How to induce a waking dream in the easiest way. What is a waking dream and how can it be used? Who experiences hypnagogic hallucinations?

Every night, falling asleep, we find ourselves in one of the most mysterious worlds - the world of dreams. In an era of incredible scientific discoveries, we still know very little about our own dreams.

What does an unborn child dream about? How to decipher the secret meaning of dreams? And is it possible to control dreams? For hundreds of years, people have been dreaming of solving this mystery and understanding what happens to us every night? The Moscow Trust TV channel prepared a special report.

What is sleep

Attempts to understand what sleep is and what happens to the body while we sleep have been made by scientists since the 19th century. For a long time it was believed that sleep is needed to rest the brain.

“This point of view was abandoned very quickly after they learned to record the activity of neurons in the cerebral cortex of animals during sleep and wakefulness. And it was shown that brain neurons during sleep not only do not rest, but, as a rule, on the contrary, they begin to work much more more actively than they did while awake,” says the chief researcher at the Institute for Problems of Information Transmission named after A.A. Kharkevich RAS Ivan Pigarev.

Neurons are brain cells that form complex electrical impulses and control the activities of the entire body. During the day, they analyze the signals we receive through our senses: hearing, sight, smell, taste and touch.

But what do they do at night? This question has puzzled sleep researchers. We close our eyes and the image stops coming. We choose a quiet and comfortable place and are not bothered by loud noises. But that's not all.

“There are special devices in the brain that additionally block the transmission of signals from the outside world to the cerebral cortex. The cerebral cortex is completely devoid of signals from the outside world. And at the same time, the neurons of the brain continue to work, continue to work actively, and, in general, not at all no less than they did while awake,” says Ivan Pigarev.

Today, there are several theories explaining what our brain is doing during sleep. According to one of them, he analyzes the information received over the past day. This is precisely what explains the appearance of certain images that take shape in dreams.

“Dreams are a kind of free analysis of what happened during the day. Moreover, this is not an actual presentation of information, but, as a rule, some kind of subconscious analysis of images. Moreover, such free associations arise. That is, we can fly in a dream - and this is us doesn't bother me at all.

“Yes, we can move in space, we don’t have an internal feeling that this is impossible. That is, everything is possible there, right?” says Roman Buzunov, head of the sleep medicine department of the Barvikha sanatorium, “And the brain, perhaps, looks at information differently and thinks what to do with it: analyze, forget, save. This is, you know, translated into modern language, a kind of cleaning of the hard drive. That is, “storing” into long-term memory, erasing RAM. In the morning, the brain ready to receive information again"

In addition to this theory, there is another, developed by Russian scientists quite recently and confirmed, unlike all the others, by a number of successful experiments. According to it, brain neurons that analyze information coming from the outside world during the day switch to checking the state of our internal organs at night.

Honore Daumier. "Second class carriage"

“We selected neurons that, when awake, were classical visual neurons that responded to visual stimulation. And when the cat fell asleep, we stimulated the intestines, and found that these same neurons that literally 10 minutes ago responded to vision, visual inputs, began to respond to stimulation of the intestines, stomach. Or they began to work in the rhythm of breathing or in the rhythm of the heart,” says Pigarev.

But if sleep is an analysis of the performance of the internal organs of the body, then what are dreams and how do they arise?

So we start to fall asleep. Consciousness is inactive. Interference from the outside world is blocked. The brain analyzes the signals that internal organs send to it. Let's imagine that one of these signals was particularly powerful and managed to slip through the barriers our brains had set up and into the area that is responsible for perception, emotion, sensation, and conscious action during the day.

After all, it is this part of our on-board computer that is practically inactive at night. And only a signal that accidentally breaks through the brain blocks can wake her up.

"The block, which is a switch that stands on the way to consciousness, is a chemical switch. It is not a toggle switch that turns off and on. These are chemical synapses that do not turn off completely. They change the threshold. But if the signal is very strong, it can slip through above this threshold. And very strong signals jump over these thresholds and fly into the area of ​​​​our consciousness. They flew there somewhere and excited a certain neuron there. And this neuron, if excited, it can only be associated with those objects, those symbols ", those concepts with which we operate in cheerfulness. Therefore, dreams are always an unprecedented combination of experienced things," says Ivan Pigarev.

Regularity or coincidence?

Scientists believe that signals that manage to overcome all obstacles and enter the area of ​​our consciousness activate the most excited neurons, that is, those that were among the last to work. That is why most often we dream about the events of the past day, the problems that bothered us before going to bed, or the people we thought about the day before.

And yet: why do we have specific dreams with specific plots? How, among all the information that we receive during the day, does the brain absorb exactly what it sends to us in dreams? These questions still remain open.

"As for the physiology of dreams. This is still a rather dark side of the planet, so to speak. Unfortunately, we cannot record a dream. Take a VCR, disk, flash drive, record the dream and play it back as a video. That is, we do not We can touch it, we cannot evaluate it scientifically.

And in fact, everything that a person simply tells us, we must take his word for it. Do you know how many storytellers we have who say that they have prophetic dreams and so on?” says Roman Buzunov.

And at the same time, it was prophetic dreams, if you believe history, that more than once changed the course of events. Thus, Napoleon’s marshal, Viceroy of Italy, Prince Eugene Beauharnais, in 1812, with French troops, came very close to Moscow, and became a camp near a monastery.

That night he dreamed of an old man with a gray beard, in long black clothes, and said that if the prince saved the monastery and the church from being plundered by soldiers, no misfortune could overcome him and he would return home safe and sound.

Vincent Van Gogh. "Afternoon, or siesta, imitation of Millet"

The next morning, the marshal called the army and forbade them to enter the monastery. He himself went to inspect the local church. Imagine his surprise when, upon entering the temple, he saw the tomb and the image of that same old man. It turned out to be Saint Sava, the founder of the monastery.

The prince took part in all the battles of the Napoleonic Wars, but was not even wounded in any of them. And as the elder predicted, he returned to his homeland alive. Even after the fall of Napoleon, all adversity passed him by, although other marshals of Bonaparte's army died.

It is difficult for scientists to give a scientific explanation for such dreams, but it was the inexplicable facts that at one time forced them to study this mysterious phenomenon in detail.

When do we start dreaming? Research has shown: even before birth. It turns out that the fetus sleeps most of the time in the womb. But what information can an unborn person analyze?

