newb - Slow wave sleep consciousness experience?

[shakto]

Hi - Like to see if anyone else has had this - couldn't find it on search 2 nights ago - very undetailed dream - me, 5 other people, no setting, background..intense conversation, illogical things came up, i pushed them I pushed them to see where they would go, and.. catapulted into a state where I was only pure consciousness, no identity, no memory, no boundary, yet I was a bit of light, a flashlight's circle, bouncing in the dark void. the void was not other, there was no self or other, the void was just dark nothing. I had this intense non-verbal feeling that there was more to the universe than just me as a patch of light in the void, and I was intent on pushing back the void, expanding the circle, trying my utmost, huge exertion but could not do it. Then woke up. Girlfriend told me I was thrashing in my sleep as if I was wrestling, and looked like I'd just lost when I woke up. Huge subjective feeling of meaningfulness afterward. Thinking this might have been a glimmer of what Tibetan dream yoga refers to as non-dualistic "clear light sleep," which could be extending of consciousness into slow-wave sleep. Any thoughts on this appreciated. Background: Read a lot on lucid dreaming, and practiced maybe 15 years ago. Got so I was having totally lucid REM dreams every night, but got away from it, have had them rarely since then. Thanks, Shakto

[jarrhead]

ANy idea how far into sleep this was? Thrashing? You may have REM behavior disorder, or, extremely uncommonly, you could have had a dream in non-REM. SWS is the sleep that cools off your brain, meaning minimal activity, just your involuntary muscles pretty much. Stage 1/2 dreams are usually just auditory or void. Stage 3/4 (Slow Wave Sleep) is very rarely occured dreams. Your brain needs cooling. May have been, not saying it isn't, but highly unlikely. Could have been. Shift knows more about SWS than I.

[shakto]

Thanks for the quick reply Jarrhead- about 3 h into sleep. Pretty sure it wasn't REM, given movement, and lack of dream imagery or narrative.. Any thing you can tell me more, or point me to, regarding the Stage 1/2 auditory / void dreams you mentioned? Shakto ANy idea how far into sleep this was? Thrashing? You may have REM behavior disorder, or, extremely uncommonly, you could have had a dream in non-REM. SWS is the sleep that cools off your brain, meaning minimal activity, just your involuntary muscles pretty much. Stage 1/2 dreams are usually just auditory or void. Stage 3/4 (Slow Wave Sleep) is very rarely occured dreams. Your brain needs cooling. May have been, not saying it isn't, but highly unlikely. Could have been. Shift knows more about SWS than I.

[jarrhead]

Stage 1/2 sleep is very very close to REM sleep and waking life. In stage 1/2, you will probably deny the fact you were even asleep. Sometimes you'll have auditory hallucinations, or vivid daydreams (Not always HH, sometimes though. Just like imagining something, but more extreme, cause you have absolute quiet and no distractions, with eyes closed) Stage 3/4 sometimes has auditory and void dreams. I have had auditory dreams in complete black in SWS before. You'll just hear talking. There's no way you'll go lucid, you're totally unconscious, and there's NO imagery. just black. May have been REM, which is more likely.

[shakto]

I'm interested in the Stage 3/4 void dreams; could you describe them further? How do you know you were in SWS? It does sound like what I experienced; I had no awareness that I was in a dream, so no lucidity; but also no awareness of the whole concept of dream / wake, or of any sort of identity or verbal processing at all. btw, thanks for going to the trouble to post the info on stages, but I'm pretty familiar with EEG. Shakto

[jarrhead]

SWS is where you brain is cooling off. As far as I know, you can only keep on thought at a time. This being usually auditory. Nothing to it. Nothing but black. You can't think, you're pretty much unconscious, you just recall some words.

[Shift]

Just to clarify, I'm not sure what these auditory/void dreams are either. When jarrhead explained them to me they sounded just like HH. I'm actually not sure what is going on in this thread.

[jarrhead]

Sounds like a good explanation, but there's no CONSCIOUS logic, no consciousness, nothing. You can stay conscious until you hit SWS, then regain it upon REM, as if you were to WILD outside of an REM period. Try it tonight, I tried last night. Keep consciousness. Keep your mind BUSY. Make up another character or something and keep a conversation in your head. Once you hit SWS there's no way you'll be thinking. It may be HH, but then, wouldn't the visuals of a dream just be organized HH? Wouldn't the sounds be organized HH as well? When I experience HH, it's nothing logical. It's ALWAYS flashes that are dangerous for those prone to seizures. I get strobe lights and such in my eyes. I get loud, high-pitched stuff. Rings, clanks, kids talking. During SWS I'll get organized, little sentences. Things that make total sense. I've even had a dreamwhere it says "but it's only 1:15 AM" and i'll get woken up by a car outside, bam, 1:15 AM. Not saying it's anything supernatural. Point is, HH is disorganized, dreams are not.

[Shift]

I'm confused, have you got an EEG? How do you know that you're getting into SWS?

[jarrhead]

You don't know for sure, but it should have been. I was 4 hours 15 minutes into sleep. Smack in the middle of what should be SWS

[Shift]

There are a zillion things that could throw that off; it's not enough to simply just go on timing if you want to talk about things at this level. All sorts of factors could determine what stage of sleep you could happen to be in. I'm also not sure what you mean by there's no CONSCIOUS logic, no consciousness, nothing. You can stay conscious until you hit SWS, then regain it upon REM, as if you were to WILD outside of an REM period.

[jarrhead]

I'm by no means saying indeed 100% fact, but it's probably close. It's not like any of us are going to experiment. Labs are nowhere near and these don't happen often enough.