Merkabah

[Skarekrow]

"I am human"

Yes you are. I would be thinking that you are! Human as, when you look in the mirror, you are more than what meets the eye. We could almost say there are two "you". One s what you see in a mirror, a living biological human biological body, but there is “someone” inside of that body that laughs and cries and feels emotions. Even deeper still, this "ghost in the machine", or "flesh pilot", is an energy. You, when we dig down deep at this level, are an intelligent and divine energy. It is what is recognized, when we say "Namaste"! This is the "you" that I will be talking about.

This gets even more crazy. Matter, that is all that is physical comes from something called the Unified Field.

http://www.cosmometry.net/unified-field-and-quantum-field

In this realm of existence, everything is in pure abstract form. All possibilities exist in this realm. This is what quantum physics are trying to unveil today. From there we have the second stage. They call this the Quantum Field. This is where matter fizzes into our realm we call the Three Dimensional Universe. But wait. What is still even more weird is the fact that it "fizzes" into our universe as waves....until we look at it, where it finally becomes solid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwXQjRBLwsQ

Crazy stuff isn't it? Your human body with all its atoms and electrons comes from this place as well. I am not about to get too much into the science end of things, but it is necessary to explain this, or the rest will not make too much sense.

The deep essence of you comes from the same place as all of our matter does! Well how is that possible? How can "I" be in the dimension of pure abstract and manifest here in the 3D universe at the same time unless.... we had...a vehicle to....transcend...the dimensions...like a...



Yes. Like a Merkabah!

Merkabah: Divine Chariot...Something to Ride in.

Wikipedia defines it like this: The noun merkabah "thing to ride in, cart" is derived from the consonantal root r-k-b with general meaning "to ride".


You guessed it. We all have our own Merkabah. We cannot see it anymore than we can see our "energy selves", yet we are most definitely here. Like-wise, your Merkabah surrounds you and is in motion at all times. The Merkabah is an energy that is in a way, alive. It is dynamic and its function or state depends on you. We will get into that at a later time.
So, summing this up... You, are an energy that exists primarily in another realm. It is the realm of All. It is the Unified Field, the Zero Point Field, Cosmic Consciousness, and there is a list other names for it. I like the term Base Dimension. It is the base of all that exists in the universe. There is no space, nor time in this dimension. Everything is together. So how would you learn or experience anything if you had nowhere to go and no time to do it? You couldn’t. It would be impossible. So what if the Third Dimension was created so that you CAN experience space and time. The problem is that your primary form of energy could not exist here in this universe. So let’s introduce the Divine Merkabah. Thanks to the Merkabah, you can “stay at home” in the Base Dimension and live out an entire life here in the Third Dimension so that you can learn, observe, and hopefully experience the objectives to your maximum and find a balance in all of this. It is the Merkabah that allows you to exist here as a Spiritual Entity so you can have a human experience. This is a two way street too. When you go into deep transcending meditation, you touch into a “super consciousness” or you touch the “one”. What you are feeling is the Realm of All, the Base Dimension, The Unified Field, and once you get there you realize that you are not alone. Everything exists there. Somewhere between conception and your birth, your tiny human body received a Divine Gift. You received a Divine and Intelligent Energy that in your childhood years would acquire a self recognition. You would associate your existence with your name. Some people will live their entire lives with this notion that they are Joe and Jane and that’s the end of the story. Some will go on to realize Joe and Jane is just the beginning of the story. Joe and Jane is the result of the love of parents that give these names to a Being that they created. The truth is that the parents role was creating the biological body, the Life Essence was already created and needed a biological body to manifest here. This Life Essence is really called “All of Us”, and we are a temporary expression of this Being for a limited time here on Earth, although this Being in its pure essence is eternal. “You”, your Consciousness never dies. Just your body does. This Being, like you and me, has the miraculous chance to manifest here in this universe, to live a lifetime as an individual...thanks to your Merkabah. No Merkabah, no bridge to span the dimensions, no “You”. The fact is....you ARE here. So let’s Love all things, all Sentient Beings, all forms of Life and learn what we need to know to grow into the wonderful Being that we all have the potential to do.