"As soon as the fetus's brain has formed in the womb of the mother, it begins to see. At least, there are changes in the brain that are characteristic of the fact that the child sees a dream. What does he see there? One of the theories, genetic, is that genes, as it were, reproduce information, he watches the same cartoons and is educated. Why sometimes they say that people remember something that they almost certainly could not encounter in their lives. So maybe the information that he saw in the form of cartoons comes up there, in the womb of the mother. But this, of course, such reasoning is not very proven. We cannot ask a born child: “Well, what did you dream about?”, argues Roman Buzunov.

Most scientists believe that absolutely everyone dreams. It's just that not everyone remembers them. This depends, first of all, on what phase of sleep a person wakes up in. Sleep is divided into two phases: fast and slow sleep.

“And this phase of sleep with rapid eye movement, or rapid eye movement sleep, as we call it in Russian, which occurs at the end of each sleep cycle (and we sleep in cycles, each cycle takes 1.5 hours), every 1.5 hours ends with a period of REM sleep, with these periods increasing from evening to morning. That is, the most powerful periods of REM sleep, when the most intense dreams occur, occur in the morning," says the chief researcher at the Institute of Ecology and Ecology named after A.N. Severtsov RAS Vladimir Kovalzon.

Why are dreams needed?

The REM sleep phase alternates with the NREM sleep phase. On average, this alternation is repeated four to six times per night. This means that every night we see an average of five dreams. If we are woken up during REM sleep, the dream will be remembered. If you wake up during slow-wave sleep, you will most likely be sure that you were not dreaming.

For a long time, scientists adhered to this theory. Indeed, in the REM sleep phase, the eyeballs make different movements, as if the sleeper is watching some scene. This led researchers to the idea that it is at this moment that we see dreams and monitor what is happening in the same way as we would do in reality. But this theory was shattered by new facts that scientists discovered after a series of experiments.

“We carried out special experiments and recorded eye movements, carefully, with high resolution, in cats, in monkeys during REM sleep, these movements. And it immediately became clear that eye movements during REM sleep have nothing in common with those eye movements that these animals are used in wakefulness to examine the visual scene. And first of all, the movements of the right and left eyes in REM sleep are not synchronized. In our case, the right eye can go up, the left eye can go down, the right eye can jump, and the left eye can crawl. And, in general, ", these are absolutely two independent objects that can walk in different directions at different speeds. That is, it is absolutely clear that it is impossible to imagine such a visual scene that anyone viewed using such eye movements," says Ivan Pigarev.

According to another version, dreams visit us only twice during sleep: when we fall asleep and when we wake up.

Pierre Cecile Puvis de Chavannes. "Dream"

If we all see dreams every night, then the question arises: why are they needed? Do they convey any important information? Can they be decrypted? And if so, how?

“Even the smallest dream carries very important information for a person. Dreams are the signals that inform us about what is happening to us now: with our body, with our emotional life and, in general, what is happening in our lives.” , - Professor of the Department of Nervous Diseases of the First Moscow State Medical University named after I.M. Sechenova Elena Korabelnikova.

It turns out that dreams are not just an inexplicable illusory world into which we plunge every night. For example, in dreams the body warns of impending diseases when it is not yet possible to diagnose them. For the first time, large-scale research on this topic was carried out by the Soviet psychoneurologist Vasily Nikolaevich Kasatkin. The scientist devoted 30 years to collecting dreams and deducing patterns.

He abandoned mystical symbols, replacing them with scientifically based facts. It turns out that our body can signal an impending disease long before its first symptoms appear. And he sends these signals through dreams.

“There are specific signs that can appear in dreams with this or that pathology, with this or that disease. And further research, in fact, confirmed this. The fact that, for example, diseases of the cardiovascular system have their own markers that will make "to suspect that something is wrong with the person's heart. If it is a disease of the respiratory system, then these are its own markers," says Elena Korabelnikova.

According to research, very often people with digestive problems dream that they eat spoiled foods. In case of respiratory diseases - a scene of suffocation.

“But this does not mean that dreams are a diagnostic panacea, that dreams can be used to make a diagnosis. This is absolutely not true. Dreams are one of the methods, this is a help that, together with other research methods, will allow us to look at the problem more fully, more broadly ", says Elena Korabelnikova.

But sometimes the analysis of a patient’s dreams becomes a truly significant part of medical observation and treatment.

“As studies of cancer patients have shown, dreams show improvement and deterioration when the machines are not yet showing. And this means that it is necessary to prescribe the same chemotherapy in time or cancel it in time so that there is no overdose,” says Maria Volkova, candidate of philosophical sciences.

Message from above

But what about so-called prophetic dreams? How to explain creative dreams when inspiration or a sudden solution to complex problems comes at night? They definitely have nothing to do with diseases. History knows hundreds of cases when the greatest discoveries occurred in a dream.

So, dreams are given to us not only to inform us about impending illnesses? Scientists do not deny the existence of prophetic dreams, although they are also in no hurry to consider them from a scientific point of view. Psychologists divide prophetic dreams into several categories.

“It sometimes happens that in dreams a person makes very correct, very competent forecasts for future events. A person is able to analyze and compare facts. In general, a dream is an active work of our psyche,” says Elena Korabelnikova.

Playing out controversial situations that concern a person is another supposed function of dreams. The brain tries to calculate all possible scenarios in order to be prepared for any of them in reality. But we do not remember the entire dream.

Most often we remember only short segments of it. And it happens that in reality the situation unfolds in exactly the same way as in that very segment of the dream that we remember - then the feeling of a prophetic dream arises.

"Another category, another example: a person is so impressed by his dream that he completely unconsciously begins to build the scenario of his life so that his dream comes true. For example: a person sees in a dream his friend, whom he has not seen for many years. And he impressed. Why did he dream about this friend? And he completely unconsciously begins to visit, go to those places where he and his friend communicated, where he lives, perhaps lived before or lives now, and thus increasing the likelihood that the meeting will happen in reality , and it really happens,” says Korabelnikova.

Nikifor Krylov. "Sleeping Boy"

Another interesting fact: according to statistics, pleasant dreams come true much less often. Most likely, this is due to the fact that in a dream a person, in principle, experiences mainly negatively “charged” situations.

It has been established that the probability of seeing a prophetic dream is about 1 in 22 thousand. This means that in 60 years you will definitely see at least one dream that will come true. And yet, prophetic dreams, apparently, will forever remain outside of official science. At least until scientists manage to create a device that can read our dreams.

Along with the prophetic dreams of each of us, “under the knife” of scientists comes the famous story about the periodic table seen in a dream and the discovery of Kekule’s formula for benzene.

“As far as I know, there is not a single documentary evidence that Mendeleev had this dream. No one knows where it came from, but the myth lives on,” says Ivan Pigarev.

