In this essay I shall explore the topic of sleep paralysis and the accompanying hallucinations, known as hypnagogic or hypnapompic hallucinations, depending on whether they appeared during waking up or falling asleep.
In short, sleep paralysis is an affliction during which the brain keeps the body muscles paralysed as during REM sleep, but is not in the sleep stage itself.
The person is somewhat conscious, but cannot move his body. This state can last around several minutes, after which the person falls back into sleep, or the paralysis passes and he stays awake.
This affliction is very often accompanied by vivid hallucinations, visual and aural. Especially the latter are extremely common during falling asleep - almost everyone can recall more or less comprehensible voices heard inside one's head just before dozing off, as if some previous dream tried to catch up with us. The source of all those hallucinations is the increased brain activity experienced during the transitory stage of falling asleep or waking up. During hypnagogic/hypnapompic stage, human brain works like a madman, its activity far exceeds that of waking or sleeping stage (incl. REM sleep). This is the reason such an overactivated brain creates hallucinations.
The most common visual hallucination, the one immortalized in folklore and mythology of all people on the globe, is the nightmare, literally. A night mare, a demon which comes in the night to a sleeping man, appears near the bed, sits on man's chest and suffocates the paralysed, hapless victim. Also known as the Old Hag, as kikimora or zmora in Slavic folklore. In Polish poetry we had a poem "Dusiołek" (Suffocass - combination of Polish words for suffocation/strangling and an animal of the horse family), referencing a folklore figure of a demon attacking a traveller during his nap.
Indeed, a man who is in the stage of falling asleep, when grasped by the sleep paralysis, is quite aware of his surroundings, he sees them with his eyes which he can still move around. But the brain superimposes its own creations upon the visual nerve signals, combining images from the eyes with the images from the depths of its subconscious memory in a sinister fashion. All boosted by brain's insane overactivity in this stage, which may last for several minutes.
But why the nightmare, why the vision of a chest-sitting, strangling creature? I guess it is triggered by the stiffening of the body muscles in preparation for entering sleep phase. The overactive brain combines the sensory data from the body (stiffening) and synthesizes a dreamy hallucination of a threatening figure which literally suffocates the sleeper by the very weight of its body hulking on one's chest. It also produces emotions of fear, helplessness and madness during this imaginary demonic attack.
In the absence of paralysis, this hypnagogic activity would probably produce different hallucinations, which I shall testify to in a moment.
The brain's activity supposedly is stimulated by a substance DMT, which is produced in the pineal gland. During the normal REM sleep phase, DMT is responsible for dreams - and those are required for normal and healthy functioning of human organism. Deprived of REM sleep, human would die after just a few days. However, during the pre-sleep phase, DMT is produced in extreme amount and if the brain does not fall to sleep at that very moment, we are bombarded with hallucinations produced by the very hallucinogen our own bodies made.
Why would the brain not go to sleep at that very moment? Reasons are many: stress, fatigue, different place we sleep at, etc., all may be contributing factors.
The key moment of reckoning is the one in which we, when trying to fall asleep, experience something of a feeling of falling down - produced by our cerebellum "going to bed" - and if during that stage we startle, this may trigger the sleep paralysis incident, because the muscles are already being paralysed, while our brain gets a kick from our consciousness of feeling startled by falling down.
Of course it does not explain the sleep paralysis during waking up. Perhaps it involves startling within a dream.
I mention it, because advanced so-called oneironauts (sleep travellers) are able to enter sleep paralysis at will by inducing it and overcoming all fear associated with the hallucinations, therefore there may be actual tips for how to induce oneself into sleep paralysis when one wishes to - think about lucid dreaming/out-of-body experience groups to look for.
My experiences
Back in 2009, I had two major instances of sleep paralysis and accompanying hallucinations, which I shall describe here briefly.
The first one happened after I got back home from work, doing quite a sprint to make it before rain hit (still I got wet). I ate tomato soup with noodles and just dozed off immediately. The nap was very light. I instantly entered REM phase, in which I woke up inside the dream, got up from bed - but was unable to walk. So I levitated. Notice: false awakening, levitation - sounds kinda like astral travel! So I levitated through the apartment to another room and sat on an armchair. And then suddenly I felt the emanation of something evil. Something was definitely NOT OK. I looked around and saw a multitude of spiders coming down around me from the ceiling. Bam! I woke up again at that very instant, this time for real - but I was paralysed. I felt a touch hallucination - of something crawling up my legs, something heavy and crushing. I couldn't make myself move my head towards it, so I could only behold this thing with a corner of my eye. With my own eye I partly beheld... A BLACK BULK sitting on my stomach...
A black bulk which started to jump and ride me like a mount!
I was unable to direct my eyes toward its face - fortunately - but its body, the part I was able to behold was just horrifyingly terrible. As if it came straight out of "Shadow Over Innsmouth" by H.P. Lovecraft, from the depths of Y'ha-nthlei... although its "skin" was as black as a black magma in a dungeon.
Suddenly, the paralysis went away, the hallucination disappeared, I only felt the trembling of my body receding - and I rose up, covered with sweat. I am certain that my body reacted to that unholy nightmarish ride as if it was real.
