The reasons for sleep.

Originally posted by AGENT_T

Originally posted by jimjamjerry
no, the problem is that "consciousness" takes its toll on the body

Or possible your 'conscience' taking it,s toll.
I mean, you know what it's like trying to sleep if there's something you haven't completed..or if you've had a argument that hasn't been resolved..It just won't let you rest.

no, that's just because your consciousness want to stay involved in the issues.

you can learn to let that go if you want.

I'll put my thoughts in on this topic! As far as the high level of brain activity goes, maybe the physical operation of the body causes the brain to function at a lower level than it would "like" to. Sort of how when you're driving along, doing the speed limit, and get behind someone who is going 10 MPH lower than the speed limit. Its not hurting you, but it sure can make you feel antsy. So the brain puts us to sleep in order for it to stretch out, and basically gun the engine for a few hours.

Also, I think I have different types of dreams. Some are your "normal" dreams, involving people and places from my waking life. These serve to sort out the details of life and may show one things you missed while awake. Then there are the nonsensical dreams. These are just flights of fancy, the brain expressing itself and being ridiculously creative. Then there are the ones (at least that I have) where it feels like there's a whole other existence I'm living outside of this one. Anyway. Who knows though...Andy

reply to post by drumist69


That was a fantastic analagy.
Exactly what I feel too.
Maybe the very reason for Stephen Hawkins' intellectual ability.

I wish I could find the meditation research that my friend mea was searching for.
If you feel refreshed after a few hours sleep where your senses aren't completely shut down.. Imagine a technique where you can TOTALLY relenquish control over your senses..REPLACING the need to sleep.
Imagine what could be achieved if the brain power of sleeping/meditating people could be harnessed psychically.

Sensory deprivation has been known to be used for superlearning.
Maybe we are just too bombarded with modern interferences in todays world to attain a completely serene state.
Are we being deliberately subdued?

i do have to put my 2 cents in on this. I often have dreams where i know things i dont normally know. I remember in one dream i was lecturing on the four noble truths of buddhism and i dont even know those when i am awake...though i knew them when i woke up from that dream. Another time i was dreaming about a song I didnt know, and when i woke up I put the lyrics onto google...and found a new song that i like that was the song in my dream. Its possible of course that you maybe have incredible recall in dreams that you normally cant access when awake...but its just amazing. I often have dreams of flying...love them. and lucid dreams are incredible too. Usually i just waste them with gratuitous sex, but one time i decided in a lucid dream to sit down and meditate...it was an INCREDIBLE experience! I reached a point in seconds of dream meditation that i only reach rarely in waking meditation.

reply to post by pexx421


You're not alone.
I slept and when I woke penned down and recorded a whole track including gospel style backing vocals.. Not my Forte since I was purely into a different musical style.

I then realised a few weeks later I must have heard the track on TV/Radio/next doors CD whatever while I was asleep..
Bloody Curtis Stigers

Not exactly related, but I think it may be in some way. I was reading an article a few months ago about a Japanese inventor, who has a few thousand inventions to his credit. He has his house set up to facilitate the invention process. He has one room which is almost completely empty...just a chair and table, no decorations at all. He starts there. Then he goes to a room with all kinds of video and stereo gear. Goes in there, listens to music, watches tv for a while. Then, best part of his process...he goes in his pool and holds his breath under water until he feels like he's going to black out! He claims that this is where his best, most creative ideas come from. He even brings a special under water writing tablet, so as soon as he has an idea he can make some kind of note so he doesn't forget it as he rushes to the surface for some air! I don't know, seems like it ties into the topic in some way! I'll see if I can find a link about him...Andy

Here he is...

www.iht.com...

I'm sure there's a bunch more info on him and his unique practices, but this gives a good overview! Andy

Similar things have happened to me, once while asleep I was literally rapping my every thought in the most perfect rhyme, without even thinking about it, with total ease! it was only when I realized what I was doing that it stopped.

Amazing, our brain can be very powerful in this state, Ive heard of many great people in the past having great ideas (inventions, music etc) in this state.




[edit on 24-11-2007 by _Phoenix_]

I'm a smoker so when I sleep for eight hours I don't smoke. I want to know how to tap into that sleep mode and quit smoking or not have an urge to smoke while I'm awake. Seems like things like that are shut off during sleep. Like you said OP about your senses of smell and all that are gone. I think sleep is a good way to tap into your unconsciousness, it's just knowing how to remember it when you wake. They say you only remember a little out of a whole lot of work going on with your brain while your sleeping. To me sleeping is letting your body re-energize from all the energy you used up during the day. I wonder what would happen if you quit sleeping. Would you die? Most likely, but sleep has always had me wondering about our unconscious mind working while we snooze.

reply to post by _Phoenix_


I keep a guitar by the side of the bed to play through songs that come to me during sleeping.
It only takes one run through to remember them when I'm fully awake.

The worst thing that ever happened was a fantastic tune coming to me.. I 'woke' and played through the tune...Happy that I'd remember it the next day I went back to sleep..
Only to really wake the next day to find my guitar was on the other side of the room..
I hadn't run through.. No memory of the song whatsoever.

Yoga Nidra
I just had a quick search and found this..
It sounds a lot like what Mea was looking for.Not exactly though..
It is reported to replace between between 3 -8 hrs of sleep for 20 minutes meditation..
Too varied to be exact but interesting anyhoo.

[edit on 24-11-2007 by AGENT_T]

When you really think about it sleep is a little strange, mainly because we don't know all the real reasons why we have to go unconscious for such a large chunk of time.