And yet, researchers cannot completely deny the presence of prophetic dreams in our lives. For example, the artist Konstantin Korovin dreamed of the death of the singer Fyodor Chaliapin. In it, Chaliapin appeared to him and persistently asked him to help him remove the heavy stone that was pressing on his chest.

Korovin tried to help him, but in vain. The stone seemed to be firmly attached to the maestro’s chest. And two weeks later the great bass died in Paris. Korovin himself outlived the great singer and his prophetic dream by only a year.

Famous historical figures used the power of dreams not only for prophetic purposes. Salvador Dali, for example, depicted scenes from his dreams on his canvases. To remember his phantasmagoric dreams, he used a special technique.

"He has such a wonderful dream with a key in his hand. You can follow his advice. That is, after a hearty lunch in the summer, when you are tired, sit on an uncomfortable chair, put some kind of metal container (bucket or basin), take some kind of metal object in your hand and squeeze it. You start to fall asleep, you soften, you have a dream, you drop. You wake up - there is a picture. But this, of course, is such a humorous approach, but, nevertheless, it works," says Maria Volkova.

Nightmares

Another subject of close attention of scientists is nightmares. Researchers have come to an unexpected conclusion: scary dreams are beneficial.

“Very interesting, for example, there are facts that confirm that people who have nightmares are better adapted to life than those who do not have nightmares. Why? Because this is a kind of multimedia playback of situations, assessment, search for a way out, solutions And if a person, God forbid, then encounters this situation or he has experienced it, let’s say, then he finds some way out, he finds a solution for himself. And by the way, here the situation is also known, that if a person does not find a way out or decisions, obsessive dreams begin. These are, as a rule, post-traumatic dreams,” says Roman Buzunov.

All scientists agree on one thing: the images that we see in dreams carry some information. And their analysis can greatly facilitate the solution of many life problems. One of the first to raise this topic was Sigmund Freud.

The psychoanalyst's job was to reveal to his patients the true meaning of their dreams. In his opinion, the overwhelming majority of dreams represent desires repressed from consciousness, which, of course, have sexual overtones.

His student Carl Gustav Jung placed much less importance on sexual signals. In his opinion, dreams help reveal features of our personality that may be hidden in reality. Today, dream researchers do not tend to adhere to any one of the classical concepts. But almost everyone agrees that dreams signal us about something important.

Henry Fuseli. "Nightmare"

“Dreams, dream analysis are rather closer to psychoanalysis. This is an absolutely wonderful thing. You can use it. You need to use it. Neurologists who use it for medical purposes use it successfully. They do not analyze dreams as dreams, they use this dream for the purpose of to get information about the mental problems of this or that person,” says Ivan Pigarev.

But it's not that simple. The images we see in our dreams can only be deciphered by ourselves. One person will associate joy with one image, while another will associate it with a completely different one. And no specialist, without knowing the person, will ever be able to correctly interpret a dream.

“If a person associates something with danger: some situation, some events, and so on, then next time the subconscious feeling of danger will manifest itself in this image. Or maybe on the beach, some kind of bandits attacked, while he was sunbathing in the sun, and took away his wallet, next time the danger will be associated with the fact that he is lying, sunbathing on the beach,” says Roman Burzunov.

People have been analyzing their dreams since time immemorial. The most ancient spiritual practices and religions refer to sleep as a way of self-knowledge and healing. Many tribes that have preserved the traditions of their ancestors still use dreams to solve their problems.

"There is a Senoi tribe in Malaysia. In the middle of the 20th century, anthropologists and psychologists became very interested in this tribe. Why? Because there are no mental illnesses in this tribe. Well, they still don’t exist. We began to study why this happens. And it turned out that that Senoi have a special habit: predicting their dreams. It’s not that they wish for what they will dream, but their very life, their very position in life... Senoi do not distinguish reality from dreams. There is no direct clear boundary between these two states. The Senoi tribe begins the morning with all family members getting together and discussing their dream,” says author and dream researcher Olard Dixon.

The elder representative of the tribe explains to the younger ones what the dream could symbolize, what they should pay attention to and what to do next time in a similar situation.

“And in this way a dream is formed, programmed, that you can meet your friend inside a dream, you can meet a predator in the forest inside a dream and defeat him in order to overcome your fear. And many things can be solved inside dreams. And this is how programming arises "- says Olard Dixon.

Sleep management

It would seem that the idea of ​​programming dreams, and even more so of controlling them, is from the realm of science fiction. Meanwhile, lucid dreams, or lucid dreams as they are also called, are actively practiced both by doctors and by those simply wishing to experience absolutely incredible sensations upon waking up in their own sleep.

“The practice of lucid dreaming really exists. This is a separate direction. A very interesting direction. Until now, lucid or lucid dreams remain a mystery, despite the fact that some ideas and possible explanations have been proposed. Still, a lot is not clear to us. And therefore, this special area of ​​​​work of our psyche must be approached with very great caution. Since, for example, there are cases when attempts to practice with lucid dreams aggravated mental pathology, psychosis, and so on," says Elena Korabelnikova.

The term “lucid dreaming” was introduced at the beginning of the 20th century by the Dutch psychiatrist and writer Frederik Van Eeden. In 1913, he presented a report to the Society for Psychical Research, in which he reported on his 312 lucid dreams from 1989 to 1912.

Later, in the second half of the 20th century, Carlos Castaneda and psychophysiologist Stephen Laberge wrote about them. To date, scientists cannot distinguish a patient’s lucid dreams from ordinary ones. At the same time, science cannot ignore the very clear and detailed reports about this state from experienced dreamers, including scientists themselves.

“Unfortunately, there are no objective methods of control so that we connect some sensors and say that this is just a dream, and this is a lucid dream. Alas, we cannot do this. Yes, but people tell this, and even experienced it from our own experience ". This is a very well-known technique. Another thing is that, again, there may be fairy tales, there may be Munchausens and so on, so on, who like to tell stories that actually do not exist," says Roman Burzunov.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder. "Land of Lazy People"

What is a lucid dream and how to recognize it? Practitioners say that while in a state of lucid dreaming, a person feels exactly the same as in reality, and only a few details can indicate that he is sleeping.

"Lucid dreams are not predicted dreams. This is an even higher level. This is when a person knows for sure that he is sleeping, that he is dreaming everything that happens and is already acting in accordance with this knowledge. This is an even higher step, this is even more interesting, then, when dreams actually cease to be a dream as such, but are already perceived by a person simply as reality, so dense that you can do anything in it exactly the same as in reality,” says Olard Dixon.

