Hello all,

I've joined your forum in the hope of getting an explanation of what happened a few nights ago, and maybe getting some pointers to making it happen again, as it was quite interesting.

My wife and I went to visit some friends, and for fun decided to camp out in their garden in a tent. We have not been camping for very many years. At about 4am when it became light my wife decided she had had enough and went into the house; I went in too for a pee and then went back to the tent. Of course I was wide awake by now, so I lay on my back with my eyes open for a while, and then turned on my side to try to sleep.

As I had been looking up into the light, I now had a large green after-image on the back of my eyelids. After a while I noticed that the green I could see was no longer after-image, but the green grass on which we were camped. After examining this closely for a while, I thought it was odd that I could see it so clearly, as (a) I should just have been able to see the floor of the tent, and (b) my eyes were shut. So I opened my eyes, and of course now I could just see the black plastic floor of the tent. Close the eyes again, and the grass comes back. I found I could get up and move around the tent and all seemed normal with my eyes open, but whenever I closed my eyes the grass re-appeared. It was fascinating, but I was tired and after a while I must have drifted off to sleep again. When I woke up, I could recall the whole experience with perfect clarity.

I should add that I do not normally remember my dreams at all, and I'm not into the sort of stuff you people do (although I'm definitely going to give it a try now that I've discovered it!)

So: what happened? Was I dreaming, or (as it seemed to me) awake?