Medical Anomalous, extraordinary, or otherwise interesting conscious experiences

[zoobyshoe]

That is, the primary causal flow was probably from emotional stress to dissociation, with the particular thought I had merely facilitating that flow.

You were already stressed out about the money issues so the thought was particularly potent at that time. The degree to which a thought affects our moods is a somewhat separate issue. Had some exceptionally pleasant thought occurred to you instead you would have have run just as far with that, but in the other direction. The depth of the reaction is different for different people, and different for the same person under different circumstances, depending on the general strength of your emotions at the time, their general volume. The thought itself steers the direction the emotions take, not necessarily the strength of those emotions.

Our pre-existing emotional state does, indeed, prime us to explore certain kinds of thoughts via a confirmation bias. This is what you mean when you say there was a "flow" from stress to dissociation already in progress: you had fallen into the habit of calling up negative thoughts in response to the negative emotions precipitated by the previous negative thought. It actually does run in chains like this, and the solution is to notice what you're thinking, and to correct the distortion of thought. The emotions follow suit.

 

[Simetra7]

In my late teen years and early twenties i was a rather heavy user of marijuana. At that time i enjoyed the whole altered state of awareness feeling that it gave me, and just went with the flow. I found that when i was high my brain seemed to operate on a completely different level and I experienced a deeper understanding of all the spiritual practices i was learning at the time such as meditation and visualisation. At around 24 or 25 a different kind of altered state started to creep in. At first just subtle changes but eventually a whole new and scary state took over. I would find myself unable to control my thoughts and i would imagine that people around me were plotting against me. I realize that paranoia is fairly common in drug users, but this went beyond that. Because i had become quite proficient at visualisation, and was able to manifest many things in my life with this technique, i started to believe that my paranoid state was going to somehow manifest these terrible situations and that i was not going to be able to stop this from happening. It was as if my mind had been completely taken over and when one plot ran it's course without consequence another more elaborate plot would take over. Needless to say i stopped smoking the dope altogether but it took a long time for my mind to come back to the level it had been at before all this started. Now, thankfully that is way in the past and things are relatively normal.
About lucid dreaming; I have been trying to become lucid in my dreams for a long time and have only managed it a couple of times and only for a short duration. A strange thing that does happen sometimes is that i'll be dreaming about someone who i am close to, and all of a sudden i will get the feeling that he/she is the one who is dreaming and that i am in his/her dream. I tell them so but they don't believe me. They tell me that it is my dream not theirs but even then it doesn't really register that i may be lucid, and the dream just takes it's own course while i am still quite sure that i am in someone elses dream.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

It seems that on at least a few ocassions, for some period of time during which I was under tremendous pressure and got very little sleep, I walked the three-hundred feet from the house to my office, worked on various parts of an engineering project including high voltage circuits, walked back to the house and went to bed, never to remember a thing. Only later did I realize what must have happened through circumstantial evidence - e.g. work done by either me or elves, and I'm guessing that it wasn't elves.

The first real clue came when Tsu got up one night and I was gone. I had no idea where I had been!

What do you mean "where was I"?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Oh yes, this is a great story from another system's integrator.

Having worked something like a week on hardly any sleep, and I mean something in the neighborhood of eight hours of sleep over a period of five days, which can happen in my line work, Leonard was working away somewhere on the factory floor when a large piece of equipment fell from high above, landed right next to him with a huge crash, and nearly killed him. Leonard thought to himself how funny it was that he didn't even jump. He just kept working as if nothing had even happened. A little while later another engineer walked up to discuss something. When leonard started to tell his co-worker about the near miss and looked over at the fallen machinery, nothing was there. He had hallucinated the entire episode.

 

[Ramster5678]

I was sleeping then i would wake up, and i would see a penny, lying at the tip of my bed, and i tried to grab it, but it went right through my hand! That same night, i had this same experience except with a pencil box. I go to swip it off the bed, but my hand goes right through it. I don't remember how i got out of this incident, i might have just gone back to sleep or it just went away as i (with no success) tried to get it off my bed. This, though, only happened once.

 

[matthyaouw]

A strange experience I had when I was about 9 (i think)
I was at school. I remember leaving the classroom, and on my travels, I took a look out the door, and saw a group of older children that seemed to be getting ready for a group photo in 3 rows. The back ones must have been standing on a platform of some kind. I didn't stray far from the door, but on the way back, there was no one there. They didn't come through the door, and there was no evidence that they'd been there at all- no platform the back row could have been standing on, nor could I think of a reason why they'd be there in the first place. I still don't know for certain whether they'd really been there at all.

 

[cotarded]

I don't even know where to begin in this thread. I have had, or still have, experiences relevant to so many of the topics discussed here. Just a few minutes ago I posted in the "Stuck in REM sleep" thread about an incident where my dream world decided to stowaway when I crossed into reality and I was robbed of a real sleep/wake transition (full hallucinations while I wrote on my desk). I also share loseyourname's artistic life perspective completely (although I'm far less articulate so I'll keep my two cents to myself concerning that idea) and generally think I'm more inclined to a narrative worldview because I don't have any eidetic (visual) or much emotional recall at all. My past is inert and verbal, although wordless (if that sounds like a contradiction, it feels like when somebody tells you about a concept by contrasting two words - before he comes up with a final word or you say "I understand", that verbal but unarticulated substance is my memory).

