, as if I'm lying on a soft mattress that yields about 3 feet when I lie on it. Sometimes accompanying this experience is a subtle loss of the sense of my body boundary, such that it's difficult to tell where my body ends and the bed begins-- they feel almost like they continuously merge into each other. Once or twice when this has happened, I've also experienced a slight out of body kind of feeling, where it seems like "I" am hovering just a few inches over where my body actually is. I've experienced similar "sunk into the bed" feelings (though nothing out of body-like) while deep in self-hypnosis, another mind altering technique I've dabbled in.

 

[Smasherman]

At all times I see what looks like infinitely small dots everywhere. They seem both black and white at all times but not quite. They don't impede my vision at all and are present in total darkness, light, with my eyes closed, and in twilight. Occasionally the dots seem to form shapes, but the shapes don't stick to the same part of my vision like "light stains" do when I glance at the sun or a bright light. I can control the shapes to some degree, but barely.

Once I was traveling to my dad's house on the other side of California and I felt a great sense of dread. I told my dad to be careful numberous times. After a while I started seeing a kind of blurry color in my inner eye. After a while I could see others as well. About 3 hours into the trip it felt like something was lodged in my chest. I imagined/saw a piece of metal in my inner eye. About 4 hours into the trip we came upon a HUGE car wreck exactly where I saw the first color.

I have a lot more, but I can't remember them all right now.

 

[hypatia]

As a kid I had flowered wall paper in my room, and as I fell asleep, the flowers would begin to dance. Well I called it dancing, mostly movements in circles and waves.
To me it was very natural, and was suprised when I found out that others don't see this.

 

[hypnagogue]

As a yound child (I would guess around 5-7 years old) I sometimes experienced what, in retrospect, is an odd sort of mental imagery when I closed my eyes. I would see a constellation of dimly lit points of light, somewhat as if seeing stars in outer space, and my perspective would zoom through the field as if I were traveling on a very fast space ship. At regular intervals on the order of seconds, the zooming would abruptly stop (I believe the points of light would actually jiggle back and forth a bit as if the abrupt stop had caused a reverberation), and then it would continue again in another direction. This occurred spontaneously, but I recall being able to initiate it intentionally if I so wished. I usually experienced this when lying down to go to sleep, but I don't recall being very sleepy when it would happen. It seems an odd sort of thing to happen in retrospect, but at the time it felt quite natural and not out of place to me.

 

[hypnagogue]

I've had something similar happen, but it's familiar music playing. It will be a song that I have recently been listening to and usually happens after using headphones. It isn't my inner voice singing the song; It sounds just like the normal song - whoever's vocals and the instruments, only much fainter and a bit fuzzy. It seems like the sound is coming from the environment (the first time it happened, I thought the radio was broken), but I don't experience the same sensation in my ear. It usually keeps repeating the same short snippets. I'm not in a 'special state' when this happens; It just needs to be quiet enough for me to notice the faint sound. I figure my brain is just doing something funny. And who knows how often it happens without me noticing. Could you be experiencing the same thing, only conversations instead of songs? You're sure the sounds are entirely new and not just memories?

I sometimes experience something like this. Sometimes when I have a song in my head, all of a sudden the song will go through a sort of qualitative phase change and sound quite vivid and clear, as if I am actually listening to it (although it still seems very much 'in the head' as opposed to coming from the environment). This effect usually lasts for several seconds with no conscious intervention on my part, but then fades.

 

[Gza]

I've done that too! A couple times, it seems to happen when you fall asleep ... Or rather, it happens when you wake up in places you don't usually wake up in or are unfamiliar to you. I think they're quite cool.

sounds like a typical saturday morning for me after a crazy friday night

 

[matthyaouw]

About 3 hours into the trip it felt like something was lodged in my chest.

Were you sleeping/snoozing at the time? A feeling of pressure on the chest is a common symptom of sleep paralysis.

 

[Smasherman]

No, I was wide awake.

 

[EnumaElish]

As a kid I had flowered wall paper in my room, and as I fell asleep, the flowers would begin to dance. Well I called it dancing, mostly movements in circles and waves.
To me it was very natural, and was suprised when I found out that others don't see this.

That's really neat, and cute!

Here is a personal "ghost story." (Not really scary, just weird.)

