Wow. I didn’t know this, but I was actually able to observe this state on myself. When going to sleep, my mind is wandering. But at one point it drifts from real world thoughts to completely abstract concepts and wild imagination that sometimes makes no sense. It’s almost like a hallucination. What’s most interesting is that sometimes I am able to notice the transition to this state and consciously observe it. Usually it makes me happy because I know I’m about to fall asleep within the next few seconds (which I often have problem with, writing this comment at 1:26am again..). I am also able to consciously observe the images being generated. It’s very weird, because it feels like one brain looking into someone else’s brain to the extent that is impossible by any technology or in any other way. Sometimes I’m able to consciously wake up from this state, because I have weird “sleep phobias”. Sometimes I am fascinated by the idea generated at that stage. But unless I write them down or really get up, they are typically lost if I fall asleep within next 5 minutes - maybe I’d have a Nobel prize already, if only I kept a pen and paper ready next to my bed. Or apartment full of crappy kitch paintings..
Wow, I have this exact same experience before falling asleep. It feels like a direct shift in the thought processes, and as you described it, it feels as though you have become a passive observer of your own thoughts. The images are sometimes so absurd and creative that I almost laugh to myself. But I also, don't KNOW if the images are creative or absurd, but just my brain believing it so -- is there even a difference? If anyone has ever had a "genius" idea while high, written it down, and read it the next day, you know what I mean...
Just as you mentioned, this switch lets me know, I'm gonna be asleep in the next few seconds. I also often listen to audiobooks or ASMR while lying down to sleep, and just as this state kicks in, I know its time to flick out my earbuds just before I lose consciousness. However, sometimes I'm even able to ride this wave right into sleep -- as in, from weird observer state right into the dream world. I was actually thinking about this a few days ago, and did some very quick searching, but couldn't find anything -- I wonder if we are observing the switching of our own brainwaves from alpha to theta?
I'd like to ask other people that experience this: do you also have high rates of sleep paralysis? I get it almost nightly. My dreams are also very vivid, and I remember about 80% of them. Also, if I wake up during a dream, upon falling back asleep, I'm able to "continue" them. Maybe I'll try this Dali method a bit, who knows!
It feels like a direct shift in the thought processes, and as you described it, it feels as though you have become a passive observer of your own thoughts
Because it is, according to my doc. You’re looking directly at your inner thinking machinery, and moreso you can interact with it by simply asking yourself a question just before this state kicks in.
I have a little success story of using it. Previously I’ve had a fear of being late, with a heavy protective behavior, almost OCD-like. Doc wanted me to answer when and how did I get the idea that being late is so terrible. I tried hard to recall, but only simple reinforcement events came up to mind. Then he said that I should either fall asleep in that session (failed it), or repeat the question before I go to sleep at home. Just in few seconds my subconscious presented me the correct event from my childhood in full detail. One session later I was free of that fear, and now can easily plan 4-5 meetings in a row in different parts of the city, an unimaginable thing for me before.
Lucid dreamer here. I often feel the "switch" the same way you do, and I ride through it as the images transistion into the "dream world". Through this I can directly enter into a lucid dream if I choose to keep my conscious mind slightly active, else it becomes a passive dream (though sometimes I do discover that I'm dreaming and it then becomes lucid once more). I have to be cautious here though, as if I start thinking too hard I snap out of it and return to consciousness.
During this time sleep paralysis is almost always in effect. Basically I can listen and think, but there is a gate on my muscles - small motions like twitching my fingers won't work, strong motions cut through (and immediately stops the paralysis). To me it generally happens when my mind is about to switch off and I am on the verge of falling asleep.
I have this also. So many things to say I don't know where to begin. I feel like there is a distinct difference between the experiences of seeing the images when you are falling asleep vs seeing the images when you have recently come out of sleep. And then there is a third state where you have recently come out of sleep but you aren't done sleeping yet so you are also falling back to sleep. This last one often allows me to start having a lucid dream.
1) Weird things like this happen to me most often in the early morning hours when I'm still drowsy but I've woken up for a few minutes.
