Sleep paralysis or what happens while we sleep - an enchanted soul. Borderline state between sleep and reality Techniques for inducing a state between sleep and wakefulness
Borderline state between Dream and Reality
The borderline state is a specific state that almost everyone who practices so-called “lucid dreaming” experiences. This state has quite stable characteristics, so I attribute it to one of the levels of the Dreaming process.
We can say that this is a state in which a person is at the intersection of the “lines” of wakefulness, normal sleep and Dreaming. This can happen for two reasons: natural awakenings in a certain state of sleep and as a result of Dreaming practice.
Distinctive features of this condition:
it is difficult to determine whether you are asleep or awake;
it is difficult to move the physical body;
the presence of various unusual phenomena.
How does this usually happen?
A person tries to enter the Dream from a waking state. After some time, his consciousness begins to “float” and fall into a state of drowsiness. Thanks to this floating state, the dreamer can wake up in one of the dream states, i.e. - for some time he seems to fall into sleep, and then wakes up again, but after a while, having fallen into sleep, he wakes up already in a dream (as if, without fully emerging to the surface into the waking world).
Usually, it happens like this: while performing the technique of entering the Dream, the practitioner falls asleep and his consciousness falls asleep. But suddenly, at a certain point in time, he realizes that his eyes are open and he is observing the usual picture of his bedroom from a lying position. And here, the dreamer may feel that the body is numb and difficult to move, or, raising his hands to his face, he may notice that the hands of the sleeping body have remained in their place. It feels like I didn’t fall asleep, but I didn’t wake up completely either.
Often in this state various unusual phenomena begin to occur, for example:
feeling of pressure on the body;
someone unfamiliar just stands and watches (acts less often);
the presence of shadows in the room (from amorphous to quite clear in outline);
various color spots on the interior of the room (as if colored lighting);
strange noise or voices (as if someone is talking behind the wall);
animals (may behave aggressively);
the presence of objects that do not correspond to the decor of the room (for example, there may be a small airplane standing in the middle of the room);
someone enters the room or knocks on the door;
someone you know begins to help you “get out of the body,” or vice versa, to prevent you from doing so;
other.
I have indicated only some phenomena, but there are many options. Much depends on the dreamer’s personal history - his ideas, expectations, fears, etc. The reasons for these phenomena can be different, I partially talked about this in my article “Frightening Images”.
A similar situation is often encountered by people who accidentally fall into this state due to sleep paralysis. At the moment, statistics are such that at least a third of the world's population has experienced this state at least once in their lives. So far, this phenomenon has not been fully studied, but we can already confidently say that the state of sleep paralysis is a natural phenomenon and is not a physical or mental pathology.
At first, when you encounter this phenomenon, it seems that the borderline state is a state between sleep and wakefulness. Here, the characteristics of reality, sleep and the “out-of-body state” seem to converge and overlap each other. At the same time, there is a feeling that you are not sleeping and, at the same time, there are signs of the manifestation of a “second body” and the chaos of random images characteristic of ordinary sleep. The state is paradoxical; at first it is very difficult to really understand whether you were sleeping or not.
Later, with practice, a different feeling and understanding of this phenomenon comes. This can most simply be described as a partial “out-of-body experience” (partial release of the dream body). For the main characteristic of this state is the incomplete exit of the dream body, its incomplete separation from the sleeping body. And what’s interesting is that over time, many unwanted and frightening phenomena go away on their own, often complete separation from the body is enough for this (which leads to certain thoughts).
Now this is perceived as one of the stages of the Dreaming process.
This article was automatically added from the community
What does a person see and feel between sleep and reality? For decades, psychologists, hypnologists and neurocybernetics have been struggling with these mysteries. The questions did not arise out of nowhere: there are precedents when mentally healthy people on the verge of falling asleep observed anomalous visions that subsequently left quite material traces in our world.
We know that the human brain works all the time, whether we are sleeping or awake, it generates and emits a certain type of waves. Encephalographs connected to the cerebral cortex impartially record electroencephalograms that reflect the activity of one or another activity of our thinking center. By the type of oscillations of alpha, beta, delta or theta waves, you can always determine which organ or system is active in the body. If we digest food, the brain prefers the alpha wave. If we write poetry, or paint a picture, or invent, then theta waves appear on the scene. They are responsible for a person’s creative streak.
