Hypnopompic And Hypnogogic Imagery

[paigetheoracle]

With regards to hypnopompic and hypnogogic imagery, is it always figures seen when waking up or dropping off to sleep or is landscape projected outwards as well?

 

If we only see figures upon waking up and going to sleep as in hypnopompic and hypnogic imagery, rather than see everything else (buildings, landscape), does this possibly indicate that such spectres are not projected from our own mind but possibly have an existence of their own externally or is there some other explanation? (I thought of an answer, when walking along the river bank this morning but didn't write it down and have now forgotten what it was).

[pamela]

what are you saying paigey? These images are not real but a trailing thought crossing from dream state into wakefulness. As far as I am aware, no one has ever proven the existance of spectres. Try to remember your answer that should be interesting :)

[Moontanman]

I've experienced such specters before, in fact I quite often visit them or am visited by them in lucid dreams, I strongly suspect they are from your own mind, the wonky part is when someone else shares these images.... a very strange sensation...

[Qfwfq]

With regards to hypnopompic and hypnogogic imagery, is it always figures seen when waking up or dropping off to sleep or is landscape projected outwards as well?

Any visual and auditory hallucinations count as them, even tactile sensations or the sense of some odd presence. They've all occasionally happened to me (usually sounds), and sleep paralysis too, my last time was just a few days ago early morning; I thought the family member I had to assist was calling my cell, though it sounded faint, but then I was conscious enough to know where I was, in bed, and was quite sure my cell was switched off on the night table. I was thinking "What the hell!?" and tried turning to reach for the darn thing but couldn't budge my muscles until fully awake. Didn't get any more sleep that morning.

[belovelife]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwaDi13ZeOI&list=PLCB44DFE07C99768A&index=28&feature=plpp_video

 

 

 

what kind would this be?

[Qfwfq]

what kind would this be?

It seems I would need to try it later this evening but I doubt it could be called either of the two this topic is about.

[CraigD]

Thanks for the introduction to the term “hypnopompic”, Paige. :thumbs_up I’m interested in subject of dreaming, but hadn’t heard this one before, even though it appears to have been coined in the late 1980s.

 

If we only see figures upon waking up and going to sleep as in hypnopompic and hypnogic imagery, rather than see everything else (buildings, landscape), does this possibly indicate that such spectres are not projected from our own mind but possibly have an existence of their own externally or is there some other explanation?

You might want to answer this question using a lucid dreaming technique, one of my favorites: ask one of the spectres.

 

Hypnogogic states are, pretty much by definition, fleeting, but I’ve occasionally been able to hold on to a figure seen at the edge of sleep into a full dreaming state, then speak with her/him/it. Most often, when asked the direct question “who are you?”, the figures in my dreams answer “I’m you”.

 

Of course, since dreams have large parts of wish fulfillment, and I don’t believe in gods, angels, demons or ghosts, someone who does could reasonably argue that such an entity is just telling me what I want to hear to be nice or string me along. However, I’ve had some long, deep, memorable conversation in dreams that leave me firmly convinced that this isn’t the case, though, and that all my dream conversation are actually with myself.

 

I've experienced such specters before, in fact I quite often visit them or am visited by them in lucid dreams, I strongly suspect they are from your own mind, the wonky part is when someone else shares these images.... a very strange sensation...

I’ve never seen a figure in my dream I’d call a “specter”, in the sense, say, seen by Scrooge in Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. The few “ghostly apparitions” I’ve seen in or near dreams were more like scenery, sometime accompanied by bizarre tricks of scale, like fold of clothing becoming hills with roads, houses, and people on them. Almost always, I’ve been able to remember where I’d seen such a figure in waking life, to the extent that I doubt anything I see in dreams is not something I’ve previously seen, but often not remembered, awake.

 

Can either of you post or link to a drawing of you’ve made, or think matches, one of these specters you’re describing?

 

what kind [of an hallucination] would this be?

I wouldn’t call what you perceive watching that or similar video an hallucination, but an optical illusion.

 

I enjoyed that one, finding it relaxing, the illusion of depth and moving through a tunnel very pleasant.

 

Most optical illusion graphics I’ve seen are stationary, not moving images. I find the moving ones more engaging – I can easily watch 5 minutes or more of them without feeling bored or distracted by other things, many times longer than with even the best static eye-fooling images – though I’m told I appreciate these videos more than some. My eyes were fairly glued to the screen for all the “flying” and “going into” visual effects sequences of Gaspar Noé’s 2009 movie Enter the Void, which my wife was bored by after a few minutes.

