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Regarding falling asleep - I've noticed an interesting phenomenon in myself. Usually it takes me around 30 minutes to fall asleep, during which period I seem to gradually mellow, my internal narrative becomes weaker until I finally fall asleep. During the final stages of that process, I sometimes imagine beautiful and quite complex music or art that I like a lot (unfortunately, I'm nowhere skilled enough to try to create actual pieces based on this). This does not happen to me in any other state - it's as if there's a temporary imbalance between my mental functions (perhaps the logical brain shuts off first) that generates this unsolicited creativity.

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Same for me. Sometimes on bad nights it can be hours but I need that time to "unwind".

The music is awesome. I sometimes get hypnogogia. I can imagine the music and then, as I get closer to sleep, I actually hear the music.

If I don't imagine music and I get hypnogogia, I'll hear people chatting next to me. That was quite scary before I understood what was going on.

If I don't get hypnogogia, I'll start imagining odd scenarios. Sometimes I'll recognise that it's a sign I'm about to drift off and then bang I'm awake.

From what I've read, this comes from straddling wakefulness and light sleep phase.

I believe Thomas Edison and others took advantage of the creative power. He drifted whilst holding a ball bearing above a plate so when he went, the ball would clatter on the plate. He'd wake up and note everything down.

Me, I just wanna sleep. I struggle as it is and I cannot nap. The idea of purposefully preventing sleep sounds like torture.

While I don't recognise the music/art part, I have this happening pretty regularly:

> If I don't get hypnogogia, I'll start imagining odd scenarios. Sometimes I'll recognise that it's a sign I'm about to drift off and then bang I'm awake.

Almost like lucid dreaming, but when I'm only half-asleep, and becoming lucid wakes me up.

Lucid dreaming itself woke me up, often in the middle of the night. I had to force myself to forget to ensured I stayed asleep and got a full nights rest, and eventually I stopped remembering dreams altogether.

Lol, reminds me of my first lucid dreaming experience after a long time of sowing the seeds. The moment I recognized I was dreaming ("I" "was" in my living room) I was very excited and thought "Great, it worked! That means I could try out flying!". So I took off - and bumped my head on the ceiling (1). Woke me right up... :-/

(1) Seems like sometimes dreams /can/ be logical

Only had one lucid dream and it was pretty disappointing.

I woke and my light was on. I remembered that I'd definitely turned my light off - hey, this must be a lucid dream! So I looked at my hand for a few seconds and everything turned to white. Then I woke up, pitch black with my arms under the covers. The excitement of lucid dreaming woke me up!

I used to hear the voices if I was very tired and in a silent room and just listened, not thinking. Since I got tinnitus I've never heard them. I think for me silence was essential, felt like my brain was trying to auto gain select, and if there was no signal crank up the gain until some feedback creeps in.

What on earth... I've never heard of hypnogogia. I just looked that up to discover hypnopompic... auditory hallucinations as you transition from sleep to waking up. I haven't constantly suffered this, but at periods in the last 5 years, I have often woken with a jump and an impending sense of dread to either the sound of a doorbell, or my ex yelling my name. In both cases, I know these were hallucinatory, the doorbell I have installed doesn't make the same sound as the doorbell I hear as I wake, nor has my ex been in my presence at the time I heard her calling my name. I had no idea this was a thing, I thought I was just going crazy, lol. So thanks for introducing me to these "conditions(?)" Perhaps I am still crazy, but at least there's a name for it :D

Yeah, a friend told me about that a while ago. He was pretty freaked out and worried it might be some kind of psychosis!

Don't think you have to worry. I haven't had any issues with my mental health for 8 years, beyond maybe periods of high work stress, and it's appeared at night often since then.

There's a word in the Sami language (a culture indigenous to parts of Scandinavia) that describe the state between being awake and asleep: "Adjágas".

It's been somewhat impotently translated as "slumber" - but it's more akin to what gp describe. I'm sure many native American languages have similar concept.

Sounds very similair to Dali's process. Where he would meditate holding a kitchen utensil on top of a pan. And when he would fall asleep it would fall making a sound and wake him up with i inspration for his next painting.

http://www.creativitypost.com/authors/profile/33/mmichalko

It sound interesting, but I never have heard it before and I can't find it in the link or in Google. Is it in the book? Is there other source? (Creativity advisors are sometime too creative.)

This is also mentioned in the Coursera course "Learning How to Learn" (https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn). Though I don't recall/know what their source is. "Dali Sleep Technique" turns up many hits in your favorite web browser, however.

it is in "50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship" a bit after the "Three rules for controlling your dreams".

Edit: Search for the sentence "In this posture, you must hold a heavy key which you will keep suspended, delicately pressed between the extremities of the thumb and forefinger of your left hand." and look at the google book result, you can read the page 36.

