How many of you have at one time or another woken up unable
to speak or move? If you have, you are not alone.
The classic definition for this phenomenon is called sleep
paralysis. It may last a few seconds, several moments, or occasionally longer
and usually occurs right before you are about to fall asleep or wake up. Many
people report feeling a “presence” that is often described as malevolent,
threatening or, evil, and usually experience a tremendous amount of terror.
The presence is usually seen, felt and even heard. People
also report unique experiences like the sensation of floating or being outside
the body. They believe the phenomenon to be an extremely spiritual one.
In the modern medical world, these experiences are defined
as hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations (0), which is often the
explanation when conventional modern views of spiritual experience is combined
with medical ideas that label direct spiritual experiences as
psycho-pathological. It is well understood that sleep paralysis coincides
with physiological mechanisms in the
brain. What is not well understood are the strange experiences individuals have
when experiencing sleep paralysis. The
discussion of spiritual experience as an explanation for a bizarre and complex
phenomenon that little is known about has been suppressed thus discouraging
discussion of it in modern society.(1)
"Beginning in college and graduate school I was particularly
interested in the beliefs of ordinary people, especially the ones that were
treated as nonsense in the academic world. The academic world treats spiritual
belief in general that way. I was interested in alternative medicine at the
same time for the same reason. Right from the beginning I was convinced that
ordinary people are smarter, are more sensible than they’re given credit for by
scholars, and that traditions that are wide spread and deeply held probably
have more rational basis, and more observation built into them than the
theories that I was taught in graduate school. I couldn’t believe that all the
beliefs of ordinary people that are not part of the academic worldview were
nonsense. I have the impression that the academic world might be a little to
narrow, and that regular people might have something to offer about it (sleep
paralysis) through their experience and what they believed about things. There
are beliefs that are based on experience that have been dismissed as
superstitious beliefs that bear much more investigation, these are experiences
that are built into the spiritual traditions all over the world. In the modern
western world, for at least the past one hundred years these phenomena have
been explained on the basis of psychopathology. So the discovery that those
experiences are common and that they occur among ‘normal’ people, that they are
not in fact indicative of any type of disease has tremendous importance for
medicine. This isn’t a new phenomenon, we erased the knowledge of these
experiences from the cultural repertoire – Dr David J Hufford, Ph.D, Professor
Emeritus, Penn State Medical School" (1)
Right from the get go, almost all scientific approaches to
the phenomenon of sleep paralysis assume that the experiences that stem from it
are hallucinations. Rather than coming from the standpoint of complete
neutrality, most studies completely shut out the idea of any reality behind
‘hallucinations.’ Just because there are measured biological and chemical
activities during the sleep paralysis phenomenon does not mean there is a
causal relationship between the two. There are other things we must take into
consideration and as quantum science is showing us, there are definitely worlds
within our world that we are not able to perceive easily yet. There is definitely
a non-physical aspect to science in general that we are just beginning to wake
up to.
"The day science begins to study non-physical phenomenon, it
will make more progress than it made in all the previous centuries of its
existence" – Nikola Tesla..
Spiritual Experience..
Modern scholars have found spirit and spirituality hard to
define, and as mentioned earlier usually places these topics within the circle
of ridicule amongst the scientific community. Many reading this probably have a
good idea of the terms that fit under the umbrella of “spirit” or “spiritual.”
They involve out of body experiences, visits from entities not of this world,
near death experiences, frequency, vibration and more.
It’s important to realize that many experiences people have
within the “spiritual” realm occur when one is fully conscious, awake and alert
and not during what sleep researchers call sleep paralysis. It’s quite possible
that our level of scientific understanding is not advanced enough to explain
certain phenomenon, so sometimes they are grouped into the category of
hallucinations when they are really phenomenon we do not understand and cannot
yet explain in a scientific manner.
At the same time, some of the phenomenon described that
arise from sleep paralysis could very well be hallucinations, although I don’t
believe this to be the case. I am very open to the idea that what is
experienced for some during ‘sleep paralysis’ is indeed intertwined with the
true nature of reality we clearly do not yet fully understand. The point is we
don’t yet know for sure, and for the scientific community to assume and label
them as definite hallucinations and as a figment of the imagination is
limiting.
Scientific evidence for out of body phenomenon isn’t
prevalent, but it’s hard when most scientific phenomenon is suppressed. I’m
referring to developments within the world that are classified for the sake of
national security. Recent leaks from the NSA were responsible for the very
first public disclosure of a black budget, and the Canadian government was
recently outed for the muzzling of scientists(2). This coincides with the remote viewing experiments that involved the intelligence community and
Stanford University, among others. (3)(4)(5)
It’s interesting that there is also science and official
research behind these types of phenomenon that give further credibility to it.