 

I find the titles of many of these video, eg: “how to feel high without drugs” silly, because, enjoyable as I find them, they don’t make me feel much at all like psychedelic drugs do.

[sigurdV]

(I thought of an answer, when walking along the river bank this morning but didn't write it down and have now forgotten what it was).

 

[belovelife]

i have so many vivid dreams, i actually practice remembering them when i wake up

 

interesting coincidences also

 

once i had a dream i was in my friends new glass shop, i called him the next day and told him, he sent me a picture, and it was exactly the same eccept a mirror of the shop, everything was on the opposite side, amazing, so i moved up to work with him again,

these dreams i have all the time, it would take a book to write them all down,

 

alot of the time i am in school, and i am the top student

 

one of such dreams i was an adult in elementary school

and there was a math test going on, i was like elementary math, no problem, then i looked at the test and there were so many complicated math formulas, i was completely challenged, then next day, i thought of my atomic model

 

 

alot of times i cannot tell which one is more real, the dream or reality

 

of course while i am awake, the dream is a dream, that is for certain

but when i'm dreaming, the dream is more real, and life is the dream

 

once i had a dream where there were a few of the people from the sgc with me, we were on a spaceship

and when we landed, i gave someone a tour, we went into a shop and i ordered a cup of coffee, the store was like one of those stores with a bullet proof window, eccept i don't think that was its function, then right when it was time to go, they finnished the cup of coffee, it was really close to coffee, but a little different, and they were happy i approved, then the ground turned into a slide, and i woke up in my bed

 

i could keep going on, but just wanted to share some of my dreams

 

 

 

 

 

[paigetheoracle]

Thanks for the introduction to the term “hypnopompic”, Paige. :thumbs_up I’m interested in subject of dreaming, but hadn’t heard this one before, even though it appears to have been coined in the late 1980s.

 

 

You might want to answer this question using a lucid dreaming technique, one of my favorites: ask one of the spectres.

 

Hypnogogic states are, pretty much by definition, fleeting, but I’ve occasionally been able to hold on to a figure seen at the edge of sleep into a full dreaming state, then speak with her/him/it. Most often, when asked the direct question “who are you?”, the figures in my dreams answer “I’m you”.

 

Of course, since dreams have large parts of wish fulfillment, and I don’t believe in gods, angels, demons or ghosts, someone who does could reasonably argue that such an entity is just telling me what I want to hear to be nice or string me along. However, I’ve had some long, deep, memorable conversation in dreams that leave me firmly convinced that this isn’t the case, though, and that all my dream conversation are actually with myself.

 

 

I’ve never seen a figure in my dream I’d call a “specter”, in the sense, say, seen by Scrooge in Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. The few “ghostly apparitions” I’ve seen in or near dreams were more like scenery, sometime accompanied by bizarre tricks of scale, like fold of clothing becoming hills with roads, houses, and people on them. Almost always, I’ve been able to remember where I’d seen such a figure in waking life, to the extent that I doubt anything I see in dreams is not something I’ve previously seen, but often not remembered, awake.

 

Can either of you post or link to a drawing of you’ve made, or think matches, one of these specters you’re describing?

 

 

I wouldn’t call what you perceive watching that or similar video an hallucination, but an optical illusion.

 

I enjoyed that one, finding it relaxing, the illusion of depth and moving through a tunnel very pleasant.

 

Most optical illusion graphics I’ve seen are stationary, not moving images. I find the moving ones more engaging – I can easily watch 5 minutes or more of them without feeling bored or distracted by other things, many times longer than with even the best static eye-fooling images – though I’m told I appreciate these videos more than some. My eyes were fairly glued to the screen for all the “flying” and “going into” visual effects sequences of Gaspar Noé’s 2009 movie Enter the Void, which my wife was bored by after a few minutes.

 

I find the titles of many of these video, eg: “how to feel high without drugs” silly, because, enjoyable as I find them, they don’t make me feel much at all like psychedelic drugs do.

 

Well Craig, some interesting points that will lead onto more by me as you'd expect. Firstly you could argue that the spectres 'lie' and tell you what you want to here (I really love that answer!). Secondly it could be viewed that we are all one another, cut off by our fears of losing our separate identities: This could explain the internal 'cure' for people who suffer from hearing voices and fight against them as evil demons, by getting them to reconcile their differences (Make peace, not war as on the outside world, where you regard someone as different (an enemy) and treat them with hostility, to keep them physically away from you as in death and other violence: A part of our collective self that we imprison or try to exclude from our perception - this includes class, sex, sexual persuasion, race, religious and other beliefs and practices etc. differences). 'Newman MD' starring Gregory Peck, covers this idea well (Eddie Albert's brilliant role - he should have got a best supporting Oscar for it, not Bobby Darin)

 

Can I post an image of the goblin figure I saw by my wife's side of the bed? No but there are images by I think of an Italian artist (or Dutch?), who made faces out of fruit and vegetables, one being part of a tree trunk, which was like this.

