Sliding between dreams and reality
A description of one of the most productive states of consciousness – the drift between sleep and wakefulness.
Recently came to the conclusion that all the modern and non-modern «parapsychological» practices I know of, the most productive is just working with the state of mind. No bat wings needed, nope :-) Even like Sufi whirling with this approach is only a tool, not a goal.
And one of the most interesting and practically useful states-of-mind that I've «tasted» over the last six months is the sliding between dreams and reality.
This is a state while you didn't really fell asleep, but you didn't really woke up as well :-). In my case, for some reason, it works easier on waking up than on falling into sleep. Metaphorically, this can be expressed in the form of an iceberg:
Dream-reality-sliding iceberg metaphor picture
The picture is simple – let's imagine all knowledge available to one as a single iceberg, where consciousness is a small but open part; and the subconscious is large, but hidden. Fixing most of the attention on consciousness, we are awake; fixing most of the attention on the subconscious – we're dreaming. The transition to the state of sliding is fixation of attention on a narrow strip between dreams and reality.
That's like a state of trance. Yep.
Pros of being in this state:
- Great integrity, unity of one's personality. «Sliding», you get more pleasure from just being.
- The ability to receive direct and the most relevant knowledge at the moment. For example, when I've first entered the «slide» state, I was visiting a friend. An internet video was on, in which a middle-aged American guy fluently squealed something about wrestling; in English. I must say frankly, that my English is good, but far from excellent, especially in terms of spoken language - so I was not clearly perceiving what he was talking about. And wrestling at all didn't really interest me. While «sliding», I had not only understood every word of his – without translating, with all intonations and phraseological units; I've also imbued with his state, empathized him. The second time in the «slide» gave me the «true name" of the gel next to me. After sharing this fact, I've received the onfirmation: since childhood, she was dreaming of this name, and mother should have give it to her, if grandmother had not intervened.
- Ability to read books in a dream and remember the information that was read. Some researchers of the dream state consider that is impossible.
I do not use any special methods for the transition to the state of sliding, but as far as I know, Salvador Dalí have used similar states. And he used the following method to enter, which he called «sleep with a key in hand»: he sat in a comfortable chair with armrests, put a metal key in one (relaxed!) hand – so that when he fell asleep completely relaxed, the key would fall to the floor and woke him up. The attention did not have time to plunge deeply into sleep, and the artist could remember a couple of images from the dream upon waking up.
7-8 years ago I've practiced this method, however, without much success – either the falling key (spoon / fork / anything metal and not very heavy) hit the floor so quietly that I did not wake up; or when I put a metal bowl right under the hand, the sound was so deafening that the image of sleep was completely lost due to fright. But, in any case, this practice gave a certain effect: who knows, if I have not performed that practice, could I now transfer my consciousness into a sliding state using only my willpower?
Try it; you might succeed. But keep in mind, the main thing is the inner effort, practice is just a helper, a tool.