Anyway, what I thought I'd share was the change in headspace that persisted for some time after a really foolish phase of experimentation with nitrous oxide. Note for those who haven't played with the stuff, it's my opinion that it's surprisingly and insiduously(sp) addictive, not to mention destructive. For those who don't know, it tends to exhibit reverse tolerance in the beginning, intensifying each time you hit it. After some time, for reasons that are unknown to me, and about which I'm extremely curious, the effects diminish to the point of being undesirable. Coinciding with this qualitative change in the high is a change in the comedown. For the enjoyable interval (those times before the acute effects disappear), the comedown is almost better than the actual intoxication, leaving you feeling inspired, generally quicker, and excited. The only thing I can compare it to is the way I feel after I recovered (30 mins or so) from a hard, and successful cross country run (which makes analyzing the source of the effects difficult, as you're combining accomplishment with hypoxia/blood ph change/deranged blood sugar levels/enkephalins etc.).

Anyway, the last few times I did whippets, about a half to a day later I would become completely depersonalized and anhedonic. To the point where the entire world would seem completely fake and pointless. It's a hell of an experience - when you can't feel any emotive response, there's no reason to do anything! Maybe I'm the only one that would find this obvious result counter-intuitive in experience. I'd sit and think, do I want to talk to so-and-so, and feel nothing, do I want to x, nothing, do I want to think, nothing. So after going into a frenzy to evoke feedback, I eventually acquiesced into a state of heavy inertia until my beloved carrot and stick came back and provided reason for living. It was inconcievable how even logic wasn't sufficient to maintain me, because the assumptions were based on emotion, and no matter how many times I demonstrated to my desperate, apathetic self that this or that logically followed, it didn't mean anything.

Last little tidbit that I'll leave out here just to see if anyone is interested:
I experimented with 5-HTP at one point, out of sheer boredom (terrible reason to do anything to your mind, I know, but this was after the preceding and no argument was compelling - I was exhausting habits and impulses since the tried and true wasn't true anymore as far as feedback), thinking it would have no effect, and was met with a very, very unusual change in consciousness. Normally I can never say with confidence that I've been "unconscious" because it may just be that I don't remember (i.e. I could have been thinking all night but not remember it - even if those thoughts were handicapped into incoherence by being memory deprived), but in this case I fell into lapses of non-subjectivity where I felt like a deterministic, inanimate object (in retrospect, at the time I felt nothing) then returned to consciousness with full memory of the events after a second or two.
Tidbit that was.

lates,
cotarded.

 

[fuzzyfelt]

This is pretty mundane after the last post, but I’ve got a thousand things I should be doing and don’t feel like doing, so thought I’d share a hypnagogic hallucination that seemed to take hours once when I was 17yo art student, as a reason to procrastinate. I was using, as I do (easier than thinking!) the hypnagogic state as a kind of tool.

I went to bed, meditated, then rolled to one side facing in and felt some movement about my exposed ear so rolled over facing out across my large room, reassured by a small shaft of light I was now facing as the door on the other side of the room was slightly ajar. (This house has a lot of family history, some may be considered spooky )

As I lay looking at the light I became aware that it was moving, or rather I was moving down the bed. I felt that if this was going to be a proper out of body my awareness should not be still attached to my body, and felt I should relax more and wait. Nothing changed, and I was becoming increasingly concerned that my head was slowly en-route to collide with the wooden bed-end. So I struggled to free the paralysis but couldn’t and my movement down the bed was unrelenting. I awaited the collision.

However, in the instant that my head was due to receive a pummelling from the bed-end, I was flipped upwards, and at a furious pace found myself flying head first, my arms still glued to my sides, around the room- the air racing passed my ears was noisy, my hair blown right back and I could feel the speed on my skin, like when you stick your head the window of a fast moving car. I couldn’t orientate myself in the darkness. I was dreading other, more brutal collisions with the three external brick walls, windows and hard furniture. It felt totally out of control, seemed to be endless, and I was wondering how it would stop.

Then at some point I noticed a pattern in the movement - my feet were remaining much in the centre of the room, whilst my body was sweeping out a large circle that wavered up and down, although above the furniture and below the high ceilings, which was some relief.

It occurred to me this could mean something had control of my feet- had pulled my stiff body down the bed and still had them as it swung my seized body around. I felt that it was important to try to see my feet, and so, possibly, what it was that was doing this to me. It wasn’t that I was certain that there was a malevolent force present, it was more that I had to rule that out, or see it if it existed, otherwise I would always wonder. As I mustered the strength, and courage, to twist my neck to look back at my feet, again, in the very instant that I managed to twist, my newly flexible body was forcibly thrown back on to my bed with a loud thud, I think my sheet fell on top of me then too, and there was silence,... and everything was back to normal. It all felt real.

 

[Dayle Record]

I once went to a Junior High assembly, a musical assembly at my daugther's school. I realized that I was slipping into a bad migraine headache, and there wasn't much I could do about it. Then the "orchestra" (all stringed instruments), was set to play a melody. There were only about a dozen players, and they were terribly out of tune. I have perfect pitch, and the sawing of the instruments in their out of tune state, gave me the effect of worms crawling on my scalp. It was the oddest thing, and that is the only way I can describe it. I was in so much pain I found it laughable, and then when the orchestra started up, it was as if my scalp wanted to leave the room.

 

[selfAdjoint]

I once went to a Junior High assembly, a musical assembly at my daugther's school. I realized that I was slipping into a bad migraine headache, and there wasn't much I could do about it. Then the "orchestra" (all stringed instruments), was set to play a melody. There were only about a dozen players, and they were terribly out of tune. I have perfect pitch, and the sawing of the instruments in their out of tune state, gave me the effect of worms crawling on my scalp. It was the oddest thing, and that is the only way I can describe it. I was in so much pain I found it laughable, and then when the orchestra started up, it was as if my scalp wanted to leave the room.