So how do you recognize a dream? How does dream reality differ from waking reality? How do you realize that you have woken up inside your own dream? There are many practices: shamanic, practices of Tibetan yogis, practices developed already in Western society at the end of the 20th century by the same Laberge. But in general they all come down to the same markers.

"Inside a dream, the clocks don't work correctly. Inside a dream, you can't tune musical instruments. Inside a dream, no mechanics work. Well, that's how we remember our childhood nightmare: a burglar comes, and we want to close the door, but it won't close. Why? Because There's no lock inside the dream door. There's just the appearance of a lock, but the lock itself isn't there. So you can't close it," Dixon explains.

Masters of lucid dreams claim that if you follow clear rules in a dream state, the dreamer will always receive a clear result of his actions. For example, if inside a dream you constantly turn left and go around all obstacles on the left side, it will start to rain or an image of marshy areas, streams, lakes will appear.

If, on the contrary, you turn right all the time, then the person awakens. The further the dreamer goes to the right side, the closer he is to awakening. Experienced dreamers not only keep a dream diary (and this, it must be said, is a prerequisite for training mindfulness and reading the signals of their dreams), but also draw up their own maps.

“If we say: “We dreamed of a grocery store that is located across the street from our house, the dreaming house,” then if we wrote it down (our dream), if we sketched it, where this store is located, in the next dream, when we will end up on the same street, we will see this store in the same place. Why?

Because we stabilized it. Because we described it, we recorded it. We mapped a certain area of ​​space, and it became stable. Stable not only for us, but also stable for others who end up on this street,” says Olard Dixon.

Experts are convinced that absolutely everyone, without exception, is capable of lucid dreaming. You just need to follow simple rules, train your attention, and be aware of the laws by which the world of dreams exists. Lucid dream practitioners call this process “reality testing.”

“Before we turn on the light here, in reality, when we enter our apartment, we touch the switch itself and realize that we are turning it on. Just mechanically once - and it turns on. And we realize that we are turning it on.

Literally a second of awareness. And then we press the key and see whether the light turns on or doesn’t turn on. It turns on - very good, which means it’s real, because in reality it most often turns on. But if it doesn’t turn on, we ask ourselves: “Is this a dream?” and we do a reality test on the second subject, for example, looking at the clock and seeing what time it says,” says Olard Dixon.

The technique of lucid dreaming is used not only in spiritual practices with the goal of knowing oneself. It is quite actively used by psychotherapists to treat phobias and addictions. Doctors are confident that dreams can help solve a number of psychological problems, because in dreams we are not afraid of failures and setbacks.

Here we can play out any situation that worries us and consider it from all possible sides. Some psychotherapists go beyond the conventional use of lucid dreams and use a similar technique to train athletic skills.

"German psychotherapist Paul Toley - he specifically went to work for the German sports team, where the level of injuries is highest. This is ski jumping from a springboard, even when they do somersaults. He taught athletes lucid dreams so that they practice tricks in their sleep. The quality has improved. , the number of injuries dropped sharply,” says Maria Volkova.

From dreams to reality

But no matter how attractive the idea of ​​lucid existence in the world of dreams is, scientists and masters of spiritual practices claim: for an unprepared person, a lucid dream is fraught with as many dangers as miracles.

“I never understood why this was, but it was absolutely clear that after some time of using this practice of lucid dreaming, patients were guaranteed to develop, first of all, gastrointestinal problems, stomach ulcers and all the other delights of the gastrointestinal tract. intestinal.

Then the next one is cardiovascular disorders, because this system is the most complex and most affected by sleep deprivation. Well, God forbid that some woman starts to engage in this nonsense, because if then she suddenly becomes pregnant, then the likelihood that she will give birth to a freak is very high,” says Ivan Pigarev.

In addition, experts say that lucid dreams can cause psychological dependence. In some cases, they lead to a complete disconnect from reality. It becomes much more interesting for a person to exist in the world of dreams than in our everyday life.

“Another thing is that Laberge advertises this as a kind of tool for healthy people. This is a kind of drug addiction without a drug. You can get hooked on it. And this is very dangerous, because, again, I’m not a doctor, but in consultation with neurologists and psychiatrists They all loudly declare that there are a lot of people with schizoid tendencies (these are healthy people, it’s just their personality type) - for them this can lead to irreversible mental disorders, that is, to put it simply, “the roof will go off and it won’t come back,” he says Vladimir Kovalzon.

Antonio Pereda. "The Knight's Dream"

“And I had to consult several times with such patients who actually live only in their sleep. It’s practically like drug addicts. He’s not interested in the day. He, I don’t know, sits like some kind of security guard all day and blankly looks at the passing stream, and at night he superhero: Superman, Spider-Man or something else like that. And this is absolutely clear, clear, how these sensations are perceived in life,” says Roman Burzunov.

In various cultures, only trained people who have studied all possible ways of working with their consciousness and subconscious, and are well acquainted with the state of deep meditation, have been allowed to engage in such practices at all times.

"Now in the Western world and in Russia, we most often study dreams without any yoga, without any practices. A person simply comes into awareness with what he is. Because awareness itself does not make him better or worse. It allows (consciousness inside a dream) to be realized. And a person with negative thoughts begins to realize these negative thoughts. Here the law does not allow him to do this. There he has free hands.

For our brain, it doesn’t matter at all where we do this: inside a dream we are engaged in destruction or here. Why? Because serious pathological changes occur in the brain of this person, because the person has already allowed himself to do this. He has already allowed himself to be killed. Inside the dream, if he allowed himself to kill, then this is already a skill,” says Olard Dixon.

While for many the idea of ​​lucid dreaming is still fantasy, businessmen and scientists are putting dreams into practice. For several years now, devices have been on sale that allow, if not mastering lucid dreams, then certainly ordering the dream that a person wants to see.

“Currently, such research on inducing dreams is underway. They are based mainly on some kind of, say, the formation of conditioned reflexes. That is, you, for example, think about some situation that you want to dream about, and at this time it is supplied by a device, for example , some sound or light, or smell. And accordingly, a certain conditioned reflex arises that connects this sound, color or smell with what you want to dream about. And then the device during the dream (and it can, in principle, be tracked according to a certain motor activity there, and so on) give these signals to a person. And they work as a kind of trigger that causes what you were thinking about. Although this is also not a 100% result. This is also like some kind of training," explains Roman Burzunov.

Scientists do not stop at the possibility of programming the brain for given dreams. There is already incredible research going on. Scientists are trying to develop a program that can read the images that our brain receives. The first successful results have already been obtained in California.

