WAKING SLEEP


Dozy Gary Lachman wakes from his reverie to explore the visions and
brainwavess of the half-asleep.

The brief transition between wakefulness and sleep we experience each
night has been known by many names: the `borderland state', the `half-
dream state', the `pre-dream condition'. Its technical name is the
hypnagogic state and, along with dreaming, it is one of the most
fascinating altered states of consciousness we can experience without
the use of drugs.

In the hypnagogic state, visions, voices, weird insights and unusual
sensations greet us as we drift out of consciousness. Faces may
appear, threatening or comical. A landscape may open up, with distant
mountains and wide, expansive vistas. Geometric forms, jewels,
diamonds and intricate patterns may dance before our mind's eye, not
unlike those seen under the influence of certain psychoactive
substances. Splashes of colour, flares, sparks and cloud-like forms-
known as `entoptic lights', `phosphenes' or eigenlicht, may drift
through our drowsing consciousness, accompanied by strange,
nonsensical sentences announcing portentous truths. We may feel we
are floating, or that our body has grown to enormous proportions, or
that we have suddenly grasped the answer to the riddle of the
Universe.


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). Some years after
Maury, the psychical researcher FWH Myers coined a complimentary
term, `hypnopompic', to cover similar phenomena occurring as we wake
from sleep. Some researchers are keen to split hairs, but in general
there seems little difference between the material produced in either
state, the main difference being which point of the sleep cycle
investigators have chosen to observe.


But if Maury, an indefatigable dream diarist, was the first to give
the condition its `official' title, he had only recognised something
that observant sleepers had known for centuries. One of the first to
remark on hypnagogic phenomena was Aristotle, who spoke of
the "affections we experience when sinking into slumber," and "the
images which present themselves to us in sleep." In the third century
AD, Iamblichus, the Neo-Platonic philosopher, wrote of the "voices"
and "bright and tranquil light" that came to him in the "condition
between sleeping and waking" and which he believed were a form
of "god-sent" experience. There is much evidence to suggest that the
alchemists of the Middle Ages made use of a form of hypnagogia during
their lengthy preparations and distillations. The weird characters
and eerie landscapes that fill alchemical illustrations would not be
out of place in a hypnagogic hallucination. In 1600, the astrologer
Simon Forman wrote of apocalyptic visions of "mountains and hills"
which came "rolling against him" on the point of sleep and beyond
which he could see vast "boiling waters." Not long after, the
political philosopher Thomas Hobbes spoke of "images of lines and
angles" seen on the edge of sleep accompanied by an odd "kind of
fancy" to which he could give "no particular name."

In the 18th century, the philosopher, scientist and visionary
Emmanuel Swedenborg developed a method of inducing and exploring
hypnagogic states, during which he travelled to heaven, hell and
other planets. Other occultists followed in his footsteps. Oliver
Fox, a theosophical writer in the early 20th century, used the
hypnagogic hallucination of a doorway as a starting point for his
astral travelling. The magical artist Austin Osman Spare journeyed to
hypnagogic worlds and brought back images to adorn his canvases.
Rudolf Steiner, whose visions of the Akashic Record seem very much
like hypnagogic experiences, advised that the best time for
communicating with the dead was in the period between waking and
sleep. Steiner claimed that if you asked the dead a question as you
fell asleep, they would answer you the next morning as you woke up.
Other explorers have included William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
Thomas De Quincey, Edgar Allen Poe, Gerard de Nerval, Havelock Ellis,
CG Jung, Jean Paul Sartre, Ernst Jünger and the novelist Robert
Irwin, to name just a few. In Irwin's 1996 novel Exquisite Corpse,
Caspar, his surrealist hero, wanders about aimlessly in an almost
continual hypnagogic state. Writers have always had an affinity with
hypnagogia. Robert Desnos, with André Breton one of the leading
voices of Surrealism, had a profound knack for automatic trance
writing, aided by an enviable ability to fall asleep at will;
something most other writers find only in their readers.

