Stay Signed In
Do you want to access your site more quickly on this computer? Check this box, and your username and password will be remembered for two weeks. Click logout to turn this off.
Stay Safe
Do not check this box if you are using a public computer. You don't want anyone seeing your personal info or messing with your site.
This is the term for waking up and it is the state of consciousness leading out of sleep state. People usually “witness by sight, smell, taste and hear” things during this state. In terms of hearing things, the commonest experience is that of voices which seem to occur right after a dream.
Hypnagogic
This is the term for the onset of sleep.
The term “hypnagogic” was coined by the 19th-century French psychologist LF Alfred Maury, and is derived from two Greek words, Hypnos (sleep) and agogeus (guide, or leader).
Hypnagogic sensations are vivid dream like experiences that occur as one is falling asleep or waking up. Accompanying sleep paralysis can cause the sensations to be more frightening. Hallucinations can occur at the onset of sleep either by day or at night. They are usually quite vivid and visual.
Hypnagogic and Hypnopompic
A number of features of hypnagogic/hypnopompic experiences are very similar to features of experiences such as ESP, apparitions, and OBEs (Mavromatis, 1983, 1987). It has been concluded that these states of consciousness may be both conducive to a person experiencing and misinterpreting vivid imagery, for example that of deceased individuals.
Through researching this area of consciousness, a recent survey found that people who report more childhood experiences of hypnagogic/hypnopompic imagery or sleep paralysis also report a greater number of anomalous experiences during childhood or adulthood (Sherwood, 1997). More specifically, hypnagogic/hypnopompic imagery has been associated with reports of extrasensory perception (ESP), apparitions and communication with the dead, out of body experiences (OBEs), visions of past lives and experiences involving extraterrestrials (e.g., Glicksohn, 1989; Gurney, Myers, & Podmore, 1886; Leaning, 1925; McCreery, 1993; McKellar, 1957; Mavromatis, 1983, 1987; Spanos, Cross, Dickson, & DuBreuil, 1993). In addition to the above experiences, sleep paralysis has also been associated with reports of Psychokinesis (PK), and near-death experiences (NDEs) (Baker, 1992; Green & McCreery, 1994; Rose & Blackmore, 1996; Rose, Hogan, & Blackmore, 1997; Spanos et al., 1993; Spanos, McNulty, DuBreuil, Pires, & Burgess, 1995). Sensations of smell, for example the smell of cigars/smoke, roses), taste, sensations of actively touching or being passively touched by someone or something, hot or cold sensations sometimes moving along the body, have also been reported during the hypnagogic and hypnopompic states (Mavromatis, 1987).
Further research into visual hypnagogic/hypnopompic imagery appears to indicate the facilitating of interpretations in terms of ghosts or apparitions. Faces may be experienced which range from the beautiful and the pleasant to the hideous and the terrifying (Leaning, 1925; McKellar, 1957; Mavromatis, 1987). These faces are often characterised as being extremely life-like and often seem to be looking at the observer (Gurney et al., 1886; Leaning, 1925). These faces can also develop into figures which may move towards the observer. Such faces/figures can be singular or in groups, of known or unknown, living or dead persons and may sometimes seem to represent particular moods and emotions (Leaning, 1925; Mavromatis, 1987). The individual may also hear their name being called which might be interpreted as attempts at communication by deceased persons.
I would just like to pose a question here for consideration, however, that if the above mentioned areas are being experienced during the sleep states highlighted, then how do some individuals experience the same in their waking state? Is the research stating that these individuals are in some form of sleep state whilst investigating on a vigil for instance? Is it the onset of hypnogogia which seems to deliver results? If this is so, what about people attending a vigil who have slept prior to attending the same? Surely they would be more alert to their given surroundings and therefore less likely to become “victim” to such occurrences? (Emery, 2009).
Some research appears to indicate people in the hypnagogic state experience the feeling of floating and out of body experiences, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia - cite_note-37falling sensations and the associated hypnic jerk while drifting off to sleep.
Hypnagogia has been recognized for hundreds of years as a source of creative thought and intuition by a long list of distinguished philosophers, artists, and scientists, names of which include Aristotle and Albert Einstein. Research into hypnagogia is now shedding light on explanations of psychic abilities and creative intuition obtained outside direct sensory processes by revealing the possibility that our brain may have the ability to tap into other states of consciousness.
A possible physical explanation for Hypnagogia is rooted in the discovery of magnetite crystals in cells of the brain and meninges. It has been found that there are five million magnetite crystals per gram in the human brain, and twenty times that number in the meninges. These biomagnetite crystals are oriented in the brain in a manner that maximizes their magnetic moment, thus allowing the crystals to act as a system and marking the ability of the brain to sense energy fields. These crystals could very possibly be the cause and explanation behind psychic abilities, as well as the feelings of intuition during states of hypnagogia. Studies that show the proximity of the crystal containing brain cells to the pituitary and pineal glands, have led researchers to propose that these glands may use information from the earth’s magnetic field to regulate the release of hormones in the brain, thus directly controlling conscious awareness levels. Studies have been done to show that various low intensity magnetic signals delivered to the temporal lobes indeed have a positive effect of producing various hallucinatory effects in the subject.
Rose et al. (1997) found that sleep paralysis has been associated with reports of a number of anomalous experiences, such as ESP, PK, OBEs, Near Death Experiences, apparitions and past life experiences. It is possible that anomalous experiences and sleep paralysis episodes might be related to each other because they might both be affected by a third variable such as the earth’s geomagnetic field. A number of studies have found that subjective (e.g., Persinger, 1985) and experimental GESP experiences (Berger & Persinger, 1991) and sleep paralysis (Conesa, 1995, 1997) tend to occur when geomagnetic activity is relatively low.
Contibutors: Wikipedia and Fortean Times and Seredip and Wikinfo
Back To Home Page
