Scientists have long wondered about our level of consciousness while we sleep. Using meditation, visualization, and lucid dreaming techniques, some participants learned to remain aware as they drifted into non-REM sleep, with an EEG confirming episodes of conscious but dreamless awareness. Researchers investigated reports of a rare phenomenon known as objectless sleep experiences, a state of awareness during sleep without dreams, images, or a sense of self. Studying such states may refine our understanding of consciousness, altered states of mind, and conditions such as deep meditation, sensory deprivation, or even “mind blanking.” For some people, sleep brings a peculiar kind of wakefulness. Not a dream, but a quiet awareness with no content. This lesser-known state of consciousness may hold clues to one of science’s biggest mysteries: what it means to be conscious. In those studies, we found a spectrum of experiences we called “objectless sleep experiences” – conscious states that appear to lack an object of awareness. In all cases, participants who alluded to an objectless sleep experience reported having had an episode during sleep that lacked sensory content and that merely involved a feeling of knowing that they were aware. Although objectless sleep experiences like conscious sleep have mainly been linked to contemplative practices, such as dream yoga, our results indicate that people without knowledge of those practices also experienced this phenomenon. In fact, the results of our online survey did not indicate an association between engagement in meditative practices and objectless sleep experiences. Objectless sleep experiences expand our picture of what it is like to be conscious during sleep. Sleep consciousness has traditionally been widely studied in relation to dreams and dream-like experiences, but recently, there has been a shift in this trend. In our recent study, my colleagues and I tested a new induction protocol that combined meditation, visualization, and lucid dreaming techniques. Four participants learned to stay aware as they drifted into sleep and to signal that they were lucid with a pre-agreed eye movement. Portable EEG recordings, which measure the brain’s electrical activity, confirmed that some objectless states occurred during non-REM (slow-wave) sleep. Researchers believe non-REM sleep lacks the sort of complex conscious states we have while dreaming, although some other forms of sleep experiences, including simpler forms of dreaming, might occur.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!Can You Be Aware Of Nothing The Rare Sleep Experience Scientists Are Trying To Understand
