“the sense of wonder extinguishes ‘myself””
The hypnagogic state is the stage of consciousness between being awake and asleep. Lucid and visionary dreams are common during this relaxed state. Some people feel like they are flying or falling.
Stanislav Groff one of the founders of transpersonal psychology, conducted research into non-ordinary states of consciousness to explore healing and obtain insights into the human psyche. He says, “The paradox is that Rene Descartes’ Discourse on Method, the book that reformed the entire structure of Western knowledge and that provided the foundation for modern science, came to its author in three visionary dreams and a dream within a dream, which provided the key for interpreting the larger dream. What an irony it is that the entire edifice of rational, reductionist, positive science, which today rejects ‘subjective knowledge’ was originally inspired by a revelation in a non-ordinary state of consciousness.”[i]
Insight # 30 comes to us from David Foster in The Philosophical Scientists (1985). He outlined the existence of the god theory which argues against the blind random chance mutations of Darwin.
“There are more examples of sudden scientific inspiration when a person is in a relaxed state of even day-dreaming. The nature of the emotion is simply an intense feeling that a problem has been solved, but the sense of the origin of the solution is non-personal and transcendental. It is as though the sense of wonder extinguishes ‘myself.’”[ii]
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Additional Reading:
- Hypnagogic State, The ABC’s of Simple Reality, Vol 1
#30 Hypnagogic State
[i] Grof, Stanislov. The Holotropic Mind. New York: Harper, 1993, p. 170.
[ii] Foster, David. The Philosophical Scientists. New York: Dorset Press, 1985, p. 149.