I reckon the obvious reason being the need to take a break from the constant flow of information and processing we have to put up with, its known we have a consciousness and an unconscious or subconscious, perhaps its basically shared time between the two, the subconscious does so much work for the conscious it seems only fair it gets some time to rest and do its thing without the consciousness wanting to play.

A more weird idea I had before was that possibility it's because this existence really is created and maintained by consciousness, perhaps it takes so much thought/processing to keep it stable that half the life on earth and in the universe has to sleep at any time, everyone takes their turn to sleep so that things may exist in a stable state, as we all know dreams are anything but stable, consciousness at one time may have gotten tired of randomness and created this very existence as a nice change from the unstable chaos it experienced and also so it may properly evolve, kind of like how you can play a game and cheat all you want and mess around for as long as you want but the thing is you spoil the game and get bored more easily there after, little and even big things become pointless to do and meaningless so you just defeat the point in playing, this existence for better or worse has rules you can't break and everything has its place and matters.

[edit on 24/11/07 by just theory]

reply to post by just theory



Maybe the brain thinks of the body as a kind of dumb brother it has to drag around all day.. But at night it gets a chance to break out and hit the town.

(Last night I dreamt I was part of a desert orienteering team that got lumbered with the fat kid because we were winning too much.
We were roped together and we had to drag him up the biggest sand dunes ever.) It just came to me now after typing the above:duh

The reason that all animals need to sleep is to be able to dream. Dreaming is type of psychedelic trip caused by endogenous '___' that is released in your pineal gland at night. If your deprived of sleep you start to hallucinate, so it shows that it the dreaming part of sleep that is the important bit that the brain needs. It needs it so much you start to hallucinate when awake.

Sleep deprivation experiment (specifically REM sleep);





I also uploaded a discovery documentary on the secrets of sleep, and they too came to the conclusion that the reason we need to sleep is to dream.




(there are five parts to it, this is just the first)

reply to post by ZeuZZ


Appreciate the links.
Wow this is interesting stuff so far.

Could this 'dream drug' be manufactured I wonder.
REM sleep is comparitively short.
If you could immediately sleep and dream. then you could shorten total sleeping time.

reply to post by drumist69


Thanks Drumist. I missed this post/link at first.
What an amazing guy.
When they start talking about 'floppy disks' I kinda get the impression it was mis-translated and were actally referring to compact discs though, you think?

When I get enough space I might try building some kind of 'sleeping cage' to see if it can block radio waves/light/sound/ etc.
Then see what dreams occur.

Originally posted by AGENT_T
Appreciate the links.
Wow this is interesting stuff so far.

Could this 'dream drug' be manufactured I wonder.

I'd be quite confident in saying that you will have large amounts of '___' near you right now. '___' is actually one of the most abundant drugs in nature. It is only found in small concentrations, but it can be extracted from various types of common grass. The most common is phalaris grass or Reed Canary Grass.





I have a whole field of this stuff growing in my garden!





deoxy.org...

Phalaris '___' is something brand new--derived from one of the ayahuasca analog plants, it is a natural form of '___' and 5-MeO-'___' which can be grown by anyone outside the polar regions. It has no somatic side effects (nausea, vomiting), nor is it dependent for its extractions on complicated laboratory procedures, equipment or knowledge; hence it isn't necessary to rely upon a profit-oriented monopoly of dealers to obtain. It comes on fast, is too intense, and subsides rapidly: just like the way we live our lives. Here for the first time, untainted by High Technology, Drug Dealer Capitalism, Cultural Unfamiliarity or Somatic Malaise, is the most potent entheogen imaginable freely available to anyone willing to take the trouble to grow and extract it. Since the plant resembles your front lawn, any law banning it will be virtually unenforcable.

Given the historical context of this sudden gift, it is difficult not to see it as a potential catalyst for a quantum shift in awareness, nothing less than a challenge from the imaginal realm to take the next step in human evolution.

Originally posted by AGENT_T
REM sleep is comparitively short.
If you could immediately sleep and dream. Then you could shorten total sleeping time.

The other stages of sleep are probably important for some other reason, but REM definately does seem the most important and active stage of sleep. REM is also when people have their dreams.

It has been shown that if you are deprived of REM when you next sleep you start REM much quicker, and go into a much deeper dream, which indicates that the brain needs dreams. Its so mysterious though, no-one really knows why we need to dream.

Everyone spends half of their entire lives sleeping, and no-one has a clue why. It really is quite mysterious if you think about it. Not just humans aswell, every single living thing on earth sleeps, and the fact that NO animal at all has evolved to not need sleep shows how important to life it is. An animal that does not need to sleep would be at a tremendous advantage to other animals, yet none have done it.

From the university of Berkeley;
sulcus.berkeley.edu...

VISIONS PRODUCED BY DREAMING AND ENTHEOGENIC DRUGS

Entheogenic drugs and dreams alike have a special place in the evolution of humankind and its value systems. Profound musical inspirations and scientific discoveries of the past century have even been inspired by them. Our ancestors religious views and values were influenced by their faith in visions communicated by entheogenic drugs and dreams. In an age of environmental destruction and moral erosion, the knowledge afforded by dream and entheogen induced visions could not be more valuable. Let us hope that our culture is fortunate enough to open our minds and build on the mysteries our ancestors have explored for ages.

Thats quite a conclusion coming from a well esablished university about one of the most prohibited drugs in the world! i'm sure the govenment was not happy with that study
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[edit on 29-11-2007 by ZeuZZ]