Hi Everyone!
I would love to get a diagnosis of this experience (I won't bias results by saying what I think). The interesting thing is that there is definitely some possibility of 'scripting' here, since I have been reading a lot and experienced some deep philosophical realizations lately... but in some ways I think it could also be a case of 'scripted, yet valid'?!?
Practice up til this point:
Concentration practice using visual objects
-I have been using complex objects (such as flowers, plants, cracks in the sidewalk) rather than kasinas
-I think I often reach 1st Jhana: get 'lost' in the object, almost 'swimming' in it, with lots of weird visual effects
-'cutting edge' of concentration practice is noticing a strong feeling of bodily bliss, then tuning into that
-once I was very tuned into the bliss, had closed my eyes, and started to notice that the bliss itself was made of vibrations (a shift into Insight practice, I think)
Insight practise
-I usually do this on the bus to/from work, or while slowly walking around my neighborhood
-I start with some visual concentration to 'get in the mood', then I combine noting with choiceless awareness... once the noting gets fast I let it speed up to ~5 Hz and drop the labels
-I think I often get into Mind & Body: all the different moments of perception (sound, touch, emotional, thought) seem to be 'on an equal playing field' and all seem quite clear; I observe thoughts as beeing in many 'layers' (gross to subtle); most of the gross ones seem very Not Me, clear, and transient, I observe the quick appearance/disappearance of all the different moments of perception
-Since my practice started 'seeming to get somewhere', I often walk around for periods of hours or days thinking 'wow this is great, everything in the visual field seems so colorful, vivid, clear, and three-dimensional'; I find there is a certain method of breathing which really 'powers up' the sense of vivid perception
-My 'cutting edge' of insight seems to be Cause & Effect: I start feeling as if 'the universe is watching me', I feel a sense of guilt and a physical sense of wanting to slump over (ie in a bowing or penitent way)... I am suddenly concerned with 'acting correctly' in every little action and thought
-Interestingly, I don't think I have had many experiences where I really clarified the experience of intention vs. action... I had been thinking this was the 'next thing to do' in order to really clarify Cause & Effect
The Event in question:
-This morning around 3am I was 'accidentally' waking up from sleep...
-Some part of me managed to observe something that happened during that waking up transitional period
-I had a brief series of moments where 'the film broke in the projector'.... its hard to describe yet fascinating, basically it was like suddenly 'turning my attention away from the entire universe', in a flickering kind of way
-at first it was almost like no big deal since I was half asleep, then a moment later I thought 'what the heck just happened' and suddenly felt very awake with my mind reeling... I realized just how 'abnormal' things had seemed, almost 'outside the bounds of sanity'
-here's the big thing: I suddenly had the vivid impression that I had "Shared A Moment of Thought" with Everyone... in other words I had this sense that anyone who 'wakes up' in that weird way would not just be Having an Identical Experience as I just did... but rather they would literally be myself in that moment and vice versa, all partaking from this Same Identical moment of experience (!!) This was not a hindsight-theory, but something that occurred to me within 1 minute or less of having the experience
-another notable thing: the experience was definitely not something I could have consciously pictured, or made up, before it happened, it was a whole new category for me (well except perhaps for some weird stuff in the distant past, but that's another story and I had totally 'lost the feeling' of those past events)
-still dozing on/off, I caught myself having some weird imagery where I was walking around as a rotting corpse, and started worrying what my friends, family would think of that (then I woke up more again and saw the humor in that

)
-then, with eyes closed, a strange shimmering blackness expanded across my visual field, not completely but in different segments
-Notably I wouldn't say I saw white light... although more in hindsight I feel this *impression* of white light, as being something 'seeping through/in the cracks' of that experience (I suppose it's obvious what I'm wondering about when I talk about the presence/absence of white light haha)
-Eventually I went back to sleep
...since getting up today I've been thinking all kinds of elaborate philosophical and scientific theory type stuff. (Which, to be fair, I often do.)
So, any takers?

Graeme