 

As for the bedclothes being like a landscape, this takes me back to childhood and the wonders of imagination - again go to Carl Warner's site, where he uses food to make landscapes (M R James, wrote a lovely ghost story about bedclothes turning into a ghostly figure, filmed by Jonathon Miller on BBC television in the sixties (probably on You Tube somewhere) - Fortean Times had three interesting reports in this context, over the years - one was a photo of a curtain that had a recognizably gigantic human face on it/ within it, another was someone up in the hills, in Wales, who saw the top of a mountain turn bright red and a face appear on it that looked around the valley and disappeared again. The third incident was a man at a railway station, who saw a face in the trees, made up of leaves and branches, who assumed it was a simulcra (natural phenomena that 'appeared' to be something familiar)until it suddenly withdrew like a person pulling back from looking out of a window (no wind, if that was what you were thinking). In the old days this would have been put down to 'elemental' beings - nowadays its put down to much 'Emmental' Cheese!

[paigetheoracle]

what are you saying paigey? These images are not real but a trailing thought crossing from dream state into wakefulness. As far as I am aware, no one has ever proven the existance of spectres. Try to remember your answer that should be interesting :)

 

Oh Pammy, the problems of getting older and not having a pen and pad to hand when you need them! As for them trailing into reality - yes I'd agree but as Moontan says, what about when they are seen by other people! I think from my experiences of UFO visitations and bedroom visitors, that there is a definite trail from inner to outer and we shouldn't discount 'reality' from being separate from this process (We all talk of turning dreams into reality after all, don't we?). Maybe the magicians of the past and illusionists of the present play with this power/ mind set (Could these dream figures be plasma energy of some sort, manipulated by the mind as in light shows i.e. lasers/ fireworks. I remember the case of a UFO abductee that was told, 'The more you believe in us, the more real we become'). Put that in your pipe and smoke it! (By this I am not implying you should use wacky-backy to induce hallucinations / dream imagery). By the way I cannot swear any of my experiences were physically real as I never touched an alien. On top of this Norman Don, late of Chicago University, carried out a study that displayed the fact, that those claiming genuine contact experience were able to automatically reach a brain wave state that so called mediums and trance inducers couldn't (even Yogis in India could only reach this state after years of training and then not many of them (This would seem to indicate that you need to be an altered state to see such beings and that it is actual contact that initiates this ('Turn on, tune in' in reality)):

 

Google - topografia cerebral de pessoas abduzidas (a Portuguese site but this study is in English and cites the French one on Yogis*). Is it all in the mind or does it translate into the physical in some way, not yet understood?

 

*Smarter than the average bares, Boo-boo! (terrible pun but I couldn't resist it).

[paigetheoracle]

i have so many vivid dreams, i actually practice remembering them when i wake up

 

interesting coincidences also

 

once i had a dream i was in my friends new glass shop, i called him the next day and told him, he sent me a picture, and it was exactly the same eccept a mirror of the shop, everything was on the opposite side, amazing, so i moved up to work with him again,

these dreams i have all the time, it would take a book to write them all down,

 

alot of the time i am in school, and i am the top student

 

one of such dreams i was an adult in elementary school

and there was a math test going on, i was like elementary math, no problem, then i looked at the test and there were so many complicated math formulas, i was completely challenged, then next day, i thought of my atomic model

 

 

alot of times i cannot tell which one is more real, the dream or reality

 

of course while i am awake, the dream is a dream, that is for certain

 

A lot of my dreams are about being at University or living on the outskirts of one (No formal education of this type but had a friend who went to Cambridge). I think synchronicity is where you are dreaming while awake i.e. connecting to a greater reality than the mediocre one we all accept normally (Bit like traveling on a train as opposed to walking and making faster connections than we would at a more 'pedestrian' rate).

but when i'm dreaming, the dream is more real, and life is the dream

 

once i had a dream where there were a few of the people from the sgc with me, we were on a spaceship

and when we landed, i gave someone a tour, we went into a shop and i ordered a cup of coffee, the store was like one of those stores with a bullet proof window, eccept i don't think that was its function, then right when it was time to go, they finnished the cup of coffee, it was really close to coffee, but a little different, and they were happy i approved, then the ground turned into a slide, and i woke up in my bed

 

i could keep going on, but just wanted to share some of my dreams

[paigetheoracle]

Any visual and auditory hallucinations count as them, even tactile sensations or the sense of some odd presence. They've all occasionally happened to me (usually sounds), and sleep paralysis too, my last time was just a few days ago early morning; I thought the family member I had to assist was calling my cell, though it sounded faint, but then I was conscious enough to know where I was, in bed, and was quite sure my cell was switched off on the night table. I was thinking "What the hell!?" and tried turning to reach for the darn thing but couldn't budge my muscles until fully awake. Didn't get any more sleep that morning.