Most `scientific' accounts of hypnagogia view it much as they do
dreaming - a random, meaningless activity of the brain, a means, at
best, of clearing its circuits, but more likely just a way of dumping
psychic clutter. That reams of anecdotes and hundreds of
introspective accounts by non-scientists show the shallowness of this
approach need not be stressed. Anyone with the interest, time and
determination can quickly discover that the dreaming brain is engaged
in creative, analytical and, not infrequently, paranormal activity,
merely by paying attention to the mental `junk' it is supposedly
throwing out. But while dreams are never observed, except for
infrequent patches of lucidity, but always analysed after the fact,
the same is not true of hypnagogia. With a little practice, anyone
can learn how to watch otherwise obscure mental processes at work;
processes which, according to some investigators, take place
continuously alongside our waking `rational' mental states. As well
as providing some fascinating interior entertainment, familiarising
yourself with hypnagogia is probably the best and most reliable
method of developing a working relationship with your unconscious
mind. Contrary to A Alvarez, whose cursory account in his book Night:
An Exploration of Night Life, Night Language, Sleep and Dreams leaves
much to be desired, hypnagogic phenomena are not "wholly impervious
to art, narrative and interpretation." They have a recognisable
structure and meaning. And, like other products of the dark side of
the mind, they have an intelligence that often exceeds that of the
waking mind observing them.

One of the earliest modern explorers of hypnagogic states was the
Russian journalist and philosopher PD Ouspensky. Although best known
as an interpreter of Gurdjieff, Ouspensky was a insightful thinker in
his own right, and some of his earliest work involves a close
observation of dreams. In 1905, he began a study of what today are
known as `lucid dreams', dreams in which we are conscious that we are
dreaming. Ouspensky realised that the best way to achieve this state
was to try to preserve his awareness as he drifted off into sleep.
His attempts to do this created what he called a "half-dream" state,
in which he both "slept and did not sleep." Ouspensky also discovered
something known to other hypnagogic voyagers: that creating these
states at night usually led to a fitful sleep. He soon discovered
that it was preferable to observe `half-dream' states in the morning,
when he was awake but still in bed.

Ouspensky's essay "On the Study of Dreams" in his book A New Model of
the Universe is full of important insights. His `half-dream' states
filled him with a sensation of "astonishment" and "extraordinary joy"
because he could see and understand how dreams were created, an
experience he shared with the 19th-century French Orientalist and
dream diarist Hervey de Saint-Denys. One of Ouspensky's insights was
into the presence of an `artist' in his dreams, who could take the
slightest bit of material and create from it a remarkably `real'
adventure. Ouspensky recounts how he observed the dream artist at
work during one of his `half-dream' states.

"I am asleep. Golden dots, sparks and tiny stars appear and disappear
before my eyes. These sparks and stars gradually merge into a golden
net with diagonal meshes which moves slowly and regularly in rhythm
with the beating of my heart... The next moment the golden net is
transformed into rows of brass helmets belonging to Roman soldiers
marching along the street below. I... watch them from the window of a
high house in... Constantinople... I see the sun shining on their
helmets. Then suddenly I detach myself from the window-sill and...
fly slowly over the houses, and then over the Golden Horn in the
direction of Stamboul. I smell the sea, feel the wind, the warm
sun..."

Ouspensky also discovered that he had a certain control over these
states and could alter his `half-dreams' at will, an ability that
many readers of `lucid dream manuals' work assiduously to perfect.
But what is most arresting is Ouspensky's remark that "we have dreams
continuously, both in sleep and in a waking state." Had he lived to
see it, Ouspensky would have been gratified by the hard, neurological
evidence for this fact. According to neuroscientists Denis Pare and
Rodolfo Llinas, the brain's simultaneous 40 Hz `neural oscillations',
which are associated with consciousness, also occur during REM sleep.
Given this, Pare and Llinas were led to the conclusion that the only
difference between our dreaming and waking states is that in waking
states, the "closed system that generates oscillatory states" is
modulated by incoming stimuli from the outside world. In other words,
what we call "waking state" is really an REM dream state, with a
sensory topping. Or, as Ouspensky put it, we shouldn't speak of being
either asleep or awake, but of "sleep plus waking state."