Did anybody at the pary seem to react to you? In the evidences of Padre Pio's bilocations, presented as part of his case for canonization, he was said to have bilocated from his friary in Italy to one in, I think, Brazil, and people there who knew him personally said they had heard his voice in the corridor, but not seen him.

 

[selfAdjoint]

I once went to a Junior High assembly, a musical assembly at my daugther's school. I realized that I was slipping into a bad migraine headache, and there wasn't much I could do about it. Then the "orchestra" (all stringed instruments), was set to play a melody. There were only about a dozen players, and they were terribly out of tune. I have perfect pitch, and the sawing of the instruments in their out of tune state, gave me the effect of worms crawling on my scalp. It was the oddest thing, and that is the only way I can describe it. I was in so much pain I found it laughable, and then when the orchestra started up, it was as if my scalp wanted to leave the room.

Did anybody at the party seem to react to you? In the evidences of Padre Pio's bilocations, presented as part of his case for canonization, he was said to have bilocated from his friary in Italy to one in, I think, Brazil, and people there who knew him personally said they had heard his voice in the corridor, but not seen him.

 

[Dayle Record]

A Junior High School musical assembly is something that should be banned under the Geneva Accords. I was just sitting in a row, smiling with tears starting to form from the pain, and wearing an amazed expression, since it was such an awful performance, amplified by inexplicable neurological effects of migraine. I think the soul of my scalp, did transmigrate to Jamaica at the time, and dred lock motility has taken off as an art form since.

 

[cotarded]

fi said:
"I was flipped upwards, and at a furious pace found myself flying head first, my arms still glued to my sides, around the room- the air racing passed my ears was noisy, my hair blown right back and I could feel the speed on my skin, like when you stick your head the window of a fast moving car. I couldn’t orientate myself in the darkness. I was dreading other, more brutal collisions with the three external brick walls, windows and hard furniture. It felt totally out of control, seemed to be endless, and I was wondering how it would stop."

I have had an identical experience, though it was coming out of sleep. I hinted at it in my post in the "stuck in rem sleep" thread, but didn't really do it justice. The story is long and convoluted and also includes other hypnopompic hallucinations, even ones that followed me into my waking state, but there was a stage where I tried to get out of bed and I simply fell out of my body and into an intense sort of discarnate rollercoaster that is very much in accord with your description here. I found mine a little disconcerting but mostly exhiliarating(sp) - I wish I could feel that sense of acceleration again, as well as the awesome, pervasive sense of wind resistance all over my body, like I was moving so rapidly through the air that the viscosity became that of water (at first it seems that this is a long-winded way of saying I felt like I was swimming, but air is dry, so it's actually a pretty ineffable sensation).

lates,
cotarded.

 

[fuzzyfelt]

I have had an identical experience, though it was coming out of sleep. I hinted at it in my post in the "stuck in rem sleep" thread, but didn't really do it justice. The story is long and convoluted and also includes other hypnopompic hallucinations, even ones that followed me into my waking state, but there was a stage where I tried to get out of bed and I simply fell out of my body and into an intense sort of discarnate rollercoaster that is very much in accord with your description here. I found mine a little disconcerting but mostly exhiliarating(sp) - I wish I could feel that sense of acceleration again, as well as the awesome, pervasive sense of wind resistance all over my body, like I was moving so rapidly through the air that the viscosity became that of water (at first it seems that this is a long-winded way of saying I felt like I was swimming, but air is dry, so it's actually a pretty ineffable sensation).
lates,
cotarded.

Thanks, cotarded, it is reassuring to hear of similar experiences, it makes it seem less wierd! I described mine as an hypnogigic hallucination because that seems most plausible. However, my gut feeling is I would have had an out of body experience had I let myself disengage my awareness of body, and the motion and lack of control was some attempt to shake that off. Afterwards, I had a feeling I'd been a bit of a failure, that I should have let go and felt more exhillerated, less frightened of smashing into something, and then something greater would have been achieved. So it is also reassuring that you don't mention feeling worried about bodily consequence, and that you were exhillerated, and that that still was the extent of the experience. Your post has made me feel less of a failure and more happy to believe it was an hypnogogic hallucination. You say you'd like to feel it again, personally I'd like to avoid it, but do you meditate? If not, perhaps that would help.

 

[-Job-]

I once walked outside at night in my sleep. If you've never sleepwalked before, it feels like an acted out dream, the next morning you may remember a couple of things (and feel really guilt for whatever reason) or you may not. Generally it's not a big deal. Mostly it's stuff like if i have nightmare i'll instinctly run to the bathroom and then go back to bed. What is interesting is that if I'm walking around in a sleep state and i see or hear something unexpected i'll just go on a wild tangent and think something else is happening. Three times it has happened that this has produced a scenario where i thought the building was either on fire or being demolished by a bulldozer. These situations feel completely real, so i just panic extremely, run to the closest window and start banging at it trying to break it. While doing this i usually either wake up myself or someone else and one time i was caught halfway out the second floor window, the other times i couldn't get out because the mosquito net got in the way. When i wake up my heart is racing and i feel really stupid and guilty. I'm as afraid of this happening again as the real thing, it's quite a scary thing.

 

[Mk]

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

Thank you once again to PF

Sucess! After over a month of dreaming, I have finally achieved the goal of... having sex! YES! I win!

 

[CosminaPrisma]

Mk achieved his subconscious desires! ::high five::

 

[Mk]

Ooops, I forgot to add that I had sex in a lucid dream, not that I have been dreaming of sex and have been trying to get laid.