So to reiterate - after intensive physical exhaustion (sprinting), after eating a dose of carbohydrates (noodles) right before taking a nap - the effect was uneasy, light sleep with a false awakening inside, produced by brain's overactivity. Astral levitation, feeling of something evil, waking up paralysed - and immediate attack by the nightmare.
This was my first such vivid experience with sleep paralysis and hallucinations.
The next one came after half a year.
I cannot recall any special circumstances before the incident. The attack happened in the middle of the night. I felt something of a launching of my body from bed to the floor, after which I experienced a satanic tempest rocking my body all over the floor (all inside a dream) under a canonade of thundering sounds. After a short while it all disappeared, and I found myself woke in bed, paralysed. Opposite me, against the window - A HORNED GOD, HERNE THE HUNTER.
I beheld him with a feeling of awe, bewilderment and fear. I noticed his horns from which two children hung - undead, condemned children with skin looking like an armchair's leather. The children were whispering something, I fancied it was in ancient Akkadian. At first, I wanted to strike the Horned God with a pillow, but being paralysed, I couldn't move. So I decided to astrally forward my arms toward the children. And indeed, they noticed my attempt and started to reciprocate with their own leathery arms towards me. Our hands met and I felt extreme cold touching one of their hands.
Suddenly, the vision disappeared in an instant. The Horned God became what it really was - a plant on the window pane, which in the moonlight, against the window, looked like a horned creature to my hyperactive brain on DMT.
Insane, right? No drugs involved. Only my own, personal DMT...
I have had no notable incidents since then.
Sometimes I experienced a loud scream during falling asleep, right next to my ear, which broke me from falling asleep - but did not produce paralysis.
Several years later I experienced something different though.
I had a dream I was returning from woods on my bike, but when nearing home, I sensed there was something terribly wrong. As if something in the structure of the building was off. Climbing the staircase I noticed that the walls were kinda oblique. In fact, everything was oblique or geometrically transformed in the building in a way I did not recognize it.
It produced an instant feeling of terror. A terror of disorder. Immediately, I woke up - no paralysis. It was already morning light, I could see the room. And then I saw a huge spider running upon the wall over me. I jumped from my bed and I was looking at the spider. I took a look from various angles. It was crawling and crawling down in my direction, it was so close I could touch it. But it also turned more and more transparent. Finally, it disappeared right before my eyes!
It was pure hypnapompic hallucination, albeit without accompanying paralysis - the result of DMT residue in the brain, overproduced during the last terrifying stage of that dream with disordered staircase. The terror which triggered the onset of hallucination was produced by the disorder in ecumena, represented by my home - I guess one of the primal fears haunting our ancestors in their time, when they feared getting back from mammoth hunting to their homes and seeing them ravaged and demolished by either natural disaster or attack, with their female tribesmen and children killed or taken into slavery...
Anyway, the spider hallucination is also interesting. After reading more about it, it seems that many people experience such hallucinations after waking up. Some people see spiders, others see snakes, or even centipedes. I reckon it has to be another primal fear, evolutionally imprinted memory to safeguard us against wild venomous creatures which we should always avoid, instinctively.
In a dream they are combined with the feeling of evil and uneasiness, and they may trigger sleep paralysis if we get startled enough to wake the brain up.
Ok. Since that spider incident I have not experienced anything new worth of note. Not in any case so vivid and strange as the ones I described here.
My mind has become accustomed to such experiences, I guess. Or maybe the reptillians decided I am no longer viable for lifesucking of my ethereal essence! Haha. It is curious, though. People who took DMT in the form of an ayahuasca drink and experienced visions while being awake, often recalled that they saw large humanoid lizards which told them that they were the real masters of this world, the lizards. Lizards-reptillians - the serpents from the Paradise! Perhaps the Bible was authored by a guy who took a dose or two of ayahuasca? Or had a sleep paralysis hallucination and interpreted it for an angel talking to him? Or a snake?
The lucid dreaming connection is also worth exploring. I can recall one incident, again from 2009, when I read a lot about inducing lucid dreaming via sleep paralysis, and so I ate a lot of bread before taking a nap (carbohydrates, remember). The paralysis took on, indeed, and I was attacked by an apparition of a small lizard-like thing combined with a pterodactyl. It started chewing on my leg. According to oneironautic lore, such a creature could be a bot, a harmless guardian at the gate of sleep, behind which lies the astral world of limitless lucid dreaming. So the key is to defeat the bot and cross the gate. That would make a huge step towards reaching lucid dreaming world. But unfortunately, I just woke up from the paralysis and the bot disappeared. The chewing on my leg thing was just a sensory perception of frost biting on my uncovered leg during the nap.
The fascinating world of sleep hallucinations, lucid dreaming, astral world and DMT is interesting indeed, although I always considered these topics from a rational point view - physiology of the brain, not esoterics.
Now I hope that my readers will
- share their sleep paralysis experiences with us
- tell us about their hallucinations and nightmares during the SP
Those who haven't yet experienced SP, or don't recall any details, will manage to get an SP or remember more details the next time. I recommend intensive physical exhaustion before the sleep, eating a lot of bread right before - and voila! Don't be afraid. Explore.
Good luck with your sleep demons!