simon's dream project
tinkering with the mechanisms of sleep
Excerpts from a conversation I had with Technology Alex on June 4, 2003 regarding experimentation with dream states.
ALEX: By the way-- have you tried staying conscious while you fall asleep? Fascinating experience.
SIMON: Yes, I tried that a few times at the beginning of my dream experiments last autumn, and haven't tried since. I had mixed results, but a few times I think I was close. The time I think I had the most success I started dreaming and it seemed like a hallucination. A balloonish head was rising from the bottom of my field of view and I had the impression that it was someone coming to welcome me to the dreamworld but then the sudden spark of victory and surprise woke me up. That is the hard part--- keeping your own awareness from waking you up.
Do you have any hints or experiences you'd like to share? I should try to start that again.
ALEX: I don't try to sleep until I'm pretty tired. I see a very weak hallucination almost from when I close my eyes-- a little like a "dream machine", if you've experienced that. I try and relax, and lie on my back like I do to go to sleep. My breathing gets slow and deep, and my body relaxes. I can feel the muscles getting more and more slack. At the same time, my willpower fades. I don't fight sleep, merely be as aware as possible. At some point, I am unconscious, and I don't remember anything.
I've done it half a dozen times. I once listened to an audio book called "learning from the Himalayan masters" of an Indian guy who spent his youth in the Himalayas, going from cave to cave, and learning from fellow aesthetic monks. At one point he talked about trying to be conscious of the point of sleep. That fascinated me, so I tried to do exactly that.
The next day (June 5th) I tried this experiment myself while laying on my back on the couch. I was awoken a few times by the telephone but finally as I started to fade I thought I could feel signals shooting in waves across my brain. I perceived them as signals for triggering new stages of thought and sleep. I felt as if they originated near the bottom of the back of my skull and swept through my brain to the furthest regions near my forehead. They seemed like chemical signals, but any effort to pay too much attention to them zapped me back into normal awareness and waking-style consciousness.