Why do we sleep so much?

I've pondered this a bit over the past few days so I thought i'd make a thread. Everyone knows sleeping is necessary for re-charging our body and mind. We sleep nearly 1/3 of our lives, or about 30 years. That is an incredible part of your life that seems to be going to waste, but is it? One of the important parts of sleeping is dreaming.

It is interesting that in dream sleep the brain is actually very active. And this is where things get really theoretical. We’re not really sure exactly what dreams accomplish. Some experts believe that dreaming is actually some king of clearing-out process. More sleep researchers think that dreams serve the function of helping to reorganize and store psychological information taken in during the day.

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We have some theories on why we dream, but nobody knows for sure. It seems like a colossal waste that all sleeping accomplishes is re-energizing our body and mind. There has to be a bigger reason for this that we haven't discovered yet.

I remember when I was a young-in, about 11 years old and I was trying all day to try and remember something (I can't recall what it is now) and I went to bed that night. When I awoke in the morning, I remembered. That was something that has never happened since, and I don't know how I did it at all.

When my father passed, I had the most vivid dream about him. We had a conversation like it was really happening. I was pretty upset about his death and he told me not to worry.

Those are the strangest things that have happened to me while dreaming.

Can spirits contact us while we are dreaming?
Do dreams act like a 'medium' so to speak?

I get end-of-the-world dreams occasionally. A few examples would be nuclear bombs going off far to the north, and the fallout coming south to me and all I was thinking was i've got to go, now. I also had a very vivid dream where this war was going on (I can still picture it now) and i was in the ocean, close to this hanger filled with advanced aircraft. I managed to make it out of the water and into the cockpit of this aircraft. Next thing I knew I was being flown to this abandoned place. I could see myself sitting in this aircraft as we flew to our location. The location was over-run with jungle. We (don't know who was with me) were ambushed there and that's where the dream ends. Thru-out the dream I had this overwealming feeling of some kind of war going on.

Could dreams be some sort of test? From ETs or something else?

I'm curious to see what you folks have to say. Please post any theories or wierd dreams you have had.

Sometimes I tell my friends that sleeping is my favorite part of the day, and they say that is "sad."

Well, they must not experience the dream state the same way I do. Multiple, vivid dreams every time I sleep. Every couple nights I have a "party" type dream where I see and talk to dozens, sometimes hundreds, of people in my life. Sometimes I fly in my dreams, or jump over trees, or hang out with celebrities.

On the rare occasion I have a dream with clear precognitive elements.

The curse of being a vivid dreamer with human problems is the nightmare side. I often have dreams of car crashes, automatic weapon shootouts, screaming arguments with my parents.

The dream state of the mind, in my opinion, is the best expression of your personal psychology. It is also one of the greatest creative activities a person is capable of.

My experiences in the dream state have led me to believe that barriers fall and your truest identity "travels" beyond the part of mind corrupted by ego.

I've done some experimenting with sleep deprivation in an attempt to have (what I call) a "dream overlay" on my perception. A goal of controlled hallucinations to see if any added insight is gained on the nature of reality. Haven't been too successful there. But the experiment is ongoing and I'm determined to prove there is some benefit to seeing the world in tandem with dream aspects.

We don't sleep much compared to most other living things. It takes a lot of energy to live.

reply to post by MassOccurs


Interesting.
Do you think dreams are random or something more?

Personally, I believe dreams serve many functions, one of which is to help sort of organize all of the experiences and learnings of the day.

But one of the more interesting things I've always appreciated about dreams is that they can allow you to experience emotions or feelings you might not otherwise have ever felt, which can potentially help you better understand someone else's point of view. For example, though you might have never actually fought in war, you may have dreamt about it and felt a unique sense of fear or other emotions you might feel if you were to have actually been in that situation. Not saying what you feel in dreams is necessarily 100% accurate to what you'd feel in a real life scenario, but that they perhaps give you a better sense than if you were to simply imagine what you might feel in a given situation.

reply to post by SepticSheepHerder


No random at all.

Example: I stole a joint from a roommate the other day (yeah, jackass move). Then the next day I left a library book out and he took it and hid it. So there was a lot of tension for a few days. I knew i needed to apologize, but admitting wrong doing is not one of my stronger points..

Anyway, I had two dreams where I was fist fighting with him intensely, and getting beat up. Apologized to him later.

Dreams should be used as a guiding tool, your larger mind is a lot smarter than your "you" mind that operates most of the time.

Can spirits contact us while we are dreaming?
Do dreams act like a 'medium' so to speak?
Could dreams be some sort of test? From ETs or something else?

