Dreams and Metaphysics

[xandrique]

Ever since I was about 14 I have had hypnogogic hallucinations almost every day/night (I hear cicadas as I fall asleep, see faces when I open my eyes, see people running passed me when I'm supposed to be wide awake in class), I have experienced sleep paralysis at least once a week, I have a great many lucid dreams, attacks of moderate cataplexy (muscle weakness that feels like the body is falling asleep without the mind) and a constant state of sleepiness.
All these things add up to one thing: Narcolepsy.


I have read a lot about sleep including the metaphysical aspects where people believe they can somehow transcend planes (astral projection) during certain stages of sleep or that they are ACTUALLY being held down by demons when they experience sleep paralysis.
I would just like to know where this belief comes from. The way I see it it's just wishful thinking in an attempt to explain something that's out of the ordinary.. parasomnias are confusing to a lot of people.

What do you think?

 

[Prince_James]

Metaphyiscs is the study of ontology (being and existence), theology (the study of God), and first principles. What you are refering to is not "metaphysical". I do not mean to be a nit picker, but it is a pet peeve.

As regarding the demons, I have come to the conslusion that the feeling of pressure is often owing to one's own body weight and the rising and falling of one's chest feeling foreign when one has no feeling. Consider how odd one's foot feels when it falls asleep.

 

[xandrique]

Metaphyiscs is the study of ontology (being and existence), theology (the study of God), and first principles. What you are refering to is not "metaphysical". I do not mean to be a nit picker, but it is a pet peeve.

I suppose I wasn't being very clear with my question. I'm aware of what metaphysics are but I don't think I communicated what I meant very well.
Part of my interest in this is that there are quite a few people who get insight into metaphysics through their dreams, maybe through astral projection (often claimed to be achieved through the first stage of sleep) or hypnagogic hallucination.
Recently the word "Metaphysics" has also been used to refer to ideas that are beyond the physical world like ghosts, healing, the occult, transcendental meditation and so on so I am also speaking partly about the spiritual aspects of dreaming itself.
Yeah, my question is complicated..

1. What kind of spiritual, metaphysical, or paranormal things have you experienced while in a cycle of sleep?
and
2. What makes you think it was spiritual, metaphysical or paranormal?

As regarding the demons, I have come to the conslusion that the feeling of pressure is often owing to one's own body weight and the rising and falling of one's chest feeling foreign when one has no feeling. Consider how odd one's foot feels when it falls asleep.

I have experienced sleep paralysis for most of my teenaged years and I have hallucinated being sat on by an other-worldly being. It was a terrifying ordeal because the more I struggled the heavier it got.

What actually happens it that the body is still in a state of paralysis that occurrs in the REM state of sleep. The mind will awaken but the body is essentially still stuck in a state of paralysis. When people start seeing aliens, demons or other strange beings attempting to crush them they are actually having a hypnopompic (or hypnogogic) hallucination.
Despite knowing about what sleep paralysis is I have read of other people who experience the phenomenon still believing that they are being attacked by demons. I don't really understand why.

 

[Prince_James]

Xandrique:

I suppose I wasn't being very clear with my question. I'm aware of what metaphysics are but I don't think I communicated what I meant very well.
Part of my interest in this is that there are quite a few people who get insight into metaphysics through their dreams, maybe through astral projection (often claimed to be achieved through the first stage of sleep) or hypnagogic hallucination.

As metaphysics is a contemplative discipline (I.E. it is philosophic) this is hard to say. Moreover, astral projection is notoriously unreliable for anything but an interesting time. As of yet, astral projection has not presented any proof that it is not just a dream-related thing.

Recently the word "Metaphysics" has also been used to refer to ideas that are beyond the physical world like ghosts, healing, the occult, transcendental meditation and so on so I am also speaking partly about the spiritual aspects of dreaming itself.

Yes, but this is rather a bastardization of the word and comes from people misunderstanding what metaphysics relates to. Basically, metaphysics is the type of word you have to look up in an encylopedia or dictionary to understand, yet most people seem to think it means "spiritual".

1. What kind of spiritual, metaphysical, or paranormal things have you experienced while in a cycle of sleep?

The problem with this question and line of inquiry, is there is so little to verify anything we can experience in these states. We know that everything one can do in astral projection is capable in dreams.

I have experienced sleep paralysis for most of my teenaged years and I have hallucinated being sat on by an other-worldly being. It was a terrifying ordeal because the more I struggled the heavier it got.

It is terrifying, yes. -Very-.

What actually happens it that the body is still in a state of paralysis that occurrs in the REM state of sleep. The mind will awaken but the body is essentially still stuck in a state of paralysis. When people start seeing aliens, demons or other strange beings attempting to crush them they are actually having a hypnopompic (or hypnogogic) hallucination.

Yep.

 

[draqon]

<---if this is what you see when you sleep

and not this----->

than you are in serious---->

 

[xandrique]

Xandrique:
Yes, but this is rather a bastardization of the word and comes from people misunderstanding what metaphysics relates to. Basically, metaphysics is the type of word you have to look up in an encylopedia or dictionary to understand, yet most people seem to think it means "spiritual".

