Comment by veli_joza

I was introduced to this phenomenon through Kurzweil's book "How to create a mind". He claims that the brain is massively parallelized pattern recognition machine, with consciousness being a censor that filters results. While in hypnagogia, this censoring function is suppressed and you are able to make "unthinkable" connections between ideas you normally think are unrelated. Of course, you should just take notes of these connections and later evaluate them rationally to see if they have any merit. It's very exciting that technology might be able to prolong and enhance this creative state of mind.