Deep sleep - an interesting idea

An interesting theory about deep sleep came to me and I decided to elaborate it. For brain exercise and keeping my open-mindedness, I suppose.
Damn, not even exactly a theory, but bunch of abstract ideas I jotted down. :D


What if, while a person is in a state of deep sleep, they are actually awake in a parallel reality - and when they go to sleep there, they wake up here? Not being able to remember the other reality, when awake - in both cases.
The deep sleep reality may be too chaotic for us to remember when we're here(different laws of physics, colour spectrum, etc?). That would make the dreaming state a bridge between these realities we skip into;(since in our dreams, there is much chaos - unexplainable thoughts, actions, images - along with the familiar situations, thoughts and images we connect with certain elements of our known world). Therefore, it would make sense for people to be able to remember their dreams, but not "travels" in the deep sleep state;

If you don't sleep here, you're probably a lazy-ass, snoring-all-day dude over there. But then again, time may not exist there at all in the same way we imagine it.

Random thoughts or sudden bursts of creativity may be explained as brief glimpses(memories) of the chaotic reality.

Also, it would make sense for the soul to travel in such a way. Gaining experience, perfecting oneself and whatnot...

This idea is what my grandma believes in. She's not a lucid dreamer, but she loves her dreams and think that they may be messages from another dimension. From what she said, we are living this life to get experience and insight and, when our time comes, we go to the other dimension.

It sounds like a pretty enlightening path. Very cool!

The thing is though that some people do recall dreams from deep dreaming NREM sleep. I sometimes do. NREM dreams are more conceptual, more like just thoughts and ideas. For example, here are some NREM dream fragments I have had: "Dreams are like pancakes." Or "Is seasonal hunting cruel? No." Being big into dream interpretation, part of me wonders whether NREM dreams are the time when our brain prepares the REM dream: sets the stage, settles which issues the dream will be about, comes up with the metaphors to use in the REM dream. REM dreams are often so rich in meanings, many layers of meanings, and it takes some preparation to come up with that I think.

Also if deep sleep were in another dimension, and REM dreams were inbetween that and waking, wouldn't it make more sense for the pattern to be Awake - REM - NREM - REM - Awake, so REM always inbetween awake and NREM? Actually it is Awake - NREM - REM - Awake -- so NREM sleep usually precedes REM sleep.

I am open minded to all kinds of stuff, but just saying that while the other dimension idea is cool, but it does not seem to match what is observed in the sleep cycle.

JoannaB makes a very good point, I think -- I've spent a lot of lucid time in NREM, and haven't (yet?) noticed a parallel reality. An occasional absence of reality or dimension, perhaps, and maybe some hints of true strangeness, but at no time did I feel like I was in a different dimension -- which I assume I would notice, because, being lucid, I was simply aware of an unconsciously familiar place to which my mind went every night, right?

Aside from that there is another problem: we can be woken up at any time of the night. Yes, it's a bit tougher to wake a person from NREM, but they will wake up, and become conscious quickly. Shouldn't that rousing be more difficult, if not impossible, because the person's mind is literally somewhere else? Also, if you wake someone straight out of NREM, shouldn't they say something like: "Dude, you would not believe where I just was!" because some residue should remain of their very recent transition?

Like JoannaB, I'll be first on line for the trans-dimensional bus, should that stuff ever be tamed. But I'm not sure NREM would be on its route. There is just too much evidence to the contrary (especially of the anecdotal kind, in my case).

It's a neat idea, though, and a great metaphor for AstralMango's Grandma to teach (I'll bet it even helped to raise her interest in dreaming, which is always a good thing for grandmas to do). It's also a good excuse to lucidly pursue NREM/delta sleep dreaming: you might not find those alternate dimensions, but what you do find might be just as cool...

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Originally Posted by wandering

What if, while a person is in a state of deep sleep, they are actually awake in a parallel reality - and when they go to sleep there, they wake up here?

