Dreams, thoughts on the strangest cognitive state we experience

[+Hoiditthroughthegrapevine he/him]

So, my daughter was interested in Lucid dreaming (she's 8 years old) and I have been paying a lot more attention to the state of consciousness that exists when you are in the intermediate stage between the conscious state and the dream state.

One of the observations that I have made is that as you are laying in bed, waiting to transition into the dream state, there are luminescent patterns of light (mostly green with a mild purplish nimbus) that seem to move through your field of view, like the after images burned into your retina from exposure to too bright light. These patterns of semi-light undulate and modulate, sometimes coalescing into forms that are similar to visual sense impressions, but the more you scrutinize them, the more they disperse into abstract patches of light.

These are fairly common, but over the last couple of nights I have been more aware during the transition to unconsciousness, and have noticed something peculiar that I was wondering if any of you have experienced. At certain times, I noticed that the vague sensory impressions of a seeming scene were completely replaced by a fully featured scene, but the thing that was interesting was that it wasn't a visualized scene, rather it was the whole sensate impression of a scene (the idea of a particular moment, with all of the details contained in the idea) and only after actively reflecting on this idea of a scene did I visually sense the particulars of this scene. So my question is, has anyone else experienced this? I think that this might get to the heart of what dreaming actually is, it's a pre-encoded whole package sensate matrix, that exists simultaneously on multiple levels, and only later when you are trying to interpret it, does it expand into manifest specifics (like visual details, emotional resonance, etc).

Would love to hear your thoughts on this or to hear some of your more interesting dreams, because I think it's one of the reasons an intelligent creator would create an intelligent species, to see the manifest beauty of their creation reflected in the subconscious mirror of personal experience. Do we dream to give God a better sense of what he is? Do we dream to explain the mysteries of life that are hidden from God himself?

Edited January 18, 2018 by hoiditthroughthegrapevine