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Comment by TuringNYC | Hacker News Reader

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.

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.

>> 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.)

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.

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.

Hypnagogia

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