Scientists have long questioned the level of awareness during sleep. (Photography Soumen82hazra on Shutterstock)
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- The researchers have investigated reports on a rare phenomenon known as sleeping experiences without an object, or a state of awareness during sleep without dreams, pictures, or a feeling of self.
- Through investigative studies and interviews, the participants described the experiments of “fair awareness”, “nothingness”, or “vacuum”, echoing concepts of oriental contemplative traditions such as Advaita Vedanta and Tibetan Dream Yoga.
- Using meditation, perception, and clear dream techniques, some participants learned to remain aware because they were drifting into a non -throw sleep, with confirmation of episodes of conscious awareness but without a dream.
- These results challenge Western scientific views that always have awareness of awareness of something, indicating that it can also exist in the form of a minimal content.
- The study of such cases may improve our understanding of awareness, change mental situations, conditions such as deep meditation, sensory deprivation, or even “mind cooking”.
For some people, sleep brings a kind of vigilance. Not a dream, but calm awareness without content. This less well -known state of awareness may bear evidence of one of the biggest secrets of science: what it means to be aware.
A conscious sleep condition has been widely described for centuries through various Eastern contemplative traditions. For example, the Indian philosophical school of Advaita Vedanta, is based on an interpretation Ved – One of the oldest texts in Hinduism – Understand deep sleep Or “Sushupti” as the “fair awareness” case in which we only remain conscious.
Similar explanations for deep sleep are conducted by Dzogchen ratios In the Indian Buddhism Tibet. According to their teachings, various contemplative practices can be followed during vigilance and sleep to recognize the “essence” of consciousness. One of these contemplative practices is to be a dream yoga or Yoga shineEnabling the practitioner to identify dreams and sleep. This aims to transfer them to a state of “pure awareness”, a state of waking up inside sleep without ideas, images, or even a feeling of self.
For Western sciences, this country is a mystery. How can you be aware without being aware of something? If these reports are accurate, they challenge The theories of prevailing Which treats consciousness as is always the case. For example, my awareness of the laptop in front of me, or the blue sky that rises above my window, or is respiratory. The existence of this state leads us to reconsider awareness.
Sleeping experiences without a topic
My colleagues and I have begun to explore what the condition -free content during sleep in a series of studies appears. We first wiped 573 people online About unusual forms of sleeping experiences, including forms of sleep awareness that may be simpler or more. For example, awareness after a dream resolving, or naked awareness of the fact that you are asleep.
Then we made In -depth interviews with 18 participantsWho were informed that they had suffered from forms of sleeping experiments without an object, using a protocol inspired by Microfinance interview. This is a research tool designed to help people call and describe the exact aspects of their experience in accurate details.
In those studies, we found a set of experiences that we called “sleeping experiences without subject” – conscious cases that seem to lack the subject of awareness. In all cases, the participants who gave an objective sleep experience reported about the presence of a sleeping ring that lacks sensory content that contains a feeling of knowing that they were familiar with.
Some of our participants experiences are compatible with conscious sleep as shown in the eastern philosophical traditions; Unlawful and self -denial, with no feeling “me”. The participants stated that themselves seemed to have disappeared or dissolved, and it is a country that reminds us of those that “The ego is ego“The anesthetic dmt was informed, and in the Countries with deep bonds.
Other reports from the participants in our study included a great feeling of being “there” in an unlimited state, or awareness of “nothingness” or “vacuum”. Some people’s experiences included effects of primitive forms of dream, and the experience of being in a world, even if this world seems missing.
Although sleeping experiences such as conscious sleep are mainly related to contemplative practices, such as Dream Yoga, our results indicate that people who do not know these practices have suffered from this phenomenon as well. In fact, the results of our survey online did not indicate a relationship between participating in contemplative practices and sleeping experiences without a subject.
However, the survey results found that the experience of a clear dream – when you realize that you dream but staying asleep – seem to be linked to sleeping experiences without objectivity. It should be noted that many of the participants who can dream have not reported sleeping experiences without an object.
Clear sleep training
The scarcity of sleeping experiences without an object makes them difficult to study. We need training ways to urge these experiences so that we can better understand them.
In our modern study, my colleagues and I have tested a new incitement protocol that combines meditation, visualization and clear dream techniques. Four participants learn to stay familiar with They drifted in sleep The indication that they were clearly with the already excessive eye movement. EEG mobile records, which measure the electrical activity of the brain, confirmed that some non -derived cases have occurred during a slow -wave sleep (slow wave). Researchers Believe A non -throw sleep lacks the type of complex conscious cases that we have during a dream, although some other forms of sleep experiments, including simpler forms of dream, may occur.
Sleep and awareness research
Currently, there is a lack of agreement between scientists on what is the basis of consciousness. Some popular opinions confirm that consciousness arises when Information is broadcast In the brain. However, there are still discussions about the type of information the brain needs for cognitive treatment.
Sleeping experiences without objectivity expand our image of what looks like conscious during sleep. Sleeping awareness has been widely studied with regard to dream -like dreams and experiences, but recently There was a shift In this direction.
The minimum forms of consciousness, such as those that sleep experiences without an object, can pave the way to improve our theories of consciousness. Their presence is alleged to a form of consciousness completely stripped of the content. Moreover, studying this type of experiments can help us understand Change conscious statesIncluding deep meditation, sensory deprivation, or even Mind The episodes that seem to be empty or go “no place.”
The fact that people can be aware of “nothing” while sleeping may tell us more about the mind than any dream at all.
Adriana Alcars SanchezPost -PhD colleague in the philosophy of reason and knowledge sciences, University of Edinburgh. It obtained research funding from the following organizations: the College of Scottish Graduate Studies for the Arts and Humanities (SGSAH), the European Research Council (ERC), the International Dream Study Association (IASD), the College of Graduate Studies at the University of Glasgow, and the Institute of Advanced Studies in Humanities (IASH) in Edinburgh.
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