As promised, and fully recognizing the creative rabbit trail I’m blazing, here’s the bit I promised about hypnagogia, the mental state of consciousness between wakefulness and sleep.
“You must seat yourself in a bony armchair, preferably of Spanish style, with your head tilted back and resting on the stretched leather back. Your two hands must hang beyond the arms of the chair, to which your own must be soldered in a supineness of complete relaxation. […]
In this posture, you must hold a heavy key which you will keep suspended, delicately pressed between the extremities of the thumb and forefinger of your left hand. Under the key you will previously have placed a plate upside down on the floor…. The moment the key drops from your fingers, you may be sure that the noise of its fall on the upside down plate will awaken you.”
Salvador Dali used this practice to basically poke his head into a dream state, look around in there a bit, and then, immediately upon waking, taking inspiration from what he observed to begin his next painting.
“This procedure utilizes the muscle paralysis that naturally occurs upon falling asleep, causing the spoon to drop and startle you awake. Just before awakening you momentarily enter the hypnagogic sleep state, a state similar to REM sleep where the mind is fluid and hyperassociative, allowing creative connections to form, connections between seemingly remote concepts that you may not realize in the structure of waking thought. In other words, in this state your mind is able to bring together distant ideas in a new way.” — Michelle Carr Ph.D.
Dali considered the challenge of taking inspiration from his dreams to be one of “sleeping without sleeping”. To be able somehow to consciously tap into a subconscious reservoir of inspiration while remembering everything. He determined the challenge as central to investigating our dream state “which walks in equilibrium on the taut and invisible wire which separates sleeping from waking.”
And yes... there’s definitely something rare going on in that space.
Scientists have observed the presence of both alpha brain waves — which are the dominant brain wave mode when we are conscious but relaxed, for instance when daydreaming or meditating — and theta brain waves, which are associated with restorative sleep, during hypnagogia. Typically, these brain waves occur only separately, and it may be the unique combination that gives rise to unusual visions and sensations. — Carolyn Gregoire, Senior Writer, The Huffington Post
The brain uses two separate pattern recognition systems – an extrinsic and an intrinsic one, writes Steven Kotler in Psychology Today. The explicit system relies on logic and rules and is tied to our conscious awareness. We can explain it verbally. The intrinsic system, on the other hand, relies on intuition, skill and experience. — Jane Porter, Writer, FastCompany
When the explicit system is involved, the neurons that are talking to one another are usually found in close proximity. When the implicit system is at work, far flung corners of the brain are chit-chatting. Creativity … depends on those broader implicit networks putting together information in new ways. — Steven Kotler, cofounder and Director of Research for the Flow Research Collective
“Dreams are just thinking in a different biochemical state.” — Deirdre Barrett, author of “The Committee of Sleep”
Neuroscience aside, there's a wonderful magic that's born of our imaginations set free. A creative liberation that marvelously transcends the bounds of logic and intention and focus. It’s a release... to simply be a force of creation without restraint, an engine that seemingly conjures from nothing but is actually unveiling what's been there all along.
It's a wonderful magic.
The real magic, I think, stems from our innate resistance as human beings to allow fragments and illogic and blurriness to persist. After all, it's not often our brains present to us a full, completely gift-wrapped story or image or solution. We're presented with fragments. With inspirations. With the nudges... we so desperately need.
And that real magic?
Is what we weave from there.
:-)