 

[CosminaPrisma]

Hahah Mk!

 

[PIT2]

Ooops, I forgot to add that I had sex in a lucid dream, not that I have been dreaming of sex and have been trying to get laid.

Tell us all about it, how was it?

Here are some of my weird experiences:

Ive heard a few weird noises and voices similar to what hypnagogue described in his second post, usually when falling asleep. Has happened about 6 times and the noises were twice a 'boing' noise(like u hear in cartoons), someone saying my name, and i forgot the other ones.

One time i had a weird experience where a friend asked me a question to which i could not have known the answer("guess who i saw downtown yesterday"). However before he had finished the question i had already answered him without even thinking about it, it blurted out. Also, not only did i know the answer, i had a memory of where he saw the guy - down to the exact meter where it happened (it was a politician waiting at a streetlight)and what the politician was doing (phoning and holding a newspaper under his arm). It was all as if i had been there myself and seen it. It didnt feel weird, it felt like remembering any other event that one has experienced, but i know i couldn't have known these things. In short, the famous nonexisting telepathy happened to me.

 

[Mk]

Tell us all about it, how was it?

Well, I won't get into it, but it wasn't better than normal.

 

[Alkatran]

When I go to sleep I sometimes 'trick' myself into thinking the bed is tilting. It's weird because I can almost feel myself slipping.

Usually after going to a theme park I'll feel like I'm still on the egg-beaters and spinning in bed (which is an AMAZING feeling).

Sometimes I'll suddenly feel like I'm being pressed very strongly into the bed. I can stop this whenever I want, but the sensation is pleasant because I know it's only in my head... and there's no pain involved.

 

[AngelShare]

This is all really interesting.

Hm, let's see...one of the oddest things I've experienced while sleeping is being asleep but being awake. I'm fully aware that I'm asleep but I can't move, talk, or anything...I don't even think I can wake myself up. BUT, I can hear people talking very clearly. Once, I figured I was just imagining this so I asked my Mom something that pertained to something she was supposedly talking about earlier. Turns out, I was right, she had been discussing said topic. It doesn't happen often but it's a really odd feeling.

When I was about eight, my Grandfather died and my Mom and Dad had a huge falling out. As a result, sleeping arrangements were shifted so that my Mom and Dad could be separate. On one particular occasion, I slept with my Mom in her room...but I couldn't remember where I was the next morning. It was still dark so I couldn't see...I knew my Mom was on my right but I wasn't sure what was on my left. Open air? A wall? If it was a wall, it was my Mom's room...if it was open air, it was either my room or my brother's room. I layed there for at least an hour, too afraid to move, thinking, "Where am I? Why can't I remember where I fell asleep last night?" Eventually, my Mom woke up and, by that time, I was pretty freaked out so I just up and asked, "Mom where are we?"

Oh yeah, I had a pretty unnerving dream about three or four years ago as well. I dreamt that our Beagle dog, Susy, was bleeding from her mouth. Not a lot but enough that I could see it. I was standing, for no apparent reason, in the doorway of my Dad's basement office (Where I'm at now- we keep the computers here.) when she started slowly and rather weakly walking towards me. I looked down at her and she looked up at me...then I woke up. I was then alerted to her having passed away...I took a close look at her and found that there was some blood on the floor not far away from where my dream took place and that it had come from her mouth. Everyone assumed she died from old age but I still wonder where the blood came from...

I would definitely like to explore this topic more as I wonder what some of these experiences would feel like first hand...I'll have to hang around this thread for a while.

 

[Mk]

This thread is very interesting to read.

 

[AngelShare]

Yes, it is. I'd like to try controlling my dreams but, so far, they've all been out of my control.

 

[Mk]

I figured out I need to apply it to my real life, that's what works best for me. In a dream, I either a) think its real or b) are lucid dreaming and don't really care. In a dream a few weeks ago I was flipping through the tv channels and was reminded of oneironauting, and then made the *full* realization that I was in a dream. I jumped up many levels of lucidity. The higher your level or degree of lucidity, the more
*awake you are
*understanding you are of the situation
*clearer you think
*perception of the vibrancy of the world around you

Oneironaut comes from the Greek for "dream sailor," like astronaut comes from "star sailor." Sailor as in explorer.

What has really helped me, is to ask yourself as frequently as possible "am I dreaming," and reading up on the capabilities and things to do. Read about oneironauting experiments at http://lucidity.com.

 

[scott_alexsk]

Occasionally I go to sleep and then feel like I wake up the next day and do something stupid. Then I really wake up and think was I dreaming, since I feel regret. On several occasions I have had to convince myself that what I dreamed did not happen at all, since it seemed so real like I had just gone through another day. Would this be considered lucid dreaming? I have no idea.
-Scott

 

[Mk]

Occasionally I go to sleep and then feel like I wake up the next day and do something stupid. Then I really wake up and think was I dreaming, since I feel regret. On several occasions I have had to convince myself that what I dreamed did not happen at all, since it seemed so real like I had just gone through another day. Would this be considered lucid dreaming? I have no idea.
-Scott

Closely related to lucid dreaming, this is a typical case of a false awakening. You think you woke up, maybe move around, get up and get a glass of water, then you really wake up. I don't like them. I know I can never tell that its still a dream. Somehow if I "wake up," I take it at face value like normal people do in their dreams. I never, ever think twice.

 

[scott_alexsk]

It is really strange with those dreams I have had. Whenever I have them I wake up feeling regret, then I remmeber the dream. In turn I feel bad until I convince myself that it did not happen. Perhaps I have more dreams like this, but the emotion of regret may change how I feel so I remmeber it in the morning.
-Scott

 

[Mk]

I have spasms a lot, well, I think its more than other people, I've never really been somebody else, so I don't know for sure.

