The Hypnagogic Space

The “in between” is just as true and essential as anything else. For example, the stairwell connecting the upper floor of a house and the lower floor of a house is just as important as that which is exhibited on both floors. The liminal zone known as the stairwell provides access to both floors. If the stairwell is missing in a house, the house itself becomes one-dimensional, flat, and boring. Due to the existence of the stairwell, or liminal zone, a house can become multidimensional, luxurious, and worthy of our sensory approval.

Here are other “in between” places we encounter on a daily basis:

-Escalators
-Elevators
-Intersections
-Hallways
-Thoroughfares
-Trails
-Doorways
-Alleyways
-Courtyards
-Fields
-Crosswalks
-Tunnels

All these places are transitional zones of consensual, public space. They are just as important as the initial spot we departed from and our desired destination. They make the reality of public space livable and enjoyable. On paths or escalators or trails, we can think of the moment that was and the moment that is yet-to-be from a perspective that has gone beyond the was but hasn’t reached the yet-to-be just yet. If we’re cunning and savvy enough at navigating these transitional zones, we can even remain in them for the majority of the day. In other words, a path can reach a courtyard and then a doorway can reach a tunnel that leads to an open field. This abidance in transitional space would allow something new to grow in us. Something impalpable to both the was and the yet-to-be would take root in a soul that is rich in liminality.

Alongside the existence of these shared, public, and consensual spaces, there are also spaces within our own minds that exist in between. One of these spaces is known as the “hypnagogic”. The hypnagogic exists betwixt the 3-D awake self and the multidimensional sleeping self. As far as this mind is concerned, the hypnagogic is an altered state of consciousness, because it doesn’t conform to the physics of the everyday world or the skewed, intangible physics of the dreaming world. It definitely falls in between the veridical existence of both. In the inquisitive words of Jeff Warren, author of “Head Trip: Adventures On The Wheel of Consciousness”:

“Hypnagogic experiences are a bit of a mystery in the sense that scientists don’t know exactly how to classify them—are they dreams, or thoughts, or something else entirely? Where exactly do they come from? Is there any logic to their appearance? And if they are a species of dreams, do they appear suddenly, as fully developed dramas, or do they evolve more gradually, as part of some furtive and mysterious psychic progression?”

My own experiences with this particular realm of consciousness are definitely peculiar. One time while I was held in the hypnagogic thrall, I saw a floating, Byzantine cross come out of my bookcase. I was almost positive that this cross was cognizant. At other times I’ve distinctly felt strange pressures on my chest, and disembodied and irascible presences in the room. One time it felt like I was receiving clairaudient messages from an alien. Sometimes I can hear echoes from movements or voices that have transpired in the past (or do the echoes come from the future?). Sometimes auditory signals are prominent, hyperbolized, and dissonant. Sometimes it feels like I am levitating. And other times I can take cognition-based wormholes into dream states which operate in a different sector of the honeycombed multiplex of the mind.

All the psychic idiosyncrasies I’ve culled from the “in between” tell me that the mind is more complex than the models we use to help explain the mind. The models are only maps of a twisting and turning terrain. The map is not the territory. The model fails once its tenets are disproved or transcended, and once its built-in biases fall into cracks caused by the quakes of transrationality. We must admit we know very little about the mind until we’ve experienced all that it has to offer. Staying true to this line of thought, it can be said that we know very little about the mind if we haven’t crossed the bridge of hypnagogia.

Jeff Warren also had another interesting thing to say about the hypnagogic state. He said, “The hypnagogic is an opportunity to rejig a calcified worldview.” I think I have to agree with him. Like the transitional zones of public, consensual space that reorient our view of the collective environment itself, the hypnagogic reorients our view of the subjective self and the senses it uses to forage for information. It gives us access to a very special point in mind-time where the flame of rationality hasn’t yet dwindled and the flame of the irrational has just begun to glow. It is a place where non-sequiturs come to do the fandango. It is a place where inklings flirt with inferences. It is a very special place indeed.

God is in the details. A bridge connects the disparate landmasses of the mind. We proceed by losing ourselves. We go on because we don’t know why.