I had heard Edison did this.

John Cleese mentions this process as being done as well by Thomas Edison in his Talk at Google: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-p44-9S4O0&t=9m39s

and Michel Houellebecq seems to use similar process:

INTERVIEWER

What is your writing schedule now?

HOUELLEBECQ

I wake up during the night around one a.m. I write half-awake in a semi-conscious state. Progressively, as I drink coffee, I become more conscious. And I write until I’m sick of it.

This explains a lot about Houellebecq's writing.

If you're reclined (on your back) a bamboo chop stick (or light metal tube that's a bit bigger held with the tip a couple of inches above your forehead works. Make sure your thumb (and no fingers) are below the stick so it will fall.

For me, this exact state is also an ideal one to truly enjoy great music. The music can become surreal and surround me.

I've never used drugs, but this is how I imagine hallucinogens to be...

This reminds me of an experience I had once. I was lying in bed, it was about mid-day, listening to music. Suddenly I started to feel pins and needles all over my body and then felt my body disintegrate, as if I was just a "blob" of energy or something hovering in the air. Lastly, I could clearly hear every single instrument and note in the song I was listening to without trying, as if the different layers of the music were being deconstructed in real time. The experience felt kind of like a dream, because the more I evaluated or thought about it in my head the more it seemed to slip away - it was strongest when I just calmed down and experienced it without trying to think about it. Eventually my mind got the better of me and it stopped. I've never done drugs, but I imagine that this might be what some hallucinogenic experiences feel like (though to be honest I have no real idea).

I think a couple of things contributed to this weird state that I've never been able to reproduce again:

* This happened soon after my family relocated to the other side of the world and my sleep schedule was still a bit messed up.

* I was a teenager and at the time was going through a phase of interest in lucid dreaming, so I'd been keeping a dream journal and got to the point where I had really good dream recall. I think it also helped me stay conscious closer to the boundary between sleep and wakefulness (eg as opposed to just blacking out into sleep I would remain conscious during more of that transition process)

* I had been practising taking mid-day naps because I read that those might be the best time to induce a lucid dream. I wasn't trying to do this when this happened, but it _was_ somewhere around mid-day and I _was_ in bed, maybe my body just decided it was time for a nap and entered that state between sleep and wakefulness.

I wish I could make it happen again, but I've never been successful with inducing this.

We and all the matter around us is only energy. Mass is energy in a very low frequency. Practice hypnotism or meditation and you'll change your life for the better.

>> I wish I could make it happen again, but I've never been successful with inducing this.

Same here. But there are some things that help me getting into this state: Dont be hungry, dont be thirsty, ensure to use the restroom beforehand -- basically, get rid of nagging distractions so you can focus on just mental state. Then work on getting to the edge of sleep. It happens to me sometimes on the subway if I'm coming home late or on a bus trip where i've starved myself of sleep beforehand (usually in the winter, cozy in a overcoat.)

From the description seems you have fully entered alpha brain frequency. It is not exactly hallucinations, just brain disconnects from body while retaining consciousness. I recommend looking up Silva method which developed various ways to achieve this healing mind state, such as countdown meditation or binaural sound.

Check out Astral Dynamics by Robert Bruce. Even if you think out of body experiences aren't real, well, they're experiences. That book explains how to enter the hypnogogic state (mind awake, body asleep) which I think can also lead to what you experienced.

Hypnagogia

There’s this book called “head trip: adventures on the wheel of consciousness” that puts forth the idea that there are many brain states, not just asleep and awake. The one just before falling asleep is a really wild one.

https://www.amazon.com/Head-Trip-Adventures-Wheel-Consciousn...

I was curious about this a few years ago and looked it up. It's called hypnagogia and people have been known to try to induce it deliberately for creative purposes.

Gave it a Google. Explains my other ranting post in this thread quite well. I apparently spend quite a lot of time in this state. Get lots of really good ideas (almost as many as when doodling on the condensation of a foggy shower window).

When I’m really tired and falling asleep, it sometimes feels like my creative brain becomes uncorked. I can focus on any vague idea and then immediately summon an image or multiple images on the theme of that idea, clear as day. I’ve also sometimes been able to keep a mental guitar jam going almost indefinitely. Wish I had this superpower while awake — making art would be a million times easier. (Maybe it’s trainable?)

You can trigger and even control this state. It's caused by deeply letting go and avoiding structured thoughts. I used to spend 2 hours per day on the train, for 5 years. I always kinda napped in the train, usually with ambient music in my headphones. At some point, I was able to go exactly between the waking and sleeping state, or lucid dreaming. It's an incredibly powerful experience, you can control anything, you are dreaming while your consciousness is fully awake. I also had one experience that could be described as spiritual or religious (though I'm none of that) that was very powerful.

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