I used to live in a high-rise building. An elderly lady who served at the front desk used to live in one of the apartments and we'd chat every once in a while. Then I moved to a nearby place but continued to talk to some of my previous neighbors. One day I learned that that woman had fallen ill and was hospitalized. As she stayed in the hospital, some of our common neighbors used to visit her in the hospital. I never went myself but sent my well wishes and was told that she remembered me.

At around that time, I started to get the feeling that there was a "presence" in my new place, usually during the evening hours. I never felt a threat, just a weirdness. I stopped sleeping in the master bedroom where I thought that was happening, and started sleeping in the small bedroom where I thought it didn't happen.

Days went by until one dreadful winter night when I got home very tired and dragged myself to the master bedroom to go to sleep. There was a winter rainstorm, with a wind that was shaking trees to their roots, and a rain coming in lashes. I was so tired that I thought I couldn't sleep. Then a heaviness descended upon me, and I dreamily thought that something was covering and weighing over me, so that I could sleep despite being so tired. My last memory before I fell into sleep was how the wind was sounding like a wild laughter as it howled and whistled through the branches and dry leaves of the trees nearby, and for some reason I imagined a couple of sisters' ephemeral spirits laughing as they ran wildly along the wind. Then I fell asleep.

That weekend I heard from an ex-neighbor that the woman in the hospital had passed on, during that stormy night, and at around the time that I thought I had heard a couple of sisters laughing in the wind.

It took me a while to make the connection, especially to the passive "visits" during the evening that coincided with the time that she was in the hospital. I now think that she was letting herself wander at night, in the neighborhood that she had lived and worked last. And that, during a stormy night, she was invited by an older sister to come and join her and to laugh with the wind.

P.S. Animist stories can be found in almost any culture; e.g. the Irish have their black bird (a crow?) that signals someone has deceased. What I posted above is the only such event that I personally experienced, to my knowledge.

 

[Grizzlycomet]

Have you had any successes yet? Anything interesting happen?

I have had a few interesting experiences. I have reached the hypnagogic state many times, and have seen plenty of interesting images in my "mind's eye", and also had auditorial hallucinations such as bangs, knocks, voices, and sometimes bits of music. Sometimes I have also felt as if I was floating, not "hovering above my own body" as you mentioned, and as I have read a lot of people feel when they try these techniques, but rather floating in the same posistion, as if the bed wasn't there, but the air still supported me in the same place.

I have not yet succeeded in taking the last step and actually achieve a lucid dream, but hopefully I will in due time.

 

[HiPPiE]

I want to try lucid dreaming sometime.. I just don't feel like I have enough time right now

So.. yeah I also get deja-vu a lot, but one time sticks out in my memory.

I used to be a bit of a gamer. I was online on Warcraft III, observing a game, which we used to do a lot back in the day. The observers just talk to each other and watch etc. Then something happened in the game, and I said to myself, haha I remember this! Now, this person is going to say the following, (I forget what the actual line was but it was long and nothing standard like 'lol' that I could have predicted), and then to my shock and awe the person said exactly what I had foretold.

I guess it was some lapse or delay of something in my brain or SOMETHING, I really don't know, but I do know that I predicted speech with exactness.

 

[Mk]

This lucid dream thing you are talking about, it comes completely naturally to me, about 80% of my dreams are of the lucid.

Wow, this is so weird, as I'm reading this Wikipedia article, its like I'm reading about me. The more I learn the more I found out I knew! Maybe I'll describe some of this to you. Wow, I am befuddled, astounded, mystefied.

Reality testing is a common method that people use to determine whether or not they are dreaming. This method involves performing an action with results that are difficult to re-create in a dream. An example of a reality test is to read some text, look away, and read it again, or to look at your watch, and remember the time, look away and look back. Observers have found that, in a dream, the text or time will often have changed. In the real world, the text will not change and the time will not change by more than one minute.
Another form of reality testing involves identifying one's dream signs, clues that one is dreaming. These can be anything such as a pink elephant on parade to a talking cat. Dream signs are often categorized as follows:
Action - The dreamer, another dream character, or a thing does something unusual or impossible in waking life
Context - The place or situation in the dream is strange
Form - The dreamer, another character, or a thing changes shape, or is oddly formed or transforms; this may include the presence of unusual clothing or hair, or a third person view of the dreamer
Awareness - A peculiar thought, a strong emotion, an unusual sensation, or altered perceptions.