I was just watching my arm two nights ago. One of my biceps was twitching quite a bit. I could see it hitting against my loose white T-shirt.
What I mean is that, like:
1. put your left hand on the keyboard, with your fingers on the "home row," touching the asdf and space keys.
2. Tense all the muscles in your arm, while watching the sleeve of your t-shirt, or make a muscle, or whatever your fancy while keeping your hand pinned to the same location on the keyboard, and your arm pinned to the same location on your shoulder.

Yeah, like that.

I think my muscles get very tense when I am exited. When I go to live music concerts, I always have to sit down. The suspense builds, I am more and more anxious, and feel the uncontrollable urge to tense and relax all my muscles. If I don't, I watch my feet, legs, and arms spasm. If I am immersed in very exiting movie or book it happens.

I think its anomalous or extraordinary, I've never seen anybody else experiencing this type of thing.

Can anybody tell me something about it?

 

[Mk]

I've found it!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-eye_hallucination
This is awesome1!

I asked about this before in this part of the forum, and found no answer, but browsing about Wikipedia I've found it!

KLASFJKLSGJKLS@! I'm sooo happy!

Closed eye hallucinations or closed eye visualizations (CEV) is a term used to describe a distinct class of hallucination, which generally only occurs when one's eyes are closed, or one is in a darkened room.

These are dots I was talking about before dancing on the walls. Comparable to a visual static, but it is not seen if you try and "focus" on a part of it.

Level 1: Visual Noise
The most basic form of CEV perception that can be immediately experienced in normal waking consciousness involves a seemingly random noise of pointillistic light/dark regions with no apparent shape or order.

Ha! See! Its like white and dark little things, like on the white and black static you get on tv.

This can be seen when you close your eyes, but try to actively look with your eyes at the back of your closed eyelids. In a bright room, a dark red can be seen. In a dark room, blackness can be seen. But in either case it is not a flat unchanging redness/blackness. Instead, if actively observed for a few minutes, you become aware of an apparent disorganized motion, a random field of lightness/darkness that overlays the redness/blackness of your closed eyelids.

The redness comes from the redness of the blood in your eyelid I think? The eyelid is very thin. In bright light I skip Level 1 completely.

For a person that tries to actively observe this closed-eye perception on a regular basis, there comes a point where if you look at a flat-shaded object with your eyes wide open, and try to actively look for this visual noise, you will become aware of it and see the random pointilistic disorganized motion as if it were a transparent overlay on top of what is actually being seen by your open eyes.

Uhm... that sounds weird.

Level 3: Patterns, motion, and color
At a sufficiently deep level of relaxation, the noise becomes highly organized, taking on complex geometric patterns and shapes, as if it were a field of tiny stars, squares, or diamonds, floating over and under each other in ribbons and fields.

Couldn't be said better. Sometimes I just like to close my eyes and watch.

This level is relatively easily accessible to people that smoke marijuana, and appears to be what most people refer to as the colorful visuals.

I've never smoked pot before.

However, this is also accessible to people involved in deep concentration for long periods of time, such as doing complex math or geometry problems in school. When lying down at night and closing the eyes, right before sleep the complex motion of these patterns can become directly visible without any great effort.

Yeah, sounds like me.

Level 4: Objects and things
This is a fairly deep state, typically only accessible through psychoactives or people who have practiced meditation for a long time. At this level, what you are thinking becomes visually manifest as if it were a real object or environment. When this level is reached, the CEV noise seems to calm down and fade away, leaving behind an intense flat ordered blackness. The visual field becomes a sort of active space where what you think is what you get. A side component of this is the ability to feel motion if your eyes are closed. For example thinking of moving down may cause the interior of an elevator to manifest in the CEV field, along with the distinct perception of physically moving downward.

Well that sounds right to me except for the motion. After the moving geometric patterns and shapes, "real" things appear, such as wildcats and owls. Sometimes they can get scary, there is no reason why though.

Opening the eyes returns one to the normal physical world, but still with the CEV object field overlayed onto it and present. In this state it is possible to see things that appear to be physical objects in the open-eye physical world, but that aren't really there.

Uhm... noooooooooo.

Level 5: Overriding physical perception
This is the point where it appears to the outside world that a person is either unconscious or insane. The internal CEV perceptions and think-it/feel-it perceptions become stronger than physical perceptions, and completely override and replace open-eye physical perceptions. This can be a somewhat dangerous state if a person is still mobile while literally off in their own little world, but by this time most people are motionless on the couch and as such, are not likely to do something hazardous to themselves or others.
This is the point where most hallucinogenic references say it is a good idea to have a "sitter" present to watch over the person using the chemicals, and keep them from accidentally harming themselves or others while deep into their own world.

Wow, insane-o... I can get it to override physical perception if I woke up but never opened my eyes. This is what I aim for every morning. I try and wake up with my eyes closed, so I can go over the dreams I've been having, because they are quite interesting and some may want to be remembered. I keep them closed and create a fantasy world, sometimes after long enough, and if I'm calm enough, I can fall asleep into the fantasy.

Nobody else has these?

Come to think of it, I hallucinate a lot by comparison to other people I think. If I'm in a darkened room, and am calm, I will see the flashing black and white visual static, and when looking into the edges of where the ceiling and wall meet, it will appear for them to move. If things are very dark, and are very hard to distinguish from their surroundings, they will appear to move. All three of these hallucinations are alike in that if I try and focus on a region the whole thing will stop. Does anyone know a person I can contact about all these weird things?

