How to distinguish betwen psychic ability progress and hypnagogic/falling asleep

[cesm23]

First of all, by hypnagogic imagery i also mean image streaming, those images and feelings we use to get before sleeping but still awake.

I have been reading forums like these for years and i read so much... for what i see here, most of the persons that descrive psychic experiences, such experiences are always SO  similar to the things i have in the hypnagogic imagery stage and also when i am falling asleep. The problem is that just the idea of me having all this work in wanting to develop psychic abilities and the only "results" is... falling asleep is very very un-motivating to me, hence why i had quit SO many times before because to me falling asleep means absolutly not any progress at all and that i am just wasting my time, so you get the idea, just because of this lack of motivation, such exercices most of the times become almost like torture, because usually absolutly nothing works on me ever (not even brainwave entrainment). By the way i use to have hypnagogic imagery almost everytime i do any meditation at all (that is, only when i actually suceed in clearing my mind)

Is there a way to know if such experiences are REALLY some results from psychic development exercices/energy work/meditation or JUST a natural side effect of falling asleep?? Unless maybe these two indications are what i am looking for can someone tell me if these things could be indicators of progress or not :

- many times, when i have hypnagogic imagery and i don't fall asleep afterwards, i feel my whole upper body pulsating. This is quite strange, because i never had any other side effects from this, besides just hypnagogic imagery, maybe this is normal when trying to go to sleep ?

- during hypnagogic imagery state about half of the times i have it, i think i DON'T lose conciousness at all before having it and i am actually aware that i am having it and that i am not actually sleeping. The other times tought, it seems more like a dream and when i awake i notice that i had losed conciousness, and also during it i wasn't aware that i was having those visions. Could this difference mean, that it's actually good progress being aware during hypnagogic imagery state and not losing conciousness ?

[Stookie]

I would guess that hypnogogics themselves are normal and non-psychic. The act of maintaining awareness through them can help strengthen our awareness for other modes of perception. It's more about how and where we choose to focus our awareness. You can use the hypnogogics as a springboard into other states of consciousness.

In other words, awareness is the key, not the hypnogogics.

[Leannain]

Yesterday I was listening to the "Orientation" tape of the First Wave Cd of the Monroe "Gateway" program. While I was there, looking at the darkness(my eyes were closed), suddenly, the image of a house comes out of nowhere. I didn't imagine it. It just sprang. Is that the Hypnagogic state?

Thanks 

[cesm23]

I would guess that hypnogogics themselves are normal and non-psychic.

Yes that's what i already "feared" i just would like to know how do we distinguish them from visual psychic impressions that psychics get, unless it's not possible to get images with clairvoyance like these we get in the hypnagogic stage?

The act of maintaining awareness through them can help strengthen our awareness for other modes of perception. It's more about how and where we choose to focus our awareness. You can use the hypnogogics as a springboard into other states of consciousness.

In other words, awareness is the key, not the hypnogogics.

Speaking of that, i did a VERY interesting experience last night when i was trying to sleep, please give me your opinion about the results

When i was trying to sleep (my bedroom wasn't completly dark, there's always some very mild lightning every night) that night was one of those in which i started getting into the hypnagogic stage. It was both images and sounds (voices), so i remembered to try again something i tried a few times and i wasn't sucessfull : i tryed to keep those hypnagogic images and sounds with my eyes OPEN. Needless to say, even if i open my eyes very slowly, as soon as they are open, the sounds immediatly ceased (the images already ceased since the first try and didn't came back during these attempts, only the sounds). Then when i closed my eyes they came back in a few seconds, and so on. BUT after the 4th or 5th try they started to happen also with my eyes opened (not for long of course) which was a big surprise to me this never happened before, but this time i started hearing also other very strange sounds, which i usually read that people hear when trying to astral project, for example, the sound of a cardboard being teared hard (it's hard to explain this in english since it's not my native language) and those are quite loud, i also heared a sound similiar to a ballon when it's popped. Also these sounds aren't new to me i already got a few of them sometimes during hypnagogics but never with eyes opened. I got about 2-3 of these when i had my eyes open, but besides that nothing more happened. Then i decided to roll over in my bed (which i always use to do) to go to sleep for real, and strangely i felt a little bit dizzy, this also never happened before just because of trying these things... (also my heart beating was normal, i could notice it since my upper body was a pulsating a bit harder than usual, but this uses to happen when i try hypnagogic while sit too). Also my body, even before the roll wasn't completly stopped, i was just relaxed, but i wasn't having any vibrations or paralysis at all and also no energy sensations at all. But it was really weird hearing those sounds for the first time with my eyes opened (and yes i was seeing part of my room, as i said it wasn't totally dark). Let's see if i am able to recreate this more times since seems to be interesting (at least i hope there isn't anything dangerous about this, right ?)

[CFTraveler]

Ok, I have a slightly different viewpoint.
Hypnagogics are brain-generated, but not 'invented'- that is, the brain is replaying images of things you have seen in your life at some point or another.  Most of what you see goes directly into your subconscious, without notice, and sometimes the things you don't think you've seen may have been seen and then forgot.
At the same time, when you are nonphysical (when your consciousness is perceiving nonlocally, conscious or unconsciously (in other words, 'psychically')), it also is part of the information that gets regurgitated right back at you when in the hypnagogic state.
So the state (hypnagogic) is no different from 'clairvoyance', the content of the material is what may or not may be different.
The experience is there for anyone, but the ability to distinguish physically obtained images from nonphysically obtained images is what differentiates the psychic from the 'beginner'.  But the state is the same.
That's what I think, anyway.
And yeah, I'm just a beginner.

[cesm23]

Hum i see what you mean, but then what you think i should do to make ESP stuff coming in the hypnagogic stage ? I mean there's gotta something we do in this state to avoid falling asleep and getting ESP stuff in here... is it just a matter of practising and keep trying ?

Also several months ago i also did a different experiment, i was hearing voices in this stage and then i actually tried to make that voice say what i wanted, i mean, i visualized ("audialized"    loool) the voice speaking speciafic words and sentences that i wanted and it actually worked! Now of course it was a voice that i already heared before but the things i "heared" it say i never heared before.. (it was a voice from a tv show dub so you see my point) and i was hearing it just like a normal physical sound, only that i am always able to notice that it's "in my head". I also tried a similar experiment with images and it also worked. But unfortunately this was quite hard to do and i never was able to achieve this again, even tough i haven't tried that hard (or that often), lol