2) It is sometimes accompanied by a "whooshing" sensation that used to frighten me and usually caused me to "back out" into normal consciousness. Eventually I learned how to relax and let it unfold without panicking. Quite often I have the sensation of rolling out of my body, off the bed and onto the floor.
3) I am paralyzed when it happens, in the sense that if I move my hand, the hand that moves is a dream hand. My real hand of course doesn't move. It doesn't feel like paralysis because I can "move" in my dream. But I am consciously aware that my real body is lying still in bed.
4) I have to be very careful not to wake myself especially at the beginning (edit: and being careful is paradoxical because if I am too careful then that will wake me too, sort of like the paradox of needing to be both loose and tight in sports). I am also aware that if my wife coughs or makes some kind of noise, I might wake up. I have discovered an odd remedy for this however: if I make "dream noise" - for instance, if I shuffle my feet loudly in the dream - I am less likely to be woken by real noise from the real world.
> Also, if I wake up during a dream, upon falling back asleep, I'm able to "continue" them.
I have this too, i asked around and people just found it weird.
Most also don't remember their dream, but i can remember the last one for about 10 minutes before it fogs away.
If i want to continue it. I need to remember the last thing that happened and the first moments i can control what's going to happen until something else takes over. It's the only reason I would go back to sleep again, if the dream was really "nice".
I also think I can control a dream and I mostly realize that I'm dreaming. Then I think about: "hey, this is really weird what's happening here, I'll wake up now. Since this is just a dream. It can't be real."
There's also one time I totally didn't realize it at all. And something embarrassing happened. But I drank alcohol the night before and it must have been related to that.
Sometimes people say they can have conversations with me, while I definitely was sleeping. You could ask any question than and I'd answer ( even the kind that you shouldn't ask)
I, too, rarely have (or remember) dreams – once per month, maybe. But lack of dreams is not a problem for me. What I find annoying (and I'm really curious if you have similar experience) that I don't have feeling of passed time.
My sleep is like blink of an eye. It's night, I close my eyes, then I open them, and there is morning already. I's always the same, no matter how long I have slept, whether I am well rested or tired.
Since the time feels so compressed during my sleep, I can't help but feel that sleep is, kinda, a waste of time.
Usually I have 2-3 coffees per week. I drink a lot of various types of tea daily, though.
Hmm.. I don't really have this problem. When I wake up, I definitely feel like time has passed, but I wonder if it's for different reasons than you're expecting.
For me, I usually will wake up once in the night, and fall back to sleep quickly. This adds to a sense of time. Also, waking up in the morning it's distinctly more cold, I feel distinctly more groggy, etc. I definitely get a sense that time has passed...
But if you're asking if I am ever aware that I'm sleeping and conscious of the minutes passing by? No, never. I fall asleep, time passes, I wake up (but, unlike you, I do feel like time passed...)
You dont even have slight hallucinations while falling to sleep, just like in the linked article? My first sign is I usually start hearing voices which I almost always know are not real.
I think I had them when I was kid, but not anymore.
And just to be clear, I didn't mean that I fall asleep as soon I close my eyes. It's just that there is no "transition" between being conscious and sleeping. And then, suddenly, I'm awake.
I have that idea that my mind suppresses the memories of dreaming and falling asleep, because when I was a kid I had two recurring nightmares that I dreamed of almost every night. Still, never did proper research on this topic.
So if you try to stay awake like Dali you will only skip time intervals without seeing anything? That's interesting. If I am too sleepy but still awake I even start hearing sounds and start seeing vivid images in my head with open eyes.
I'm with you, I fall asleep to blackness and it's instantly morning. When my kids were babies and we were getting up a lot in the night to feed and change diapers I actually had an uptick in awareness of my dreams, but otherwise it is extremely rare for me to be conscious of anything during the night.
I’ve helped a half dozen people with this. One trick is to just keep a notepad by your bed and first, first, first thing try to write down what you remember from your dreams.
My suspicion is eventually the brain says “oh you care about this? Okay cool I’ll hold on to them for longer.”