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[Solongo]

Your post reminds me of:



You sir, have been shocked

 

[Skarekrow]

Your post reminds me of:

View attachment 19199

You sir, have been shocked

I have that same picture in my stash of pics and stuff...
It’s a very true statement!
Quantum physics makes just about everything possible, including, but not exclusive to, metaphysics.

 

[Skarekrow]

“The mind is a reality of the brain, but only if the brain is considered as the quantum reality behind the spiritual facts of consciousness”.
Michael Lockwood
“Everything you have seen, every flower, every bird, every rock, will disappear and will become dust, but the fact that you have seen them cannot disappear”.
Zen philosophy

 

[Skarekrow]

 

[Cornerstone]

Yes!

 

[Cornerstone]

Sorry, I was a bit vague, but I love that this kind of stuff is coming into the cultural dialogue.
I really believe it to be absolutely essential to working out what we need to do to see the kind of positive change so many people obviously long for.

 

[sprinkles]

[video=youtube_share;Me2DrhshC3g]http://youtu.be/Me2DrhshC3g[/video]

2 minutes and 46 seconds in, I can tell you why Einstein was right about the moon, and how the observer effect still exists:

It can be presumed that it should actually be called a measuring effect. Schrodinger's cat doesn't actually happen because things are measured whether they are observed or not. It has been shown in experiments that even an electron can 'observe' another electron. There's no consciousness needed. This is why the cat is alive or dead.

 

[Hazard]

2 minutes and 46 seconds in, I can tell you why Einstein was right about the moon, and how the observer effect still exists:

It can be presumed that it should actually be called a measuring effect. Schrodinger's cat doesn't actually happen because things are measured whether they are observed or not. It has been shown in experiments that even an electron can 'observe' another electron. There's no consciousness needed. This is why the cat is alive or dead.

Can you site a source? I've never heard that the effect can take place without a sentient observer. How is it that one electron can observe the movements of another and make the wave effect not happen? Wouldn't that create a situation where the waves never took place since there are almost always electrons observing other electrons?

 

[sprinkles]

Can you site a source? I've never heard that the effect can take place without a sentient observer. How is it that one electron can observe the movements of another and make the wave effect not happen? Wouldn't that create a situation where the waves never took place since there are almost always electrons observing other electrons?

It does take place without a sentient observer because in individual particle experiments, you cannot see the particle. One uses an instrument to detect it, and the instrument creates an interference.

This is why the quantum eraser works. If you try to detect which path the particle goes through, it destroys the interference pattern. BUT if you erase this detection, the interference pattern comes back.

First, a photon is shot through a specialized nonlinear optical device: a beta barium borate (BBO) crystal. This crystal converts the single photon into two entangled photons of lower frequency, a process known as spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC). These entangled photons follow separate paths. One photon goes directly to a detector, while the second photon passes through the double-slit mask to a second detector. Both detectors are connected to a coincidence circuit, ensuring that only entangled photon pairs are counted. A stepper motor moves the second detector to scan across the target area, producing an intensity map. This configuration yields the familiar interference pattern.

Next, a circular polarizer is placed in front of each slit in the double-slit mask, producing clockwise circular polarization in light passing through one slit, and counter-clockwise circular polarization in the other slit. This polarization is measured at the detector, thus "marking" the photons and destroying the interference pattern (see Fresnel—Arago laws).
Finally, a linear polarizer is introduced in the path of the first photon of the entangled pair, giving this photon a diagonal polarization. Entanglement ensures a complementary diagonal polarization in its partner, which passes through the double-slit mask. This alters the effect of the circular polarizers: each will produce a mix of clockwise and counter-clockwise polarized light, regardless of which slit the second photon passes through. Thus the second detector can no longer determine which path was taken, and the interference fringes are restored.