Dictionaries and Encyclopedias update every year. My parents have encyclopedias from 1978, 1986, and 1999 so when I do research on things I'll consult all of them and you can see how ideas evolve to encompass new areas. Metaphysics has become one of those things, whether you like it or not.

My question is weird, i don't even really know what I was asking. Maybe I just had a deep desire to proclaim that I have narcolepsy. LOOK AT ME.

 

[Prince_James]

Xandrique:

You and Jimmy Kimmel have it.

Ziggy-zoggy! Ziggy-zoggy! Oi! Oi! Oi!

 

[xandrique]

Xandrique:

You and Jimmy Kimmel have it.

Ziggy-zoggy! Ziggy-zoggy! Oi! Oi! Oi!

Yeah, Jimmy Kimmel is my real dad.





Actually he isn't but he could be! (I don't know my biological parents)

 

[Prince_James]

It could be that your conditions are related.

 

[Mr Anonymous]

Despite knowing about what sleep paralysis is I have read of other people who experience the phenomenon still believing that they are being attacked by demons. I don't really understand why.

Choice.

Actually y'know, in my experience at least, people such as yourself actually afflicted with a given set sleep disorders such as you describe, themselves don't particularly elect to view their situation as being anything either supernatural and/or metaphysical - they may have concerns regarding their experiences and perceptions, certainly. But that's a very different and perfectly understandable set of circumstances.

Others, on the other hand, theorists if you will - simply take what they merely hear about people such as yourselfs experiences at complete face value and use them to elaborate upon and "prove" their own, fantastical notions of what the real world is actually like.

The myth, for example, that X million Americans claim to have experienced abduction by aliens was originally perpetuated by UFO Research group stumbling across the findings of a large scale academic survey conducted back in the 80's trying to ascertain the extent and effect of Sleep Paralysis on the US population as a whole which, because the findings seemed to tie in so well with what they already believed regarding alien abduction, they somewhat famously took the findings of the original survey and contrived to make out that it was originally set out to investigate the extent of Alien Abduction experiences in the US, not sleep paralysis at all.

So pervasive has the notion become, still to this very day people with a belief in the phenomena still site the poached statistics and scoff dismissively at the explanation of sleep paralysis as accounting for by in large most so called incidences of alien abduction from home - even though it was a research project concerning sleep paralysis specifically which generated the figures usually sited in the first place.

Which is where the other others come in: the wannabee's. Those who fancy themselves either touched or else in some way sensitive to this other, wider, deeper, metaphysical universe. Again, as with the belief in first hand alien contact, there are people who simply just want to believe that there are more things in heaven and hell to which the rest of us are actually blinded to and that they themselves can in some fashion or other both commune with it and partake: in the case of people who who claim metaphysical insight via their dreams it remains a choice based on personal belief. Nine times out of every ten those that do actually claim such experience themselves aren't even necessarily afflicted by such conditions as produce such experience - they just want to believe that they are in some fashion special and choose to go through life based on such belief.

Usually they are the sort which will immerse themselves heavily in the "literature", read extensively on the subject at the exclusion of anything even vaguely contradictory concerning their beliefs and just choose to live their lives accordingly.

Those such as yourself, with little actual say in the matter and prone to simply have to endure an actual ongoing, life long condition tend instead to want to seek actual information regarding what's afflicting them, rather than the fanciful.

Mind, when a sane, no delusional person genuinely has to continually learn to delineate between being awake and asleep in such a manner as yourself I should imagine about the least useful thing you could possibly choose to embrace would be unnecessary, additional, third-party flights of fancy on top of whatever ones own head chooses to throw at one.

Congratulations on doing an admirable job at keeping your head bolted together. I wouldn't worry too much about the drivel of other's not so fortunate. You're literally missing absolutely nothing at all...

A

 

[xandrique]

Which is where the other others come in: the wannabee's. Those who fancy themselves either touched or else in some way sensitive to this other, wider, deeper, metaphysical universe. Again, as with the belief in first hand alien contact, there are people who simply just want to believe that there are more things in heaven and hell to which the rest of us are actually blinded to and that they themselves can in some fashion or other both commune with it and partake: in the case of people who who claim metaphysical insight via their dreams it remains a choice based on personal belief. Nine times out of every ten those that do actually claim such experience themselves aren't even necessarily afflicted by such conditions as produce such experience - they just want to believe that they are in some fashion special and choose to go through life based on such belief.A

Thank you for your insightful comment. This is what I have been trying to explain to a friend of mine with very little results... your words are clearer than mine.

 

[Mr Anonymous]

Thank you for your insightful comment. This is what I have been trying to explain to a friend of mine with very little results... your words are clearer than mine.

Please, not a word of it. Thank you for sharing your experience with us and standing your own ground on what you know. Experience has simply taught me, when one chooses to look into the truth of a given matter, what one finds is a relatively speaking straight forward affair actually rather interesting in itself, but completely over layed by romantic fancies and notions reality itself has not the slightest hope of even supporting, let alone lending any credence to. The more people that step forward and speak of their own actual experiences, candidly and irrespective of the generally presumed preconceptions which surround their actual experiences, the closer I believe some element of truth on the given matter may become preeminently clearer and more obvious for that greater, muddled, rest of us...

Thank you for your clarity.

My regards to you,

A