I consume lotsa caffeine and still have weird, vivid dreams that I remember in the morning. I'd say in my case the caffeine doesn't inhibit any dream capability. I also have small fragments of lucid dreaming, but usually wake up quickly then (because of the excitement mostly).
Ditto on "lotsa". To the point caffeine no longer amps me up but rather just keeps the migraines at bay. Pondering my addiction many years in the past, I decided to try an experiment where I drank a few sips of coffee before going to sleep. It did, and still does, increase my lucidity & retention during/after sleep cycles. I have vivid dreams with self awareness pretty much most nights, and a experience a surprisingly large amount of content during power naps(15-45 minutes). This is still a drop in the bucket compared to my dreams when I was a teen & 20-something, however. I haven't been able to 'fly away' or soar like I did when younger, nowadays I merely wake-up when things start down a dark path(*Covid induced nightmares, were a rare exception; the 1st night terrors I've had in decades).
I don't drink caffeine and I rarely dream, just to chime in. When I dream it's almost always because something is disturbing my sleep. An upset stomach is the most common cause of dreams to me.
Or quitting cannabis, in which case I have vivid and wild dreams for a couple weeks and then back to normal.
I’m the same way. I pretty much never have dreams unless I take some supplement like melatonin or valerian and even then it’s hit or miss. While I’m awake I also can’t picture things clearly(without any meaningful details) in my mind. Maybe that’s related.
What I can definitely remember is that before I started being conscious about this transition I started waking up with "mental" shock, like the absolute last part part of sleep were cut of prematurely and you are shunted straight into consciousness, it wasn't physical shock, I might have twitched a bit but it's kind of hard to be sure about it.
Then these shocks also started happening before sleep, before entering or inside this N1 state, basically I would "hard on" consciously notice I am drifting which kind of catapulted me back into full consciousness. Though, it wasn't hard to start slipping back into sleep unless nervous for next day stuff.
I am not a lucid dreamer, I think I experienced that once but it was very ...murky, like a typical dream afterwards. Same for sleep paralysis, happened few times but it's rare and as far as I remember, it wasn't fear inducing.
Also, needs to be noted that my "sleep organization" is pretty fucked up and I often end up sleeping less hours then I would normally need, for days, refilling the deficit thru weekends.
Yes, often toward the end of this near-dreaming state, just before entering deeper sleep. I experience a sensation like entering a free fall and lose the ability to move. It takes quite a lot of energy to climb back out of it and regain the ability to move.
A similar experience occurs with me almost always when jet lagged. After fighting off sleep for much of the day when I finally fall asleep during the later part of the day, it starts off exactly like described - a really dreamy state. Then after I have slept a couple of hours, I enter a state where I am sleeping and also awake at the same time and wanting to wake up but in a state of sleep paralysis where it is a herculean effort to try and shake off sleep and wake up. More often than not, even though I know I am in this state, still a panic sets in me that I am not able to shake off sleep and I wake up after quite some effort. And yes, I have had dreams where I have been able to solve some problems at work even without thinking about them during the day. Its totally fascinating!
How would you describe your sleep hygiene? Do you sleep the same amount every night? Do you fall asleep at the same time? How much sleep do you get? Are you generally very tired when you lay down to sleep?
Just curious as someone who has never had any of these N1 experiences, what might I be missing...
I used to have fairly poor sleep hygiene but am now pretty good about it. I have had this experience in both states. I had night terrors as a child which eventually gave way to curiosity, and I practiced staying self aware while falling asleep. A common trick you can use is to learn to recognize the signs that you are sleeping, for example by checking your phone. Digital screens will have garbled symbols in a dream. You also might notice altered laws of physics, or suddenly remember that you already went to bed and the dream can't be real. After the first few times, your brain learns how to do it and it happens more and more without effort. Then you can stay self aware while falling asleep, and can start to explore the transition states that you otherwise couldn't see.
> The images are sometimes so absurd and creative that I almost laugh to myself.
For me the images and thoughts are absurd but in a terrifying way. I usually wake up when this happens. I analyze the thoughts and images after waking up and they make absolutely no sense, yet in my sleep they make me very very afraid/upset, disturbing enough to make me get up terrified. I have anxiety disorder, and that's most certainly causing me to feel this way.
