Hi All,
Something which happens to me fairly regularly is this: After going to bed, switching off the light and closing my eyes, I begin to feel myself drifting off to sleep. Then after what feels like half an hour or so I’m suddenly aware of a loud rushing sound in my ears, a bit like the sound a large waterfall might make if you were standing close to it. I am concious at this time and aware of what’s happening. This makes me feel disorientated and confused, and I wake myself up with a jolt. On waking I am breathless and can feel my heart beating quite fast. I also have a very odd dizzy feeling in my head for 20 seconds or so. I then calm down and eventually fall asleap again. I assume I’m in a state of not being fully awake or fully asleap but I’ve never been able to explain the experience.
Last night I spent the evening reading about lucid dreaming. I went to bed and after closing my eyes I repeated the words “I’m going to have a lucid dream” to myself. After a short while I got the rushing sound again. I remembered something I had read earlier about staying calm during lucidity (although I knew I wasn’t having a LD). I managed to calm myself down slightly and listened to the sound. I noticed it was changing slightly in volume at regular intervals like it was sort of pulsating. I could feel the bed under me, and could feel myself lying in the same position I was in when I had gone to bed. I decided to open my eyes and could see the bedroom dimly lit by the street lighting outside, except that it appeared slightly distorted or mis-shapen, as if I was looking through very thick glass. Although I was lying on my right side, I was aware of myself looking around, above and to the left of me, even though I somehow knew that I was not moving my head. This alarmed me and I closed my eyes again. I then woke up with a jolt, and had the usual fast heartbeat and breathlessness, although no dizzy feeling this time.
I’d like to know what on earth causes this rushing sound and what does it mean? Also what should I do next time this happens? Can I use this state to induce a LD? I read somewhere that a rushing sound is a sign of an OOBE. Should I be exploring this rather than trying to have a LD? Any help or advice apprecited.
Upon falling asleep, it sometimes happens that the body is already asleep, while your mind is still awake. Then you’re entering a state of light trance. This situation is very often accompanied with visual imagery, noises and physical impressions (sinking in your bed, weight upon your chest, vibrations,…). All these effects arise inside your brain. Your physical senses are shut down (the body is already asleep), so practically everything you perceive must come from your own mind. When you perceive these sensations or visuals upon falling asleep, they’re called hypnagogic hallucinations (or hypnagogic imagery in case they’re visuals). When you perceive them upon waking up, which is far more rare, they’re called hypnopompic hallucinations. It’s nothing unusual and it’s part of the sleeping process. The only thing which is rather rare is that you remained conscious. Nothing to worry about In fact, during this state of mind, it is said that the mind can become highly sensible to various forms of creativity.
Realize they’re coming from your brain and just enjoy the show
Rushing sounds are indeed related to OBEs, because apparently they’re signs that the astral body is disconnecting itself from the etheric body. But in order to induce successful OBEs you need to have enough energy first. No fuel, no astral travelling. In any case, I’d stick with LDs for now
If you have these hypnagogics in the middle of the night, after waking up for half an hour or so, you can perfectly use them to enter a dream consciously. This is the basic LD induction method of WILD. It’s easier to practice WILD during the early morning than when you’re going to bed in the evening, because the dreams become longer during the night. You can find a BIG Topic about WILD here (it’s already part 12, so there’s lots of information to be found there): https://community.ld4all.com/t/the-big-wild-topic-part-xii/10704
When you opened your eyes, I think you almost certianly had entered a dream. You had, in effect, used WILD to achieve HILD .
Anyways, next time something like that happens, this is what to do:
With the feelings, just lay there until a dream comes.
If you open your eyes and soemthing seems to be strange, start taking RC. If you had become lucid, I’m sure you would have been able to stop the funny looking around thing.
I believe it’s better to think it was just a dream, especially if remember you had read about OBE and compared the descriptions with the sounds you hear. I often feel something similar (maybe, more pleasant ), but it never is an OBE, because later I always notice difference between my real room and what I saw in the dream. But I don’t want to say that if I cannot have OBE no one can. When you learn to stay in this state longer, you will just check if it is really your room or only the idea of your room…
Speedie, you win my “best new avatar of the day” award! I love it!
