Dream Science by Pagel J. F

Author:Pagel, J. F.
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780124047105
Publisher: Elsevier Science
Published: 2014-02-05T16:00:00+00:00

Dreams commonly occur at sleep onset. Most of us can describe our own sleep-onset dreams. Mine typically occur during those early mornings when I get up early to sit in meditation. While sitting and staring at the wall, I am prone to microsleeps associated with intense short and visual dream experiences: a beautiful young brunette holding a microphone, wearing a red dress, leaning on a bar-stool, alone at a bar upholstered with red simulated leather; a corner of yellow-and-white stitched drapery frozen motionless in a window that opens to the midday sky; a partial visual field image, the right upper quadrant, of a wide angled view of ocean rollers, white on blue, extending impossibly in each direction to the curve of the Earth. Each hypnogogic experience has common characteristics: they are short, visually and emotionally intense, reality based, relatively bizarre, and associated with limited story. Each occurs with the initiation of perceptual dissociation at the onset of sleep, forming a snapshot of non-perceptual visual consciousness present at sleep onset: consciousness without perception, without associated content and memories, without control, yet with intense emotion, visual intensity, and detailed recall. This is sleep-onset consciousness. Evidently, within the structure of meditative practice, such events are quite common. One teacher was quoted, when approached by a student excited by an intense visual image that had occurred during meditation, as dogmatically stating, “What is the value of such a blank insight? Don’t dream!” (30).

The formal characteristics of sleep-onset dreams are summarized in Table 6.3. Comparative bizarreness per scale is ranked, as well as characteristic dream state-associated thought processes as based on work by Wolman and Kozmova (see Table 5.1 in Chapter 5) (31).

Table 6.3

Sleep-Onset Consciousness: Formal Characteristics, Bizarreness, and Thought Processing

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