I also get voices speaking random gibberish that gets progressively louder which forces me to get up from my sleep. After getting up I'm usually like 'wtf was that' and go back to sleep.
Something that happened a few times to me during this transitional state is “hearing” (more like hallucinating) music that I was singing in my mind while still awake. Except much clearer and vivid than ever before. I think that since the ordinary hearing function was just shutting itself off, the conscious brain could experience only its memory of the song and did it intensely so.
It lasted a couple of seconds only, while I was extremely tired, but it was an amazing experience.
It’s such a fascinating topic and yet it’s remarkable how little we still know about sleep, consciousness, dreams, etc.
I get this too. While awake, the sounds I hear on my own mind are just basically the signs I could make with my own voice. I can imagine a song by imagining humming or singing it, but I cannot recall what the actual recording sounds like. Yet there's that switch that flips as I go to sleep that I notice occasionally where I can hear crystal clear music. It's beautiful and I can't recognize the music.
I also get this, much more rarely, with images. While awake, I can't truly picture what I imagine, it's like I just have a notion of what is there, like motion and shape, without really seeing it, or at best a momentary flash of a picture. But when drifting to sleep there is a moment where the images become real, with color and texture and detail far beyond what I can imagine while awake. It's shocking and wakes we up when I notice it happening.
What is this switch? How can my brain have such discretely distinct modes of operation? Falling asleep itself seems so much more of a continuum.
A similar thing happened to me after some sleep deprivation in a noisy bar. I was moving to the music, and someone said the music had stopped. I listened while still moving to it, saying no it hasn't. They repeated that it had. I listened again and indeed there was no music in the air, only my mind. Cognition and perception is based on hallucination around stimuli--sometimes we fill in more than the gaps.
I've had this a few times. It's like listening to a good album on your headphones, except you are in control of the music. Being able to do that was a wonderful experience, especially since I've never actually played an instrument.
If you try to sleep with your eyes partially closed, you’ll start to hallucinate the things in front of you. Things become shapes, and then completely different things. It’s pretty interesting.
I recognize this exact moment, because it occurs precisely prior to when I begin snoring, and my wife will sometimes nudge me awake. The best I can describe it in concrete terms is that the world stretches before me and my mind bounces around for a moment.
Yeah I call it being aware of ones thought process in third person. It's not that unusual of an angle of perception, the first place I ever saw it "documented" was here:
I get this too! And they are hallucinations - hypnogogic hallucinations. It starts out for me in thought but then blossoms into something that feels very real.
Apparently it’s a normal phenomenon, I’ve noticed it’s more pronounced in those who struggle to get off to sleep.
Usually, when I try to explain it, it comes out as nonsense that makes complete sense to me. But once I’m awake, the sense is lost and it makes zero sense.
But it’s not always nonsense. Once I heard the most beautiful orchestra. The composition, the performance, it was truly beautiful. I can’t remember anything about it other than it was the most beautiful piece of music I’ve ever heard.
Coming in at a close second was an incredible guitar solo. It was a deep, emotional ballad expressed entirely on the fret board of an electric guitar. Again, truly beautiful. I look but I can never find anything that matches it. The closest I’ve come are some live performances of Buckethead.
It’s sad that I haven’t the ability to reproduce these experiences.
For the nonsense stuff, I’ve heard voices talking amongst themselves next to my bed. Sounds like they’re speaking English but what they say makes zero sense. Like grammatically correct sentences that mean nothing.
I’ve also watched pigs doing cartwheels while on a guided tour of a suburban neighbourhood.
I’ve never had the self-control to break it and note things down (by that point, I usually just want the sleep) but I have tried to apply ideas from behaviourism. And funnily enough it seemed to help.
On nights that are a particular struggle, I’ll let my mind wander and inject the odd bizarre, abstract thought, audio or visual in my minds eye. What I’ve noticed is that I seem to “catch the drift” and it triggers the whole hypnogogia thing that leads to sleep.
Some nights it doesn’t work but on those nights I’m far too tightly wound.