Neuroscientists were able to recreate the visual images that arose in the head while watching randomly selected videos. This means that the day is not far off when we will be able to record our dreams as if on film, and watch them during the day and analyze the information that our body sends us.

Dreams accompany a person throughout his life; it is only natural that he wants his dreams to be pleasant. However, few people know that nightmares can be avoided by taking control of the dream world. After all, there are various techniques that will make it possible to induce a prophetic dream or a waking dream; Moreover, you can control what happens in your sleep.

How to induce a waking dream?

Somnologists call a waking dream a phenomenon called sleep paralysis. It represents the shutdown of motor activity during sleep. In some cases, the inability to move occurs before a person falls asleep or immediately after waking up. This state does not last long, only a few minutes. Sleep paralysis is often accompanied by auditory and visual hallucinations. For this reason it is called a waking dream.

In this state, people feel inexplicable fear and terrible helplessness for just a few moments. They may hear noises or strange voices, see ghosts, or feel someone's presence.

This condition can be induced artificially. To do this, a person must be in a stressful state for a long period and rarely sleep. You can also induce a waking dream in the following way: lie on your back, do not move and resist sleep. In half an hour the desired state will occur. Since anyone can induce a waking dream, you should not fall into it often, as it can turn into an uncontrollable habit.

How to induce a lucid dream?

In the last few years, many people have become interested in the practice of lucid dreaming. However, not everyone knows what it is and how to induce a lucid dream. The meaning of such a dream is that a person is sleeping, but at the same time can control the plot of his dream. Moreover, he can create any reality in a dream and live it the way he wants. You can invite any person into your dream, be it a relative or a pop star. In the world of dreams there are no restrictions or prohibitions.

The danger of lucid dreaming is that a person begins to like to control his dream and finds it difficult to put up with the restrictions of the real world. Soon he may lose contact with the world, which means his mind will not be able to distinguish between two realities - true and imaginary.

The Art of Sleep Management

There are several ways to learn to manage your dreams. The first of them is related to the comprehension of relaxation practices. In this case, meditation will help, because the state of relaxation is very close to sleep. However, the brain is awake, which means that any situation can be simulated and controlled.

The second option involves keeping records of your dreams in a special diary. Absolutely all dreams should be written down there. This is necessary to understand the difference between reality and the world of dreams. After all, often a person, being in a dream, does not know about it and takes everything for everyday reality. Over time, you will be able to find the distinctive features, and you will be able to understand this, being in the world of dreams. To make your work easier, you need to ask yourself as often as possible: “Am I sleeping?” This way you will be able to understand what reality you are in now.

The famous esotericist Carlos Castaneda advises looking at your palms in a dream, then you will be able to get an answer to your cherished question. After all, in a dream a person cannot see the lines on them; this way, you can understand what reality you are in and quickly take action.

How to induce a prophetic dream?

There is an opinion that in a dream a person can see future events, so many people wonder how to cause a prophetic dream. Some people have a gift and can see such dreams, but most often a person has to work hard for insight to come to him.

A prophetic dream will help trigger a special ritual. Magicians recommend spending it in the last days of the waxing moon. You should only go to bed alone. Before going to bed, it is recommended to relax by taking a bath with aromatic oils. Then light a candle and scroll through your head the question to which you need an answer. As soon as you feel your eyes begin to close, go to bed.

This night you should see a prophetic dream. In the morning, do not rush to get up, try to remember your dream in detail. You can even write it down in a notepad. It may not be possible to induce a prophetic dream the first time, but with practice, you will be able to achieve what you want.

Also, to induce a prophetic dream, you can try to carry out the following ritual: before going to bed, pour water into a transparent glass glass, light a candle, and, looking at the flame through the water of the candle, repeat in a whisper: “Dream, give an answer to the question (ask a question of interest).” Repeat this phrase 12 times. After that, drink the water to the bottom and go to bed. The answer to the question should come in a dream.

Every night the world plunges into darkness. Nocturnal animals go hunting, and people, like other diurnal animals, go to bed. Sleep is the most important process that ensures the functioning of the brain. The function of sleep is that the impressions of the day are transformed into the form that is more convenient for consciousness to use. More important events are placed in long-term memory and included in the picture of the world. Less important ones are put on the farthest shelves. And remembering them is no longer so easy. Sleep is needed to solve those problems that were not solved during the day, but are important for a person. In a dream, those actions that happened in reality are experienced. If a person does something for the first time - say, learns to drive a car - then dreams become more vivid. During sleep, new and unusual information is brought into line with the person’s picture of the world. The more novelty the brain encounters during the day, the more sleep it requires at night, but is this really true?

The duration of sleep is also influenced by the internal attitude towards the perception of life. Energetic and proactive people sleep less. Their internal attitude is to actively perceive circumstances and transform them for their own purposes. And vice versa: passive, suspicious people sleep longer. And with big changes in life - a wedding, divorce, moving, changing jobs - the need for sleep can increase dramatically. The amount of sleep required for good rest is about 7-8 hours a day, while in childhood about 10 hours of sleep are required, in old age - about 6. There are cases in history when people spent significantly less time sleeping. For example, as witnesses said, Napoleon slept no longer than 4 hours a day, Peter I, Goethe, Schiller, Bekhterev - 5 hours, and Edison - generally 2-3 hours a day. Scientists believe that a person can sleep without realizing or remembering it.

It is well known that the answer to some very important question for a person, which has been tormenting him all day or several, can come in a dream. Sleep obeys the innate biological rhythm; with a smooth flow of life, the duration of sleep comes to a certain level. Strong deviations from this level disrupt the functioning of the intellect. A person copes worse with tasks that require a creative approach. Sleep is a biological necessity, and the need for it accumulates throughout the day. Scientists consider the intersection, to a certain extent, of the states of wakefulness and sleep to be a normal phenomenon, but lack of sleep leads to a deterioration in well-being.

Insufficient sleep at night for long periods of time increases the incidence of conditions that subsequently lead to microsleep. This may require you to spend extra energy to concentrate. This will make you feel sleepy or tired. In addition, with sleep deprivation, very short (several seconds) repeated episodes of microsleep may occur during the daytime, which a person may not be aware of, but during these periods there may be a significant decrease in attention and activity level. This phenomenon is particularly problematic for people who drive cars and ride motorcycles. When a person falls asleep, he leaves his body and hangs in the subtle body at a height of about a meter above the physical body. At this moment, our subtle bodies actively absorb energy from the space around us, as a result of which our “battery” is recharged - the amount of energy that we need for normal normal life activities during the waking period. If we haven't slept enough, then this "battery" doesn't have time to charge, and we feel tired during the day. You can give a figurative example - it’s like charging a mobile phone - we use it all day, and by the evening its battery runs out. And for the phone to work again, we put it on charge.