I don't use any of these techniques, I just know. I just know. But I do use Action, Context, and sometimes, almost never, Form.

Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreaming (MILD) is a common technique used by lucid dreamers to induce a lucid dream at will. This method involves setting an intention to recognize dream signs while falling asleep.

I can do this, but the opposite, kind of. I can ahead of time, decide what I will NOT have my dream about, which is helpful, every once and awhile.

Waking induction of lucid dreaming
Waking Induction of Lucid Dreaming (WILD) is one of the most common induction techniques used by lucid dreamers. In this particular technique, a person goes directly from being awake into a lucid dream. The key to this technique is recognizing the hypnagogic stage. This stage is within the border of being awake and being asleep. If a person is successful in staying aware while this stage occurs, they will eventually enter the dream state while being fully aware that it is a dream.

I many times, and can only "wake up" into this "hypnagogic" state. And it is actually very calming and peaceful, a place I would love to go to sometimes in life. But only in the morning when I oversleep, around 9 am, to 11 am, I am able to control if I can stay awake in the hypnagogic state long enough for me to enter the dream state. After doing this WILD thing, the lucid dreams I have are different from other ones. In these dreams, everything is fainter, like I'm imagining it, but while I'm in the dream everything is just as real, and in these, once I have control, I have full control, of everything I do, of everything I see.

Other phenomena associated with lucid dreaming
False awakenings: In a false awakening, one suddenly dreams of having awakened. If the person was lucid, he/she often believes that he/she is no longer dreaming, and may start exiting their room etc. Since the person is actually still dreaming, this is called a "false awakening". This is often a nemesis in the art of lucid dreaming because it usually causes people to give up their awareness of being in a dream, but it can also cause someone to become lucid if the person does a reality check whenever he/she awakens.

I have not, and believe I never will have a "false awakening." Although When I'm having a WILD dream, I am many times simultaneously in my lucid dream, and somewhat aware of my real surroundings.

Sleep paralysis: During REM sleep the body is paralyzed by a mechanism in the brain, because otherwise the movements which occur in the dream would actually cause the body to move. However, it is possible for this mechanism to be triggered before, during, or after normal sleep while the brain awakens. This can lead to a state where a person is lying in their bed and they feel like they are frozen. Hallucinations may occur in this state, especially auditory ones. People also generally report feeling a crushing sensation on their chest (possibly because they try to consciously control their breathing). People trying to lucid dream sometimes try to trigger this state, or accidentally trigger this state, while using a waking induction of lucid dreaming (WILD) technique to enter a lucid dream directly when falling asleep.

This is absolutely the scariest thing I have ever experienced, I use my alternative MILD technique to stay away from it. I remember it almost every night I lay my head on the pillow. It happens almost only when I am lying face down in my pillow. You don't get as much air as you need because A) You're not sleeping you're awake! (at least partially) and B) You're trying to breath through a pillow. And I just discovered why I am completely incapable of opening my eyes! Because I'm in REM sleep! Its terrible. You are trying to breath but you can't after many many tries (you get a tiny breath of air in almost every try), you do you're best to muster up all of your body's energy into your right arm, while you are dying, but the thing is you have no energy. You are sleeping. But you don't know you're sleeping, you think you are awake, and suffocating, and its you're fault. I just can't decribe to you the torture.

And I guess I'm one of the lucky ones!

Most common:
Vividness
Fear
Common:
Sensing a "presence" (often malevolent)
Pressure/weight on body (especially the chest)
Impending sense of doom/death
Fairly common:
Auditory hallucinations (often footsteps or indistinct voices, or pulsing noises)
Visual hallucinations such as people or shadows walking around the room
Less common:
Floating sensation (sometimes associated with out-of-body experiences)
Seemingly seamless transition into full hallucinations or dreaming, also associated with out-of-body experiences
Tactile hallucinations (such as a hand touching or grabbing)
Rare:
Falling sensation
Vibration

I can't imagine my fear if I was struggling for breath and had tactical hallucinations and auditory hallucinations. I guess they have their eyes open, if they can "see."

Transformations: Some people believe (after some practice) one could transform their dream-selves into real or fictional animals, and claim to have tried sensory experiences not normally achievable while awake, such as 360 degree stereo vision, sonar (bat) vision etc.[/quote]
This sounds interesting. I'll practice it. Too bad I don't know how.