When the brain pulsates in the borderline state of consciousness between sleep and reality, it is difficult to decipher this chaos of vibrations. There is nothing to compare with, there are no original sample diagrams, there are no adequate descriptions of the “correctness” of brain function. In this state, a person can see, hear, taste, touch. He is unable to separate the hallucination from the real picture. The illusory picture of the world and material reality in the internal neurocybernetic space of the brain are mixed in the most bizarre way and present to the mind a new pattern between the worlds of sleep and reality. Medicine says this is how testing long-term and short-term memory works. Information is sorted: rarely used information is discarded and remains in short-term memory, while unnecessary information is blocked, and we forget some episode; on the contrary, what is frequently used is rewritten into a long-term “brain storage”.
But we don’t believe that during the falling asleep phase the brain, like a ragpicker, does nothing but sort through all sorts of informational rubbish. Psychologists believe that the main command post of our central nervous system before sleep controls the processes of inhibition and wakefulness and looks for the shortest path to optimizing the state of the psyche between stress and comfort. Hypnologists still cannot give an exact definition of the state of hypnotic sleep (not to be confused with ordinary sleep) and deep trance. Neurosurgeons joke: during craniotomy, no mind, no mind, no consciousness, no soul is visible, and only the cerebral convolutions that require glucose and oxygen appear.
Some sensitive people who engage in introspection and self-immersion in trance argue that the borderline state of consciousness allows a person to see the world more integral and rich than ordinary materiality. Are they lying to themselves or others? Can these visions be completely attributed to hallucinations or can we take into account one fact that is still indisputable. The Universe, its visible and observable part, is barely 4% studied today, but what about the remaining 96%?
Modern science at various macro and micro levels suggests that not everything is as simple in the real world as in classical Newtonian mechanics or in Minkowski space-time. It is not for nothing that over the past fifty years many physical models about the structure of the world have appeared, expanding the horizons of the universe. These are additional dimensions where quantum gravity with gravitons hides. These are parallel Universes with their own physical constants and their own flow of time. These are cosmic strings with zero thickness, where hosts of other worlds can hide. The crown of scientific thought is the Metaverse, in which myriads of different Universes float like in an aquarium.
We do not yet know for sure what the human brain is capable of, especially in stressful or other borderline states of consciousness. Is the human brain capable of perceiving information from the Metaverse or other Universes? It is possible that it is precisely between sleep and reality, in order to see other worlds, that the brain “misbehaves” and, like a street racer, presses the gas pedal, forcing a person to gain, as it were, additional information for reflection. What if we learn something useful? The notorious periodic table is “iron” proof of this.
Every night, when a person dreams, the brain completely turns off his ability to control his body, plunging the body into a state of paralysis so that dreams do not “break through” into reality, scientists believe, or maybe they turn us off in order to feed on our energy while we sleep. The author of the video was not afraid to install a camera and film the room while he was sleeping. True, now it’s not entirely clear how he will sleep at all after what the camera filmed.
Every night, when a person dreams, the brain completely turns off his ability to control his body, plunging the body into a state of paralysis so that dreams do not “break through” into reality, said Vladimir Kovalzon, a member of the board of the International Society of Somnologists, Doctor of Sciences.
The scientist recalled that sleep consists of two phases - the phase of slow sleep, and rapid or paradoxical sleep. It is during the last phase that a person dreams.
“These are two different states - slow-wave sleep and fast sleep. Two fundamentally different states, differing from each other no less than sleep from wakefulness,” the scientist said on the eve of World Sleep Day, which is celebrated on March 19 this year.
For the first time, two stages of sleep were discovered with the advent of electroencephalography, a method of recording electrical potentials in the brain. It turned out that the brain goes through several periods during sleep with different levels of activity, one of them - with relatively reduced activity - was called slow-wave sleep, the second, during which brain activity was almost the same as during wakefulness, was called fast sleep. phase.
Rapid or paradoxical sleep is characterized by the fact that a person's eyes move quickly, and the electroencephalogram becomes almost the same as that of a person who is awake.
The dream is three billion years old
For a long time, scientists could not say exactly why living organisms need sleep, in which they are defenseless against predators and other threats. You can restore strength simply by being at rest. Hypotheses have been put forward that during sleep the human body gets rid of toxins, and that during this period the functioning of the brain is restored. Experiments showed that animals deprived of sleep inevitably died.
Kovalzon says that the genes that are responsible for sleep appeared at the dawn of evolution, in the first microorganisms, about 3.5 billion years ago.
“These are genes associated with rhythms, with the biological clock. This is the most important mechanism; apparently, already in the first stages of evolution, it was needed to adapt to the fact that there is a change in darkness and light,” the scientist said.