 

[Lars Laborious]

Drinking and dreaming

I've had a few wicked experiences a few days after drinking too much. Once, when I was resting with my eyes open, I started seeing dreamlike clouds in the room. I realized I could control them and soon I made a really vivid man taking form. Then I closed my eyes since it was starting to freak me out a bit. It all disappeard when I opened them again.
Annother time I woke up (after dozing off for about 15 min) by a man grabbing my chest and squeezing hard. The first thought that hit me was "Jeez..., it's the Moral Man... I really got to cut down on drinking." He to disappeared after I "shaked" him off like a dream.
I've also had some "clear dreams" were I know that I'm dreaming, and can control much of what's happening. This one time I tried to "confront my fear" by walking down a hall to meet whatever might hide in the shadows at the dark end. Even though I was fully aware that it was all just a dream, I simply couldn't do it. I didn't dare walking into the darkness. I still wonder if I would have died of fear if I had done it.

 

[Mk]

I've also had some "clear dreams" were I know that I'm dreaming, and can control much of what's happening. This one time I tried to "confront my fear" by walking down a hall to meet whatever might hide in the shadows at the dark end. Even though I was fully aware that it was all just a dream, I simply couldn't do it. I didn't dare walking into the darkness. I still wonder if I would have died of fear if I had done it.

Called lucid dreaming, welcome to the club! Eh, you just got to do it. Do it before thinking too much about it, because you know you are dreaming.

 

[Tsunami]

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.

Wow.


So is this the absynth you can buy in a local supermarket, or the now forbidden kind that was popular in Parisian artistic circles?

 

[Tsunami]

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?

Paul Ricoeur: Life is a story in search of a narrator.

or: We become the narrator of our own lives, but never its author.

 

[complexPHILOSOPHY]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-eye_hallucination
This is awesome1!

I asked about this before in this part of the forum, and found no answer, but browsing about Wikipedia I've found it!

KLASFJKLSGJKLS@! I'm sooo happy!


These are dots I was talking about before dancing on the walls. Comparable to a visual static, but it is not seen if you try and "focus" on a part of it.


Ha! See! Its like white and dark little things, like on the white and black static you get on tv.

The redness comes from the redness of the blood in your eyelid I think? The eyelid is very thin. In bright light I skip Level 1 completely.


Uhm... that sounds weird.

Couldn't be said better. Sometimes I just like to close my eyes and watch.


I've never smoked pot before.


Yeah, sounds like me.


Well that sounds right to me except for the motion. After the moving geometric patterns and shapes, "real" things appear, such as wildcats and owls. Sometimes they can get scary, there is no reason why though.

Uhm... noooooooooo.

Wow, insane-o... I can get it to override physical perception if I woke up but never opened my eyes. This is what I aim for every morning. I try and wake up with my eyes closed, so I can go over the dreams I've been having, because they are quite interesting and some may want to be remembered. I keep them closed and create a fantasy world, sometimes after long enough, and if I'm calm enough, I can fall asleep into the fantasy.

Nobody else has these?

Come to think of it, I hallucinate a lot by comparison to other people I think. If I'm in a darkened room, and am calm, I will see the flashing black and white visual static, and when looking into the edges of where the ceiling and wall meet, it will appear for them to move. If things are very dark, and are very hard to distinguish from their surroundings, they will appear to move. All three of these hallucinations are alike in that if I try and focus on a region the whole thing will stop. Does anyone know a person I can contact about all these weird things?

Ingest some triptamines or entheogens and you will experience a level of consciousness that you could NEVER imagine.

 

[eeka chu]

Lots of the visual effects people mention, like static, can be caused just by how your eye works on a mechanical level.

Dead cells float around in the liquid core of your eye and will show up on your vision as they float past the retina. You can also see things like the back of your own eye as a reflection, and I'm sure I've actually seen blood flowing in my retina, or somewhere else in my eye, before now.

Some of the strangest things I've experienced have been just on the edge of going to sleep. Quite often I hear things, but vividly as if someone is actually making that noise in the room I'm in. It was happening last night and has done quite frequently these last few nights. It's usually just a word or two, like my name. Or sometimes it's a few notes. But it's very clear. I think at least once I've actually replied to these sounds thinking someone was calling me.

But complexPHILOSOPHY is right, all of this is nothing compared to what you'll experience with the help of something like magic mushrooms.

I remember cycling home after eating some psilocybe truffles that hadn't worked very well (they'd been in storage for a while and the psilocybin had obviously started to break down). It was funny actually, I was, without thinking, repeating Hoffmann's own psychodelic bicycle ride home.

Along the way I heard crystal clear sounds as if there was a group of people chatting around the corner I was about to go round (it was dark and being a cyclist I'm always listening out for people who I might be about to ride into at a corner). But the weirdest moment was as I came towards my house I went by a car that was emitting a noise identical to that which you'd get when you tune a radio into some kind of satellite, the computery encoded sound. It sounded very glossy and almost like music. It was so weird and interesting I stopped my bike and backed up to investigate, but it had stopped by then.

However, that's not much compared to the hour or two I spent totally naked one night lying on my bed occasionally waving to faces I was watching appear on the ceiling.

 

[Tsunami]

So, a couple of days ago, I noticed that I heard a high, constant tone in my head. This tone hasn't gone away since.


This is seriously freaking me out, considering that this is very likely to be a symptom of ear damage. So, first off, as a question unrelated to the topic: is there anything I can do to stop this damage from becoming permanent? I think I might have caught it because of the high frequency buzz of my tv channel when I link it to my laptop; if not, it's a tone from my laptop itself. I'm now working on it, with my headphones on (of course, with no sound coming in through the headphones, I use it for protection from outside sound).