I do have this one dream, though. I happen to willingly jump off a cliff. The scenery is just like New Zealand, in the hills. But the cliff must be miles high. I hit terminal velocity in only a few seconds and the feeling is amazing, something that can't be felt here on planet Earth, there's nothing I can compare it to. Its like what the 6th dimension looks like. There's no possible way to.

Lucid Dreaming is quite often hard to achieve with most people. The inability to experience lucid dreaming is often because they cannot trigger the thought of "this is a dream" and therefore, their dreams are uncontrollable.

All in all, I no know, after some goosebumps, butterflies and gasps for air, I know now that I well... I am one of the few that have this power of lucid dreaming, and I would like to learn as much as possible about it. But right now, its 1 am here, and I am done.

Tell me more, and I would ABSOLUTELY LOVE to be supplied with more information on this. Maybe I'll check out that book by Stephen LaBerge.

Thank you so much, all.

 

[hypnagogue]

Thanks for sharing, Mk! It seems you have a truly unique gift, and you should definitely try to cultivate it. If you'd like to learn more about lucid dreaming, The Lucidity Institute is definitely where you want to be. The institute was founded by Stephen LaBerge and I imagine it has the most authoritative and extensive information about lucid dreaming. On the site you can find a FAQ about lucid dreaming, excerpts from books, scientific studies, forums where you can communicate with other avid lucid dreamers, and more.

 

[Grizzlycomet]

Thats awesome Mk! With time, mostly anyone can learn to have lucid dreams by practicing, but very few are natural lucid dreamers such as you. As Hypnagogue suggested, the lucidity institue would be a good place to start exploring how to develop your gift further. LD4all and their http://ld4all.com/forum/index.php might also be worth checking out.

 

[Mk]

Thanks a lot for the Lucidity Institute (which happens to be a incorporation).

Those studies revealed that lucid dreams have two ways of
starting. In the much more common variety, the "dream-initiated
lucid dream" (DILD), the dreamer acquires awareness of being in a
dream while fully involved in it. DILDs occur when dreamers are
right in the middle of REM sleep, showing lots of the
characteristic rapid eye movements. We know this is true because
our dreamers give a deliberate prearranged eye-movement signal
when they realize they are dreaming. These signals show up on our
physiology record, so that we can pinpoint the times when
lucidity begins and see what kind of brain state the dreamers
were in at those times. DILDs account for about four out of every
five lucid dreams that our dreamers have had in the laboratory.
In the other 20 percent, the dreamers report awakening
from a dream and then returning to the dream state with unbroken
awareness -- one moment they are aware that they are awake in bed
in the sleep laboratory, and the next moment, they are aware that
they have entered a dream and are no longer perceiving the room
around them. We call these "wake initiated lucid dreams" (WILDs).

That hits the spot! Why wasn't the DILD thing in the Wikipedia article?

I think these definitions of various related issues of lucid dreaming are very, well different. The more I read, the more my understanding changes, or I get confused. Like where the Lucid institute describes WILD as waking up, then returning to your lucid dream. Whereas Wikipedia describes it as going straight from laying your head on your pillow to dreaming, but with a further look into Wikipedia's description, you find that WILD is a technique used by those who want to lucid dream, and it is like staying conscious while you are falling into a dream state, through the hypnogogic state, halfway between awake and adream. I am extremely familiar with this state until I read on LD4All that when in the hypnogogic state you see dots and shapes and complete images sometimes. It is very akin to an LSD trip. This state I have never experienced before.

After a much better understand of lucid dreams, I would have to say ALL my dreams are lucid. I figure I started lucid dreaming around 9 years old.

In every dream I have a small element of concurrent control, and for several weeks have been trying to predetermination control, with no success what so ever. But I know I can do it. This is what I was talking about before, when I could make sure I do NOT dream about something.

If I learn how to do anything interesting, I'll update back!

Thank you once again to PF, and all its dedicated members!

 

[Evo]

I have always done what I call "directed dreaming", I am always aware that I am dreaming and I "direct" my dreams like a movie director. If I decide I don't like something I am dreaming, I rewind it to a suitable spot to change the direction it was going. I am rarely in my own dreams as myself, I am usually someone else or just observing others.

Some of my dreams are like epic movies with casts of thousands and intricate plots and subplots. I love going to sleep just so I can dream.

