What is Sleep and Why Do We Need It?

[rgray222]

I am not attempting to explain sleep or why we need it, I am literally asking the question, what is sleep and why do we need it? When you really start to think about sleep there must be some extraordinary reason why we so desperately need it.

I believe sleep is somehow intricately tied into where we came from (the source) and where we are going after physical death. It seems like we have to be plugged into the matrix (must be a better word) everyday otherwise we can not function properly. I have often wondered if sleep renews our amnesia on a daily basis. Also does sleep somehow adjust or fine tune our DNA.

A good analogy (at least for me)......sleep is similar to maintenance on a car. Every so often you need to take your car in for regular maintenance, engine is tuned up, fluids are replenished, tires are properly inflated and it is sent back out on the road with no memory of what was wrong with it in the first place.
After you rack up enough miles the car needs to be completely recycled for a new model. The old model disappears but is not actually gone, most of the metal and parts are recycled and put in brand new cars or other equipment. This is not unlike what happens to each and everyone of us.

What happens if we didn't sleep?

A good way to understand the role of sleep is to look at what would happen if we didn't sleep. Lack of sleep has serious effects on our brain's ability to function. If you've ever pulled an all-nighter, you'll be familiar with the following after-effects: grumpiness, grogginess, irritability and forgetfulness. After just one night without sleep, concentration becomes more difficult and attention span shortens considerably.

With continued lack of sufficient sleep, the part of the brain that controls language, memory, planning and sense of time is severely affected, practically shutting down. In fact, 17 hours of sustained wakefulness leads to a decrease in performance equivalent to a blood alcohol level of 0.05%

Research also shows that sleep-deprived individuals often have difficulty in responding to rapidly changing situations and making rational judgments. In real life situations, the consequences are grave and lack of sleep is said to have been be a contributory factor to a number of international disasters such as Exxon Valdez, Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and the Challenger shuttle explosion.

Sleep deprivation not only has a major impact on cognitive functioning but also on emotional and physical health. Disorders such as sleep apnoea which result in excessive daytime sleepiness have been linked to stress and high blood pressure. Research has also suggested that sleep loss may increase the risk of obesity because chemicals and hormones that play a key role in controlling appetite and weight gain are released during sleep.

When sleep loss is at its extreme, it can definitely lead to death.

Do all animals need sleep?

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=pmCuelNxbCg

Sleep has a vague definition: having a state of immobility that can quickly be reversed, combined with a greatly reduced rate of responsiveness to stimuli. Due to the difficulties in explaining what sleep actually is and the lack of research outside of birds and mammals, scientists tend to be a little hesitant when attributing the word sleep to reptiles, fish and especially invertebrates, and prefer to use the term rest instead.

I found this definition of sleep especially intriguing because it speaks to our consciousness.

a condition of body and mind such as that which typically recurs for several hours every night, in which the nervous system is relatively inactive, the eyes closed, the postural muscles relaxed, and consciousness practically suspended.

For something that takes up a third of our life, we actually know very little about why we need sleep – though we do know that it is essential, and that we cannot function without it.

It seems to me, if we understood the need for sleep it would bring us close to understanding the source of humanity. It would shed light on our creator(s) and provide some answers to mankind's role in the universe.

It is something we all take for granted but it is an extraordinary occurrence that happens to all of us everyday!

Any thoughts?

[ghostrider]

the body heals and grows when we sleep ... it has been said when the earth has an ice age , that is sleep for a planet ... the flowers and trees in winter go dormant , they sleep , as there is time fo everything ... the immortal part of us needs to download , thus the container goes dormant and information and exploration takes place ...

[ROMANWKT]

Ask Dawn, its a question that I always hit people with when we get to the nitty gritty of this subject, Dawn and others have written about this here on Avalon, the higher you raise your frequency the less sleep one requires or no sleep one requires??? the answer is there. Its a question that we should all know the answer to, it would be great understanding and a possible measure to our spiritual level.

Regards

roman

[Peace4all]

I would love to see or hear about someone so spiritually advanced with such high frequency that they never have to sleep..
Why would you ever not want to sleep ROMANWKT?

[ROMANWKT]

Posted by Peace4all (here)
I would love to see or hear about someone so spiritually advanced with such high frequency that they never have to sleep..
Why would you ever not want to sleep ROMANWKT?