Anyway, there are some odd things I noticed.

1) It's a background sound. An hour ago, I went out in the street, where it was raining, and the sound of the rain completely blacked out the high tone. When I came in, I heard it again.

2) It can resonate. Whenever my laptop or the tv sends out the same sound, I hear the tone being reinforced.. sometimes I even noticed beating, when the frequencies are very similar.

3) Not sure about the beating though ; there's something that seems like beating, when I try to analyze the sound, with no other sounds in the proximity. It seems like a constant tone, but when I imagine a sine wave, it seems as if the tone starts to oscillate as well.

 

[Mk]

Dead cells float around in the liquid core of your eye and will show up on your vision as they float past the retina. You can also see things like the back of your own eye as a reflection, and I'm sure I've actually seen blood flowing in my retina, or somewhere else in my eye, before now.

Its not floaters.

But complexPHILOSOPHY is right, all of this is nothing compared to what you'll experience with the help of something like magic mushrooms.

Oh, no way man! This is very subtle, and it is so subtle that its almost like you're not seeing it... because you're not. But I doubt that shrooms could bring you up to a level of consciousness parallel to some lucid dreams I've had.

I remember cycling home after eating some psilocybe truffles that hadn't worked very well (they'd been in storage for a while and the psilocybin had obviously started to break down). It was funny actually, I was, without thinking, repeating Hoffmann's own psychodelic bicycle ride home.

What was that?

1) It's a background sound. An hour ago, I went out in the street, where it was raining, and the sound of the rain completely blacked out the high tone. When I came in, I heard it again.

2) It can resonate. Whenever my laptop or the tv sends out the same sound, I hear the tone being reinforced.. sometimes I even noticed beating, when the frequencies are very similar.

3) Not sure about the beating though ; there's something that seems like beating, when I try to analyze the sound, with no other sounds in the proximity. It seems like a constant tone, but when I imagine a sine wave, it seems as if the tone starts to oscillate as well.

Does anyone else here a sometimes very annoying "hum" that you hear when it is ALL quiet? TOTALLY quiet, the hum comes in, it can be quite loud. It is not a hum... but akin to the sound of moving air in a conch shell. In fact, that is probably what it is.

For you, how high is it? Very high? Somewhat high? What tone?

 

[Tsunami]

Well, it resonates with my tv when it's on dvd channel, so it's pretty high.


When I was a child, I used to have that hum sometimes.. it's been a while though.

Anyway, I'm going to see my doctor about it, I don't think it's healthy anymore (three days really is too long).

 

[PIT2]

There was a documentary about people with 'sound shock syndrome' (something like that, i can't remember the name). They showed a guy who was in a band, and one day they decided to let their audience hear a shotgun sound. The sound was too loud for the singer near the speakers, and the following days he noticed that he started feeling weird (he didnt know why). He ended up with a constant very loud hum/beeping noise in his head, and he couldn't sleep anymore. His ears weren't damaged, but his brain was confused by the sound.

Other examples in the show were people who had listened to music or other noises for too long. Their ears/brains had adjusted to the sound and when the sound was removed, the ear would still give off signals to the brain.

 

[PIT2]

I forgot to write it down here, but a few weeks ago i had what i think may have been an OBE, but it could as well have been a dream.

Here is what happened:

I was asleep and dreaming, and somewhere along the dream i thought: "im dreaming... I am dreaming... hey I am dreaming!". So at that point it was a lucid dream (also my first, or perhaps second one). Almost instantly when i realized i was dreaming, i thought it would be interesting to see if i could leave my body. As soon as i thought this, i started hearing static noise (like radio or tv), the dream was gone and replaced by my normal room, and i felt that i was being pulled/pushed out of my head. Then i felt/heard a *pop* and it felt as if i had exitted my body and was now floating somewhere in my room.

I was aware that my eyes were closed, so all i experienced was darkness, a loud static noise, a feeling of floating around, and a feeling of being in an open environment. However i was too scared to open my eyes and check if i could really see the environment. I wanted to check if i was experiencing something real, but i just didnt feel safe. Picture urself getting up in the middle of the night and walking outside in the rain completely naked into an unknown place, and then u can imagine how it felt. I mention the rain because that is what the static noise reminded me of - rain hitting the roof and giving off a noise, or perhaps it was really raining at the time. The situation felt unsafe because i thought if i opened my eyes i might see a sleep paralysis demon walking around the room. I didnt feel any presence, it was just my mind remembering that people had said they sense beings while in sleep paralysis situations. I would not have thought of any demons if i hadnt known about SP.

Because i didnt feel safe and was scared, i almost instantly ended it all (by just willing it to stop). The whole thing happened in a timespan of maybe 20 seconds, so it was very short. After i ended it, i was briefly awake and thought "wow did i just have an OBE? I should remember this", then fell back asleep.

So i don't know what this was: an OBE, a lucid dream, a normal dream, or a sleep paralysis episde, or a combination of all four, and i wish i had opened my eyes too see if the environment was real.

 

[Rader]

Has anyone ever had the experience of reading in 3D. What I mean is, while your reading, all the letters on the page can be focused in on like a necker cube. The letters have depth like you see sometimes on the big movie theatre. Its possible to look around the sides of the letters as if they were houses and by moving my head to one side or the other or from the top or bottom. This has happened to me three times and lasted one day then dissapears. When it happens I can remember the feeling is like when I go inside those 3D hidden pictures. It feels good.

 

[Mk]

How anomolous, extraordinary, or otherwise interesting, Rader.

