EXPERIENCE STATES

Have you ever wondered how people sleep walk?   Well normally, we don't act out our dreams because a mechanism in our nervous system paralyzes our body when we're dreaming.   But if for some reason that mechanism doesn't work on cue, then if a person dreams, that person will act out that dream and sleep walk.

Hopefully that little example will give you a context for what this page is about.   It explains the direct causes of sleep paralysis, hyponogogic hallucination, and lucid dreaming.   Sleep paralysis is when you are unable to move after waking up or before going to sleep.   Hypnogogic hallucination is when you hallucinate after waking up or before going to sleep.   Lucid dreaming is when you are aware that you're dreaming.

The Experience Systems
Abnormal experiences, like sleep walking and sleep paralysis, have the same origins as normal experiences, such as dreaming or simply being awake. Collectively, I call these experience states.   They result from four systems' either being on or off.   They are:

  • paralysis: the reason you don't act out your dreams while you're asleep is your body is paralyzed whenever you dream.
  • waking: when you're "awake", your conscious experience is derived from your physical senses.
  • dreaming: when you're "dreaming", your conscious experience is derived from inside your mind.
  • memory: when you're asleep, your "long-term" memory is turned off.
The Experience States
The following table shows the experience that results when each of the main three systems is either on or off (memory is considered later):
paralysis waking dreaming result
off
off
off
 normal sleeping
off
off
on
 sleep walking
off
on
off
 normal waking
off
on
on
 hypnogogic hallucinations
on
off
off
 undetected paralysis
on
off
on
 normal dreaming
on
on
off
 sleep paralysis
on
on
on
 hallucinating paralysis

The normal cycle of experience you go through is normal waking, normal sleeping, normal dreaming, normal sleeping, then normal waking again.   To achieve this, the three systems have to be turned on and off in a synchronized way.   If they aren't, an abnormal experience results.

For example, suppose you are dreaming and then wake up.   Now, if your paralysis system doesn't turn off right away, you will be lying there in bed, awake, but paralyzed.   That is sleep paralysis.   On the other hand, if your dreaming system doesn't turn off right away, you will continue to see and hear your dream even though you are awake.   That is hypnogogic hallucination.

Perhaps the most frightening case is when both your paralysis and dreaming systems fail to turn off.   Then you are lying in bed awake, but paralyzed and hallucinating.   This is hallucinating paralysis, and is theorized to be the real cause of what some people call alien abductions.

Details
You can actually hallucinate in two ways: you can hear things, and you can see things.   One or the other, or both, might happen when you hallucinate.   Rarer, but also a possibility, is that of feeling a hallucination.   An added twist is that you might hear your dream and hear real life at the same time (similarly for seeing or touch).

Often people report that when they hallucinate after waking up they hear a loud tone, squealing, or static.   This is likely the result of feedback loops in the hearing nervous subsystem.   It is akin to hooking two incompatible inputs into a stereo speaker.

The Memory System
I decided to leave out the memory system until now to simplify the above discussion.   Like the other systems, the memory system can be on or off (What I have chosen to call "memory system" here is actually just our situational memory system.)   It produces the following interesting states:

state
memory
resulting state
dreaming
off
normal dreaming
on
lucid dreaming
awake
off
disorientation fugue
on
awake normally
sleeping
off
normal sleeping
on
aware sleep

I've not yet mentioned the two states highlighted in blue.   A disorientation fugue (my term) is when you're awake but can't remember what's happening, where you're at, or why you're there.   Aware sleep is when you're asleep and not dreaming, but still somehow aware of the passage of time and of the fact that you're sleeping.

Conclusions
It's disappointed me that people in more conservative circles have been forced to hide the fact they've experienced sleep paralysis, hypnogogic hallucinations, or any of the other abnormal states mentioned above because they are afraid of being labeled as crazy.   Hopefully though, the above analysis has convinced you that these abnormal experiences are simply the result of certain mental systems being temporarily unsynchronized.   They are not the result of being psychologically disturbed, demonicly possessed, or abducted by aliens.

The above analysis has been dispassionate to the fact that sleep paralysis and hallucinating paralysis are extremely frightening experiences.   Hopefully, with the above knowledge, your next, or first, experience of these will be less a fright and more a fascination.

John LeFlohic
February 23, 1999