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Sleep researchers say they have demonstrate that many of the vision of angels and other religious encounter described in the Bible were likely " the products of self-generated lucid dream . "
In a sleep study by the Out - Of - trunk Experience Research Center in Los Angeles , 30 Tennessean were instructed to perform a series of genial steps upon waking up or becoming lucid during the night that might run them to haveout - of - body experiencesculminating in perceive encounters with an angel . one-half of them succeeded , the researcher say .
Elijah and the Angel by Bernardino Luini (1521).
Specifically , the Tennessean were told to try out to re - create the story of Elijah , a prophet who is cite in the Talmud , the Bible and the Quran . In one of the news report in the Bible ’s Book of Kings , Elijah flee to the wild and falls asleep under a raetam Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree , worn-out and prepare to die . Suddenly an angel shakes him alive and tells him to eat . He appear around and , to his surprise , sees a loaf of staff of life bake on some coals and a jug of piss . Elijah eat the meal and goes back to sleep . Lead researcher Michael Raduga suppose this upshot was chosen from among a multitude of scriptural passage involving religious visual modality during the dark , because , " in terms of verifiable results , angels were the idealistic choice , as westerly culture provide a relatively well - found double for them ( wings , white robes , halos , etc . ) . "
The inquiry , which has not been reviewed by match for scientific publication , does gather support from some dreaming researcher who were not involve in Raduga ’s subject . They said the finding support further enquiry into the basis of such religious imagination . One dream expert , however , level out that many spiritual tales of cherubic encounters occur in daytime , which suggests they could not have been dream .
daydream of Elijah
During the four weekends devote to the study , 24 of the volunteers point they had know at least one lucid dream . They had been instruct to attempt to " break from their eubstance " every clock time they became half - alive or transparent during the dark . If they were able-bodied to dream that they had separated from their slumber bodies , they were then supposed to expect for angels in their homes . If they were unable to have an out - of - body dream experience , they were recount togo back to sleepand try again later in the night .
Fifteen of the 24 " lucid " participants sound out they were able to re - create the narrative of Elijah during their dreamlike experiences , either in part or in full . Nine of them dreamed of experiences involving both an angel and food , while the other six encountered only an angel . [ Alien abduction May Be Vivid Dreams ]
Raduga , whose organization is partly funded by sale of his " practical guide " Holy Scripture on transparent dream , designed the experimentation to test his possibility that many reports of miraculous clash are in reality representative of people experiencing this vibrant , natural dream country . If he could coach people to dream a realistic religious encounter , he said , that could try that many historical account of such encounter — such as Elijah ’s sight in the Bible — are really just products of hoi polloi ’s imagination .
Angelic encounters
The voluntary who bring home the bacon in foresee angels described their encounters for the researchers .
One participant , identify as Anton M. , recall make a successful attempt to separate from his body : " I left my body and then summoned my ' guide , ' and he came in the mannikin of an angel . I asked him for some cookies and urine . He open them to me readily . I feed everything up , go through every taste sensory faculty and the feeling of satiation . I returned to my body and fell mightily back numb . "
Though Raduga and his co-worker ' work has not been peer - reviewed or published , other dream researchers call the finding interesting and implicative . " I am sure these Guy are on to something , " said Allan Hobson , a professor emeritus of psychopathology at Harvard Medical School and generator of several books on the neuroscience of dream , including " Dream sprightliness " ( MIT Press , 2011 ) .
Hobson said the approximation that spiritual encounters were really vivid dreams is n’t raw . " William James , the swell and very kind philosopher - psychologist , write a book in 1912 entitled ' Varieties of Religious Experience ' in which he stated that many vision were probablydreamlike apparitions , " he told Life ’s Little Mysteries in an electronic mail .
And then there is " the story of Emmanuel Swedenborg , the Swedish scholar , who … sleep - deprived himself , and it was n’t long before the holy man seem and enjoin him to found the Church of the New Jerusalem , " Hobson said .
Ursula Voss , a sleep and dreaming psychologist at the University of Bonn in Germany , agrees that some spiritual encounters could be products of the human thinker . " But other scenario are also possible , " Voss suppose . If the sight are imagined , she reason that these encounters would not happen during limpid dream , but rather could be example of " soporiferous hallucinations , " which happen just before people pass gone , when the brain is extremely susceptible to the mogul of proffer . [ Key to Hallucinations Found ]
Brigitte Holzinger , a psychologist at theInstitute for Consciousness and Dream Researchwho was not involved in Raduga ’s study , tell that many biblical tales are memorialize as having happened during the day ; as such , they were probably not dream .
" What we can learn from this is that we want a right definition of transparent dream , and based on that definition we need to severalise lucid dreams from other shape of trances , visions and maybe even hallucinations , " Holzinger write in an email .
She added that " a project trying to determine these states would be very interesting . "