I can also "create" my dreams. Before I go to sleep, I start imagining what I want to dream about and will continue it when I fall asleep.

 

[Mk]

How many of your dreams can you direct? Do you know this hypnogogic state where there's colorful shapes, patterns and images?

 

[Evo]

How many of your dreams can you direct?

I'd say I'm aware of directing maybe 90%. Sometimes I'm not aware I am in control until the dream starts to be unpleasant, then I stop it, rewind and change the ending.

Do you know this hypnogogic state where there's colorful shapes, patterns and images?

No, I haven't read anything about it.

Have you ever heard of opthalmic or ocular migraine? I've had two of those. really bizarre, the second one was "classic", like this. The first was black and white and really fascinating. There is no headache, just designs.

http://www.eyeguys.net/ocular.jpg

http://www.eyeguys.net/ocularmigraine.html

 

[Mk]

Have you ever heard of opthalmic or ocular migraine? I've had two of those. really bizarre, the second one was "classic", like this. The first was black and white and really fascinating. There is no headache, just designs.

http://www.eyeguys.net/ocular.jpg

http://www.eyeguys.net/ocularmigraine.html

If I had one of those I'd be REALLY freaked out. Thought I was going to lose my vision, which I my favorite of all senses! I'd have someone drive me to the emergency room immediately!

 

[EnumaElish]

Have you ever heard of opthalmic or ocular migraine? I've had two of those. really bizarre, the second one was "classic", like this. The first was black and white and really fascinating. There is no headache, just designs.

I wonder to what kind of an influence many undiagnosed persons with this condition have attributed their visions throughout human history.

 

[Mk]

Insanity probably had to do with it. "You can't see the dots? What? They're right there! See?! They follow me around where ever I go."

 

[zoobyshoe]

I wonder to what kind of an influence many undiagnosed persons with this condition have attributed their visions throughout human history.

See: The Visions of Hildegard, chapter 20 of Oliver Sacks' The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat.

 

[Mk]

I just realized something... most times other people aren't aware they're in a dream!

Gosh, It must be terrible to face a "real-life" situation like some of the dreams I've heard. That's why I never have nightmares, I just change it around. Once I was against a foe I have long forgoten, I and it were at my old elementary school. In a time of inevitiable loss, I conjured up a RPG-7V1 for myself (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPG-7), and a small army of ten Operation: Desert Storm M1 Abramss. Whatever it was, I don't think I even finished the dream before moving on to the next, it was easily defeated, before shots were fired.

 

[Rabid]

This isn't as weird as some of the other experiences here, but it's something that freaks me out.
From time to time I will wake up in the middle of the night and I won't be able to move, it's like I'm paralized. I can open and move my eyes and hear, but that's it. I eventually shut my eyes and am able to fall back asleep. This is definitely not an enjoyable experience.

 

[Mk]

This isn't as weird as some of the other experiences here, but it's something that freaks me out.
From time to time I will wake up in the middle of the night and I won't be able to move, it's like I'm paralized. I can open and move my eyes and hear, but that's it. I eventually shut my eyes and am able to fall back asleep. This is definitely not an enjoyable experience.

This is called awareness during sleep paralysis, I described it to the best of my ability a few posts above:

Quote:
Sleep paralysis: During REM sleep the body is paralyzed by a mechanism in the brain, because otherwise the movements which occur in the dream would actually cause the body to move. However, it is possible for this mechanism to be triggered before, during, or after normal sleep while the brain awakens. This can lead to a state where a person is lying in their bed and they feel like they are frozen. Hallucinations may occur in this state, especially auditory ones. People also generally report feeling a crushing sensation on their chest (possibly because they try to consciously control their breathing). People trying to lucid dream sometimes try to trigger this state, or accidentally trigger this state, while using a waking induction of lucid dreaming (WILD) technique to enter a lucid dream directly when falling asleep.

This is absolutely the scariest thing I have ever experienced, I use my alternative MILD technique to stay away from it. I remember it almost every night I lay my head on the pillow. It happens almost only when I am lying face down in my pillow. You don't get as much air as you need because A) You're not sleeping you're awake! (at least partially) and B) You're trying to breath through a pillow. And I just discovered why I am completely incapable of opening my eyes! Because I'm in REM sleep! Its terrible. You are trying to breath but you can't after many many tries (you get a tiny breath of air in almost every try), you do you're best to muster up all of your body's energy into your right arm, while you are dying, but the thing is you have no energy. You are sleeping. But you don't know you're sleeping, you think you are awake, and suffocating, and its you're fault. I just can't decribe to you the torture.