 

[quantumcarl]

My totally conscious experience that defies conventional ones is as follows.

I had finished a climb of about 600 vertical feet and was rewarded by a bluff overlooking a large straight of ocean between me and a large island that was 21 miles to the west where I was looking.

I was standing and admiring the vista when I noticed something small and hovering at my eye level. At first I thought it was a bug until I focused my vision and attention on the object.

After carefully watching this eye level object I could discern that it was actually about my size but about 60 feet away from me, 600 ft over the ocean below. As I inspected what I now accepted as something the size of a miniture helecopter cockpit I began to make out its content. It was a humanoid form yet it was transparent like the cockpit is was inside.

After realizing the nature of the hoovering object my heart-rate rose and my adrenalin did what it normally does to my body and brain. The object then rather subtley began a backward retreat while remaining at my eye level.

It steadly, with a slight waver up and down, made it back to across the straight to the large island west of me in 20 seconds or so... this means it was traveling approximately a mile a second since the distance was 21 miles. I watched it till it became a dissappearing speck.

Not sure if this is the type of thing you wanted for this thread, but, its true and there you go!

 

[fuzzyfelt]

I was going to ask this in the hallucination thread, but this gets a little off track. I’d like to know about the difference between hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations. I have heard with no great authority, that the former is artistically helpful, and the latter, scientifically so.

I’ve also just read this, about whether or not dreams are useful to problem solving – “ Morton Reiser, a psychoanalyst at Yale University ….says ‘ How do you explain that so many scientific breakthrough ideas have been portrayed as dream imagery?’ (as cited in Schulte, 1998, p.3.)”. http://www.asu.edu/clas/english/linguistics/Joanfinalpaper.DOC
I wonder if this is the case and if this is related to hypnopompic experiences.

I wonder about the differences between states of hypnogogia, because I’ve had a lot of (not drug, but otherwise self-induced) hypnagogic experiences, mostly artistically helpful, but only one hypnopompic experience that I recall, and it didn’t seem scientific.

It was recent, early December, and involved the appearance of an astral traveller who was doing me the honour of visiting. I would say it would qualify as a hallucination because there was no distinction between sleep and waking. I had been aware of some movement and noise, but in identifying them as the 6:30 alarm and my husband waking beside me, the wonderful vision standing in our room, regrettably, was gone. However, I’m not science minded and so am unlikely to think scientifically. I’m also not a morning person, and find I’m not too good with hypnopompic experiences myself, but would like know more about them.

 

[complexPHILOSOPHY]

I embrace the activation-synthesis theory of dreams (random patterns of neurons fire and are perceived by certain cortices) and consolidation or mental-housekeeping theory.

Activation-synthesis explains incoherent, fragmented dreams while consolidation theory describes coherent, story-like dreams. Neither theory can explain all dream related phenomena but together help to explain a lot.

I really have not seen any convincing empirical research which indicates that problem-solving theories have any validity. Although, I am interested in your thoughts.

 

[madhatter106]

I'll put in my experience on this question first, "difference between hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations".
I've been experiencing this as far back as I can recall, toddler age on, so about 30+yrs. As a child it was very intense and I didn't know what to make of it, my mother figured the house was possessed by demons, she was a bit over the top with religion. However here's what I've "seen", the hypnagogic stage was sometimes more frightening as the wallpaper would come to life, pictures would start-up and behave as TV's complete with sound, as a child this is a bit much! As I got older I found that I could control what was happening and what the outcome was, I also found that this gave me a completely new world in my dreams. I learned to completely control my dreams and become the 'creator' at about age 8, I would travel to other planets by flying AKA superman, I could make entire environments appear etc... I found that I would rather spend more time asleep than awake. who wouldn't?

As I got older I found that I could induce the dream state while awake, it was sketchy at first and required concentration, usually in the form of day time school. which by the way I always daydreamed during, this started around 2nd~3rd grade - I'd 'zone' out of class and disappear into my own reality, while still being aware of my surroundings and 'remotely controlling' myself so as not to appear too detached.

Now on the hypnopompic arena, that's entirely different. It can be a mix of waking dream into reality or waking and carrying in hallucinations that I don't recall in the dream state, I also think it's just hallucinations related to external visual field that my mind plays with. These are at first so real that it's impossible to tell the difference, it's the voice of reason in my head that says, "wait a moment, this can't be real" I then have a choice, I can try and interact with it at which point the hallucination fades or disappears or do nothing and watch it evolve into very fascinating things, and here's the key difference I've noticed, in the prior state of lucid dreaming while falling asleep the visuals and what not are just what ever I want them to be or have induced no real deep meaning or substance, more like and alternate reality. In the case of waking and dreaming, there is always a very deep meaning sense of feeling tied to it, I also find that it relates to something I've been trying to solve or work related with my design process. It's like seeing the overall picture all at once and getting a sense of where to focus and what and how to tie it all together to get this 'flash' where the proverbial light goes on.

It sounds very odd, and the experience is very hard to put into words as it's entirely for me a 'picture' based thing.

 

[Alex11111]

Nobody else has these?

I have noticed this lately, but my question is why so happy? You identified the problem, but its still a problem. Is there any treatment for this, its ridicules to try to fall asleep with this.

Let me know, thanks.

a.

 

[Tregg Smith]

You probably know of the inner alarm clock where in some mysterious way you wake up at just the right time to go somewhere without an actual alarm clock. One time when sleeping I heard a most pure and beautiful single note of what must have been a silver bell and my eyes opened and I was awake. What a wonderful way to wake up I thought. Too bad it can't happen everytime.