Anyway. To detect a particle, the particle must be interacted with, which causes a disturbance with the particle. The harder the particle is measured, the larger the disturbance.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/02/980227055013.htm

Strange as it may sound, interference can only occur when no one is watching. Once an observer begins to watch the particles going through the openings, the picture changes dramatically: if a particle can be seen going through one opening, then it's clear it didn't go through another. In other words, when under observation, electrons are being "forced" to behave like particles and not like waves. Thus the mere act of observation affects the experimental findings.

To demonstrate this, Weizmann Institute researchers built a tiny device measuring less than one micron in size, which had a barrier with two openings. They then sent a current of electrons towards the barrier. The "observer" in this experiment wasn't human. Institute scientists used for this purpose a tiny but sophisticated electronic detector that can spot passing electrons. The quantum "observer's" capacity to detect electrons could be altered by changing its electrical conductivity, or the strength of the current passing through it.

Apart from "observing," or detecting, the electrons, the detector had no effect on the current. Yet the scientists found that the very presence of the detector-"observer" near one of the openings caused changes in the interference pattern of the electron waves passing through the openings of the barrier. In fact, this effect was dependent on the "amount" of the observation: when the "observer's" capacity to detect electrons increased, in other words, when the level of the observation went up, the interference weakened; in contrast, when its capacity to detect electrons was reduced, in other words, when the observation slackened, the interference increased.

If the experimenters were watching this the whole time (what's an experiment that you can't observe?) then why did the interference pattern change with the power of the detector? Because the detector itself is doing the measuring.

 

[sprinkles]

[MENTION=5383]Hazard[/MENTION]

It's also not just observing, it's measuring.

If it were only observing then the experiments would not work. It must be measuring as in something that could gather a datum about the particle, such as its spin. If you can observe it in such a way that you know very little or nothing about its attributes, then the particle is hardly effected.

 

[Quiet]

This thread is awesome! Thank You for making it [MENTION=5045]Skarekrow[/MENTION]!

 

[sprinkles]

Under most interpretations of quantum mechanics, there is nothing special about human eyes that make the universe want to collapse on itself and decide what a wavefunction is going to be! Under some interpretations, if we track back the experiment, we'd quite quickly find that the cat itself is perfectly capable of observing whether it is dead or not. Similarly, the Geiger counter or any other component of the device would also act as a suitable observer for the phenomenon in question, under these interpretations. If the experiment were taken literally, and the cat was both alive and dead at the same time, then the experiment can be expanded a little.

Suppose the physicist performing the experiment is inside a closed lab, and their colleague is standing outside at the moment the box was opened. From the colleague's point of view, one of two events can occur: the physicist can open the box to find a dead cat, or the physicist can open the box to find a live cat. Until the door is opened, a literal interpretation of Schrödinger's cat suggests that both events happened are are coexisting in a superposition until the colleague opens the door and the wavefunction collapses. Again, from the perspective of someone down the corridor, two events have occurred; the colleague has walked in on someone holding a seriously annoyed cat, or has walked in on them trying to dispose of the evidence from the cat's owners and the ethics committee. Essentially, this is Schrödinger's cat inside a box, inside a box, inside a box and the chain can continue until we hit the question; what's outside all those boxes causing the wavefunction to collapse? This alone should give people pause before taking the interpretation of the thought experiment too literally. However, the Many Worlds interpretation says that, indeed, the cat is both alive and dead, and if someone "observes" the state of the cat, that simply puts that someone in a quantum superposition as well.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Schrödinger's_cat

 

[Solongo]

A famous study by Dr. Masura Emoto demonstrates that the energy of our thoughts has a direct effect on the geometric structure of water molecules within ice crystal formations. The hypothesis that water “treated” with intention can affect ice crystals formed from that water was pilot tested under double-blind conditions.

A group of approximately 2,000 people in Tokyo focused positive intentions toward water samples located inside an electromagnetically shielded room in California. That group was unaware of similar water samples set aside in a different location as controls. Ice crystals formed from both sets of. That group was unaware of similar water samples set aside in a different location as controls.