Another early hypnagogic explorer was the Freudian psychologist
Herbert Silberer. Silberer was more independent minded than most of
Freud's followers, and he paid for his intellectual freedom
tragically, comitting suicide shortly after being excommunicated from
the master's circle. (He died gruesomely, hanging himself and leaving
a flashlight shining in his face, so his wife would see him when she
came home.) Silberer wrote a book about occultism and psychology,
Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts, which pre-dates
Jung's alchemical explorations by decades. His interest in hypnagogia
began accidentally and his central insight is that the hypnagogic
state is profoundly `autosymbolic', i.e. that the symbols and images
produced represent either the thoughts or the physical or mental
state of the hypnagogist. In 1909 he published a paper on his
research. One afternoon, drowsing on his couch, Silberer thought
about a problem in philosophy, comparing the different systems of
Kant and Schopenhauer. He had difficulty keeping the two views firmly
in mind, but kept making the effort. When he believed he had
Schopenhauer's position firmly fixed, he returned to Kant, but
couldn't `find' him. Then a dream image came to him: he was asking a
secretary for some information. The secretary disregarded him
entirely and finally gave him an unfriendly look. It struck Silberer
that this hypnagogic dream was a symbol of his unsuccesful efforts
to `find' Kant's argument.

Other examples fill Silberer's paper. Thinking of improving an
awkward passage in an essay, Silberer received an image of himself
planing a piece of wood. Reflecting on the ambiguity of the human
condition, he saw himself standing on a stone jetty extending far out
into a dark sea. Losing his train of thought, he tried hard to
retrieve it but couldn't. The hypnagogic image was of a piece of
typesetting with the last few lines gone.


Silberer concluded that the conditions necessary to produce
autosymbolic phenomena were "drowsiness and an effort to think",
something familiar to most of us from our school days. The struggle
of these two "antagonistic elements" elicits the autosymbolic
response.


Many hypnagogists missed this point completely. The existentialist
Jean Paul Sartre, who spoke of the hypnagogic state as "consciousness
in bondage", failed to recognise it, as did the many Surrealists who
followed Robert Desnos' lead and nodded off in cafés and other
Parisian hangouts. One researcher who did recognise it was the
psychologist Wilson Van Dusen, who came to the study of hypnagogia
through a deep interest in the work of Swedenborg.


Swedenborg was probably the first to recognise the autosymbolic
nature of hypnagogia, and his dream journals are filled with
impressive examples. Van Dusen began practising hypnagogia himself
and found that Swedenborg was correct. He also discovered that
the `meaningless nonsense' sentences so beloved of the Surrealists
were actually just as autosymbolic as the images were. In his
enlightening book The Natural Depth in Man, Van Dusen writes: "Much
of the hypnagogic area looks simply like cute images and odd
sentences being tossed around in one's head until one asks precisely
what the individual was thinking of at that same moment. Then it
begins to look like either a representation of the person's state or
an answer to his query... I was trying to pick up hypnagogic
experiences and heard, `Still a nothing.' I wasn't getting much and
it said as much. While I was trying to see in detail how hypnagogic
experience forms I heard, `Do you have a computer?' I was getting
very sleepy in the hypnagogic state and heard `The usual snoofing.'
At the time the odd word `snoofing' sounded like a cross between
snooping (trying to snoop on the hypnagogic) and snoozing (getting
sleepy)... I was thinking of the richness of the process and
heard `My liberal arts course.' While meditating on a pain in my head
I heard `Nonmaterial!'"


