Hypnagogia

Dali used hypnagogia to get his inspiration

Hypnagogia and hypnagogic are not methods they are states.

The adjective "hypnagogic" is a term coined by Alfred Maury for the transitional state between wakefulness and sleep.  It is a synonymous term for the trance state induced during hypnosis or during befuddlement, relaxation  or during meditation.

Early references to hypnagogia are to be found in the writings of Aristotle,  Iamblichus,  Cardano,  Simon Forman and Swedenborg.  Scientific enquiry of the phenomenon continued in the 19th century with Johannes Peter Müller, Jules Baillarger and Alfred Maury, and continued into the twentieth with Leroy.

Francis Galton provided one of the first systematic investigations of hypnagogic hallucinations in his 1883 book Inquiries into Human Faculty.

The types of spiritual experiences that have occurred during this "threshold consciousness" phase include visual and audio hallucinations, invisible input such as inspiration, improved and pure perception and out of body experiences – so the full gamut.

The person can control the duration of the experience, remember the experience and also, in well-practised individuals, induce the experience at will, but it differs from lucid dreaming – which is not dissimilar in effect, by being a technique which is used while you are awake, whilst in lucid dreaming you are asleep.

NOTE:  There are some sources who now make the distinction between spiritual experiences had on going to sleep and those had on waking up, calling them hypnagogic and hypnopompic.  As the original term was intended to be a state and not an indication of a time of day, I have not made this distinction. 
Given that some people have these dozing on the couch with no intention to go to sleep; and some people have had them in the middle of the night and have no idea whether they were waking or about to go to sleep; and some people have had them at four in the morning after they have got up to go to the toilet, we could be inventing terms until the cows come home. 
Hypnagogia means not quite awake and not quite asleep and this trance like state can happen at all sorts of times of day - even at work. 