Ice crystals formed from both sets of water samples were blindly identified and photographed by an analyst, and the resulting images were blindly assessed for aesthetic appeal by 100 independent judges. In conclusion, the present pilot results are consistent with a number of previous studies suggesting that intention may be able to influence the structure of water. Here is a photo of the effects direct states of conscious intention had on the structure of water.

Consciousness has measurable effects on the geometric structure of water crystals. What does this tell us about the nature of consciousness? Is it possible that water is comprised of the same underlying "thing" as our thoughts are? 60% of the entire human body is water, while 70% of the brain is water. What can these thoughts do to our health?


Video demonstration of the study:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtDennZr5fA&feature=share&list=PL2C2FBAB7E002EE3E

 

[sprinkles]

A famous study by Dr. Masura Emoto demonstrates that the energy of our thoughts has a direct effect on the geometric structure of water molecules within ice crystal formations. The hypothesis that water “treated” with intention can affect ice crystals formed from that water was pilot tested under double-blind conditions.

A group of approximately 2,000 people in Tokyo focused positive intentions toward water samples located inside an electromagnetically shielded room in California. That group was unaware of similar water samples set aside in a different location as controls. Ice crystals formed from both sets of. That group was unaware of similar water samples set aside in a different location as controls.

Ice crystals formed from both sets of water samples were blindly identified and photographed by an analyst, and the resulting images were blindly assessed for aesthetic appeal by 100 independent judges. In conclusion, the present pilot results are consistent with a number of previous studies suggesting that intention may be able to influence the structure of water. Here is a photo of the effects direct states of conscious intention had on the structure of water.

Consciousness has measurable effects on the geometric structure of water crystals. What does this tell us about the nature of consciousness? Is it possible that water is comprised of the same underlying "thing" as our thoughts are? 60% of the entire human body is water, while 70% of the brain is water. What can these thoughts do to our health?
View attachment 19209

Video demonstration of the study:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtDennZr5fA&feature=share&list=PL2C2FBAB7E002EE3E

Well, the universe is entirely a cloud of matter and energy (this includes you!), so it wouldn't surprise me if this were true.

I mean there are microorganisms that can make ice from water at temperatures which would normally be above freezing by emitting a protein that changes the properties of the water.

 

[sprinkles]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudomonas_syringae

Pseudomonas syringae is a rod shaped, Gram-negative bacterium with polar flagella. It is a plant pathogen which can infect a wide range of plant species, and exists as over 50 different pathovars, all of which are available to researchers via international culture collections such as the NCPPB, ICMP, and others. It is unclear whether these pathovars represent a single species.

P. syringae is a member of the Pseudomonas genus, and based on 16S rRNA analysis, it has been placed in the P. syringae group. It is named after the lilac tree (Syringa vulgaris), from which it was first isolated.

P. syringae tests negative for arginine dihydrolase and oxidase activity, and forms the polymer levan on sucrose nutrient agar. Many but not all strains secrete the lipodepsinonapeptide plant toxin syringomycin, and it owes its yellow fluorescent appearance when cultured in vitro on King's B medium to production of the siderophore pyoverdin.

P. syringae also produce Ina proteins which cause water to freeze at fairly high temperatures, resulting in injury to plants. Since the 1970s, P. syringae has been implicated as an atmospheric "biological ice nucleator", with airborne bacteria serving as cloud condensation nuclei. Recent evidence has suggested that the species plays a larger role than previously thought in producing rain and snow. They have also been found in the cores of hailstones, aiding in bioprecipitation.[5] These Ina proteins are also used in making artificial snow.

P. syringae causes supercooled water in plants (water that is cooled but remains liquid) to freeze in order to crack open the plant's cells so that the P. syringae can get nutrients.

What does this have to do with consciousness and intention? Well, if consciousness is quantum in nature, then you're a full quantum being. You're already quantum in nature even if you aren't conscious because your body has quanta, manipulates and depends on quanta. If consciousness is also quantum then you have a cohesive unit - you can now know why you can lift your arm without even thinking of how to do it!

So it's not the fact that consciousness is conscious, its about what consciousness is 'made of'.