It is even more interesting that it is within the hands of the intelligence
community, extremely classified and washed away in secrecy, just like the
experiments conducted at Stanford University. Among the varied hallucinations
associated with sleep paralysis, out of body experiences and vestibular motor
sensations represent a distinct factor.(6) Remote viewing is the ability of
individuals to describe a remote geographical location up to several hundred
thousand kilometers away, this phenomenon has been proven time and time again,
and shortly after its publication the program was instantly shut down by the
department of defense.
We have many examples of phenomenon that would fit under the
“spiritual” umbrella, and who are we to say that the experiences that occur
within sleep paralysis are not indeed real phenomenon. Sometimes, ideas and
concepts can be a threat to power, to control and to the overall perception humanity
has of reality as a collective. If you change the way you look at things, the
things you look at change. If the planet changed the way it looked at this
phenomenon, surely it would contribute in one of the biggest paradigm shifts
the planet has ever seen, and this is exactly what is continuing to unfold on
planet Earth today.
"The ridicule of these phenomenon is a level of social
control. Scholars, academics and elite intellectuals in general constantly
describe these things as if not indicative of insanity, them being primitive,
and being the product of a lack of education. These concepts in the realm of
anthropology and history are taken to be are product of imagination" – Dr David
J Hufford (1)
My Experience With Sleep Paralysis..
When I was a child, I remember having a number
of lucid dreams. They seemed so real and I felt one hundred percent conscious
during the experience. I was able to do whatever I desired whilst dreaming. My
first experience with sleep paralysis didn’t occur until I was a little bit
older. The very first time it happened I remember
suddenly waking up from a loud bang, a
bright flash of light (although my eyes
were closed) and a loud sound in my ears. I had the ability to open my eyes, but I
couldn’t move my body. It’s almost as if my brain was awake but my body was
still sleeping. I was terrified, and the reason I didn’t open my eyes is
because I felt the presence of two beings on my left side, and two beings on my
right side and I didn’t want to see. Whether they were there or not, I don’t
know, whether I was dreaming or not, I don’t know.
Keep in mind that experiences like this occur when people
are totally conscious, driving down the street, going about their everyday
lives away from the time of sleep. Many people have totally consciousness
experiences with phenomenon that seem to be beyond our understanding, they are
not paralyzed and they are not asleep. I have also had totally conscious
bizarre experiences away from sleep, that might contribute to my bias of my
experiences within sleep paralysis being more than just hallucinations. This
particular experience I had during sleep lasted approximately five minutes I
would say, until I totally regained consciousness.
Another time, again I woke up in the middle of the night. I
could open my eyes and I was totally aware of my surroundings. I was on the
road in a motel room by myself, I could see the TV, I could see the lamp in the
corner of the room as well as the chair. I could not turn my head but I could
look around. Although my eyes felt heavy, I could indeed open them. I couldn’t
move and was pretty scared, I remember thinking “not again, why is this
happening to me.” I saw a dark shadowy figure come through the window, it
seemed about 5 feet tall, I was on the left side of the bed and the window was
in the right corner of the room. It came across the room, across the foot of my
bed to the left side of my head. It put its mouth up to my ear and started to
whisper rapidly. I could not understand what it was saying, but it was
whispering extremely fast.
I had a few other experiences after that, and after I woke
up from these experiences which were pretty scary, I started to desire more
because I realized that although I couldn’t move, my consciousness was still
there. I was still awake, alert and able to perceive the environment around me.
The next time it happened, I assured myself that I would not react in fear, and
that I would instead embrace the experience and try to “play” with it, explore
and use this state of consciousness for further discovery about a potential
world we are not able to experience, but are. The next time it happened, I
reminded myself to stay calm, enjoy it and see what happens, this time I
actually wanted to communicate with whatever I perceived to be there, or was
there. When I did this, nothing presented itself. I still couldn’t move, but
didn’t try to jolt myself out of it. I tried to float out of my body and was
successful. I fully floated out of my body, but could only go so far, about one
meter. I tried to go further but it was as if I was still attached to my body.
This was a very cool experience, unfortunately after I decided to not react in
fear, and play around the with experience, the experience stopped, and I never
had it again.
These type of phenomenon are definitely intriguing, and
nobody, including researchers within the scientific world should dismiss the
experience one has while experiencing sleep paralysis as completely false. The
scientific community should be comfortable in a place of neutrality, instead of
characterizing a phenomenon as false without any evidence to suggest that be
the case. They don’t have to ridicule it.
I hope I’ve provided enough information within the article, as well as
adequate sources for you to further your research if interested.
(1) Sleep Paralysis