There are different sleep techniques; monophasic, biphasic, polyphasic. Monophasic is normal sleep from evening to morning, biphasic is sleep divided into two parts - four and a half hours at night and one and a half hours during the day. According to a recent discovery, before the invention of electricity, people slept twice a day: they went to bed after sunset and slept until midnight, then woke up for a couple of hours and fell asleep again until the morning. But in total it was still 7 or 8 hours. Perhaps in the future we will return to this old scheme. Polyphasic sleep is very interesting; it is associated with the name of Leonardo Da Vinci, who, according to some information, lived in this mode all his life and, perhaps, that’s why he managed so much. Albert Einstein, Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison, Benjamin Franklin and many other lesser-known people are also considered polyphasic sleepers. There are several scenarios in polyphasic sleep; Tesla's so-called sleep - two hours at night and twenty minutes during the day, Leonardo's sleep - every four hours, fifteen minutes of sleep, Fuller's (architect, inventor, philosopher) dream called Dymaxion - every six hours, fifteen minutes of sleep, Fuller developed the unique ability to fall asleep within thirty seconds.

There are other modes of polyphasic sleep; Uberman and Everyman - the first consists of six stages of sleep of thirty minutes each (2 pm, 6 pm, 10 pm, 2 am, 6 and 10 am), the second is three hours of sleep at night and three twenty-minute periods in the rest of the time, so that you can stay awake for five hours, four times a day. The technique of polyphasic sleep is as old as the hills, I decided to try them on for myself; It was hard to adapt to Tesla’s regime and Leonardo’s regime - sleep broke me on the fourth day, so that I slept for twelve hours in a row in both the first and second cases, and I considered everyone who tried to wake me up as my “enemies”. Biphasic sleep is very easy to perform over long periods (one and a half months), when it is possible to sleep during the day. The Dymaxion and Uberman modes were also difficult for my body to accept, as in the case of the Tesla and Leonardo modes, it is difficult to fit such systems of sleep and wakefulness into our society, after a period of adaptation to such modes you can get used to such modes by force of will, but it was very boring when you didn’t find it, what to do with yourself, time flowed differently - as if it had stopped, but, undoubtedly, the modes are very interesting - they free up a lot of time, just like the Everyman mode. What to do at night when everyone is sleeping, and if you find something to do, you will definitely wake up someone nearby - an inconvenience, to say the least!

Having practiced these sleep patterns and feeling all the shortcomings of existing approaches, I decided to change the approach fundamentally - a priori! In order to sleep, it is not necessary to lie down; you can sleep while sitting, but in a static position and with your eyes closed. I decided to conduct an experiment, the purpose of which was the following - why not create such conditions in the internal environment of the body when it would be possible to sleep with open eyes, and even in movement, and even in communication... The thought then, ten years ago, seemed to me absurd, but in nature there are mammals, birds and insects, which in our understanding do not sleep at all and are in motion; dolphins, whales and sharks, a giraffe can go for weeks without sleep. It is enough for him to take a nap for about 20 minutes during the day in order to regain his strength. At this time, he sticks his head between the thick branches of trees and, thanks to strong neck muscles, does not fall. And to sleep, the animal lies down and wraps its neck around its legs. Previously it was believed that birds did not sleep during migration. But it turned out that this was not the case. Every ten minutes one of the birds flies into the very middle of the flock and sleeps there. It happens like this - she moves her wings only a little so as not to fall, but is carried by a stream of air created with the help of the entire flock. Then the next bird makes its way to replace it. But it has not yet been possible to catch the period when the cuckoo sleeps. She is in “trouble” all day long. Bees are also constantly on the move. They probably rest somehow, it just happens in a very short time or too rarely. The idea of ​​ants has also changed. They were previously classified as insects that never sleep. But it turns out that they sleep almost 4 hours a day. The ants simply fall asleep 250 times and sleep for 1 minute. By the way, when they wake up, they even stretch!

In general, I began to experiment, at first myself, and then, when it began to work out, I involved other interested people in this, all of them are alive, healthy, none of them were harmed. At the very beginning, sleeping with open eyes affected motor skills - lethargy appeared, everything around me, including me, stopped, there was a clear feeling of sleep, but with open eyes, I started lying down, then sitting. The transition to sleep with open eyes in motion was a very unusual sensation; it was more difficult to maintain “waking sleep” during communication, but this height of the bar, in general, is useless; during the day you can find “windows” of five to ten minutes, six to eight times a day without attracting the attention of others, it all depends on the task; if during the day the work is very intense, mentally and emotionally, it is enough to turn on this mode six times for five to ten minutes, the body quickly recovers, I become much calmer, my thoughts stop jumping - everything is in order, thinking is easier and more pleasant, there are many more associations, the process becomes more creative, non-standard solutions often appear immediately after leaving the “waking dream”, later I learned to record and remember dreams that unfolded next to my head - on the right or left, when I know that I will need to work also at night, until two -three hours without loss of performance the next day, I turn on the “waking sleep” mode eight times during the day for five to ten minutes, the last time at ten o’clock in the evening, this is enough to work until two o’clock in the morning, wake up at seven and start everything again. The “daydream” mode is good because it can be turned on and off as needed; in polyphasic systems, it is necessary to maintain stability of the mode for a long time so as not to fall out of context. While practicing “waking sleep,” I noticed that at first the number of lucid dreams decreased and then increased, it became easier to enter the Wasps - I want this, and it happens! The unconscious layer and dreams have become much more interesting for me, I can’t put it any other way, very often - what is dreamed then unfolds in reality, in general, knowing events in advance is very pleasant and interesting, every time there is genuine surprise in the process - will it really come true again , although logically it should be otherwise!

In a dream, a person gets the opportunity to communicate directly with the subconscious. And if we don’t understand something in a dream, we don’t need to immediately declare it “our fantasy.”

In addition to aimlessly wandering through spaces of options and different worlds, the subconscious can show us in a dream the solution to certain life problems and tasks that concern us in life.

Sleep is a unique phenomenon to which people practically do not pay any attention. Whereas, by using sleep correctly, you can gain such enormous Knowledge that you will not receive anywhere else. Einstein, Bohr, Tesla, Kekule, strange as it may sound, became Nobel laureates only because they knew how to “sleep correctly,” and Edgar Cayce was called the “sleeping prophet.”