Hi Peace4all

No, a misunderstanding, let me rephrase, the by product of raising ones vibration through meditation, is that one can literally not being able to sleep, or only requires 2 to 3 hours sleep a day, that what I meant, sorry.

regards

roman

ASK DAWN

[Mike Gorman]

Sleep is deeply mysterious, it is one of those aspects of life that is so seemingly 'obvious' and banal that most of us don;t give it much
thought. I have always thought it is as much about the essence of our existence as it is about our physical well being-we delve into this
chaotic hallucinatory realm where we all go quietly barking mad for a a few hours-deep, long journeys seem to be taken; ever woken up and felt
as though you had been away for a long, long time? And what about Dreams...about as weird an experience as an individual can have.
We need to learn and explore a lot more about sleep, it has always deeply intrigued me. People literally Die when deprived of it for many days.

[Bubu]

Posted by ROMANWKT (here)

Posted by Peace4all (here)
I would love to see or hear about someone so spiritually advanced with such high frequency that they never have to sleep..
Why would you ever not want to sleep ROMANWKT?

Hi Peace4all

No, a misunderstanding, let me rephrase, the by product of raising ones vibration through meditation, is that one can literally not being able to sleep, or only requires 2 to 3 hours sleep a day, that what I meant, sorry.

regards

roman

ASK DAWN

Let me put it simple. sleep is needed to repair damage to or grow the body. When you are very healthy there is almost no damage to your cells. Thus you do not need much sleep. I am down to 4 hours of sleep average since I started doing the 5 Tibet rites together with activating my prana processor. I think my mistake is forcing my self back to sleep after waking up around 1 am because mainstream said we got to have 8 hrs ave.

[Rich]

Posted by Peace4all (here)
I would love to see or hear about someone so spiritually advanced with such high frequency that they never have to sleep..

I read that masters don't need to sleep like Lester Levenson. I guess if you can be thoughtless it's the same as sleeping.

[rgray222]

Posted by GalaxyHorse (here)
Sleep is deeply mysterious, it is one of those aspects of life that is so seemingly 'obvious' and banal that most of us don;t give it much
thought. I have always thought it is as much about the essence of our existence as it is about our physical well being-we delve into this
chaotic hallucinatory realm where we all go quietly barking mad for a a few hours-deep, long journeys seem to be taken; ever woken up and felt
as though you had been away for a long, long time? And what about Dreams...about as weird an experience as an individual can have.
We need to learn and explore a lot more about sleep, it has always deeply intrigued me. People literally Die when deprived of it for many days.

Yes, I feel the same way, sleep is deeply mysterious and for some reason man does not seem that curious about it. Yes there have been studies, sleep clinics and research but not as much as you would think. This is something that every man, woman and child on the planet engages in everyday, many several times a day and you would think that there would be an all out effort to find out why we need sleep.

I have often wondered if we are manipulated or programmed while we sleep. I am not that much of a conspiracy theorist but it does seem plausible. Just stop and think about disasters around the world, approximately 3000 people died in Katrina, 220,000 died in the Tsunami in the Pacific in 2004 and another 19,000 died in the 2011 Tsunami in Japan. If we were not manipulated to let these events go and if they stayed in the forefront of our minds it would be hard to get up everyday and go through life.

I saw a UFO in 1994, it was up close with an excellent view of a triangular craft. I grabbed a yellow legal pad and sketch the craft, jotted down a detailed description and time. I went to sleep that night and woke up without any memory of seeing a UFO. Only after seeing the yellow legal pad on the table did everything come flooding back. There is no question in my mind that this was somehow erased from my memory while sleeping.

My wife is one of those people that only needs 3.5 - 4.0 hours of sleep a night. Neither of us understands how she function so normally on so little sleep. On the other hand I am a person who clearly needs 7 -8 hours to function properly. Anything less causes grogginess, irritability and a lack of focus. I can only assume that she has an upgraded connection to the source that we all plug into everyday.

Yes, sleep is deeply mysterious but once again we seem conditioned not to look into it too intensely. We seem to have been programmed to accept it as something that is necessary. Food and water is something that we can easily comprehend as necessary for sustaining our life forces but the absolute need to sleep is as perplexing as it is otherworldly.