 

Did you know most ghostly encounters are auditory or smell orientated, rather than visual and that there is evidence that colour bleaches out of ghosts, seen over the years? (Source Ghost Club).

[bravox]

I once had an episode of sleep paralysis during which my dead grandmother appeared to me. Funny thing is, I didn't see or hear her, I just felt something I can only explain as a sixth sense. I suppose that is what people describe as the feeling of a presence.

 

I have no idea how I could have dreamed up a sense I don't have, and I'm inclined to think there is more to it than hallucinations.

[paigetheoracle]

I once had an episode of sleep paralysis during which my dead grandmother appeared to me. Funny thing is, I didn't see or hear her, I just felt something I can only explain as a sixth sense. I suppose that is what people describe as the feeling of a presence.

 

I have no idea how I could have dreamed up a sense I don't have, and I'm inclined to think there is more to it than hallucinations.

 

This I think links with another post I made recently, about a daytime perception problem 'Dingwall down the road.' I think I was in a dream state and didn't realize this until I compared it to historical/ physical knowledge. I think this state connects us to reality outside normal reality, which Tony Peake, an English author speaks about in his books and on his website, cheating the ferryman. I think this sense is to do with the proposed energy field as a description of the human soul. It states that we're aware of things coming into this field, even if behind us and that this explains 'knowing' when someone is staring at us. It is this that survives the death of the body and no, I cannot remember who came up with it, so unfortunately can't give you a reference for it but maybe Googling 'human energy field' will reveal something. Sorry can't be more helpful.

 

My link

[bravox]

This I think links with another post I made recently, about a daytime perception problem 'Dingwall down the road.' I think I was in a dream state and didn't realize this until I compared it to historical/ physical knowledge.

I think I found your post and I can relate to your experience. I'm taking some powerful drugs for a medical condition, and mental confusion is listed as one of the side effects. So the other day I'm trying to walk back home when I suddenly find myself in a place I've never been to. I thought, "oh well, I made a wrong turn somewhere along the way", so I walked back until I reached some place I could recognize.

 

When I arrived at the familiar place, it was a bit scary. There was only one way out of it, the way I just came from. I didn't know what to do so I took the "wrong" path once again. This time it turned out to be the right way home.

 

I can't tell you how strange this experience was. I spent hours and hours thinking what could possibly have happened. The next day I walked the same path and realized the explanation was quite mundane: I failed to recognize a familiar place. Some trick of the mind.

 

The problem with admitting your mind can trick you, is that you have no way to know if you haven't been tricked your whole life...

 

I think this sense is to do with the proposed energy field as a description of the human soul. It states that we're aware of things coming into this field, even if behind us and that this explains 'knowing' when someone is staring at us. It is this that survives the death of the body

I do suspect that the notion that we are "inside the body" is just a trick of the mind. In reality, we may not be located in space at all, in which case nothing happens to us when we die.

 

Incidentally, that is exactly what many people report after undergoing those so-called near death experiences. Even in my experience, while I was unable to move my body I did consider the possibility that I was dead.

 

I cannot remember who came up with it, so unfortunately can't give you a reference for it but maybe Googling 'human energy field' will reveal something.

Sounds like the work of Rupert Something (can't remember his last name)

[CraigD]

I think this sense is to do with the proposed energy field as a description of the human soul. It states that we're aware of things coming into this field, even if behind us and that this explains 'knowing' when someone is staring at us. It is this that survives the death of the body and no, I cannot remember who came up with it, so unfortunately can't give you a reference for it but maybe Googling 'human energy field' will reveal something.

Sounds like the work of Rupert Something (can't remember his last name)

Rupert Sheldrake.

 

Sheldrake as a fan base of a sort, but his ideas are generally considered bad pseudoscience. There’s no legitimate scientific evidence that Sheldrake’s proposed “morphic fields” exist, or that the shaping of biological organisms is determined by anything other than the growth of cells regulated by their DNA, or that people have a sense of being stared at for any other reason than that they notice other people reacting to seeing someone staring at them.