Not all hypnagogists were as observant as Van Dusen. The psychologist
Julian Jaynes received the inspiration for his book The Origin of
Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind from an auditory
hypnagogic hallucination. Like Silberer, Jaynes was struggling with a
philosophical problem, the question of knowledge. Napping one
afternoon, he heard a loud voice saying "Include the knower in the
known." Including "the knower in the known" is a basic precept of
much metaphysical and mystical thought, and was a response to Jayne's
epistemological despair. Jaynes, however, was a convinced
materialist; he ignored this insight and chose to see this hypnagogic
gem as simply a "nebulous profundity", failing to grasp its import.
His book is about hearing voices in the head.


After reading Van Dusen's book I began to observe my own hypnagogic
states. I experienced some of the usual eerie physical effects,
paralysis and heightened sensory sensitivity. I had been reading a
book on Greek mythology and its influence on Freud and Jung, and as I
drowsed I saw an image of a cellar door being pushed open. As I fell
deeper into sleep, the door opened wide and out popped a crowd of
mythological characters, Hermes, Apollo, the Minotaur. Clearly this
was both symbolic of what I had been thinking about – using Greek
myths to symbolise the unconscious – and my descent into the
unconscious itself: the cellar doors.

One little known hypnagogic explorer is the Danish philosopher Jurij
Moskvitin. In his little-read Essay on the Origin of Thought,
Moskvitin desribes how he came to observe "states of mind when
consciousness is kept somewhere halfway between the waking state and
dream." Moskvitin became aware of strange "sparks" and "smoke-like
forms", which "upon close and intense observation became the elements
of waking dreams, forming persons, landscapes, strange mathematical
forms..." The sparks, Moskvitin writes, reminded him of "the tips of
waves glittering in the sun" which on prolonged observation appeared
to be "strange rings and nets moving swiftly over the waves."




Moskvitin associated his experience with religious art and the
visions common to mystical experience – triangles, crosses, squares
and other ornamental shapes – and he believed his experience was an
old one, an insight that the `psychedelic' rock art of prehistoric
sites like Gavrinis seems to corroborate. (Most researchers associate
the rock symbols with the `entoptic forms' one can produce by rubbing
one's eyes.) These patterns seemed to assume three-dimensional forms
and, as Moskvitin writes, were projected onto the `external world' by
the eye itself; he compared the experience to the effect of a
pointilist painting. Moskvitin came to believe that the hypnagogic
patterns he was observing were the actual `material' out of which the
conscious mind `builds' its representation of the external world.
Although he conducted his experiments in the early 1970s, years
before Llinas and Pares published their findings, his conclusions are
strikingly similar. "If we remember that the essential difference
between what we call the real world and the world of imagination and
hallucination," Moskvitin writes, "is not the elements of which we
build them up but the sequence in which these elements appear... then
it follows that the sequences directed from without represent a
limitation of the otherwise unlimited combinations of the selective
forms released at random from within." Moskvitin's and Llinas' and
Pares' work can be seen as confirmation of Owen Barfield's aphorism
that "interior is anterior." Our inner world of dreams and visions
comes before the outer one of sensory stimuli, something the poets
have always known.


In recent years the most important work on hypnagogia has been done
by the psychologist Andreas Mavromatis, who in 1987 published
Hypnagogia, an exhaustively researched and deeply pondered
exploration of all aspects of the experience. Mavromatis links
hypnagogia to dreams, schizophrenia, creativity, meditation, mystical
experience, and, most strikingly, paranormal experience. Silberer
recognised that hypnagogic visions could be influenced by outside
stimuli, either sensory changes – sound, light, scent – or verbal
suggestions. Mavromatis discovered that they could also be altered by
thought. During experiments in group hypnagogia, Mavromatis found
that he could `feed' images mentally to another hypnagogist. A member
of one group was experimenting with psychometry, the ability
to `intuit' the history of some unknown object simply by touch. As
Mavromatis listened to the psychometrist's account, he began to `see'
various different scenes. He then realised that what the
psychometrist was describing were the very `scenes' he was seeing. He
tested this by consciously altering his visions. The psychometrist
began to recount Mavromatis' new visions as well. Other accounts
of `shared hypnagogia' are recounted in Mavromatis' book.


