Complex Numbers

Nightmares Are Real

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/10/hallucinations-hearing-voices...

There’s a good chance you’ve hallucinated before.

If you’ve ever felt the buzz of your phone against your thigh only to realize the sensation was entirely in your head, you’ve had a sensory perception of something that isn’t real. And that, according to the psychologist Philip Corlett, is what makes a hallucination.

The more you try to define "reality" and "illusion" as they relate to each other, the more slippery it gets. I find it easier to stop trying to do so; I'm an engineer, not a philosopher, and therefore my worldview is largely practical. Can I sense it? Yes? Then it's real.

But hang on - I can sense these hallucinations as well. I swiftly know them for what they are, but at the time they seem real.

And what about dreams? I'm a bit disappointed that the article doesn't mention that phenomenon, which is known to happen to the vast majority of people (and other animals as well). I got to wondering if maybe the biochemical mechanism that prompts hallucinations is somehow related to the one producing dreams.

Most of the time when I get sensory hallucinations as described in the linked article, it happens when I'm about to fall asleep. Maybe I'll hear my name called, as plain as if someone were speaking directly to me. Sometimes it's related to other senses, such as the shaking of a minor earthquake, or a sudden, unbidden visualization. And dreams themselves are sensory - I don't know about other people, but sometimes I'll get smell or taste or touch in a dream. During a dream, things seem real enough, until the logical mind takes over and you realize that you wouldn't really have gone to class without pants. Or whatever. (I've rarely had that one, but I keep getting dreams about being back in college and there's this one class that I've spent most of the semester having forgotten that I signed up for it.)

Dreams are real, in a sense. That is, they can affect a person emotionally. Sometimes they can even present a solution to a problem you've been thinking of, and so they spill over into everyday reality.

Confession time: I've experienced sleep paralysis way more than I'd like. Of course, once is way more than I would have liked, but it's been significantly more than once. The way it presents with me is a very vivid sequence that, at the time, I think is actually happening. Usually there's someone else in the room, someone who's not supposed to be there (these days, no one is supposed to be there, but this started when I was married). The presence is never benign. At some point I think I might be dreaming, which for a regular dream is about when I wake up, go "okay, that was weird," and get on with my day - but in an episode of sleep paralysis, I desperately try to wake up and can't for a subjectively long time; meanwhile, the presence becomes more and more inimical. This is the classic "night mare" of historic description.

But even that isn't the worst part about it. The worst part is that when I do wake up, the feelings are still with me - and I. Can't. Move. I can breathe, and my heart is still beating (fast), but no voluntary muscles will so much as twitch, not even my eyelids. I know, logically, what is happening: when we go into dream/REM sleep, the brain shuts off motor functions so that, in the dream, one can walk or fly or swim, or pick something up, or bite into a cheeseburger, or whatever, without these things translating to physical body actions. Other people have the opposite problem, in that the brain doesn't fully shut off those pathways, and so they get their legs all tangled up in the sheets or whatever. I've had that too, but it's not even close to as scary as a sleep paralysis episode.

Anyway, like I said, I know this logically, but the back of my mind - especially active at the edge of sleep - still thinks there's someone or something else in the room and I'm utterly unable to kick in the basic animal flight-or-fight reflexes. I'm just as stuck as if someone's wrapped me in duct tape (don't even think about it).

I'm pretty sure that many of the stories of alien abduction (those that aren't hoaxes, anyway) are the result of sleep paralysis, or something very similar. Their descriptions match. Now, I've never had Grays probing my ass, but the stories are otherwise consistent - being unable to do anything, inimical presence, sometimes physical displacement, extreme limbic reactions. In the old days before we really conceived of aliens as such, people would describe demons, or a demonic presence. People in other cultures probably experienced whatever monsters their particular cultural zeitgeist (pun intended) presented them with.

Eventually, it wears off, and once I concentrate on moving just one muscle, and do so successfully, it breaks me out of the paralysis.

Nightmares suck at the time, but despite the scary description, once it's over, I find the experience intellectually fascinating. In other words, it makes me think and be curious about the process.

So in that sense, they're real.