Twilight of consciousness
August 20th, 2007 |Do you remember the exact moment that you fell asleep last night? I suspect that you don’t.
I’m sure that you remember going to bed (unless you are Timmer), but how much do you recall after getting under the covers (unless you are Jim R)?
There is a period of time between when you go to bed and when you fall asleep where you are not sleeping, but you will have no recollection of that time the next day.
How long does that moment last?
What did you think about?
Why don’t you remember?
Perhaps the best ideas of your whole life occur to you during the period but, as soon as you fall asleep, they are forgotten forever.
7 Responses to “Twilight of consciousness”
Pizza
Smithers, I having a sleepy moment now…
I was thinking that the Radius #3 should be at 3:00 pm
http://www.keystonesymposia.org/8C5
Let me know. I can hook you up.
you should read Surely You’re Joking Dr. Feynman. he talks about when he was a kid he would try to remain aware as long as he could while falling asleep, and found that eventually he could control his own dreams. they also talk about that in the movie Waking Life.
I second Plan B, Feynman wrote about it. In fact, you can find the relevant passage from his book here. Before actually reading the book, I had observed myself in the same way and was amazed to find that the following excerpt from Feynman’s book matched exactly my own experience. Perhaps it’s universal.
“I got interested. Now I had to answer this question: How does the stream of consciousness end, when you go to sleep?
So every afternoon for the next four weeks I would work on my theme, I would pull down the shades in my room, turn off the lights, and go to sleep. And I’d watch what happened, when I went to sleep.
Then at night, I’d go to sleep again, so I had two times each day when I could make observations–it was very good!
At first I noticed a lot of subsidiary things that had little to do with falling asleep. I noticed, for instance, that I did a lot of thinking by speaking to myself internally. I could also imagine things visually.
Then, when I was getting tired, I noticed that I could think of two things at once. I discovered this when I was talking internally to myself about something, and while I was doing this, I was idly imagining two ropes connected to the end of my bed, going through some pulleys, and winding around a turning cylinder, slowly lifting the bed. I wasn’t aware that I was imagining these ropes until I began to worry that one rope would catch on the other rope, and they wouldn’t wind up smoothly. But I said, internally, “Oh, the tension will take care of that,” and this interrupted the first thought I was having, and made me aware that I was thinking of two things at once.
I also noticed that as you go to sleep the ideas continue, but they become less and less logically interconnected. You don’t notice that they’re not logically connected until you ask yourself, “What made me think of that?” and you try to work your way back, and often you can’t remember what the hell did make you think of that!
So you get every illusion of logical connection, but the actual fact is that the thoughts become more and more cockeyed until they’re completely disjointed, and beyond that, you fall asleep.”
That period of time defines my entire life.