Strange experience on the verge of going to sleep
Bunks
Australia Veteran
Hi all - hope everyone is well today?
I just had an unusual experience while having a bit of an afternoon nap that I've experienced a number of times before. I wondered if anyone out there has had something similar.
I will just be on the point of going to sleep or just waking up - I guess you could call it dozing. I am dreaming but can still hear noises going on around me. In the dream I'll see someone walk out of a room and go to slam the door behind them. Just as they're doing this a door in the house will actually slam at exactly the same time as in the dream!
Now, how on earth did I know someone was going to slam a door at the other end of the house or drop a piece of steel on concrete next door (which is what happened just now when I was napping) at exactly the same time as something similar in my dream? It's weird.
I hope I have explained myself reasonably well. I ain't very eloquent!!
Comments
Heck, I ain't so eloquent either, hahah.
I ain't so very scientific, but I think that peeps can be out-of-body sensitive during that period in between awake and asleep, and are aware of things in a way that defies explanation, and you just 'know' what's happening in your house.
I also have had strange thing happen a few times in the months while I was still working - being woken up just before the time I would normally wake up, and I would hear somebody calling me LOUDLY, and it jerked me awake. One time it seemed like my mom's voice but not quite, another time it was an unknown male voice and another, it was my boss's voice (female). Very loud, very weird.
@Bunks I know what you mean... Kinda like "deja vu"
So this just a theory (one of many I might add)
Because when this happens we are still in the twilight zone, the stage between sleep & awake, a time when the mind more often than not, likes to play tricks....That is, the event happens, but it doesn't register with the normal 'sense time' (which is still in dream-time) then the mind rapidly conjures up a sequence of events in the dream to coincide with the past external stimuli that activated the sense doors, which makes it seem like it happens before it happens...(The senses catching up with the events)
In the past when in dream-time I've heard a car horn going off only to wake in the split second a car horn goes off...(Well that's according to my senses)
You might find the above theory a load of bunk (excuse the pun
) I know I often do when I think back on what I've said or written.... 
No, it's quite accurate.
Like deja vu, when one side of the brain is reactive to an experience a split second before the other is (that's what happens, that's why we believe we were here before - we were, but merely a second ago) the audial sensors on one side of the brain pick up the sound a split-nano-second before the other side, and our brains create what appears to be a premonitory dream, when in fact it's just a digestion of a fact that reaches one side before it reaches the other.
It might be one universe bumping into another.
Maybe something similar has happened to me.
There's more or less synchronicity how this world (of people) works. Synchronicity started to bug me back in the 80s when I drove with my car long distances in tracts with very infrequent settlements (clumsy English?). Long time without seeing other people or cars, and then there's someone walking alongside the road and a car is coming from the opposite direction. We meet on the same "line" at the same moment. That has happened plentiful of times back then and these days, too.
How can you suddenly know instinctly that someone is wathing you (you turn around and your eyes meet someone else's eyes) or someone else instinctly knows you are watching her/him?
This happens to me frequently, especially if I nap in a car or on a plane. I cannot get into deeper sleep, so I am asleep but not. I can react to the world, but it becomes part of my dream world as well. So strange. There is quite a bit of writing about such things online, I find them fascinating to read about.
I feel @federica explanation is how this phenomena arises. In the dream world of the awake I would also mention that some of these strange phenomena can also occur for experienced cushion squashers. For Real.
Yeah - it's hard to explain but I almost feel like time in my dream goes backwards so that the dream moment lines up with the awakened moment. Hard to put into words, it's just a feeling.......
I've experienced this!!! Very weird, it's like you know the door is swinging closed. Then there is the bang and you wake up to the sound of the door bang. Spooky stuff
Now that's what i call 'spooky stuff'....and that's no yoke
I love that line!
We pay attention to the dream-like phenomena in the world of the awake if they are somehow meaningful for us.
"Jung's belief was that, just as events may be connected by causality, they may also be connected by meaning. Events connected by meaning need not have an explanation in terms of causality."
It must be them quantum particles getting confused!
Something like that may happen if you flip a quantum coin. It's called as "Quantum Flipism".
I had an interesting year after reading this book:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dice_Man
(I didn't know that the great song "Such a Shame" by the great Talk Talk is about flipism.)
That book had a cult following back in the day...I remember buying a dice whilst visiting a friend in Germany, on the sides of the dice (in German) were "Sleep" "Play" "Eat" "Exerciser" (I can't remember what was on the other two sides)....
So my question to you (whoever you might be) is : "What would you put on the six sides of a dices to motivate a Dharma practitioner ?"
Um I feel a sideline business starting up "The Dharma Dice" Just go with the roll.....
My apologies for the sidetrack @Bunks
Perhaps I should have started another thread
What a great idea! You could roll it first thing in the morning then again at lunch time.......I might try it!
Wisdom
"Meditate then ice-cream" would be on all 6 sides.
@Shoshin - I rolled Patience for the morning....
Getting what I do not want
And that which hinders my desire
There my mind finds fuel for misery
Anger springs from it and beats me down
Therefore I will utterly destroy
The sustenance of this my enemy
My foe, whose sole intention is
To bring me sorrow
Shantideva - Bodhicharyavatara
How about the six elements, or the six sense gates?
I do those as sets, so it would only be 2 options. We had it hard, you know.
Pity we don't have a five sided dice.......
a) five aggregates
b) five hindrances
c) five precepts
So you let a dice make your decisions.
Life is fliping a coin all the time because everything that could happen does happen.
Here're my pick of six :(I guess these are things I try to practice everyday anyway
)
Sati (Mindfulness off the cushion)
Metta ( Loving Kindness)
Karuna (Compassion)
Dana ( Generosity-Giving)
Samma Vaca ( Right Speech)
Nekkhamma ( Renunciation)
One could practice whatever the dice happen to land on for an hour, half a day, a day, a week, a month, whatever amount of time one chooses...Just focusing the mind on one specific task....( fine tuning the mind, so to speak)
The mind likes a challenge and a gamble ( ....to gamble in a beneficial way that is
)