Observations

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• A bird flying round the room and a wasp trying to sting her
• A clothes line with jellyfish tentacles was hanging over the bed
• A figure standing next to her bed
• A figure with a long black hood obscuring it's face
• A floating skull with demonic teeth that appears to laugh
• A legacy prompted by a vision of a priest in a Church
• A presence (I always thought of as a witch) trying to enter the kitchen
• A very detailed account of a hypnagogic hallucination
• Adventures of the mind
• All he sees are little children watching him
• All laughing at me because I'm wearing no makeup
• Animals, entities, cosmic jellyfish and astral creatures coming out of the electric sockets
• Audio and visual hallucinations a very big part of her life
• Barbara Haslam from Chatham, England hears choral singing with lovely music
• Being thumped on the arm, falling and being pushed
• Black bars hovering over her like a cage
• Black Sabbath – Tony Iommi's Out of body experiences
• Bozzano, Professor Ernesto - Psychic phenomena at the moment of death – 43
• Bozzano, Professor Ernesto - Psychic phenomena at the moment of death – 47 The death of Bishop Gott
• Bozzano, Professor Ernesto - Psychic phenomena at the moment of death – 58 ‘I saw an angel flying through the room’ and ‘I have heard an angel sing’
• Comforting visions of those who have died
• Commander F M Moureau - The kiss from his dying son
• Could see strange things like shadows moving around and the sound of the wind howling
• David-Neel, Alexandra – A lama pays a call
• Demonic creatures rapidly running over me in an overwhelming stampede
• Dr Elmer Green - My mother, father, brother, and I had become aware of what we referred to as mental telepathy
• Dr Elmer Green – A prophetic vision of where he was to work
• Dr Robert Crookall - More Astral projections - Mr Hallstead has an OBE
• Dr Robert Crookall - More Astral projections – A housewife has an OBE
• Dr Robert Crookall - More Astral projections – Miss June Douglas has an OBE
• Dr Robert Crookall - More Astral projections – Mr J A. Lilley of Streatham
• Dr Robert Crookall - More Astral projections – Mr D'nartsa has several OBEs
• Dr Robert Crookall - More Astral projections – Mr J McCormick, of Glasgow
• Dr Robert Crookall - More Astral projections – Mr K. S. Kitamura, of Langton Rd, E. Molesey has an OBE
• Dr Robert Crookall - More Astral projections – Mr R. J. Carlson, who had been practising auto-suggestion, has an OBE
• Dr Robert Crookall - More Astral projections – Mrs Nina Tank, of Hove has an OBE
• Dr Robert Crookall - More Astral projections – Mrs V. Fleetwood of West Kirby, Cheshire has an OBE
• Dr Robert Crookall - More Astral projections – Mrs Vera Oates of Northampton
• Duchess of Hamilton has a prophetic vision of Lord L in a chair as if in a fit
• Dumas, Alexandre – from Memoirs – Recounts the experiences of Mr. Villenave
• Dunne, J. W. - An Experiment with Time – Going out of body in a state of hypnagogia to see the time
• E. Blomfield - I didn't just find myself at my destination-I was conscious of a journey through the air
• Echo & the Bunnymen - The Killing Moon
• Edison, Thomas - Getting pictures of his inventions
• Eighty three Irish students go out of body
• Emperor Tiberius - And his gift of night vision
• Entities twitching at the bedclothes
• Evagrius Ponticus - A study into his asceticism
• Fairy lights patterns and circles
• Felt an intense presence of some sort of entity
• First signs of an OBE whilst in hypnagogic state
• Freedom Long, Max - Becoming amber light
• Gained control over terrifying hallucinations
• George Barth - Letter to 'Spiritual Magazine' January 1863 – The Death of his son
• Giant dragonflies flapping around the room and friendly little girls
• Green, Drs Elmer and Alyce – Experiments - Perception recall
• Green, Drs Elmer and Alyce – Experiments - Precognition and prophecy
• Green, Drs Elmer and Alyce – Experiments - Telepathy
• Green, Drs Elmer and Alyce – Experiments - The benefits of using EEG, biofeedback and visualisation
• Green, Drs Elmer and Alyce – Experiments - Using EEG, biofeedback and visualisation
• Green, Drs Elmer and Alyce – Hypnosis used in helping the body recover from surgery and other physical injury
• Hadamard, Jacques - Discovery of the value of a determinant
• Hallucinations are most frequent and intense when she is under stress, ill or sleep deprived
• Hallucinations are telling you that you are not well
• Hallucinations from drug withdrawal
• Hallucinations of helicopters landing on the bed
• Harary, Blue - And a number of quixotic encounters
• He saw a "cosmic jellyfish" hanging above his bed
• Hearing and seeing people so vivid, it's as if they're real - sometimes very abusive
• Hearing birdsong was like sleeping in an aviary
• Hearing original music
• Hellstrom, Eva - Prophecy and Past Perceptions, exploring the realm of the past and the future in Egypt, 1952
• Hellstrom, Eva - Prophecy of a scene in Viva Zapata, 1952
• Her old nanny visits her to tell her she is dying, but 'all was well'
• Hustvedt, Siri - My pre-sleep cinema of ghouls and monsters
• Hypnagogic faces
• I slept with the covers over my head