If it is true that observation collapses the wave form, and that even electrons can collapse the waveform, what does this imply? It implies that your particles which you are made of are what goes and causes the waveform collapse - quantum particles. The same kinds of particles being observed, the same kinds of particles that are radiation or electricity or light.

This would explain how waveform collapse could have existed before it was observed. If it requires your state of consciousness to collapse upon observation, this would mean that it never happened before it was observed. This would mean that it wasn't even true. It would mean that upon discovering it, it was invented for the first time, and ceased to be when we stopped looking.

 

[Skarekrow]

An interesting article...although, I would say they don’t back up their own conclusions with much more than unsubstantiated ideas.
Anyhow, it is still worth reading -

"Deja vu is one of the little-known and mysterious phenomena of our psyche. Many people sometimes feel that a situation in their life has already been experienced before in all the details. But how and when? This phenomenon is called déjà vu, which in French means ‘already seen’. It is a condition in which a person feels that once he already experienced a situation of the present, but the feeling is not associated with a specific moment of the past, but refers to the past in general.
Deja vu is quite common. Psychologists believe that 97 % of people have experienced it at least once. Sometimes people are afraid of deja vu and worry about their mental health. What lies beyond human understanding, always frightens us.
The reasons that cause the phenomenon are still not clear. It might be caused by the processes in the parts of the brain associated with memory and perception. There is a hypothesis that sometimes the perceived information gets to the memory areas sooner than to the area of the primary analysis. Thus, the brain, comparing the situation with its ‘neurocopy’ already received by the memory, concludes that it already happened before.
The human brain works with the help of biological electricity. It receives bioelectric energy from the whole body and itself. The two hemispheres of the brain concentrate energy in different ways. The left hemisphere concentrates electrical impulses with a negative charge, and the right hemisphere – the ones with a positive charge. The potential difference results in a manifold increase of the incoming electrical energy of low-frequency waves. But there is also a high-frequency current, which is perceived by our brain and body as a whole from the environment. This high-frequency subtle energy is used by our nervous system to provide all the physiological and psychological functions.Science has long proven that no man or any other living being can survive without the subtle energy. At the same time, our brain can also produce this kind of energy. This happens during the process of thinking because as a result of mental activity, dense electricity is converted into the subtle.
Subtle energy has been known to man for a long time. Psychologists call it mental or spiritual energy, physics – the energy of the physical vacuum. Scientists have discovered an elementary particle of this energy – psychon, an analog of the electron in the dense energy. Psychophysical studies have shown that thinking is primarily a process of producing the subtle electricity with certain characteristics of the information. Thus, some psychics can see thought forms as subtle electric field in different colors.
Psychology cannot yet describe in detail this feature of our thought forms. But experimental achievements in the field of quantum physics prove the very possibility of the existence of thought forms as energy simultaneously in different spatiotemporal continuities. It is proved that quantum can exist in different places at the same time! Astrophysics confirms this possibility with the discovery that light from distant stars comes to us from the past, present and future simultaneously.
Thus, if a person is experiencing deja vu, it may be the result of the information brought by his strong thought forms from the past or future. We have a wonderful and mysterious at first glance possibility to obtain information from different spatiotemporal continuities connected with us through our thought forms. Very strong, sustained thought forms are created under the influence ofstrong emotions and motivations. Therefore, very emotional people with dominant behavior are most likely to experience deja vu.
Deja vu is not a mental disorder and there is no need to worry if you are experiencing it. Try to get the emotional satisfaction of this phenomenon and the fear will disappear immediately. Further studies on the deja vu phenomenon will help biconsciously control it and use it to explore human psychic abilities."

 

[Skarekrow]

This thread is awesome! Thank You for making it @Skarekrow!

You are welcome!

Please feel free to post anything about physics, metaphysics (sorry sprinkles I know you hate that word...lol), psychic phenomena, etc...or whatever else you feel should be included.

