After posting the previous entry, I went right back to my dream log and continued reading -- and wow, how could I forget about this! This is the very next entry, titled 'A STRANGE AND INTRIGUING EVENT':
[Log entry begins] April 28 ~ 29, 1998
Great progress! After so many nights of trying and failing to remember to stay awake, achieved the deepest level yet of continuously maintained consciousness:
,,,and went to bed fairly early(shortly after midnight). Fell asleep like a rock, then some time later woke up and had to go to the bathroom. Afterward lay in bed doing the ‘PA system exercise’. Was able to keep it up for a fair while this time, then smoothly, without being noticed at first, hypnagogic imagery set in. Nothing outrageously fantastic -- just me lying there and things happening. Just remember this, the last part: I was lying in bed, someone came in and threw a blanket over my head, as if to smother me. I was not alarmed, being still conscious and telling myself I was ‘dreaming’.
This in itself is major; apart from that one lucid episode last year, I don’t remember ever experiencing such clarity of dual consciousness -- experiencing a convincingly realistic image ‘from the inside’ and simultaneously observing and commenting from ‘outside’; also the prior lucid episode commenced suddenly and full-blown, in the course of an already-occurring dream(with the aid of the NovaDreamer), rather than being gradually arrived at by stages(and without the NovaDreamer). Granted, this time I was most likely not fully asleep and dreaming but rather experiencing a fairly well sustained hypnagogic vision, but that’s also a first, so far as I can recall. And a very concrete vision it was -- for a moment I really thought it was happening, before remembering(through remembering to repeat the mantra ‘This is a dream’) that I was actually in that Dream Version of Your Bedroom(slightly different from the waking one; also I seemed to be lying in a different position in the dream bed, on my left side -- wonder why that was so).
The hypnagogic stage quickly segued into the ‘body image distortion’ state, which I had read about but never really experienced, not this clearly anyhow. Without any warning, I began to rise dramatically, experiencing a feeling of inexorable buoyancy, as if riding a rapidly uprushing column of water. Then next I felt as if I were shriveling and curving inward, like a soft-bodied bug caught in a beam of sunlight concentrated by a curious child’s magnifying glass. And simultaneously, I seemed to be horizontally falling away, or perhaps shrinking away [the picture in my mind now is that of lying on my side on a field of ice and gliding backwards at high speed]. The sensation of bending into the fetal position was uncomfortable, but I managed to get through it without disturbance, telling myself that my body was now fallling asleep while ‘I’ was still awake. The feeling subsided shortly and only a residual vibration remained. Unfortunately, breathing began to be uncomfortable, nose and throat being very dry, and I had to swallow. That put an end to it. I could feel the difference right away -- ears began to work again and night noises returned. Next time I will force myself to stay put, no matter what.
Finally I truly comprehend what Ouspensky, Fox and other oneironauts meant when they wrote about their hypnagogic experiences. This was so similar to the account in the book Lucid Dreaming, about illusory hands on the real wall, fictitious people sitting on the real bed... It didn’t seem to take any effort at all, aside from repeating ‘This is a dream’. The imagery began unobtrusively, and I didn’t notice anything until after the event was well under way.
AMAZING! I JUST REALIZED THAT THIS IS THE ONE-YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF THAT FIRST -- AND SO FAR THE ONLY -- FULLY LUCID DREAM (4-28-97). WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? DOES IT MEAN ANYTHING? WOW! DID I UNCONSCIOUSLY REMEMBER, AND TRY FOR A REPRISE? TRULY THE MIND IS MORE THAN THE CONSCIOUS EGO! THE FORTUITY SURE IS SUGGESTIVE.... MADDENINGLY SUGGESTIVE -- BUT OF WHAT? [Log entry ends]
Yes, I had had a full-blown lucid episode exactly a year previously -- I guess this means I'll have to post that entry as well.
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