Photo by Linda Mastrangelo
To sleep! perchance to dream:--ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come.
This quote is from my favorite Shakespeare play, Hamlet from Act III, Scene 1. Hamlet has just learned that his uncle had murdered his father in order to be king and marry his mother. Mad with grief and thoughts of revenge, Hamlet is contemplating suicide and ponders whether this action might carry on into the afterlife without impunity. In other words what happens when we die and is death worse than life? What is even more stunning about this scene is how Hamlet receives this morbid information; from his own dead father’s lips. This is the topic of my article today; the presence of the dead in the hypnagogic state
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But was exactly is hypnagogia?
The term ‘hypnagogic’ was coined by the 19th-century French psychologist LF Alfred Maury, and is derived from two Greek words, Hypnos (sleep) and agogeus (guide, or leader). It is that brief transition between wakefulness and sleep and has many names including ‘borderland state’, the ‘half-dream state’, the ‘pre-dream condition’. In the hypnagogic state we often have extraordinary visions, perhaps in the form of geometric shapes and patterns of bright light or we might have auditory experiences of loud knocking or familiar voices or even more dramatic a supernatural heightening of our senses and perhaps even profound answers to life’s most important questions.
But what’s even more fascinating is the many cases reported of the hypnagogic visitation dreams by departed loved ones or visions of the dying as they transition into death. The visionary and philosopher Rudolph Steiner of the famous Waldorf Schools emphasized the importance of the hypnagogic state. In his book Inner Nature of Man and Life Between Death and Rebirth he advised that the best time to communicate with the dead was during the period between sleep and wakefulness because “(e)ach day when we fall asleep and when we experience the interval between sleeping and waking, we are in our soul and spiritual nature out-side our body.”
Photo of Patricia Garfield, Ph.D.
Case Studies
Steiner is certainly not alone in his beliefs. Dream researcher and clinical psychologist, Patricia Garfield,Ph.D. also collected visitation dreams and examined their import in her book The Dream Messenger: How Dreams of the Departed Bring Healing Gifts. She has noted cases of lucid or hypnagogic experiences of the dead visiting their loved ones either in person, through a voice or even in animal form. The reason is to offer them comfort if they are grieving, give them an important message or simply let them know they’re happy and well. Often the dreamer is changed by these experiences in a profound way. This is also the case for those who are dying and transitioning into death.
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