Any hallucinations associated with sleep are parasomnia. Parasomnias are unwanted events that occur during sleep. In addition to hallucinations, these include grinding teeth, sleepwalking, sleep-talking, etc. Hallucinations in sleep are imaginary, but very realistic events. Most of them are visual, but there are also sound (even musical), gustatory, olfactory, tactile and even associated with the sensation of movement. Hallucinations can be confused with both dreams and reality.

Hypnagogic hallucinations or daydreams

Hypnagogic hallucinations are visual illusions that usually appear in the evening before falling asleep, when the eyes are already closed. Often this period is called half-sleep and is located between wakefulness and sleep. Therefore, they are closer to the type of pseudohallucinations than to true hallucinations, since they do not have a connection with the real situation. The phenomenon is also typical for healthy people. This condition occurs infrequently and lasts from several seconds to several minutes. This condition can also occur when you don’t get enough sleep. How long does a person need to stay awake for hallucinations to appear? Sometimes they begin to appear on the second or third day without sleep.

Otherwise, this type of hallucination is called Lhermitte syndrome. In common parlance you can also find such a definition as a waking dream. There is no clear definition of the concept of waking sleep and often outsiders understand by it completely different phenomena: hallucinations that occur during sleep paralysis, and hypnagogic hallucinations before falling asleep or after waking up, as well as lucid dreams and even daydreams. However, it is more correct to use the concept of waking sleep specifically in relation to hypnogagic hallucinations. This type of hallucination was first described in 1922 by the French neurologist J. J. Lhermitte.

The phenomenon can be observed in both children and adults. Some adults see them from time to time throughout their lives. Sleep researchers believe that everyone has hallucinated at least once in their life before falling asleep. During the period of remission, there may be no visions for several months, and sometimes even years. Visions are vivid, so often a person who has experienced this state can remember this all his life.

Visual hallucinations

Hypnogagic hallucinations can be multiple, single, scene-like, and sometimes kaleidoscopic. Visual images (most often these are moving, reduced-sized people and animals) are characterized by mobility, kaleidoscopicity, and quickly change their shape, size, and location in space. Those suffering from hallucinations act as contemplatives who lack a sense of fear. A person retains a critical attitude towards visible images. A person can simultaneously perceive the real world along with dream-like experiences mixed with it (for example, visual images echo real voices or noises breaking into a dream).

In ordinary dreams, the person himself is a participant in the events taking place, while this is not typical for hypnagogic hallucinations. It’s as if a person is watching a movie that the brain is showing to him. The person does not tense up, but calmly reacts to what is happening. This is an uncharacteristic state of sleep. Besides all this, a person is interested in what he sees. The observed pictures during such visions are quite definite, detailed, and there is no blur in them.

Simultaneously or separately with visual hallucinations, auditory hallucinations may also occur when falling asleep. A person can hear voices before going to sleep, uttering individual words or coherent phrases filled with semantic content, individual tones, short musical passages. Phrases are heard clearly and loudly.

Hypnagogic hallucinations in healthy people are physiological and functional. Such night voices in the head arise against the background of an existing external stimulus and are perceived together with it, without merging, as happens with illusions. For example, in the sound of a ticking clock or the sound of rain, the patient can hear the voices of people. Dominant hallucinations indicate the presence of mental trauma, which caused parosomnia. For example, someone who has lost a loved one hears their voice.

If auditory hallucinations begin to communicate with the sleeping person, talk to him, demand an answer - this may be a symptom of a serious illness and you need to consult a doctor. Hypnagogic hallucinations can appear in acute intoxication and infectious psychoses, as well as in schizophrenia in a state of exacerbation. In this case, dark, frightening figures or their individual fragments are often seen: eyes or heads, for example.

Less common, but also occurring, is such a hallucination during awakening. If hallucinations occur while going to sleep, they are called hypnagogic, if during awakening, they are called hypnopompic. However, in the specialized literature, the term common to both conditions is usually used - hypnagogic hallucinations.

Who experiences hypnagogic hallucinations?

Hallucinations before falling asleep are quite common. More often they occur during puberty and in young people. For most, the frequency of episodes decreases as they get older. However, in older people, hypnagogic hallucinations may appear along with other manifestations of insomnia. Hallucinations at night are common in patients suffering from narcolepsy. The following factors are the most common causes of their occurrence:

• taking narcotic and toxic drugs;
• drinking alcohol;
• anxiety and stress;
• insomnia;
• emotional disturbances.

The syndrome occurs as a result of irritation of the reticular formation of the midbrain. Sometimes short-term hallucinations at night can occur in patients with epilepsy. Hallucinations often occur due to lack of sleep. Sometimes migraine attacks can cause Lhermitte syndrome. Also, hypnagogic hallucinations are observed with local damage to the brain stem in the area of ​​the third ventricle and cerebral peduncles as a result of hemorrhage, tumor, and with superior basilar syndrome. Also, the pathology may have an inflammatory-intoxicating etiology.

Hypnagogic hallucinations in children

Particular attention should be paid if you see that your child is experiencing hallucinations before bedtime. This can be evidenced by his story that yesterday before going to bed he saw his aunt, who said something or the dog came. The child’s psyche is still very immature, so it can produce such pictures if the child is emotionally overloaded after an active day. This is usually evidence of stress or emotional overstrain. For example, such hallucinations or waking dreams are known when, having experienced the death and funeral of a grandfather or grandmother, a child sees them before going to bed.

Since hypnagogic hallucinations can frighten a child, the child’s psyche should be protected from the influence of stress and emotional overstrain. Otherwise, sleep pathologies can lead to insomnia, bedwetting, and the child asking to go to bed with his parents at night.

What to do with Lhermitte syndrome

If hypnagogic hallucinations do not cause any discomfort and occur rarely, then you can simply forget about them. If they cause increased anxiety, interrupt sleep, and then experience daytime sleepiness, then you should consult a doctor to establish a routine and get recommendations for restoring healthy sleep.

What you can do on your own to restore your sleep and rest patterns:

• go to bed at the same time;
• before going to bed, avoid strong emotional impressions;
• do not abuse alcohol and smoking, avoid drugs;
• before going to bed, take a walk in the fresh air;
• do not overload the stomach before bedtime;
• arrange your sleeping area correctly: ventilate the room before going to bed, remove all light irritants, buy a comfortable mattress and an orthopedic pillow.