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I think that's a fun and useful idea to think about, but that it can't be literally true. Your brain with all of its structure is here. When you're actively using it, why would that prevent the other guy in the other reality from using his? The inability to consciously multi-task that way would be the limitation of a single brain I think, and he has one also. Plus another world where cats sleep 6 hours a day instead of 18, etc., would be kind of strange. Is the cat not a predator in the other world, and if not, what ties that particular cat to another particular animal? It seems to me that an animal should sleep according to the requirements of what they are and the world they are in.

A good point that you make though is that when some parts of our minds are less active, other parts are more active. There must be processes that are more active in deep sleep, and we need that time to be 'awake' in that way.

This is very slightly off topic, maybe, but I've wondered whether our subconscious minds have a 'conscious' experience that we're ignorant of because its not connected to our other conscious memories. Here's an example. Once in a dream I was playing go. This dream was lucid enough that I was aware of the moves. After a sequence of moves I suffered a large loss, and it was clear that my 'opponent' had been aware this result was coming even though I didn't see it until it was unavoidable. So was that opponent conscious? "I" did not plan the dream, but some part of me or something did. Clearly he/she/it thinks, and I've had many, many other dreams with this kind of experience. I've even had dreams that seem designed to show me something of what its like to be conscious from his perspective. For instance, I had a "this is how I experience time" dream from the perspective of some mind or part of my mind that is not the conscious "me". It seems that this experience must be conscious in some sense from some other standpoint, or there would be no sense to try to show something of it to me in the dream.

It seems that intuition during waking life is like this too. The conscious thought appears as sort of an executive summary, but is there a conscious experience for the process that comes up with the thought that we're cut off from because we don't have access to that memory? If we had access, we'd muck around with it, which would probably tend to be very bad for our survival. In a lot of ways, mental function seems to be subdivided into different types, with information being shared on a "need to know" basis, so the different parts can attend to their responsibilities without interference from other parts. For example, I've noticed that in my mind there is long term subconscious planning having to do with things like reproductive success. Presumably, this needs its own steward, largely independent of my conscious thinking, because its important and happens on a longer scale than shorter term concerns like "food this week". Also the long term and short term needs often conflict, so its important for there to be limitations on when and how one is able to overpower the other.

In addition to these personal internal divisions, in life we experience another kind of division also, the isolation and specialization of different people with different physical bodies. We presume that other people are conscious, but their experience is mostly out of our reach also, unconscious from our experiential perspective.

Is all intelligence conscious from some perspective? My first thought is no, that where there is limited use of short term memory and other factors, there isn't an experience like consciousness. However, from my experience it seems to be possible to be aware of things from a distance. In other words, you can be objectively conscious of things that you aren't spatially in contact with. Given this, it seems to be that there could be a powerful mind that is conscious of everything that way, and everything would essentially be a part of that mind. And this fits with people's one-in-a-lifetime meditative experiences, where for an instant or a short time they seem to be aware of much more than they are normally, as if allowed a glimpse of this other perspective.

I also speculate that there are interactions in this way between different 'worlds'. Some experiences seem to suggest that. And though I don't see a reason for it to be coupled in an "awake in one world when not awake in the other" kind of way, I'll bet that there are cyclical interactions. I think that this is one reason for misfortunes in life. To a large extent, events amount to 'adjustments' that are made that keep the different interrelated worlds in sync. If we make bad choices, then some of the necessary adjustments are unpleasant, and sometimes they might be unintelligible if considered strictly within the scope of the world we are conscious of.

Note that if we state the original hypothesis as "awake in this world while asleep in another", this can be interpreted almost as a literal statement of the fragmented nature of our collective consciousness. Its almost a tautology. The difference between what I mean here and the original meaning is mostly a matter of nuance in the meaning of 'while', along with implied assumptions about the nature of identity. So it seems likely to me that the hypothesis of "wandering" is inspired by a vague but real intuition of other hidden consciousnesses, and there's just a relatively superficial difference between the form it took and the ideas I've been playing with. In other words, yeah I think the idea is probably true, just not in quite the way it was first stated. I'm sure my ideas aren't quite right either, but I think there's something there that we're vaguely aware of that is like this.