I seem to suffer of a different kind of sleep paralysis after reading more, others can move their eyelids and look around the room, and hear things. I can't do any of them.

Hmm... it could be a "false awakening" - I think I woke up but actually I'm dreaming this torture. Next time if I can get a hold of myself (which I won't be able to) I'll try to make something or change it to get myself out.

 

[Rabid]

Thanks, I have a habit of skipping forward while reading.

 

[loseyourname]

Okay, hypnagogue asked me to describe what it's like to drink absinthe. Unfortunately, for the most part, I don't really remember. I've only drank it once, and I actually made a concerted effort not to drink too much. I played the role of instigator that night, daring and prodding those who had drunk too much into performing outrageous actions that they would otherwise never do, largely so that I could photograph them and have something interesting to write in my journal (I was in the middle of a road trip and documentation was the word of the day).*

The strongest feeling I can actually remember is that of disconnection. I didn't seem to be participating in any directed way in what I was doing, or what was going on. I experienced things as an observer rather than as an actor. One thing I would like to say about this is that this may not be a typical effect of absinthe. It seems likely that what happened is that the absinthe simply intensified a sense of disconnection that I often feel in awkward social situations to begin with. I've always had a tendency to experience life as if it were a novel, a story that I was either writing or reading. In this case, I was the reader rather than the writer, and some other part of me took control of crafting the narrative, a part whose motivations I have no access to in my memory.

The other notable quality of the experience is the complete lack of fear. Absinthe is alcoholic, and alcohol already lowers one's inhibition level, but this did it to the extreme. I had the sense of being in a reality without rules. It wasn't like I could violate the laws of physics or transcend my physical limitations or anything that profound; it was simply that I had the feeling that the social rules which normally dictate human behavior were gone. All of us were reduced to the level of primal beasts, literally becoming the monsters that lurk just beneath the surface of the knowable psyche. Consider the situation of Caligula. As Emperor, there were no real consequences to his actions. He could do whatever he wished to do and get away with it. Moreover, he seemed to reach the point where morality no longer made any difference to his decisions; it simply seemed to no longer exist in his world. It was something like that.

*I realize this might make me sound like somewhat of a sociopath, but whatever.

 

[hypnagogue]

Thanks LYN for your articulate report. Can you compare the general subjective feel or background/fringey aspects of the absinthe experience to any other sorts of experience?

I find your remark about experiencing life as a novel or story interesting as well. It's not uncommon to read in the psychology literature that we experience life as an extended sort of narrative (and I've heard anecdotal reports along these lines as well), but I personally don't find much resonance with this portrayal. I'm not sure if it's because this metaphor just doesn't click with me conceptually, or if it's something to do with the way I actually experience life. Could you expand on your remark on life as a narrative a bit (if there even is any substantive expansion to do)?

 

[hypnagogue]

Have you ever heard of opthalmic or ocular migraine? I've had two of those. really bizarre, the second one was "classic", like this. The first was black and white and really fascinating. There is no headache, just designs.

I experienced something like this this morning. At the time I had been sitting and reading at the computer for some time, was somewhat tired, and had a kind of heavy-headed feeling (not quite a headache, and not painful, but something along those lines).

Suddenly I experienced a brief flash of light (on the order of a split second), as if someone had momentarily turned on some bright lights behind me. I suspected quite strongly that it was something internal but was still compelled to look behind me to see if there was some external cause (as I expected, there wasn't) because of the intensity of the experience. I experienced a similar thing, with less intensity and slightly briefer duration, two more times in the span of about 10 minutes.

It's difficult to get a handle on what it was like since each experience was so brief. But it seemed like there was a horizontal strip of white light along the upper periphery of my visual field, perhaps somewhat concave and jagged, but my overall impression of the shape is rather ambiguous. On the first occurrence, it seemed like the light lit up much of the visual field, but on the second and third occurrences this lighting effect did not occur, and the experience was limited to just the strip of light itself.