According to him, attempts to fight sleep, to increase wakefulness through sleep, are “nonsense.”
“Our nature is different. Three states - wakefulness, fast and slow sleep - live inside us, and they must be realized. Fundamentally different states, three worlds that are inside us, we live this way, we are designed this way. You can’t do anything with it.” , - noted the agency's interlocutor.
The scientist said that the functions of slow sleep have now been established - at this time complex processes occur that ultimately lead to the restoration of special brain formations.
“There are some molecules that “shift” when awake; during sleep they restore their potential so that they can work again later. This is an absolutely necessary element of our life, without it neither we nor animals can exist,” Kovalzon said.
Why do you have dreams?
However, the functions of REM sleep are still not completely clear. Although it is known that early REM sleep plays a critical role in brain development, it is not clear why adults dream.
According to Kovalzon, an adult sleeps in REM sleep for no more than an hour and a half per night, but in a child this takes up to 90% of all sleep.
“It plays a crucial role; it has been shown that if experimental rats are deprived of REM sleep at an early age, the maturation of normal brain systems is disrupted - they cannot see normally, cannot feel normally, communicate. But why do adults need this? It’s still unclear,” the agency’s interlocutor said.
Nightly paralysis
Scientists were able to find out whether animals dream. Kovalzon said that in the brain there is a group of neurons that, during the REM sleep phase, turn off the muscles and paralyze the entire body.
“During REM sleep with dreams, we have an active blockade of the spinal cord. It sends powerful inhibitory impulses, blocks our entire body, we cannot move, we are in a state of paralysis. This is done so that we cannot realize what what we dream about,” the scientist explained.
If these paralyzing neurons are destroyed in a cat or rat, then one can personally observe the dreams of animals. “The cat is hunting for an invisible mouse, running from an invisible dog. From this it was concluded that they dream, but we don’t know what the situation is like for other animals,” the agency’s interlocutor said.
According to him, similar disorders in people who do not switch off the body during sleep can lead to tragic consequences. So, in the USA, an elderly husband strangled his wife in her sleep at night.
“He was brought to court, but somnologists gave him a tomogram and proved that he had a brain disorder; he did it involuntarily,” Kovalzon said.
So “sleep paralysis” saves people, the scientist believes.
Sleep paralysis astral
From time immemorial, the phenomenon of sleep paralysis has been shrouded in some mystery. He has been associated with various supernatural entities. In Rus', the most widespread belief is that the brownie comes at night to strangle. He jumps on the chest and strangles the person, so that he will let go, you must mentally ask him “for better or for worse?” There are also, in different countries, their own legends on this matter, that this is a witch who comes to drink the energy of a sleeping person, that this is a genie, in Basque mythology there is a special character - inguma, etc. In the modern world, one more option has been added to all these options: it is aliens who conduct their experiments at night by immobilizing a person.
With sleep paralysis, consciousness is in a borderline state between sleep and wakefulness. In this state, a person can not only feel the approach or presence of a certain entity, but also see and hear it.
How to induce sleep paralysis (enter sleep paralysis)
For most people, sleep paralysis scares the hell out of them. If it happens often, then the person begins to be afraid to fall asleep at night, remembers with horror his visions and auditory hallucinations, is afraid to go to bed one day and not wake up again. But, there are people who deliberately induce sleep paralysis. This is a borderline state of consciousness and can be used for various kinds of experiments with your subconscious or, as some argue, for exits from the body.
The easiest way is to slowly fall asleep. Try to grasp the boundary between when the body has already “turned off” and the consciousness is still awake. To track this state, it is necessary to switch thinking to superficial, preferably wordless, and observe auditory manifestations. As soon as you hear some extraneous sounds, rustling sounds, footsteps, it is most likely that the sleep phase has begun and the body has fallen into sleep paralysis.
In that moment of sleep, when you are not yet asleep, but are no longer awake, at that very moment Being is revealed.
There are some vital moments in your consciousness. In these moments you are closer to your center than at any other time. You change “gear” and the moment you change gear you go through neutral. This neutral position is closer to you. In the morning, when the dream is fading, disappearing, and you feel awakened, but not yet awakened, when you are just in the middle of awakening, you are at “neutral speed”. That moment when you are no longer asleep, but not yet awakened, as times in the middle. You have switched on the neutral speed. In the transition from sleep to wakefulness, your consciousness changes its entire mechanism. It jumps from one mechanism to another. There is no gap between these two mechanisms; the same thing happens in the evening when you jump back from the waking mechanism to the sleep mechanism, from the conscious to the unconscious, for one moment there is no mechanism, there is no pressure of the mechanism on you, because you have to take the leap from one mechanism to the other. If you can be aware between these two moments, if you can remember yourself between these two moments, then you will get some idea of your real self.
