This is normally how people go to sleep, here you are trying to stay lucid, so you stay aware, and instead of falling straight through TSG to sleep, (Theta Gamma State, there’s lots on that here if you use that as the search term) you are staying in between.
Below this is called “the Phase” as it comes from Michael Raduga’s work and that’s what he called this state of consciousness.
The Phase = TGS = Trance State.
This is how you astral project or lucid dream as well. It’s how you see entities in circle. You are in trance and getting controlled info from the astral via this state of consciousness.
I found a hand graph that depicts the stages and posted in in my Journal here: Maulbeere's Ramblings and Shiny Things - #177 by Mulberry
So, neither… They were already communicating and now you can sense it more easily. And you wanted to already have accepted the spell as manifest and real before you even started the ritual.
This is different though than developing communication with the subconscious such as in Remote Viewing, where a trance state is not involved.