Perhaps the funniest event to note this time around is that, after conducting my latest Calea Z experiments (taking the dream herb in pills, smoking it, and drinking it as a tea) I dreamt I was at a party where someone offered me Calea Z. pills. They were about 3 or 4 inches long, and I took 2 of them, and so did my brother. He ended up overdosing and going to the hospital whereas I felt nothing but a slight body buzz. Oh Calea Z – your just full of games, even when I take you in my dreams!
Beyond this, I also experienced a lucid dream followed by hypnogogic illusion (I think.)
The dream was short but my degree of control was excellent. I was able to conversate with dream characters who wouldn’t give me what I wanted so I willed it and ta-dah, things and people appeared as I wanted them. Fun stuff.
Then both the lucidity and the dream ended & I’m not sure how to describe what happened next.
I can’t say I was dreaming and yet I wasn’t awake in the sense I am now.
But I was conscious of what I was seeing : the back of my eyelids, and the accompanying blackness of this which was immersed and enveloped by ever-changing shapes and psychedelic patterns.
For what I imagine was a minute, I took in the experience and then I – dammit – slightly changed the position I was lying in. The patterns just faded away into solid blackness and soon after I fell onto an unconscious sleep.
I imagine this experience is a form of hypnogogic dream imagery?
What you experienced is known as hypnopompic dreaming – flashes, dots, patterns, swirls, psychedelic patterns that occur upon waking up from a dream state. If you can catch these again you can focus on them to induce a wake-initiated lucid dream. These experiments of yours keep getting more interesting. Keep up the good work!
Yep, sounds like hypnagogia to me.
What Oneironaught said is good advice too, I’ve read that is a solid way of inducing a lucid dream. The toughest part is just getting to the hypnagogia.