• I was in a large building filled with beautiful music
• I would sometimes "roll out" of my body when I lay down
• Insects flying round his room
• Insomnia and auditory hallucinations
• Jacques Romano - On Edison and his method of inspiration
• Jean Sheppard and family - I've seen a bloody ghost
• Kekulé, Friedrich August – The nature of genius
• Kekulé, Friedrich August – The Origins of the Structure of Benzene
• Laubscher, B J F - There were noises, movement of objects, rappings under the table and footsteps all over the place
• Laubscher, B J F – The van Staden’s strange and beautiful phantom visitor who was out of body in their house
• Laura Kennedy: Night-time visions of monsters in my room seem normal – at the time
• Lhermitte, Professor Jean - Visual Hallucination of The Self – 01 With the Eyes of the Mind
• Lhermitte, Professor Jean - Visual Hallucination of The Self – 02 Source of the Hallucination
• Lhermitte, Professor Jean - Visual Hallucination of The Self – 03 Its form
• Lucid dreams in colour and with great clarity
• Lucidity Abounds Zopiclone by HM42
• Machines, vehicles, bugs, elaborate patterns, psychedelic-colored crustaceans, & sometimes lilliputians
• Madame Belot sees her dying husband in Algiers
• Maureen Magee and Melissa Stevenson - Doppelgangers
• Michelle regrets panicking in her first OBE
• Miss Graham has a prophetic warning of the collapse of her Bank
• Mr S H Beard wills a series of OBEs to his fiancée Miss Verity and her sister, and he is ‘seen’ by both!
• Mrs Jennie D, who seemed to be a congenial soul, visits Mr Weymouth after her death
• Mrs. Ventresse of Devonshire, Great Britain treasures the exquisite purity of those children's voices
• Muldoon, Sylvan - First OBE
• My ears would fill with a loud painful screech, like a flashbang had gone off next to me
• My mind is falling down through the pillow
• Nabokov, Vladimir - Speak, Memory - Hallucinations and visons
• Night terror out of body
• North Whitehead, Alfred – 19 Perceptions are not the same as memory
• Not trying works
• Oliver Sacks - Bedtime patterns
• Oliver Sacks - Donald Fish has scary hallucinations
• Oliver Sacks - Little Devils on a bicycle
• Oliver Sacks - Mental radio
• Oliver Sacks - Mrs O'M hears choirs singing
• Olivier Messiaen - Inspired by celestial music
• Phantasms of the Living - Present in spirit in the front bedroom on the second floor of a house situated at 22 Hogarth Road, Kensington
• Professor Haslam and Mr. John H. Williams [a Quaker] have a prophetic indication of the winners of a horse race
• Psychological Inquiries - by Sir B C Brodie - He saw standing at the foot of his bed a figure in a sort of Persian dress
• Punched my low-table-thingy over because I saw a face in it
• Ralph Shirley - The Mystery of the Human Double – Hermione P. Okeden goes out of body to check on her friends
• Ralph Shirley - The Mystery of the Human Double – The servant’s double who came to wake Dr Werner
• Rats in the room crawling under things
• Rev. C. Jupp, head of the Alberlour Orphan- Asylum in Craigellachie and the small cloud of light that visited the orphans
• Reverend C W S - And the meeting with his wife in the Buffalo hotel
• Robert A. Jebb - A Business-man's Experiences of the Truth of Life After Death
• Rocking
• Rogo, D Scott - Leaving the Body - During the OBE, we contact only a parallel of the real world-a plastic interactional world
• Rogo, D Scott - Leaving the Body - Scott’s own OBEs - 03 Getting used to the OBE, after one aborted experience
• Rogo, D Scott - Leaving the Body - Scott’s own OBEs - 04 An increase in visions
• Rogo, D Scott - Leaving the Body - The best conditions for an OBE
• Rogo, D Scott - Leaving the Body - The value of the hypnagogic state in OBEs
• Romano, Jacques - Dreaming of a spirit helper
• Saw her son's baseball shoes levitating over her chest
• Schelling, F W J - Clara or On Nature’s Connection to the Spirit World – The effects of hypnagogia
• Seeing laser lights or weirdly colored bugs or gadgets doing weird patterns
• Seeing spiders -- hundreds of them -- coming down from my roof and on my walls
• Seemingly Non-Toxic, but Potent Deleriogen Amanita muscaria by 3MX
• Sees her cat knocking over a lamp when he is actually fast asleep at the foot of her bed
• Shaking and tremours
• Snell, Joy – Ministry of Angels – The death of her friend Maggie
• Somebody is just talking in my ear or they slap me in my face
• Spider dreams 'so frequent that I'm not really even afraid anymore'
• Spiders crawling on her bed
• Spiders, always spiders!!
• Still having night terrors at 60
• Technicolour dreams
• Ten year old has OBE
• The death of Escolan
• The disappearing boyfriend
• The voice that said it wanted to come in
• There was a presence in my room pointing at me
• Tholey, Paul - How to Lucid Dream
• Thomas, John F - Case Studies Bearing Upon Survival – The smell of a pipe
• Tilting beds and falling into what seemed like a black abyss
• Toppling boxes and things floating through the ceiling
• Unwanted lucid dream
• Valerian and lucid dreaming
• Very realistic full colour hallucination of a person
• Vignoli, Tito - On hypnagogia and lucid dreaming
• Waking up from the pain of a dream
• Wereide, Professor Thorstein - A ghost that has lately appeared in my own home