The second and third time it happened I noticed that it seemed like my visual field discontinuously jumped very slightly up and to the left for the split second over which the experience occured, as if the experience was associated with a brief saccade such that the eye movement registered in conscious experience. (If this was a form of occular migraine, perhaps this visual displacement was caused by an occular spasm.) When this happened my overall visual experience was somewhat fringey and peripheral, as if I very briefly lost the higher degree of detail of visual experience that comes with foveal vision. The momentary loss of foveal vision and the apparent conscious registration of a saccade seem to be consistent with an involuntary occular spasm. (The brain takes some brief time to effect visual attention and foveal vision following saccades, and the jumpy visual displacement caused by saccades is normally not noticed in visual experience unless the saccades are not caused by normal visual guidance mechanisms in the brain.)

The brief visual experiences seemed to be accompanied with a strange, barely felt and ambiguous overall body sensation that lasted a few seconds, although this might have just been caused by a psychological reaction to the anomalous visual experience rather than being a similar perceptual distortion sharing the same root cause as the visual disturbance.

 

[hypnagogue]

A few days ago I was walking down the street and was rather strongly emotionally distressed by some in-family friction over financial matters. As I suppose is somewhat typical for depressed emotional states, I experienced spontaneous, fleeting suicidal thoughts (although, of course, I was not consciously choosing to entertain these thoughts and was not genuinely suicidal). The thought soon occurred to me that I might actually be in the process of dying from a suicide attempt and that my immediate perceptual environment might merely be a strong hallucination arising from an impaired brain.

What is interesting here, in the context of this thread, is not this train of thought in itself. What is interesting is that upon having this last thought, it momentarily seemed convincing, or rather entirely and thoroughly plausible in an immediate, felt-in-the-bones sense that I was indeed just experiencing a massive hallucination, that my perceptual world did not correspond to the real world. Normally one might have a kind of abstract appreciation that yes, we could just be experiencing a mass hallucination (e.g. in brain in a vat thought experiments), but not feel any particularly strong experience of unreality while entertaining such thoughts and ultimately take a dismissive attitude towards them. However, in the moment I have been describing, I did indeed experience a quite strong emotional/perceptual sense of unreality to, or disconnect from, my environment. It seemed more like a vivid fantasy or dream than the "real world." This sensation lasted about 10 or 20 seconds or so before fading away.

It's worth noting here that I have previously experienced similar feelings that have been brought on by clear, voluntary thought rather than emotional distress. For instance, upon being introduced to the philosophical concept of solipsism as a freshman in college, I took the solipsism worldview for a 'test ride,' imagining that solipsism was true and that mine was the only real consciousness, and all the world was just a fabrication of my mind. I became quite engrossed in the thought and for some time, maybe about 5 or 10 minutes, felt a distinct and somewhat powerful (and not-too-pleasant) sense of unreality about my perceptual environment.

Both experiences were probably a brief manifestation of depersonalization or derealization symptoms. DSM III describes depersonalization disorder as "an alteration in the perception and experience of the self so that the usual sense of one's own reality is temporarily lost or changed. This is manifested by a sensation of self-estrangement or unreality, which may include the feeling that one's extremities have changed in size, or the experience of seeming to perceive oneself from a distance. ... the individual may feel 'mechanical' or as though in a dream. Various types of sensory anesthesias and a feeling of not being in complete control of one's actions, including speech, are often present. All of these feelings are ego-dystonic (self-alien)..." And further, "derealization is frequently present. This is manifested in a strange alteration in the perception of one's surroundings so that a sense of the reality of the external world is lost."

http://www.chclibrary.org/micromed/00045600.html describes depersonalization and derealization as follows:

Depersonalization

Depersonalization is a dissociative symptom in which the patient feels that his or her body is unreal, is changing, or is dissolving. Some patients experience depersonalization as being outside their bodies or watching a movie of themselves.

Derealization

Derealization is a dissociative symptom in which the external environment is perceived as unreal. The patient may see walls, buildings, or other objects as changing in shape, size, or color. In some cases, the patient may feel that other persons are machines or robots, though the patient is able to acknowledge the unreality of this feeling.

Depersonalization and derealization are known to be brought on severe stress, such as car accidents or strong pain, anxiety, or depression, consistent with my experience related here. These symptoms can also be brought on by thought reform or brainwashing that strongly challenge deeply held thoughts and beliefs, which is consistent with my solipsism 'test drive' in college. (The medical library cited above also remarks that depersonalization (as a symptom, not a disorder) is "quite common in college-age populations," perhaps lending to the relative ease with which my strange experience occurred.)