This kind happens to me too, except frequently when I'm transitioning I see a really bright like that comes from "above" (hard to describe which direction) and it wakes me back up because it's intensity. Though no one I talk to seems to know what I'm talking about. But the vividness before becoming unconscious (or the white light) is often the most creative part of my day. Sometimes I can take control but often this breaks the effect.
Though the best way I learned to remember dreams and having some control is not when falling asleep but waking up. Rather set an alarm one or two REM cycles before you want to get up (cycle is 90 minutes) and then just go back to bed. It's far more vivid than when trying to go to sleep and easier to take some control (though I've only become lucid twice). At minimum you'll remember your dream.
Some buddhist sleep meditations are often called clear light meditations.
For them btw is not the trick to remember the thoughts but to stay aware when transitioning to the sleep phase, this is one of the moments clear conciousness can be experienced according to certain teachings.
IIRC this is the "hypnopompic" state and yeah, it's weird and cool. Personally I have more memories at the other end ("hypnogogic"?) on the transition to waking up.
When I’m falling asleep, I worry about things from the day — then my mind starts mixing everything up at some point.
Lying in bed, I vividly remember studying for a test on human anatomy, going over everything in my head. After five or so minutes, I felt pretty confident with my knowledge of human anatomy and I started panicking about my lack of knowledge of car anatomy (which doesn’t exist).
Strange enough, I can always tell my thoughts are jumbled up but I can’t fix them.
I hadn’t considered it was due to the shift into sleep — I always thought I was just too tired to keep making sense.
I used to be able to do this thing to where if I kept perfectly still, I'd "stare" (with eyes closed) into the nothingness---by that I mean I'd be staring into the backs of my eyelids---and there'd be a point in which my mind would start to create images. For instance, the shape would take the form of a fish, and then I'd see it become a radio, etc.
If I held on and tried this for as long as possible, I'd feel my body drift off to sleep. But it was hard, because there'd be something in me that would jerk and stop the imagery (like a hypnic jerk, just nowhere near as uncomfortable).
There was a bizarre situation where one evening I felt my body convulse (or perhaps I imagined it) and I'd actually fallen asleep. However, I was so freaked out by it that I shook my body awake, in my dream, and I woke up. I must've been out for less than a minute or so.
It's been 7-8 months since I was last able to stare into the nothingness and let sleep overtake me. Maybe it's my caffeine intake or something else, but I would like to experience it again.
> I used to be able to do this thing to where if I kept perfectly still, I'd "stare" (with eyes closed) into the nothingness---by that I mean I'd be staring into the backs of my eyelids---and there'd be a point in which my mind would start to create images. For instance, the shape would take the form of a fish, and then I'd see it become a radio, etc.
> If I held on and tried this for as long as possible, I'd feel my body drift off to sleep. But it was hard, because there'd be something in me that would jerk and stop the imagery (like a hypnic jerk, just nowhere near as uncomfortable).
I do the same thing, though the more mental effort put into creating the images makes it take longer before I'm able to fall asleep. There's a sweet spot of putting the smallest mental effort to go to sleep quickly.
I usually use it as a crutch when I can't just let my mind drift.
I've lately noticed this too but, my "N1" mostly looks more like... I am generating sounds - melodies, songs, talking people and it feels like I am indeed listening to it, not like the dreamy feeling that there just is a sound.
Visually it's mixed up with "blank images" in that sense that I know there is something happening but I can't grasp it. It's like watching very fast recording - you know something is there but either it's too fast to catch or you are too slow to grasp the meaning (if there even is any).
What's weird is that these background songs actually do make sense, well at least in my head (heh) and these are not copies or mixes of anything I can remember.
I am mainly a electronic music junkie: DnB, techno, drumstep but from time to time I, mainly dictated by my emotions, listen to instrumental rock, indie metal and alike (BMTH, I Prevail, Royal Blood).
But in contrast, all the songs in my head are instrumental, often being "lyrics first" which is pretty much out of my typical range - I like to fill in the words, feelings - some meaning into the beats myself, that is why I listen to progressive electro stuff with not much lyrics if any.
