The Dark Room, Eyes Open
By Eugene Raphael · Essay & Practice Report · Liminal Light Lab
Practice: dark room gazing, open-eye hypnagogia, and fixing the particles in silence. Theme: how a practice I picked up from the Castaneda community turned out to work best for me with my eyes open.
Where this came from
I first learned about the dark room practice from the Castaneda community. Credit where it's due: the people at r/castaneda have done a lot of work on it, and that's where I came across it.
The basic idea is simple. Sit in a dark room and gaze into the darkness, keeping your mind silent, and let whatever wants to appear appear.
I didn't expect much at first. I've always been better at feeling things than visualizing them. But when I went back through my 2024 journal recently, I found that it had worked for me quite a bit, and in a way I hadn't really put together at the time. It worked with my eyes open. It was almost like open-eye hypnagogia.
Starting with the dots
For me, this practice didn't start in the dark room. It started with the dots.
I've seen particles of light for most of my life. Everywhere I look, in daylight or darkness, there's a field of tiny multicolored dots flowing in and around everything. In modern terms it's probably what's called visual snow. Those dots became the doorway.
Early in 2024 I started gazing at them on purpose at night, with my eyes open.
Jan 20, 2024. Night, open-eyed. Began gazing. Amazed at detail. Noticed dots of energy were stuck. Began pushing them loose and was surprised that they would take off moving. I was forcing silence. After this I don't remember, must have passed out.
By March I had a clearer method. Fix the dots in place, keep the mind quiet, and watch what they become.
Mar 2, 2024. White dots. Gaze and fixate on them. Don't let them move. Silence seems to keep them from moving. As this is maintained, they change into various shapes, bizarre objects, object outlines, and other weird details. This can be done awake, perhaps even eyes open or dark room.
The screen pulls over
A week later I tried it with my eyes open.
Mar 11, 2024. Open eyes. Saw a man leaning against a house. Also saw a strange pattern, hard to describe. Blank sheet over vision like eye screen. Open eyes work. It felt like falling asleep with eyes open, like a strange screen was pulled over my vision. Could try this in dark closet, but with mask on it seemed fine.
"Open eyes work." What happened is a lot like the hypnagogic imagery you get at sleep onset. A screen slides over normal vision, and pictures start forming on it. The difference is that my eyes were open and I was awake.
The dark room
Two days later I took it into the dark room proper.
Mar 13, 2024. Dark room hypnagogic imagery, eyes open. Faces, a child sitting on a couch, an older woman with blonde hair and a bob cut saying she's with her family now. Dots turning into rings, and my chair rocking back and forth in quick jerking motions.
This one stays with me. It wasn't just imagery. There was a voice, there were figures with a sense of story, and there was a physical sensation of my chair rocking in quick jerks. And underneath it all, the same dots I always see were turning into rings. The scene grew straight out of the particle field.
Easier with the eyes open
In April I was working with a sensation I'd found just above the bridge of the nose, between the eyes.
Apr 14, 2024. Third eye sensation. Repeatable. Seemed to trigger hypnagogic state. Voices. Galaxy. Giant eye. 3rd eye blink.
Can trigger a feeling above the bridge of the nose by moving the eyes back and forth slightly across a dividing line in the center of the body. It seems to work better when focusing the eyes inside the "space" of the luminous cocoon. This creates a subtle sensation that feels located just above the bridge of the nose, between the eyes. It's a lot like the "jolts."
Playing with this last night I noticed that feeling seems to coincide with a feeling I get when I'm seeing hypnagogic imagery. I also noticed this is a repeatable sensation. It's easier to "feel" it with the eyes open, but can also be found with the eyes closed.
It's easier with the eyes open because when the eyes are open it's easier to focus on the luminosity within the cocoon, by blurring your eyes and focusing there. Like done in the "right way of walking."
What came next was energetic in nature. In my words from that entry, the imagery "appears to be made of 'threads of energy.'"
I saw a white line and realized I was seeing an object from the side. As my point of view changed I realized it was a spiraling galaxy. I heard "you are seeing the future" in my left ear.
...This time I saw a wide horizontal line drawn with fibers of energy. The pupil was moving back and forth ever so slightly. It even blinked.
Then my whole view was enshrouded by a white light that held the outer shape of an eye, and it was blinking. When the blink was in a closed position I saw a white line extended each direction, before it disappeared.
In a nap that same day I used the sensation again and went past the relaxed, numb state where my practice usually ends:
I found focusing on that tingling sensation seemed to produce imagery. I saw a room as if from far off, but it lacked in clarity. Then I saw a white intensity moving other threads of energy in a grid pattern. Also at one point I was staring at a tiled wall, fully detailed greenish tiles. It hadn't been grouted yet.
Other open-eye moments
Once I'd noticed it, open-eye perception kept showing up, both deliberately and by accident.
Apr 28, 2024. When I woke up this morning I could see the room around me. It didn't even dawn on me to try to enter dreaming. I was half asleep. Not understanding I was seeing through my closed eyes and sleep mask.
May 21, 2024. Open eye with mask. Spiders and strange things appearing. Imagery and irrational stuff. Then very intense purple swarms.
And one morning at work:
Aug 31, 2024. Head jolts repeated. Tiny white dot on blueberry muffin. I'm in a hypnagogic state, yet awake.
How it connects to Phosphene Gaze
Looking back, the dark room work and Phosphene Gaze are really the same practice in two settings. In both, you're not trying to visualize anything. You're working with what's already there: the particles, the phosphenes, the purple. You hold them steady with silence and let them organize.
What the dark room added for me was the open eyes. The particle screen is always in front of me, so I don't need to close my eyes to find it. Gazing into darkness with my eyes open gave me a way to stay awake right at the edge where the dots start turning into rings, faces, and scenes.
If you want to try it, here's the bare outline of what I did:
Darkness. Use a dark room, or a sleep mask with your eyes open behind it. The mask worked fine for me.
Gaze, don't look. Rest your eyes on the dots or the darkness itself. Don't chase anything.
Blur and find the center. Blur your eyes and focus on the luminosity within the cocoon. Move the eyes back and forth ever so slightly across the dividing line in the center of the body until you feel the sensation above the bridge of the nose.
Silence. Hold the inner dialogue still. For me, silence is what keeps the dots from moving.
Fix and wait. When something steadies, keep it steady. Let it change on its own: dots into rings, rings into shapes, shapes into scenes.
Write it down.
Takeaway
I went into the dark room thinking it was something you do with your eyes closed, or at least in a half-dream. For me, it turned out to be an open-eye practice. The screen pulls over your vision while you're still awake, and the particles you see every day become the raw material for dreaming.
Related
Community: Have you tried the dark room with your eyes open? What showed up? Come share it in the Techniques forum.
Liminal Light shares personal practice, not medical advice. Read About & Safety first.
Comments