Imagine the same thought, over and over again.
For what seems like an eternity.
You do it.
And yet, it doesn’t feel right.
It feels… incomplete.
So you do it again.
Or, you forget you just did it and you repeat it any way, slightly more frustrated than
before.
This is the Tetris Effect.
It typically happens when you’ve repeated something over and over in the day and your
mind continues to do so when you’re trying to sleep that night.
I’ve had it with accounting T-tables.
I’ve had it with Unreal Tournament deathmatch!
I’ve even had it where I dream I’ve released a video to Youtube that I didn’t want to
and repeatedly imagined having to make it private again, even though nothing has actually
happened in real life.
It’s infuriating.
Like a 5 second ad that plays over and over again, but you’re not awake enough to force
yourself to think about something else.
Sometimes it goes further.
Occasionally I wake up from it, walk about for a bit and promise myself that I’m going
to stop thinking about it when I go back to bed… only to continue thinking about it
once I’m lying down again!
It makes you feel useless.
Even helpless, being unable to govern your own thoughts.
I’d understand it if the thought was about something important or troubling my mind the
rest of the time.
But it never is.
The Tetris effect doesn’t happen to me too frequently.
But it’s the only reason I’ve ever found to justify having a quiet hour or so before
going to bed.
Just like Mum always said to!
Not that it helps.
I still repeatedly dreamed that my girlfriend was a set of accounts when in a tent while
out in the middle of nowhere.
You’ll see a trend with these experiences of mine.
It’s not the sleeping that’s the problem, it’s just getting there and the waking up
again.
The difficulties of being half awake, yet not enough to be able to make sense of it!
My Dad told me about out of body experiences when I was a child and how you could achieve
it by concentrating enough when lying in bed at night.
Imagining a rope that you use to climb out of your body or whatever.
Of course I was fascinated with the idea, and since I spent so long awake, just lying
in bed, I would often give it a go.
I mean I never achieved it (not from trying, at least), but I discovered something else
that was pretty cool, that you’re free to try tonight with absolutely no effort what
so ever!
In fact, it helps if you don’t do anything.
Because the trick is to lie completely still.
And I mean COMPLETELY still.
Your body actually doesn’t like that.
It will give you an itch somewhere and you’ll wish you could move to scratch it.
But you can’t!
You just have to ignore it and carry on.
You’ll begin to notice every crease in the bed.
Every toe that touches another.
Any muscles you may accidentally be using to stop your head from rolling off the pillow.
You have to relax completely.
It should only take 5-10 minutes before your body suddenly switches off.
It’s a pretty cool feeling!
It’s almost as if you’re hovering in the middle of nowhere, unable to feel the bed
around you.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s nothing spiritual, or even to do with sleep.
Your body has just gone into a computery sort of sleep mode, having received no sensory
updates from the world or yourself for a while.
AND YOU’LL FIND YOU CAN’T MOVE!
Just kidding.
You’ll be able to move whenever you like, which will return you instantly to your normal
boring self with a slight jolt as your muscles kick into action again.
But the plus side is that for a few minutes your body feels like it does when you first
wake up in the morning where it’s nice to roll around and stuff.
Makes sense I guess, since in both situations your body’s been still for a period of time.
Honestly?
I don’t believe in spirits.
Or ghosts.
Or religions.
I’d like to!
I’d love to believe that we’re part of something greater and more meaningful.
I just haven’t ever found the proof I’d need to believe it.
And I think it’s doing a huge disservice to our world when you give the credit for
anything fantastic to the super natural.
In the last sleep video I did I said how I could see the coach I was sitting in, even
when my eyes were closed.
I don’t think it’s any huge stretch to think that Out of Body Experiences are anything
but an extension of that, especially when they’re usually done- not just when sleeping-
but when drugged during an operation, or when your brain’s releasing a load of chemicals
when it thinks it’s dying.
I’m saying these things now because you need to know this about me.