 

[Skarekrow]

Check this out! (If only I had the time for a first and second sleep!) From the BBC magazine website -



"We often worry about lying awake in the middle of the night - but it could be good for you. A growing body of evidence from both science and history suggests that the eight-hour sleep may be unnatural.
In the early 1990s, psychiatrist Thomas Wehr conducted an experiment in which a group of people were plunged into darkness for 14 hours every day for a month.
It took some time for their sleep to regulate but by the fourth week the subjects had settled into a very distinct sleeping pattern. They slept first for four hours, then woke for one or two hours before falling into a second four-hour sleep.
Though sleep scientists were impressed by the study, among the general public the idea that we must sleep for eight consecutive hours persists.



In 2001, historian Roger Ekirch of Virginia Tech published a seminal paper, drawn from 16 years of research, revealing a wealth of historical evidence that humans used to sleep in two distinct chunks.
His book At Day's Close: Night in Times Past, published four years later, unearths more than 500 references to a segmented sleeping pattern - in diaries, court records, medical books and literature, from Homer's Odyssey to an anthropological account of modern tribes in Nigeria.
Much like the experience of Wehr's subjects, these references describe a first sleep which began about two hours after dusk, followed by waking period of one or two hours and then a second sleep.
"It's not just the number of references - it is the way they refer to it, as if it was common knowledge," Ekirch says.
During this waking period people were quite active. They often got up, went to the toilet or smoked tobacco and some even visited neighbours. Most people stayed in bed, read, wrote and often prayed. Countless prayer manuals from the late 15th Century offered special prayers for the hours in between sleeps.
And these hours weren't entirely solitary - people often chatted to bed-fellows or had sex.
Continue reading the main storyBetween segments

Some people:

• Jog and take photographs
• Practise yoga
• Have dinner...

A doctor's manual from 16th Century France even advised couples that the best time to conceive was not at the end of a long day's labour but "after the first sleep", when "they have more enjoyment" and "do it better".
Ekirch found that references to the first and second sleep started to disappear during the late 17th Century. This started among the urban upper classes in northern Europe and over the course of the next 200 years filtered down to the rest of Western society.
By the 1920s the idea of a first and second sleep had receded entirely from our social consciousness.
He attributes the initial shift to improvements in street lighting, domestic lighting and a surge in coffee houses - which were sometimes open all night. As the night became a place for legitimate activity and as that activity increased, the length of time people could dedicate to rest dwindled.
Continue reading the main storyWhen segmented sleep was the norm

• "He knew this, even in the horror with which he started from his first sleep, and threw up the window to dispel it by the presence of some object, beyond the room, which had not been, as it were, the witness of his dream." Charles Dickens, Barnaby Rudge (1840)
• "Don Quixote followed nature, and being satisfied with his first sleep, did not solicit more. As for Sancho, he never wanted a second, for the first lasted him from night to morning." Miguel Cervantes, Don Quixote (1615)
• "And at the wakening of your first sleepe You shall have a hott drinke made, And at the wakening of your next sleepe Your sorrowes will have a slake." Early English ballad, Old Robin of Portingale
• The Tiv tribe in Nigeria employ the terms "first sleep" and "second sleep" to refer to specific periods of the night

Source: Roger Ekirch

• Roger Ekirch's website
• Find your personal sleep profile
• Learn more about sleep deprivation

In his new book, Evening's Empire, historianCraig Koslofsky puts forward an account of how this happened.
"Associations with night before the 17th Century were not good," he says. The night was a place populated by people of disrepute - criminals, prostitutes and drunks.
"Even the wealthy, who could afford candlelight, had better things to spend their money on. There was no prestige or social value associated with staying up all night."
That changed in the wake of the Reformation and the counter-Reformation. Protestants and Catholics became accustomed to holding secret services at night, during periods of persecution. If earlier the night had belonged to reprobates, now respectable people became accustomed to exploiting the hours of darkness.
This trend migrated to the social sphere too, but only for those who could afford to live by candlelight. With the advent of street lighting, however, socialising at night began to filter down through the classes.
In 1667, Paris became the first city in the world to light its streets, using wax candles in glass lamps. It was followed by Lille in the same year and Amsterdam two years later, where a much more efficient oil-powered lamp was developed.

