One time at church i dazed out and all the light fixtures turned 2D, a complete lack of 3D perception. It was as looking at a scene and someone posted the fixtures on a 2D plane over glass. So apparently u can enter a state where parts of your brain turn off or maybe switch tasks but your conscious part is still fully engaged. I guess this describes some of the higher mediative states yogi enter.

I've yet to experience the accelerated time / hyper focus people talk about but i suspect its similar.

A few interesting experiences:

Sleep paralysis: Sometimes I wake up and I can't move. It was frightening the first time it happened, but after I learned what it was, no big deal. I've figured out what when I open my eyes, I'm seeing mostly the real room around me. My wife can confirm after the fact my eyes were open. There are two interesting things that happen. 1) There is sometimes a hallucination 'overlay' where I see whats real AND other stuff at the same time. and 2) if I close my eyes, while in this state, I can 'move.' I'm not really moving, I'm moving in the dream. I can't see anything because my eyes are closed, but I can feel the fake dream world around me like a blind person. In this state, if I open my eyes, I 'snap' right back into being in bed in my original position, stuck. If I keep my eyes closed, I will start to see dream visuals and either fall back asleep fully, or maintain a lucid dream state.

Sometimes I will wake up and anything anyone says to me is unintelligible gibberish for maybe a minute or so. Guess that part of me is still asleep.

Sometimes I will have an 'alternate reality' dream where my life is significantly different, but all the characters are the same. (Like on the show Sliders) When I wake up, I'm confused and can't remember which one is real. The confusion lifts in a couple minutes.

This one involves alcohol: Out camping with a bunch of people at night, circled around the fire, with the stars above and pitch black to your back. Knowing you're not to be afraid of the dark behind you because the person across the circle from you will see anything coming for you. And realizing that as long as we've existed humans have sat in a circle around a fire and that by touching that experience I've bridged a connection spanning thousands of years and traveled through time.

When I was young, somewhere around 6 (I'm not entirely sure), I used to hear things when I tried to fall asleep alone in my room. At one point, I imagined a loud banging on the kitchen counter outside my room.

I heard it once, and I froze. My inner voice drowned it out partially, so I wasn't sure exactly what I heard. Afraid as usual, I waited, and then I heard it twice rapidly, and that put me over the edge, so I ran to my mom's room. That was probably the most afraid I've ever been.

When I heard it, I imagined some guy in the kitchen with an empty beer bottle, hitting the bottom of the bottle into the counter. He looked pretty damn sinister. However, I ran right past the counter, not even thinking that that's where I imagined the man and the noise and I was running right past it (I'd probably die first in a horror movie)

I think that was one of the last incidents before my mom moved me into a room with my older brother, and then the noises stopped (presumably because I felt safer).

She pinned the noises I heard on me imagining them because of violent video games at a young age, but I'm still not really sure that's normal behavior for a kid exposed to too much violence...I believe the games I was playing and/or watching siblings play were Warcraft III and Counter-Strike. I don't remember finding them scarily violent, though.

Aside from that, I've also experienced lucid dreams, though I'm not sure which one I'd called more unique.

When I wake up, I'm confused and can't remember which one is real.

I used to think that the difference between dreams and reality is so obvious I couldn’t respect any person who couldn’t tell the difference, but for a short time I started having dreams based on reality and my dreams are always very vivid and often lucid. Basically for about a month every single dream I had was just a variation on some event that had happened to me earlier in the day. For example in the day I could decide to doodle a picture but I would choose to draw a heart rather than cupid arrow or such. Then I would have a crystal-clear dream in which I was in the same position but this time I drew the cupid arrow.

Because of the clarity of the dream I would not be sure if I had drawn the heart or the arrow the next day. The memory of drawing a heart and a cupid arrow were equally clear to me. I had to check the drawing to figure out which was the dream.

This is a bit of a reasonable situation for not being able to separate dreams from reality, so in most other cases I still maintain a bit of a hard-headed position against those who can’t separate fantasy from fiction, but it was in its own way another good insight that did give me some appreciation for the subject.


L. Spiro

When I wake up, I'm confused and can't remember which one is real.

I used to think that the difference between dreams and reality is so obvious I couldn’t respect any person who couldn’t tell the difference, but for a short time I started having dreams based on reality and my dreams are always very vivid and often lucid. Basically for about a month every single dream I had was just a variation on some event that had happened to me earlier in the day. For example in the day I could decide to doodle a picture but I would choose to draw a heart rather than cupid arrow or such. Then I would have a crystal-clear dream in which I was in the same position but this time I drew the cupid arrow.

Because of the clarity of the dream I would not be sure if I had drawn the heart or the arrow the next day. The memory of drawing a heart and a cupid arrow were equally clear to me. I had to check the drawing to figure out which was the dream.

This is a bit of a reasonable situation for not being able to separate dreams from reality, so in most other cases I still maintain a bit of a hard-headed position against those who can’t separate fantasy from fiction, but it was in its own way another good insight that did give me some appreciation for the subject.


L. Spiro

I am very similar in that regard, but very simple dreams about very simple situations (like talking about something) can trick me. And there is the loose-tooth type of dreams when I dream that one of my tooth is loose during sleeping (the sleeping is part of the dream). It's only possible to tell if my teeth are fine if I'm fully awake.

Another occurring thing is stair-sliding. I just can't tell if I'm able to do it, or I only dreamed about it. I always forget to try it.

Oh. When you mentioned stair-sliding, I thought you meant the end of this video:

Either way looks…fun?


L. Spiro

It hasn't happened to my in years but when I was younger a couple of times I had the terrifying mental state known as sleep paralysis. Your mind basically wakes up before your body. For a few minutes I was completely aware of my surrounds I could hear and feel everything but I was unable to move my body in anyway. It was terrifying and I started to panic while desperately trying to move.

As to smal experiences i got yet three

- some evening i got an ol philliphs walkman where with a small screwdriver i could make tape moving bit slower or faster, after an evening of trying setting optimal speed when going to sleep i heared a music in empty ears (some kind of percusssion + sound wave beat with no device, i could even manipulate the sound at my will (but i asleept)

- once after a reading a big doze of komixes (by rosinski) i got comix like animated dream (very fine graphics with colors and, moving draw very fine, bright pastel like colllors, exactly like here, this style but moving )

[attachment=20121:roskarg2.jpg]

- after long 2 day trip on my bike i was terribly tired i hardly cannot catch my consciousness not to fall asleep (nothing extraordinary, but really i was very exhausted, and it was unusual rare experience)