Mavromatis believes hypnagogia originates in the subcortical
structures of the `old brain'. During hypnagogic states, the usually
dominant neocortex – the evolutionarily recent and
specifically `human' part of the brain – is inhibited, and much older
structures take over. Cortical activity is associated with clear,
logical thought and with the perception of a well defined `external'
world. The older brain structures are attuned to inner experience,
and to `pre-logical' forms of thought using imagery, symbols and
analogy. Mavromatis also remarks that the subcortical structures
responsible for hypnagogic phenomena are always active, day or night,
something we have already heard from Ouspensky, Moskvitin, Llinas and
Pares.

Mavromatis, in a speculative chapter, relates hypnagogia to what is
described in Tantric Yoga as the `Fourth State', the junction of
waking, sleeping and dreaming. Curiously, this intersection of states
is parallelled in the anatomy of the brain itself. Mavromatis points
out that the thalamus, which he conjectures is the "centre of
consciousness" and the probable source of hypnagogic phenomena, is
anatomically linked to the reptilian brain, limbic system and the
cerebral hemispheres – the three `houses' of the `triune' brain. Each
of the `three brains' has a `consciousness' of its own, and
Mavromatis remarks that the consciousness of one would appear very
strange to that of another. In hypnagogia this is precisely what
happens. If a minimum level of cortical arousal is maintained at the
point of sleep – Silberer's "effort to think" – then the
consciousness of the `old brain' can be observed.


The thalamus is also important for another reason. Located within it
is the pineal gland, that tiny organ which the philosopher Descartes
believed to be the seat of the soul, and whose purpose is still
something of a mystery. In primitive reptiles, it was a kind of eye
located in the top of the head, and in some contemporary vertebrates,
like man, the pineal gland is still photosensitive. Recently, one
crucial function of the pineal gland has become clear: it is the only
gland in mammals that produces the hormone melatonin, which is
important in the production of the neurotransmitter serotonin. That
the pineal gland is located precisely where ancient Vedic literature
places the `third eye', whose function is `spiritual vision' and the
opening of which results in enlightenment, offers some hard,
neurological evidence for a belief too often relegated to fancy and
superstition. Mavromatis likewise remarks that in the Vedic
tradition, the spiritual vision provided by the third eye was once
available to man, and has only been temporarily lost, its return at
a `higher level' guaranteed through our spiritual development. He
also relates the pineal gland and its unique function with the occult
and esoteric symbolism of the sceptre of Hermes. In the twin snakes
coiled about a rod crowned by a winged cone, Mavromatis sees the
integration of man's conscious and unconscious minds, united by the
unique state of hypnagogia.


We may not want to follow Mavromatis this far. But his study of
hypnagogia is the most thorough to date, and it is difficult to see
how it will be surpassed as the standard work. In any case, its clear
that he, and the other hypnagogists we've looked at, have certainly
given all of us something to sleep on.

http://www.forteantimes.com/articles/163_hypnagogia.shtml

From FT 163
OCTOBER 2002

IMAGES
NICK DEWAR

Mary Evans Picture Library

AUTHOR
Gary Lachman is the author of Turn Off Your Mind: The Mystic Sixties
and the Dark Side of the Age of Aquarius, and, as Gary Valentine, New
York Rocker: My Life in the Blank Generation (both Sidgwick &
Jackson). A Secret History of Consciousness, will be published by the
Anthroposophic Press in spring 2003. He is researching a biography of
PD Ouspensky and an occult reader for Dedalus Books.