The hypnagogic region, that transition state between beta wave wakeful consciousness and alpha-theta wave first-level sleep, is the place where the magic happens!

In this space between conscious and unconscious, You can wake up. But that doesn’t happen very often. More often than not, it is the little you, your daily identity, the most common awareness of the ego-I that might find itself caught within a lucid dream and go off on a casual saunter around the dream-scape. But you can do so much more!

The hypnotist doctor will bring you to this state sometimes because it is precisely a place of relaxed malleability. The guards are down. The databases are accessible. Think what you can do with that data were you to consciously plug in!

The subconscious is researched not because it holds keys to repressed or forgotten memory, but because it is the storehouse of infinite calculations that have found their way into formula with exactitude and for simple lack of expression have never found their way to the surface to become manifest through action into physical reality. The subconscious holds the keys to histories and traditions that span millennia, cellular memory, maps of the cosmos. The subconscious is the closest visceral layer to the other ethereal sheaths of Self viz. the faculties of intellect and the rest, inward and beyond unto the Witness who stands motionless at the center of it all, forever watching and guiding those faculties through which we create our lives – unconsciously.

In this state of hypnagogia is where many spiritually awakened aspirants to higher being get stuck enjoying mundane feats like astral projection and telepathy and more. But make no mistake, there is more to the becoming!

The Holy Kabbalah would have us understand that there is a map of ten levels to the Godhead, accessible by twenty-two paths. The transition arena between wake and sleep is found at level 2 across the 21st path from our pillow. Yogic or Vedantic philosophy keeps it a bit simpler informing us that this stage is touched upon when we float inward from pranomaya kosha to just be in manomaya kosha and experience the witnessing from there. Hence the importance placed on Shavasana or, the death pose, the sleeping pose. All the well-developed traditions look very deeply at this place. CG Jung had a special penchant for the sub-conscious, too, and western psychology and psychotherapy pays good respect to this vast vestibule of potentiality.

We touch this hypnagogia when we meditate. It is the stage sought out by the magician. It is here where spells are cast and prayers are heard by the universal consciousness and yet, though I ramble on so stridently in favor of its charms, it is but a stepping stone. One must go through. Beyond! Beyond! Far beyond into deep sleep, or deep Silence, crossing the abyss in which the identity cannot survive.

The simple point here is that we are able to actively cross over between states of awareness. I hope this exciting piece of information will embolden you to explore the dynamics of your inner workings with the passion of one who knows the goal is within reach.

If you feel emboldened to explore the world of astral projection a bit, I encourage you to check out my advice for your first astral projection.