Roger Ekirch says this 1595 engraving by Jan Saenredam is evidence of activity at night
London didn't join their ranks until 1684 but by the end of the century, more than 50 of Europe's major towns and cities were lit at night.
Night became fashionable and spending hours lying in bed was considered a waste of time.
"People were becoming increasingly time-conscious and sensitive to efficiency, certainly before the 19th Century," says Roger Ekirch. "But the industrial revolution intensified that attitude by leaps and bounds."
Strong evidence of this shifting attitude is contained in a medical journal from 1829 which urged parents to force their children out of a pattern of first and second sleep.
"If no disease or accident there intervene, they will need no further repose than that obtained in their first sleep, which custom will have caused to terminate by itself just at the usual hour.
"And then, if they turn upon their ear to take a second nap, they will be taught to look upon it as an intemperance not at all redounding to their credit."
Today, most people seem to have adapted quite well to the eight-hour sleep, but Ekirch believes many sleeping problems may have roots in the human body's natural preference for segmented sleep as well as the ubiquity of artificial light.

A small city like Leipzig in central Germany employed 100 men to tend to 700 lamps
This could be the root of a condition called sleep maintenance insomnia, where people wake during the night and have trouble getting back to sleep, he suggests.
The condition first appears in literature at the end of the 19th Century, at the same time as accounts of segmented sleep disappear.
"For most of evolution we slept a certain way," says sleep psychologist Gregg Jacobs. "Waking up during the night is part of normal human physiology."
The idea that we must sleep in a consolidated block could be damaging, he says, if it makes people who wake up at night anxious, as this anxiety can itself prohibit sleeps and is likely to seep into waking life too.
Russell Foster, a professor of circadian [body clock] neuroscience at Oxford, shares this point of view.
"Many people wake up at night and panic," he says. "I tell them that what they are experiencing is a throwback to the bi-modal sleep pattern."
Continue reading the main storyStages of sleep

Every 60-100 minutes we go through a cycle of four stages of sleep

• Stage 1 is a drowsy, relaxed state between being awake and sleeping - breathing slows, muscles relax, heart rate drops
• Stage 2 is slightly deeper sleep - you may feel awake and this means that, on many nights, you may be asleep and not know it
• Stage 3 and Stage 4, or Deep Sleep - it is very hard to wake up from Deep Sleep because this is when there is the lowest amount of activity in your body
• After Deep Sleep, we go back to Stage 2 for a few minutes, and then enter Dream Sleep - also called REM (rapid eye movement) sleep - which, as its name suggests, is when you dream

In a full sleep cycle, a person goes through all the stages of sleep from one to four, then back down through stages three and two, before entering dream sleep
Source: Gregg Jacobs

• Gregg Jacobs' site - CBT for Insomnia
• Find out more about the science behind sleep

But the majority of doctors still fail to acknowledge that a consolidated eight-hour sleep may be unnatural.
"Over 30% of the medical problems that doctors are faced with stem directly or indirectly from sleep. But sleep has been ignored in medical training and there are very few centres where sleep is studied," he says.
Jacobs suggests that the waking period between sleeps, when people were forced into periods of rest and relaxation, could have played an important part in the human capacity to regulate stress naturally.
In many historic accounts, Ekirch found that people used the time to meditate on their dreams.
"Today we spend less time doing those things," says Dr Jacobs. "It's not a coincidence that, in modern life, the number of people who report anxiety, stress, depression, alcoholism and drug abuse has gone up."
So the next time you wake up in the middle of the night, think of your pre-industrial ancestors and relax. Lying awake could be good for you."

 

[Kgal]

This is fascinating! I'm going to have to print this and curl up in the chair with a cup of coffee to digest this.

Coincidentally - I overheard two women talking about this very thing about a month ago. I must have put it in the "keep this" section of my brain because it kept popping up to the surface every now and then. I don't know if this is an example - but I often wake up after 2 hrs of sleep or so and eat something light and get on my Nook HD. Then after about 30 minutes or so - I go back to sleep.