A woman describes feeling gradually more and more absorbed in vivid, dream-like scenes over several hours, with the boundary between her ordinary awareness and the altered state impossible for her to pinpoint. Before revealing the answer: is this a twilight state?

No, this does not fit a twilight state well. A twilight state requires a break in the continuity of consciousness — a distinct episode with an identifiable boundary — rather than a gradual drift with no clear edge between ordinary awareness and the altered state. The vivid, dream-like quality she describes points more toward a dream-like change of consciousness, which is characterised by florid, complex hallucinatory experience as its outstanding feature. The gradual, boundary-less onset described here is itself an important negative finding against a twilight state, since sudden onset and end are characteristic of the organic form of that presentation.