How to perform this technique? When you are about to fall asleep, relax. Close your eyes, curtain the room. Just close your eyes and wait. Sleep is approaching; just wait, don't do anything, just wait! Your body relaxes, your body becomes heavy: feel it. Feel it. The dream carries its own mechanism, it begins to work. Your waking consciousness disappears. Remember, because the moment will be very elusive, the moment will be tiny. If you miss, you miss. It is a very short period - one moment, a very small interval, and there will be a transition in you from wakefulness to sleep. Just wait, remaining fully aware. Keep waiting. This will take some time. This will take at least three months. Only then can you get some hint of that moment which is right in the middle. So don't rush. You can't do this right now; you won't be able to do it tonight. But you have to start, and you may have to wait a few months.
This usually happens suddenly within three months. This happens every day, but your awareness and meeting this gap cannot be planned. It happens. You just keep waiting and one day it happens. One day, suddenly, you realize that you are neither awake nor asleep - a very mysterious phenomenon. You may even become afraid because until now you have only known two states: the waking state and the dream state. But you do not know the third state of your essence, when you are neither asleep nor awake. The first time you experience this condition, you may feel scared. Don't be alarmed. Everything new, something that was not previously known, should cause some fear, because this moment, if you experience it again and again, will also give you new sensations: you will feel neither alive nor dead, nor either. neither this. This is an abyss.
These two mechanisms are like two hills; you jump from one peak to another. If you stop in the middle, you will fall into an abyss, into an abyss without a bottom: you will go on falling and falling and falling. This technique is used by the Sufis, and before they give this technique to seekers, they also give another practice, just as a safety measure. Whenever this technique is offered in the system of Sufism, another technique is given before it, which is that you close your eyes and imagine that you are falling into a deep well - dark, deep, bottomless. Just imagine falling into a deep well - falling, falling and falling, falling endlessly. There is no bottom, you cannot reach the bottom. Now this fall cannot stop. You can stop it; you can open your eyes and say “enough,” but this fall cannot stop on its own. If you continue, you will find that the well is bottomless and it gets darker and darker.
In the Sufi system this well exercise must first be practiced.
- with this bottomless dark well. It's nice and useful. If you practice this exercise and realize its beauty, its silence, then the deeper you fall into the well, the more silent you will become. The world remains somewhere far away, you feel that you are flying far, far, far. The silence grows along with the darkness, and there, in the depths, there is no bottom. Fear takes over your mind, but you know it's just your imagination, so you can continue.
Through this exercise you become more adapted to this technique, but then when you fall into the well between wakefulness and sleep, it is no longer imaginary; this is a true fact. And here too there is no bottom, this abyss is bottomless. That is why the Buddha called this unfilled emptiness shunya. There is no end to it. Once you have known it, you also become infinite. This vision is difficult to obtain while awake. It is, of course, impossible to obtain it during sleep, because then the mechanism operates and it is difficult to disidentify oneself from this mechanism. But in the evening and in the morning other states happen - only two such states in twenty-four hours - at such moments these states come very easily, but for this you need to wait.
While we are awake we are false and we know it very well. During your waking hours you are insincere, unnatural. You smile when tears would be more natural. This falsehood continues while you are awake, it continues even during your sleep - in a different form, naturally. Your dreams are far-fetched, they are not real. It is amazing that even in a dream you are not real, not natural, even in a dream you are afraid and create images. You are so fake that you cannot even have real dreams.
These are our two false faces: one appears when we are awake, the other when we sleep. Between these two false faces there is a very small door, a gap. You can get some idea of your original face in this interval. Get an idea of the face that you had when you had not yet communicated with your mother and, therefore, with society. When you were alone with yourself; when you were not this and that; when there was no division. There was only the real; there was nothing unreal. You can glance at this face, this innocent face between these two mechanisms.
Tantra says that neither in sleep nor in wakefulness are you real. You are real only between these two states. So don't get involved with waking life, sleep or dreams. Pay attention to the gap; become aware of the gap between them. Catch a glimpse as you move from one state to another. And once you know when this gap comes, you become its master. You have the key; at any time you can open this gap and enter it. Another dimension of existence opens up: the dimension of the real.
