Explanation for Dreaming and Near Death Experiences

Currently science thinks that dreams are just random firing of you brain at night, and have no significance. I have been looking into why we dream a lot recently online, and i think i may inadvertantly found a conspiracy

I've found a series of science papers that imply that dreaming is infact a type of psychedelic trip due to a very powerful hallucinogenic drug that is created naturally in the brain. Its called '___', and is the only known endogenous psychedelic (produced internally). It is the worlds most powerful natural drug, the same type of drug that shamans have used for centuries to visit the 'spiritworld' and expand their consciousness.

I am sure that govenments all over the world are not going to let this information become public, as its one of the most illegal drugs in the world. Every science paper i have found on this has commented on suppression in their research by govenments, so it does seem that there is a substancial effort to stop this information becoming public

The main reason i started to expect '___' (or other similar triptamine endogenous psychedelics) may be the cause of dreams was due to an experiment by Prof Rosalind Cartwright, which shows that when the subjects were deprived of REM sleep they started to hallucinate and see patterns when they were awake. And as REM sleep is the part of sleep where you dream, it seems that the drug that causes dreams is needed so much by the brain (for whatever reason), it starts to produce it even when you are awake. A natural trip

short clip of the experiment from a discovery channel documentary;




A fine paper I dug up on this from the University of California, Berkeley, can be seen here;
sulcus.berkeley.edu...

Entheogenic refers to drugs "which provoke ecstasy [flight of the soul from the body] and have traditionally been used as shamanic or religious inebriants."(Ott, 1996) The term (as first coined by Dr. R. Gordon Wasson, Prof. Carl Ruck and Jonathan Ott in 1979) means "realizing the divine within"

Modern science has identified some of the active components of such sacraments, which has provided for limited research opportunities. Scientific research on these substances is currently very restricted by the U.S. Government's social agendas. Further research on entheogenic compounds coupled to dream state research will offer scientific advance in the study of dreams as well as cultural advances in understanding the value of entheogenic substances for therapeutic and religious use....

The striking similarity of entheogenic experiences to dream experiences tempts us to seek answers as to whether the benefits of dreaming are potentially linked to the benefits of entheogens. The molecular action of visions produced by dreaming is quite possibly very similar to visions produced by entheogenic drugs. Carefully designed research could lend great insight into the mystery of dreaming, the potential therapeutic value of entheogens, and the potential for neurochemical advances.

and they conclude with;

Entheogenic drugs and dreams alike have a special place in the evolution of humankind and its value systems. Profound musical inspirations and scientific discoveries of the past century have even been inspired by them. Our ancestors religious views and values were influenced by their faith in visions communicated by entheogenic drugs and dreams. In an age of environmental destruction and moral erosion, the knowledge afforded by dream and entheogen induced visions could not be more valuable. Let us hope that our culture is fortunate enough to open our minds and build on the mysteries our ancestors have explored for ages.

Quite a conclusion to be coming from a university! They have obviously tried to study this, but have found funding difficult as its so controversial.

Some of the other science papers that if found had some interesting points to make about this;

[edit on 14-11-2007 by ZeuZZ]

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...

School of Pharmacy, University of California, San Francisco 94143.
The visions of dream sleep are suggested to occur through a dream mechanism which implicates tryptamine derivatives as endogenous psychedelics. The hallucinations that occur in some schizophrenic syndromes are also proposed to occur through a similar, though desynchronized, mechanism. These compounds occur in the human pineal gland and are regarded as neurotransmitters or neuroregulators. A protocol for experimental verification is suggested.

I also find it interesting that if you are deprived of REM sleep your brain will always make up what you have missed when you next fall asleep. This again indicates that the brain, for whatever reason, regards dreaming as a very important stage in sleep and does as much as it can to produce the drug that causes the visual imagery of dreams.
www.bbc.co.uk...

Experiments carried out by Professor Patrick and Dr J A Gilbert of the University of Iowa on sleep deprivation showed interesting results. Strangely though acuteness of vision actually increased in all cases. One of their subjects even began to hallucinate on the third night of deprivation. When allowed to sleep after ninety hours, the subjects did so readily and slept very deeply, showing increased time in REM sleep. If a subject is deprived of REM sleep, for example, by waking him/her every time he comes near to it, then the subject will spend more time in REM the next time they sleep. Although sleep deprivation is not as permanently injurious in humans as in young dogs, it still has serious effects.