The “rush” sound has made me dizzy before too. I think it’s mentally powerful to consciously experience the sleep transition.
The opinion if it is an OBE or LD is a personal decision you must make. The “rush” sound can accompany both. I have heard that if you have to ask “was this an OBE or LD” that it is more likely a lucid dream. OBE s apparently have a very unique feeling much different from dreams.
im in abit of a hurry so i dont have time to read everyone elses posts (incase they said what im going to say),
i believe when we dream, we exit our physical body, with anotehr body, some call it an astral body, some call it our soul, some the mind,…
anyway… when you are aware you are out of your body, ie. dreaming…you are lucid dreaming
when you are aware that your IN your physical body, while its sleeping, if your astral body exits the body to enter a dream, (the astral realm as i call it), you may often HEAR the noise your astral body makes when it exits the physical…
Why dont we always hear it? coz we arent always aware of it.
Tell me what you think about what i said…interesting? true? or bullshyte?
sounds a lot like you were in a dream for a sec. when you said that when you looked around and it looked as if you were looking through thick glass…i think that means you were dreaming. and then you woke up in RL and yeah…as for the rushing sound…listen to them. lol.
that happened to me last night, i was falling asleep, and all of the sudden i breathe in normal and i hear a huge echo (im still looking at the celing), what had happened was i breathed in and i my mind was concious but my body had shut down, unfortunantly my heart gave a huge jolt and i woke up, but i think that was a cool expirienece.
Hi,
Thanks for all the replies, and thanks for the avatar comment DreamAddict. I like it too! Here’s what happened last night:
I went to bed early and after a short time had a dream in which I was standing in the spare room of my flat. I glanced out of the window and saw a friend of mine sitting on his bicycle outside the window. I thought this odd as I was not expecting him to visit. He was sitting motionless with his head facing downward slightly and his eyes appeared closed. His appearance reminded me of a mannequin. I thought that he was playing a trick to try and scare or alarm me so I pressed my face against the window pane, grimaced and made a loud moaning sound! This produced no response and I thought to myself “this is an unlikely situation, so unlikely that it must be a dream!” At that point everything became very dark and I could hear a strange noise. Not the usual rushing sound but something similar, I can’t remember exactly. I was aware of myself lying on the bed and assumed that my body was in a state of paralysis. I decided to try and move my “dream body”. Although I felt as if I was moving in thick treacle, with great effort I was able to slowly turn my body and lift my hands off the bed. I could still see nothing but vague shadows. I started repeating the words “I’m going to have a dream” and looked for some images to form. Nothing happened so I decided to try and “create” some images. For some reason I couldn’t think of anything to dream about! At that point I woke up, but without the familiar racing heartbeat and breathlessness. As I awoke I was still mouthing the words “I’m going to have a dream”! Needless to say after waking I could think of many things I could have tried to dream about. How frustrating!
After realising that I’m dreaming, is there anything I can do to stop the dream fading away like that?
blood?
i think that its the blood rushing though your ears, that the brain filters out, and the part of the brain that filters out that noise gets switched off i guess.
Speedie, you are experiencing the same thing I am.
As a matter of fact you describe it MUCH better then I do, yet it’s exactly what I heard after thinking.
I described the sound I heard as high pitched TV snow, but anyway this has been happening to me every night because I have been inducing it. Here’s what I do.
I’m on a strict sleep schedule and I have to wake up at 6:00AM every day. So I set my alarm for 4:30AM along with 6:00AM.
When I wake up at 4:30 I just turn off the alarm and go right back to bed. I pretty much keep my mind awake by doing anything. My favorite method is “1. I’m dreaming 2. I’m dreaming 3. I’m dreaming.”
Well, sometimes, not all the time, I see images. I don’t even see them for more then a second. Then after seeing or not seeing the images my body enters paralysis. It feels like painless jolts of electricity are going through my body. For some reason when I reach this state I find it incredibly easy to stay awake because the sounds you described kick in.
I hear weird sounds… very very weird sounds. They never scare me but almost awoke me. Here’s my log of what happened since Tuesday.
