Imagining so vividly that it looks and sounds real

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I have a very vivid imagination, but and most of the time it's not so vivid that it seems real. Generally when I am tired and on the verge of falling asleep it becomes more vivid to the point that it blurs with reality, and I am not talking about dreaming. I have done a lot of research on sleep for lucid dreaming purposes and I havn't heard of anything like this, so I am thinking that it must be an autistic thing. It's on my mind right now because two notable events of this sort happened this week.

This morning I was dozing off a bit because I have been a bit sleep deprived lately and I entered that strange state where my imagination becomes as vivid as reality. I was thinking of some song and then I realized that I was actually hearing it, and quite loudly at that. When I got up to see where it was coming from it instantly stopped and I was in silence. It sounded just as real as the music I am listening to right now, and the whole time I was fully aware of the position of my body and everything.

A few days ago I was lying in bed in the early morning (trying to go back to sleep) and I noticed to my supprise that I was seeing stuff despite my eyes clearly being closed. In that case it looked like I was in a dimly lit white box the same size as my room, and when I opened my eyes it instantly changed into my room. This has happened on many other occasions, sometimes I see an almost identical representation of the room I am in or some other room that I have slept in before. I'm pretty sure that it wasn't a dream because I was still aware of my body and when I opened my eyes I didn't experience the usual sensations of exiting a dream (which usually feels like a lot of shaking/tinglyness as well as there being a loud ringing sound and my body seeming to instantly change positions, I know this because of my lucid dreaming experimentation).

So has anyone else experienced anything like this or am I the only one?

I think this is vivid dreaming, sometimes I dream of RL, sometimes I dream of being on the internet. Even posting here. When I get up I do that at-least post wise.

I have dreams like that too, but I don't see how this could be a dream. Usually after an episode like that ends I get up and continue the rest of my day, so it's clear that I am not in a dream after it ends especially considering that I am a lucid dreamer in training who does reality checks regularly. I also never feel myself passing through that state in between sleep and wakefulness that I am quite familiar with at this point. When it's happening I am fully aware of my body, I can move around and when I open my eyes then I am in the position I moved to (even if it's sitting up) although that generally causes the image to fade a bit. In that state my thoughts often get loud enough that if someone were to talk to me then I might dismiss their voice as imaginary, which happened yesterday morning in one of the instances described in the OP.

Yup sometimes but not in dreams but while awake. I can imagine things in great detail. I swear when I was younger i could imagine things in more detail than actual life although i dont know how that can work lol. It's kinda not as easy to picture things in such detail as the past but still pretty well.
I don't know if it's an ASD thing. I thought it'a just that some people think I'm pictures more .

Sometimes I sorta do daydream stimming where I imagine abstract shapes or objects moving around in repetitive ways. A few days ago, I was imagining a complex shape folding up into a compressed space with a spring-lock mechanism that could be released at will. When I released it, it felt as though the actual object was being let loose near me and made me flinch violently and set my heart rate crazy as I expected sharp abstract prongs to impact with my body.

I mean I often have moments when I'm half-asleep and something makes me think I'm falling, and my body flinches thinking it's real, but this time was different because I was fully conscious and I was able to replicate it a few minutes later.

Sometimes I have really vivid dreams, even during the day.

There was this one time a few weeks ago where I was sleep deprived so I decided to take a nap in the middle of the day. I tried sleeping for almost 2 hours without success, but I entered that weird vivid imagination state regularly. I checked the clock and tested to see if I was in a dream frequently, and I am quite sure that I didn't fal aspeep at any point. That night though, I tried to go to sleep but I just wasn't tired. I couldn't sleep until about 3:00 AM, yet I was able to wake up for school just 5 hour later with no probelem. I wasn't sleep deprived any more, it was as if I actually did sleep for 2 hours in the day. That suggests that the state I was in was simelar enough to dreaming for it to count as time speant asleep even though I was constantly aware of my body lying in bed. It's very strange.