I experienced such states on several occasions, usually randomly once every two or three years. I resolved to explore it if it happened again, and sure enough I was ready when it did.

I soon discovered you don't have to wait years; it can happen a few times a week.

Simple technique: - wait until you've woken up after a dream. (so technically hypnopompic, not hypnagogic, but more powerful imho) - Any dream will do, but be careful not to drift back into normal consciousness (so don't think of work, taxes, todo's, etc) - instead, imagine something fanciful. Like swinging at a baseball in dodger stadium in slow-motion, or, my favorite, imagining you have the worlds smallest record player between your fingers & playing a song you like (funk music is good for this) - stay with the humorous feeling, let it grow awhile - after a minute or two, you should find the dream state has stabilized - once it's stable, and only then, call up a problem or life situation you'd like insight into, or just explore the landscape (what's behind that circus tent?) - try not to get too intellectual or willful, it can dispel the state

NB: no drugs required. But caffeine in the evening can increase the odds of waking after dreaming.

This is essentially lucid dream induction. Lucid dreaming is when you become conscious that you're dreaming while dreaming... and once you are consciously dreaming you can direct the dream actively rather than experiencing it passively. This can happen spontaneously during sleep, or it can be induced with techniques such as what you're describing.

I feel it sometimes when I think about holding the mouse, it feels like my teeth are extremely large and my hands are crazy tiny heaving the mouse along.

your thing on smallest record players between fingers really described that feeling for me, very cool.

What worked for me years ago was writing down my dreams. After a while I got really good at recalling them and even lucid dreaming at times. It was really cool, but I was single. Now I wouldn't want to wake my wife.

I used to do that and I had to stop because my recall of the dreams was so detailed that it took me an hour to write it all down in the morning. The details were too vivid to gloss over or not write down, and eventually I wanted that hour back so I stopped writing the dreams down. It was very cool while I was doing it though.

You could have taken voice notes instead. Must have saved lots of time.

I wonder if other changes, not just sleep, but quick changes to environment can create this effect as well.

Your description regarding the feeling you had walking your dogs is very similar to something which happened to me once just as I was leaving work, as I was walking out of my office.

As I walked out the door, everything felt very crisp, my mind felt lighter, and it was as if my senses were working at 200%. At that time I believe I experienced that same "clarity regarding anything I examined in my mind" you described. I thought about several things and knew in that moment exactly what needed to be done in each of them, with what felt like more than absolute certainty. It only lasted a few minutes, and had left by the time I returned home.

It's never happened again. When I think back on that day, I can almost feel it, like I'm grasping at that sense of clarity, but it always remains out of reach.

I had a very similar experience walking out of a movie theater after watching a particularly good movie this year. I walked around the main street in my town and it saw it from completely new eyes, and was able to appreciate everything about it without any prior opinions or memories about all the restaurants and shops on the block. It was surreal.

I also was able to, just like you said, become aware of a couple of large life problems that I had been unconsciously ignoring, and felt such a serene sense of "absolute certainty" about what I wanted to do about them

If I could just have that state 3-4 times a year! It was genuinely magical

> I thought about several things and knew in that moment exactly what needed to be done in each of them, with what felt like more than absolute certainty.

Exactly!

I enter such state quite often, as a result of a pattern I used to enter lucid dreams when younger I can recognize and voluntarily drift into 'aware naps' - apparently based on wife feedback I can do everything from chores to rocking my daughter bed but speech patterns are garbled, even if internally I hear the conversation and interiorly think coherent answers. She just has to wake me and I can immediately and accurately answer.

People would think narcolepsy or sleepwalking, but it's voluntary, I keep memories, and keep doing whatever I need to be doing.

I guarantee that someone out there can recommend a substance which achieves that effect

Half a tab of LSD can get you there and keep you there for hours.

BRB, trying.

Weed could do it. Other things too, but weed is always a good first stop for nice mind effects.

Honestly, I've experimented a lot with mind altering substances and that was something quite different.

And then a dozen others will jump in saying that regardless of the actual authenticity of the experience it doesn't count if you did it by directly altering brain chemistry rather than indirectly altering brain chemistry.

Meditation, if you don't overdo it (namely no longer than 30 minutes) has the same effect.

I was into meditation for years and only once doing Zazen I remember experimenting something similar.

It's certainly possible I was doing it wrong though, but even in one of those 12 day silent Vipassana retreats I never got that kind of clarity.

I'm definitely not qualified to claim what's the right and wrong way of doing it but I've never dedicated even a single day solely on meditation in my life.

Usually I was kind of like "phew, I feel tired and stressed, time to lay down with eyes closed for a bit", and it all evolved naturally from there (similarly to the so-called power naps of 30 minutes).

So at least the key for my success in mediation was to treat it like a damage mitigation technique and nothing else. And for me that works very well.