 

[Evo]

I experienced something like this this morning. At the time I had been sitting and reading at the computer for some time, was somewhat tired, and had a kind of heavy-headed feeling (not quite a headache, and not painful, but something along those lines). <snip>

Yes, that could be a mild form. I actually would like to see another, since I know they are harmless and temporary. The first one I experienced was so incredible with the designs and the changing of direction and the spinning. I was under extreme stress at the time, which is probably what brought it on. It is so amazing what the brain can do.

 

[loseyourname]

Could you expand on your remark on life as a narrative a bit (if there even is any substantive expansion to do)?

This is definitely one I can expand on somewhat. It has mostly to do with the way I feel about events that occur in my life, as well as my motivations for bringing about certain events and avoiding others. Typically, or at least I get the impression that typically, people are pleased by generally good events and angered or saddened by generally bad events. While I do often feel the same way in regards to an immediate emotional response, I do not always, and oftentimes I do not feel these ways even in the immediate response. Instead, I feel the way a writer does when crafting a story. If a certain events moves the plot forward or reveals a particular aspect of character development, or even seems to make a metaphorical point if looked at from the outside, then it pleases me. If it does not, then I am not satisfied. I have to note that I do not always feel this way, particularly with regards to my immediate responses to events, but when I do, my interactions with people can become rather awkward, as the way I feel about what is going on becomes completely different from the way they feel, and I would even say that my experience of the event as being in context with a fuller narrative is probably completely different from the other person's experience. My experience is artistic rather than visceral.

If you consider the difference between watching Romeo after killing
Tybalt to actually being Romeo at that time, you can get an idea of what I mean. Romeo cries out that he is fortune's fool, in a moment of absolute despair. I would venture the guess that he probably feels nothing but despair. A viewer of the play, however, is moved by a different set of emotions, an appreciation of how fate is playing out to construct what is a beautiful tragedy. In many ways, I would rather lead a beautiful life than a happy life.

Where this manifests most explicitly is in the way I make life-decisions. Most people will simply do what makes them happy, or what they think will bring them success. But a stable home life, meaningful relationships, and material success have never been particularly important to me. When I decide what to do on the large scale of overarching plans (choosing a partner, school, job, whatever), I always take into consideration first and foremost how it will contribute to the story of my life. Does it take the plot in a new and interesting direction? Does it make any kind of artistic statement? Or, more pedestrianly, does it make for a good read?

 

[honestrosewater]

I sometimes look at my life as if it were a story, in order to gain some perspective on things, but it's more in a quiet, reflective way; It's not always on my mind.

I do have something that's a bit strange. When my anxiety problems first started, I realized that I could intentionally imagine that there was some dangerous object in my environment, and though I knew that I was only imagining it, I would still flinch or such when I imagined that it approached me. The key was to move my eyes as if I was watching the object. I was also aware of what object or scenario I was imagining, but this alone didn't produce the same result (it had other effects though).

I first noticed this when my eyes happened to move along the carpet as if I were watching a snake slither across the room. When my gaze shifted towards myself, I jerked back reflexively, as if some part of my brain thought there was really a snake there. I played around with it, making the images more vivid and elaborate and trying to resist flinching, but it was quite strong.

 

[zoobyshoe]

What is interesting here, in the context of this thread, is not this train of thought in itself. What is interesting is that upon having this last thought, it momentarily seemed convincing...

You pretty much proved the basis of Cognitive Therapy: our thoughts cause our emotional state. The way we talk to ourselves, and what we talk to ourselves about, creates our moods.

 

[hypnagogue]

You pretty much proved the basis of Cognitive Therapy: our thoughts cause our emotional state. The way we talk to ourselves, and what we talk to ourselves about, creates our moods.

It's undoubtedly true that thoughts influence moods (and vice versa), but I think this particular experience owed most of its occurrence to the general mood and mindset I was already in, sort of like the gun powder to the thought's flame. That is, the primary causal flow was probably from emotional stress to dissociation, with the particular thought I had merely facilitating that flow. I certainly don't get a powerful sense of unreality every time I entertain thoughts about mass hallucination, even when I do so deeply, but here just the mere spontaneous entry of the thought into consciousness was enough to automatically set off a strong derealization experience.