What is a waking dream

The phenomenon of a waking dream is well described by Jack London in the novel Straitjacket. Agronomy professor Darrel Standing, sentenced to death, is subjected to regular torture in a straitjacket, with the help of which he eventually learns to travel through time and the world in a transformation between a sleepy state and reality.

There are many practitioners who try to practice this state. A waking dream is the line between reality and sleep, when the body seems to be already asleep, but the brain still gives all the signals characteristic of wakefulness. The state in a dream and in reality differs in that in a dream the brain is already completely asleep. How to induce a waking dream?

To avoid headaches after waking up, you need to learn some safety rules:

• do not set an alarm clock with a sharp sound;
• It’s better to be woken up by soft, gradually increasing volume music or a friend with a light touch;
• for the first time try to fall into a waking sleep for 2 minutes and then gradually increase the time of waking sleep to half an hour;
• Try not to let anything bother you during this time.

How to induce a waking dream

1. Turn on a night light so you don't get disoriented when you wake up.
2. Take a lying position on the floor. You can lay foam or a blanket. You need to lie on your back, stretch out your arms, and close your eyes.
3. Breathe exactly 3 seconds per inhalation and exhalation. Slowly increase the length of your inhalation/exhalation until you feel dizzy and see black spots before your eyes.
4. Try not to think about anything, imagine a peaceful landscape, the chirping of birds, the sound of a waterfall.
5. Do not move under any circumstances. At some point you will feel immersed in a state between sleep and reality.
6. Now open your eyes. From this point on, have your observer friend begin counting the time.
7. Now you will find yourself in the unreal space of your subconscious, your mind will wander in the labyrinths of the subconscious.
8. After waking up, you don’t need to get up suddenly. Adapt a little to reality.

This is a very interesting and unusual experiment.

If you observe your thoughts, they are either about the future or about the past. The brain stubbornly refuses to perceive the state of the present moment, which is why it throws us either into memories or into dreams. We talk to a person or write a letter, but we are not fully aware of what we are doing, because at this moment our thoughts are either in the past or in the future. Even when you plant a flower in the ground, you mentally observe not what and how you do, but imagine how beautiful it will be when the flower grows. We are not aware of how we drink, eat, walk, talk, do something. We do all this as if in a dream.

By the way, that's how it is. Our waking state is nothing more than a sleep of consciousness. Night is our sleep, occurring in the subconscious, without the participation of material objects. The day is our dream taking place in the material world.

People who have allowed themselves to be drawn into all sorts of pyramids say this: “I don’t understand how it all happened. It all happened like in a dream.” We are all “sleeping,” so we perceive reality not as it is “here and now,” but in the form our waking dream dictates.

To confirm this, I will give just one example that actually happened to my friends in Russia in the mid-nineties. A group of guys were doing karate in the gym. Then the karatekas were protecting someone, so their stigmas were covered in fluff. There was still half an hour before the end of the training and suddenly, one of them looks out the window and shouts: “riot police!”

Everyone runs up to the window and sees that a bus has arrived at the door of the gym, and about twenty riot policemen in full ammunition poured out of it. The guys rushed along the corridor and from the second floor, they all jumped out of the window onto the street and ran in all directions, in a kimono and barefoot. We laughed together only later when we found out that the riot police had rented the same gym, and their training was supposed to begin after the group that I humorously told about finished their lesson. Here is an example of a waking dream. The brain did not act based on what was happening “here and now,” but relied on its idea of ​​the future. A reaction followed in a state of consciousness, but, as we see, the reaction was erroneous. Isn't this a dream? It’s good that no one broke their legs jumping out of the windows.

Did you laugh? But you do this too, every day. You think that you are awake, meanwhile, all your actions are dictated by the state of sleep. In a state of sleep, you buy groceries and many goods: you bring them home and only then think why you bought them, and not what you really need now. You say something to a person, and then it turns out that he was offended. “Why is he offended?”- you think.- “What did I say to him that was so offensive?” But it turns out that you speak without fully realizing the meaning of the words, and the one who listens to you is also in a state of sleep and his brain does not perceive your words "Here and now", but based on their ideas about the past or future. A person gets married or gets married and then wonders: "Where was I looking? Where were my eyes?"

Nothing strange, we do the vast majority of our actions in a waking dream. Those. our reaction does not reflect the essence of reality, but is based on the brain’s assumption of what this reality might be.

Some are so mired in their dreams that it is very difficult to pull them out of this state. Such a person will get some idea into his head and run around with it, boring everyone. He does not notice what is happening around “here and now”. There are a lot of clues around the energy information field, which always appear “here and now,” but a person does not notice all these clues, because his brain is asleep, guided by the past or future.

Start simple. If you drink tea, then observe how you drink it, what you feel, what it tastes like, how sweet it is. If you are just walking down the street, then observe how you take steps, what muscles tense, how you feel when you step on the asphalt or the ground. If you are talking to someone, then watch how quickly you speak, what you say, what tone you say, why exactly you say what you say.

Why is it important? You fill your life with what happens “here and now” and your reaction to it. Think back to your teenage years. Surely someone you know ended up in prison only because he got involved with bad company. But you were also familiar with this company. "Here and now" was the same for you and for others. Some, in a waking dream, were drawn into this bad company, and they committed a crime. Others behaved differently in this dream and live different lives. The reality for the one who went to prison and for the one who did not go there was the same. There was a different filling of life depending on what kind of dream the brain sees in reality. The same thing happens in business. “Here and now” is the same for everyone, but some cannot make ends meet, while others, at the same time, become rich and prosperous. Through their waking dreams, people see the same thing that is happening “here and now” in different ways. Now about something very important. Every day you fill your life with something. Meanwhile, you don’t even realize that every action, every word you say is a daily filling of life with certain content. You all want to fill it with something pleasant and meaningful. For this to happen, you need to learn to get rid of hibernation and perceive everything that happens around you as real “here and now”.

It is very difficult and puts a lot of stress on the brain. By constantly plunging you into the past or future, your own brain abdicates responsibility for what is happening “here and now.” But you fill your life precisely “here and now”, even at this moment when you read these terms. Here you are reading, but you are not aware of how you read (fast or slow), what hurt you or what you missed, considering it unimportant. Even now you are sleeping because your thoughts are somewhere far away.

Meanwhile, some, having read the issue, will draw some conclusions for themselves and their lives will be filled with the same content. Others will forget what they read in five minutes. For everyone reading the issue, the state "here and now" was the same, since the information is the same for everyone. But everyone’s perception of it will be different. And this is already filling your own life, based on what your brain wants to perceive in a waking dream.

Nikolai Ivanovich Karmishin