I'm tired so I won't go into detail but do feel like saying something. What you're referring to is a spin off of quantum physics. Quantum physics revolves around parallel universes that are different. This idea doesn't work assuming you start with same matter and system of physics as everything would progress the same (thought, choice, and life in general are just movement of atoms there's nothing special about them relative to a blade of grass). However starting with different physics or chemistry or quantities of certain types of matters could create different results. But still as I said before life is physic's effect on matter so there is no parallel you who acts in accordance to you. That parallel being would act in response to its environment. That being said, the amount of parallel beings would be limited to the amount of starting parameters that allow it to exist, which is an infinity small relative to the infinity where no beings exist. Even if it was an exact copy of you, it is not you, because you are not you, because life is an idea, and you no different than the blade of grass. I'm getting off track as subject rolls to subject. But something that works with your theory could be that the matter is the same but the properties, chemistry and physics are different. Imagine a circle, infinite sides for infinite parallel universes. When you go to sleep, the point opposite to you gets up. And when the same particles that make you up in an adjacent universe act in a certain way, even if they're not assembled in what we know as life, their opposite point acts in the opposite way. It's cool to think about, the anti-you, and also how in another universe you're your ingredients scattered light years away. I really like how you're thinking about time not existing in another universe because I have a theory I might stop by and write out. Basically, it's based on a graph. Parallel universes is a theory that asks what if time was 2d. In our perception time is 1d but only because our perception is limited. Think about the points on a simple 2d space graph. They all exist on a 3d graph but all occur at z equals 0. Since x^2 to x^3 is the same as x^3 to x^4, we exist on a 4d plane but cannot perceive existence past axis after z equals zero. This also means we exist on an infinity dimensional plane and that there's a 2d, 1d, and 0d all existing within our 3d plane. The problem with what most assume is that it becomes an infinite cycle of horton hears a who. There's nothing that applies to our knowledge or logic on other planes (this means no mini civilizations or giants looking down on us). This is how it relates to that aspect of your theory. Taste, touch, smell, feel, and sight wouldn't exist on those planes. And beyond that if you zoom out there's more unique axis, axis without matter or existence. And beyond that axis indescribable in words or thought in both what they strip from what we know and what they offer. I would go more in depth but I'm afraid I might bore you to death. I find this stuff interesting though. I'm hoping I can study this theoretical stuff in college.

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I'm tired so I won't go into detail but do feel like saying something.

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Pennd, you made me smile with this comment, because of the big wall of words that followed with that^^ Im certainly curious in how your post would look like, if you where about to go in to detail..:P

You don't want to know...
But really, i just got into as I was going. woke me up a bit.

I really want to know actually:P Yeah I can understand that. Well as you said it yourself, you seem to have a great passion in what you talk about. So that's a good thing:)

Here's what I think:
http://www.dreamviews.com/beyond-dre...ypothesis.html

I don't know anything about sleep states, but I'm pretty sure I dream the entire time I'm asleep.

I speculate that the different 'phases' are sort of like the different gaits an animal has when moving at different speeds. They're natural in some sense, a robot can train itself to gallop for instance. But not everybody is tuned quite the same way, so we won't all have quite the same states in the same way. By way of analogy, there are also supposedly 11 minute cycles where we shift sleeping position, or there used to be anyway. I don't move at all unless I wake up and move intentionally though, and have to make a point to remembering to do that.

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Originally Posted by shadowofwind

I don't know anything about sleep states, but I'm pretty sure I dream the entire time I'm asleep.

I speculate that the different 'phases' are sort of like the different gaits an animal has when moving at different speeds. They're natural in some sense, a robot can train itself to gallop for instance. But not everybody is tuned quite the same way, so we won't all have quite the same states in the same way. By way of analogy, there are also supposedly 11 minute cycles where we shift sleeping position, or there used to be anyway. I don't move at all unless I wake up and move intentionally though, and have to make a point to remembering to do that.

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Yes. I am of the opinion that we always dream when asleep.