ok i have some knowledge in of this sorta stuff and the brain.
kage and david pretty much summed it up. its the brain defraging pretty much after it is crammed with information throughout the day.
as for the brain needing a rest... that isnt necessarily true, its all linked to circadian rhythms (sleep patterns-im reading a book on this at the moment) and basically the body has to follow a set pattern. this is pretty much influenced by outside stimuli like day and night, hot and cold(day and night temps) and so on. when the body naturally rests then yes the brain defrags the current short term memory storage and puts it into the long term storage.
this storage is in neuron clusters from what i understand. basically if u get stimuli from anything, say that u have no other feelings and then u get sight: everything is black but u can now see a white light. then ur neuron clusters will start firing as each one relays information about what u know of this stimuli: its bright, hurts ur eyes, what ever.
so basically when ur dreaming its the random firing of single or groups of neurons that have stored throughout the day, different information u have received from stimuli: sounds, sights, smells, all that stuff.
and yes, the focus of this book where i got all this information, was on Lucid Dreaming!!!
bascally it happens when ur close to waking up with the bodies natural cycles. sometimes it happens sometimes it doesnt, it depends on how u have slept pretty much i think.
neway, as u wake up, ur conciousness will come to the fore of your processes, your awareness come out. now ur aware that ur dreaming but u can also control ur thoughts to a degree. at this point you are not aware of the outside world yet. this usually doesnt last long though, as when u dream it hapens slowly, so it may be only a minute or so in ur dream where u can control what happens, but in reality its about half an hour or so.
ill go on about lucid dreaming later though and continue with the other questions.
as for the falling feeling, i have no actual evidence to back this up, but from what i gather, it is rather close to your soul departing your body.
basically its when u become so involved in a dream that ur body forgets to breathe.
the result is that after a period of time, your natural instinctual reflexes automatically make u move to try to escape the threat of not being able to breathe, like a predator attacking your throat and u cant breathe, the body doesnt realise that it is itself the cause. there fore the heart beats faster and your all tingly and so on, the oxygen is pumping aroundur body again and the body has also gone into fight or flight mode and adrenaline has been released into your body for the need to do either. yet when you wake up, nothing needs to be done and you lay there breathing heavier than normal with a hammering pulse and tingly feeling all over.
now the alternative 'mystical' explanation is that yes your soul is being taken out, but that at the time of the jump, youre dreaming of your death and are comming close to dying. like falling off a cliff, just before you hit the ground then u wake up.
the word is that if u ever actually hit the ground then u do die. its when people die in their sleep supposedly.
now, about the lucid dreaming i was talking about before:
the book that i got all the information about the brain and lucid dreaming is called 'Caverns of Socrates" by Denis L. Mackeirnan.
it is a sci-fi/fantasy book yes. but it was done with a LOT of actual research. just reading the back few pages with his credits and so on will show just how extensive his research was.
neway, basically this book was about a super computer AI that had been created. it knew all about the human brain and how it functioned, how it was all mapped out etc, from what had been put in to it. neway, basically they induced a stake of sleep on the test subjects that didnt put them totally to sleep, but into a state of lucid dreaming.
there they partook in a test gaming experience like no other. it was real. they actually WERE the characters. there was no outside world like a computer game, where u can look away from the screen. it was the TOTAL gaming experience!!!
but there were interesting questions raised.
one is that in that reality they were in, where they knew no other reality, a place over the hill that they had just left but could no longer see: did it still exist? or was it stored in the computers memory ready to be retrieved if they turned around and came back???
the second one is related to the dying in ur dreams, and that is, what happens if they die in there? do they die out here???
hahaha, hows that essay for u all!!!!!
just a little something for u all to think on!
Assassin_666