I had the most vivid dream of my life on Tuesday, ever since that day I have been experimenting with WILD. I manage to get into SP every night since. The thing I’m having trouble with is staying awake while in SP. I know I said it’s very easy to stay awake during this period, but it’s also just as easy to fall asleep. If I let my mind wander for 1 second I will fall asleep.
Tonight I should successfuly induce an LD, I have been trying for the longest.
Hey, I’m glad I clicked on this one. ^^ I got the rushing noise last night… and was about to ask about it myself. o.O Although it reminded me more of static at the time, now that I think about it it was like rushing water. It scared the crap out of me though.
Oh yea, I almost forgot something. I also had a wierd feeling when trying to go back to sleep (after I heard the noise and woke myself up). It felt like something jumped onto my pillow. o.O; That probably sounds nuts… but that’s the best I can explain it. It just felt like a small cat jumped from the floor onto the upper-right corner of my pillow. I’m pretty sure the pillow and my head both bobbed/moved because of the “impact,” but it was probably my imagination or something…
Er, has anyone expierienced anything like that?
That sounds familiar. When I am half-asleep in the morning, sometimes I have a false awakening and a totally convincing feeling of a cat jumping onto the bed. At the same time, I know it is not real.
I think I shouldn’t have read this topic too much… Because now I found this can be really too loud… And I noticed it is really like radio static. I could even hear snatches of bad-tuned programs. I wonder if it had always sounded like this or it became sound like this when I read this thread. And sometimes it sounds like a big mechanism working…
speedie, i agree with Garlic on this and i am pretty sure you had a WILD and SP. the odd dizzy feeling is characterised in SP, also rocking sensation, falling sensation or as later mentioned, somthing jumping on the pillow.
the noises you describe also occur in SP. and Garlic is like a hero to me now. i always get scared by those sounds. static, i agree, and the noise is high in volume, basically have no real audio meaning, and come in loud pulses. this leads me to agree with Baloogan that is might very well be the blood gushing thru the ears…
i have personally had SPs several times, sometimes 4 times a week, each night experiencing 3-4 instances of it. on typically bad nights i get hit 15-20 times continuously withing a period of a few minutes. im saying its bad because im vastly afraid of SPs, i cant move and can only manipulate my eyes and diaphragm. plus the unpleasant audio signals which give me so much pressure to get out of the situation. nowadays i try to keep a regular sleep pattern. a major portion of the cause of SP for me is irregualr sleep pattern, where i sleep for 5-6hours and stay awake for 12 hours then nap for another 3-5 hours and stay awake for 20+hours.
from the others’ comments u could have had a WILD. but for your first paragraph, u definitely had an SP
I first had SP when I was like 8 or 10 years old, I can’t remember.
I was in my grandmothers house sleeping on the patio out side. She lives in this place called Vero Beach and the nights get really dark up there.
Well anyway, I had SP and I heard the sounds you heard. Well, it freaked me the hell out. I was oh so scared. I had gone onto websites telling people my story and I was even contacted by this one person who told me I was abducted.
Well, since then I had the experience so many times. It would always freek me out. Well, anyway, I stumbled upon this site, and now I actually enjoy going into this state.
Just remember, it’s nothing to fear and if you’re lucky you can turn it into one of the best LD’s of your life.
It sounds very similar to what i experience during sleep paralysis… I usually first hear this rushing sound, then i sometimes hear this static like sound, which can be compared to the static you hear on a radio just that it changes pitch.
You are really close to dreaming/sleeping during this SP, so you can really use this ability to your advantage
Yes, i have experienced something similar quite often.
Since you are virtually both asleep and awake at same time, your imagination is very much real. You can have both tactile, audio and visual hallucinations that are so real that you will have a hard time differing them from reality. This can be quite scary for some people in beginning…
In fact, during this state of mind, it is said that the mind can become highly sensible to various forms of creativity.
).
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), but it never is an OBE, because later I always notice difference between my real room and what I saw in the dream. But I don’t want to say that if I cannot have OBE no one can. When you learn to stay in this state longer, you will just check if it is really your room or only the idea of your room…
I love it!
I wonder if it had always sounded like this or it became sound like this when I read this thread. 
And sometimes it sounds like a big mechanism working…