I had an interesting dream during a nap earlier today. I experienced a dream that transitioned into lucidity the way they tend to for me when I realize I am dreaming, give up the dream-quest, and still manage to not wake up.

The dream pre and post transition took place at night in a beautiful moonlit grassy field clearing in a forest. When the dream became lucid, I decided to leap up in an attempt to fly, seeming to remember that controlling the dream keeps it lucid, while surrendering back to the dream quest will cause it to fade back into a normal dream.

The flight was short, I only managed to leap up and fall backwards where I sank into the field below the surface, where the dream went dark and suddenly ended in wakefulness, however in the instant of being awake I was having closed eye visuals of the caliber of a medium doses of mushrooms. I haven't consumed any psychedelics in several months, and wasn't expecting this. The visuals only lasted about 20 seconds and there seemed to be no signs of sleep paralysis (hypnagogic hallucination).

I've experienced dreams involving taking substances and being under the influence within the dream, however this one didn't involve substances, and the visuals were during a fully awake state. Has anyone else experienced this? The whole experience was very neat, I hope to have it happen again.

Closed-eye visuals on the border of sleep and waking is a pretty well-documented phenomena. I will often find myself enjoying a short psychedelic light show briefly before falling asleep or after waking. They don't seem to be associated with any of the expanded consciousness we usually think of when closing your eyes on a psychedelic. It's just a lot of pretty pictures.

One of the theories is that some parts of your brain are still in 'sleep' mode, while others are awake, so you get dream imagery overlayed over waking perception.

Blessings
~ND

I often get lots of CEVs just prior to sleep. Probably more phosphene in nature than anything really, but theyre still quite geometrical. Id always seen them, even as a kid and Id think...am I the only one who sees this?!


Many times over the past year Ive woken up to find, open eye smack in the center of my field of vision, a movie like reel playing. Very OBE like, and even sometmes remote viewing, or like Im seeing through someone elses eyes. I only see it if I wake up feeling a little groggy, where Im like 75% awake and 25% sleepy. Hard to explain, but its very cool. It usually lasts 2-5 minutes.

Yeah and it can be very mentally psychedelic for me sometimes - not just some kind of fading after-image. The range of different kinds of psychedelic dream experiences is really broad, and the same with the ways that they can sometimes slip into waking consciousness. Sounds cliche but it seems like pretty much anything is possible when it comes to dream experiences.

We really don't have even a decent understanding of them, how they work, and why we have them in the first place, in my opinion. But I think you can go just about as deep into psychedelic states with dreams as with waking reality. I think it's worthwhile to explore what is going on there thoroughly.

One thing though is that, for me, my memories of psychedelic dreams aren't as vivid and rich as those accessed with waking consciousness. But that's how it usually is with dreams to begin with, so no surprise there.

I'm as amazed at the fact it hasn't happened to me before as I am that it happened.

I've definitely experienced some interesting visual phenomena when falling asleep and waking up in the night. I remember one particularly vivid experience though having returned home from Peru where I had first experienced ayahuasca. I woke up one night and in the blackness of my room were being projecting these swirling geometric forms...this experience didn't last long but it was much more vivid than hypnagogia I have experienced and much more akin to psychedelia.

I get this a lot, too. Just happened last night, actually. I encountered some lucid dreaming and awoke to the visuals sliding into my waking reality from my dream reality. This has also happened just before falling asleep or waking up in the middle of the night. They are usually brief in duration and never even close to 'psychedelic'..however, they are indeed beautiful and puts emphasis on how close those realms are.

Thanks for sharing!