Hypnopompic

 

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.  A hypnopompic state (or hypnopomp) is the state of consciousness leading out of sleep.

The problem with having invented this term, is that most people are unaware what they are doing at the time this happens. Given that some people have spiritual experiences 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 still only half awake; we could be inventing terms until the cows come home.  There is a point in being precise, if the data one can collect is precise, but as one who has had these, I know you generally can't remember what you were doing and the observations show that neither can other people.

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, and it is this term which is more helpful in analysing spiritual experiences as all you have to do is establish that someone was half awake and half asleep - at rest.

All the observations for this state have thus been grouped under Hypnagogia.

Observations

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• Laura Kennedy: Night-time visions of monsters in my room seem normal – at the time