Another sleep deprivation experiment, from a well established university, where people started to hallucinate after sleep deprivation.

www.macalester.edu...

Schizophrenic-like reactions include illusions, delusions, and hallucinations, disturbances in thinking, and unprovoked emotion, such as laughter. These types of reactions are some of the most commonly reported experience during extended periods of sleep loss. Visual hallucinations have been observed in other experiments as well. Examples of these include the perception of tile squares to be pulsating and growing darker and larger, mistaking a desk for a water fountain, and the floor of the lab “appearing to be covered by a layer of shimmering water”. The frequency of these hallucinations may increase with sleep deprivation. A number of stages of visual hallucinations have been identified. These include identifying a disturbed perception, labeling a hallucination with no doubt as to its reality (i.e., being sure the hallucination is not real) labelling a hallucination with doubt as to its reality, and labeling and believing in a misperception (which is the true definition of a hallucination).

I hope that research is allowed to continue into this subject. Though considering the political ramifications of discovering that the strongest illegal drug in the world is actually produced naturally every night as you sleep, I am not optimistic.

You can look up quite a lot of information on '___' on Wikipedia. They have recently allowed information about the molecular structure of illegal drugs to be uploaded (which was prohibited before 2007), so a lot of this information is now becoming public due to the internet.

en.wikipedia.org...






The other aspect of '___', which I find fascinating, is the theory put forward by Dr Rick Strassman. He thinks that '___' is produced in huge amounts during birth and death, which is what causes the vivid visual images people see in NDE’s, and also the spiritual change in peoples attitudes after NDE’s.

From wikipedia;

Several speculative hypotheses suggest that endogenous '___', produced in the human brain, is involved in certain psychological and neurological states. As '___' is naturally produced in small amounts in the brains and other tissues of humans, and other mammals,[11] some believe it plays a role in promoting the visual effects of natural dreaming, and also near-death experiences and other mystical states. A biochemical mechanism for this was proposed by the medical researcher JC Callaway, who suggested in 1988 that '___' might be connected with visual dream phenomena, where brain '___' levels are periodically elevated to induce visual dreaming and possibly other natural states of mind. [12]
Dr. Rick Strassman, while conducting '___' research in the 1990s at the University of New Mexico, advanced the theory that a massive release of '___' from the pineal gland prior to death or near death was the cause of the near death experience (NDE) phenomenon. Several of his test subjects reported NDE-like audio or visual hallucinations. His explanation for this was the possible lack of panic involved in the clinical setting and possible dosage differences between those administered and those encountered in actual NDE cases.
Several subjects also reported contact with 'other beings', alien like, insectoid and reptilian in nature, in technological environments[4] where the subjects were 'probed', 'tested' and sometimes even 'manipulated' by these 'beings'

That’s another interesting observation; a lot of the people who take it say they come into contact with intelligent life forms from a higher dimension. Sounds far fetched, but that is what a lot of the subjects in Strassmans original research claimed happened.

In the 1950s, the endogenous production of psychoactive agents was considered to be a potential explanation for the hallucinatory symptoms of some psychiatric diseases as the transmethylation hypothesis.[13]
Ethical concerns do not allow for the testing of this hypothesis in humans, as the biological samples must come from the living human brain.
Writers on '___' include Terence McKenna and Jeremy Narby. McKenna believed '___' to be a tool that could be used to enhance communication and allow for communication with other-worldly entities. Other users report visitation from external intelligences attempting to impart information. From a researcher's perspective, perhaps best known is Rick Strassman's '___': The Spirit Molecule (ISBN 0-89281-927-8);[14] Strassman speculated that '___' is made in the pineal gland, largely because the necessary constituents(see methyltransferases) needed to make '___' are found in the pineal gland. However, no one has looked for '___' in the pineal yet. It's possible Strassman thought that because '___' falls in the large class of chemicals called Tryptamines, which includes Serotonin, '___', Melatonin (a hormone the Pineal Gland does produce), and Psilocybin.

A lot of people think that the fact that '___' is produced at death is good evidence of life after death, and the psychedelic realm that people enter after this high dose of '___' is what happens to people after they die. Religion and people throughout history have referred to this realm as heaven before, and this description closely matches those of people who have NDE’s. They see an enlightening white light, and feel that they are in the presence of some type of intelligence, which is exactly the same as people who take large doses of '___'. Read some of the descriptions of peoples experiences online, they are strikingly similar.


I’m not so sure that endogenous '___' proves life after death. But it’s certainly an interesting hypothesis.