I have no agendas I’m trying to push with these videos, other than to try and document
and to share the strange things that have happened to me in a sleepy state.
So far, I’ve covered things that you may have also experienced yourself but now I’m
going to cover the things that most people haven’t.
I often hear music or voices when lying in bed.
Almost like a distant radio.
It’s not scary.
In fact, it’s a reassuring sound!
Because when this starts, I know that sleep is finally approaching, often after hours
of just lying there.
I can best describe it like this: imagine a song, playing in your head.
You can hear it, even though you can’t.
But now imagine that this happens without you having to think of it.
And with songs that don’t exist, but that you still consider music.
It’s like your subconscious is putting on a radio station for you.
Your subconscious.
I’ve talked about this thing before.
The thing that’s responsible for the bits of dreams that you can’t control.
And now here it is, creeping into my awake state.
It’s not scary.
I never think of it as an evil entity that I want out of my head.
It goes further than just a radio station, though: when I’m really desperate for sleep
I sometimes think up a load of abstract images and scenes to try and fool my body into starting
it as a dream for real.
It doesn’t work!
It’s a pretty silly thing to try.
But do this when your body’s radio is playing and it’s like you’re given a hand.
Less effort is required to think it up and to maintain it.
It’s like you’re collaborating on it with somebody else.
As though your imagination is suddenly boosted by something else!
Obviously, the other thing being your subconscious.
It can be exhilarating.
I also wonder if it’s why loads of artists insist that getting drugged up helps them
in some way.
I dunno.
So this subconscious character, he seems like a pretty cool guy!
The sort you wouldn’t mind as your flatmate.
Perhaps invite him around for a LAN party occasionally.
He and I have a strange, fleeting friendship that lasts just those couple of minutes before
I fall asleep sometimes.
It’s never unpleasant.
It’s just a nice bit of company.
A moment where I feel like there’s more going on than just what I’m doing myself.
Somehow I don’t think that I’m ever going to get to know him better than that.
But I did have a strange and similar encounter as a child.
I was ill at the time.
Nothing serious, but I did go to sleep in the middle of the day.
Which was unusual.
Whilst in bed I had a vivid, feverish dream.
I think I was playing a game of some sort on my bedroom wall, sort of like Pong only
instead of a ball there were millions of triangles I had to knock over like dominos to generate
an exhilarating rushing feeling.
IT DIDN’T MAKE SENSE.
Although it did at the time!
I was ill, okay?!
It doesn’t matter.
What does is that I wasn’t alone in this experience.
I was playing it with somebody.
It didn’t dawn on me how strange it was at the time.
It wasn’t like your typical dream, filled with NPCs.
This person…
I didn’t see.
I only felt that he was there, playing this game with me.
And I felt so CONNECTED with him.
It was comfortable, like being with an old friend.
It’s this feeling that has stuck with me.
Whether it’s just an elaborate dream or a glitch with my subconscious, I don’t care.
I just find it reassuring that I may encounter it again when I’m feverish and delirious,
perhaps on my deathbed, looking for some sort of reassurance before the end.
I’m struggling to talk about these things.
I wouldn’t have a problem talking about them in conversation in real life.
But on the internet, with thousands of strangers?
I’m not going to lie.
I feel like I’m being judged.
I know that I myself would be quick to judge somebody who talked about these things.
The content of this video is straying dangerously close to what you’d typically find on those
weird spiritual sites, probably still using that classic 90’s webpage style.
I’m not ‘religious’.
I’m not under the influence of drugs when experiencing these things.
And I don’t THINK that I’m mentally ill.
I just want to put out there that there IS something interesting to explore in this half-awake
state.
Something unknown and mysterious, and that can still put me in a state of wonder and
awe.
And I don’t need DMT to get me there.
Just a crappy sleep cycle.
But it’s not over yet.
I’ve saved my most unbelievable and terrifying encounters with sleep to last, which I will
be covering in a third video.