I am guy with absolutely basic music theory and zero exposure to anything like music composition (okey I sometimes dream (like in wish) that I would learn piano or bass).
> When going to sleep, my mind is wandering. But at one point it drifts from real world thoughts to completely abstract concepts and wild imagination that sometimes makes no sense. It’s almost like a hallucination.
I can trigger this in myself consistently. Usually, it's either by pushing myself to stay awake for too long on too little sleep or waking up after a full days work and only sleeping a few (2-4) hours.
Apparently people with untreated narcolepsy (who naturally go in-and-out of that zone automatically on a nightly basis) tend to have "higher creative potential" than people without narcolepsy[0].
The nonsense thoughts sound very familiar. It takes me forever to fall asleep, so I have plenty of time to observe it happening. I go from actively worrying about/solving stuff, to slight relaxation with my inner voice being a bit less active, to an even more "nonverbal thinking", then finally I'll have some thoughts that seem to make sense at first, but a few seconds later I realize were actually nonsense, which makes me happy as I know sleep almost surely follows from there within 5 minutes.
One thing I didn't see mentioned here is that sometimes it seems like some of the thoughts didn't originate from me, like someone else is present or said it. I assume when I'm deeper into sleep, the same process is responsible for creating all the other characters besides myself in my dreams.
My problem is that when I start observing my ”N1”, as I do when I’m in a cycle of low/bad sleep, I get worried I won’t reach deep recovery sleep. This really have become a bad pattern for me that is hard to break.
I can spend a full night in and out of N1 sleep and be completely wasted the following day.
I seem to go through these cycles with 3-4 weeks of great sleep and roughly 2 weeks of getting stuck in N1, observing.
Really interesting things show up while in this state, but it’s thoroughly incompatible with three young children…
> Sometimes I am fascinated by the idea generated at that stage.
Same here. In periods of my life when I'm more into artistic creation (or even consumption), often quite vivid and elaborate images come to my head in the 10-15 minutes before going to sleep. That, or really rich and elaborate (original) music. Unfortunately, I don't have the skills to put them into paintings or compositions, or even to make a quick note of them so that I could remember them in the morning. But still, it's quite fun.
Thank you for posting this! I experience almost the same feeling of my thought processes abruptly changing in form as I'm falling asleep. The few people I've talked to about this couldn't relate so I thought it was something specific to myself.
You just described exactly what happens to me and that "sleep phobia", I read somewhere, is linked usually to people with anxiety/panic attack issues. Not sure if that's your case but 100% accurate in my case.
I've always had insomnia, and I often observe myself entering the N1 state of sleep. Like you, it makes me happy because it's how I know I'll soon be asleep. immediately.
Do you also have the visualizations of interlinked concepts? I find weed makes me have "the thoughts" and they are very present and come fast, but being absolutely sober sometimes those thoughts are there but not moving as fast and they it's more likely they also come with visualizations of the thought process.
I’m not sure if everyone is like this but, in my case, cannabis and psychedelic use has really ramped up that type of mental imagery. I see it without being able to describe how it looks, which is odd. The components usually comprise of blocks of logical arguments and the intersection of event spaces.
Another observation: dualistic thinking is a token side-effect of psychedelic use, but I’d go so far as to say I’ve also decoupled cause and effect in many of the abstract phenomena I observe. Whatever I’m observing or contemplating appears to be a condition or state with no time domain, rather than an operation where A causes B in that order.
Dualistic thinking is so pervasive in the US that I think it's far fetched to say it's a token side-effect, as much as saying never speaking another language that is not English in your life if a token side-effect of psychedelic use... like the correlation is so big if you do self reported studies just in the US that it will be hard to deal with it.
Probably what's going on is that people just become more aware of dualistic thinking because of the extra open-mindedness or increase in empathy that forces one to somehow deal more with that "other side" that they are definitely "not a part of".
Interesting. I heard very similar description of similar state from people using LSD. I never tried LSD, so would be curious whether that indeed triggers the same state. I personally never felt any effect of weed, so I’m not really inclined to try “harder”.