Well first I want to talk about some dreams I have and then I will eventually answer your questions from my own perspective.

Most of my dreams are completely chaotic. Normally my dreams are involving me eating something, fighting something, or becoming something and my wife normal ends up in my dreams. I call her my dream wife; she is my real life wife just in dream form. I end up in her dreams as well as she calls me her dream husband. From what I can tell we have never had the same dream, one of us entering the others dream, and having the same dream. I do have some repeating dreams, ones I like and one in particular I hate.

The dream I hate starts out with me lying in bed sleeping (yes I sleep even in my dreams). I would wake up in the dream, with something at the foot of the bed staring at me. Most of the time is a demon looking creature, but sometimes it is a typical grey alien. I would be struck with an overwhelming amount of fear. This would soon wash away and I would become aware that this is a flesh and blood creature and can be hurt. So I would start wrestling with the creature on the floor. Just when I am about to punch the creature in the face, I would wake up. It would take me awhile to realize it was a dream. I would look around the room for stuff that got damaged in the struggle, but everything would be in the proper place with nothing disrupted. My wife would still be sound asleep. This dream occurs probably 2-3 times a month. I don’t believe I am being abducted, or visited by a demon. I just think it is my mind trying to find a way to deal with the evil in my life, and force me to fight it. Now the evil in my life is just the normal run of the day bad stuff that just happens (blown car tires, rude or obscene comments, dumb people).

The dreams I love, are the ones with me eating all kinds of things. I will eat cakes, steaks, people, cats, bunnies, unicorns, rainbows. Yes just about everything in my dreams turn into chocolate and can be eaten. Sometimes I wake up to myself chewing on a pillow. It is kind of fun.

Now to your first question, yes I believe spirits can communicate with us in dreams. After my grandpaw died, that night I seen him in a dream and he talked to me in a very calming way. Letting me know he was in a better place, and that he would watch over me. This will also answer your second question.

Now the third question, I would have no clue on. I don’t think we are the only sentient beings in the universe. But to me whether or not we have been visited I can’t confirm. So if Aliens or other things do visit us, dreams would be a good way to look into how the human mind works.

To sleep is to dream, to dream is to mess with reality.

reply to post by SepticSheepHerder


It seems like our brains kinda are like an electronic device. If you leave your computer or cell phone on too long without turning it off, it is substantially slower and starts to mess up.

Once you turn your cell phone or computer off to let it rest, then it starts to work like it is supposed to.

I am not educated enough on the human brain to make a scientific statement, but that is my thought on the topic.

reply to post by SepticSheepHerder


What I want to know is how to ween myself off sleep. I know people that sleep a total of 4 to 4.5 hours of sleep per day, and they do it in a couple of short naps, they don't sleep all night. One guy I know has been doing this for decades, and he is always full of energy, and healthy, and he accomplishes so much! So, how do I ween myself off sleep, so I can work all night, take a short nap in the morning, get up and work most of the day, take a short nap in the evening, and then work all night again? Does it just take practice? Or drugs? (The guy I know is an old man now, and has never been on drugs.) Or is it some genetic gift? Cuban Coffee?

I want to be able to work graveyard shifts, and then take a quick nap, accomplish stuff all day long, and then take a quick nap before work, and function normally. Is that possible?

reply to post by getreadyalready


I have insomnia so I typically only sleep about 4-6 hours at a time. Most of the time it is closer to the 4 hour mark. If I sleep less than 4 hours I just take a nice hot shower in the morning and that takes care of the lack of sleep.
When I was younger (ages 12-20ish) the insomnia was really bad. I would stay awake for days at a time, and then slept only a few hours. After a few weeks of this I would crash out for a day at a time. The longest I stayed awake was around 80hours. Things got weird at this mark. I could not talk. Every sentence was said backwards, I heard it properly but my friends had no clue what was going. I finally passed out and slept for about a full day.

reply to post by getreadyalready


There was a recent study, which was event recently peer reviewed that has linked a genetic mutation to sleep. The average Joe (Adult's) roughly 7.5-9 hours per day/night, The mutation, has allowed certain people to sleep (in this instance) for 6.5 hours sleep and function the same as adults who have recieved their 7.5-9 hour sleep. Another article (CNN), is the best "normal persons" article i can found that doesnt get into the genetic make up and the study itself. The articles i have here are in a protected (Subscription based) website, so i apologise for not being able to link directly to that.

So if you do not have this mutation (clinically diagnosed anyhow) i'd go against trying to 'ween' yourself off sleep as there can be some serious complications to your day to day life. Please see this wiki article if you want to verse yourself on what can (and will) go wrong if you do this.