What Else Have We Lost or Misunderstood?

In the book, I spend a fair amount of time examining important aspects of society that appear inverted from their optimum functioning. However, my perspective may not have been broad enough.

I recently learned that the way we humans sleep is quite different from how we are biologically wired to sleep. I don’t just mean the number of hours, as in sleep deprivation. That’s yet another modern phenomenon, largely a result of people working longer hours to sustain a lifestyle. No, it’s more basic than that.

A groundbreaking study in the 1990s determined that we humans have a natural sleep cycle that’s entirely different from what most of us experience. Not only that, but it includes a mysterious additional state of consciousness that appears to be the realm from which much of mystical experience emerges.

Essentially, the study participants lived in the manner of our ancient ancestors. They had no artificial lighting at night. When dusk came, they allowed their natural sleep cycles to manifest and they fell into a rhythm of 8 hours sleeping per night. But not like we do it.

Instead, they slept for four hours, then “awoke” into a kind of state that was neither sleeping nor dreaming; a state of mystical reverie, that lasted for two hours. This was followed by four more hours of regular sleep. The two hours of sleep nested between the eight hours of regular sleep apparently have a spiritual quality, and participants reported deep peace, and spiritual communion.

After three weeks, they all experienced this profound change. Whether one is religious or not, such an opportunity to bask in a deeply peaceful state sounds inviting and life-enhancing.

Apart from the visions and insights gleaned from that mysterious middle state, there were specific and profound physiological changes. Specifically, “While trying to account for the peace and serenity that his subjects reported feeling during their hours of ‘quiet rest,’ Wehr discovered that prolactin (the hormone that rises in nursing mothers when their milk lets down) reached elevated levels in their bodies shortly after dusk, remaining at twice its normal waking level throughout the full length of the night. Prolactin creates a feeling of security, quietness and peace. And it is intimately, and biologically, tied to the dark.”

You can learn about this research and the experiences reported by participants in the book “Waking Up to the Dark: Ancient Wisdom for a Sleepless Age” by Clark Strand.

Clearly, this research warrants much further study. Corroborating studies from different cultures should be conducted to see if there are cross cultural consistencies, and if the rate of success in reaching this mysterious state of consciousness remains 100%–as it apparently was in the original study.

Likewise, and as a very practical matter, what are the consequences of doing this not every night but only on some nights? Is there a minimum frequency or number of nights one must live and sleep this way to retain the benefits? If one skips a night, is there an additional three-week waiting period each time, until one recovers this special gift?

Though I have long imagined a Celebration Society as having celebrations on most nights, now I am wondering: might we instead do so in the afternoon? (I take it as a given that few of us will have jobs requiring us to work then.) Or might two sub-cultures emerge, the “ancient sleepers” and the “moderns”?

PS–Certain types of clay, used by Native Americans for healing purposes for centuries, have now been found effective against MRSA and XRSA bacteria, the scourge of modern hospitals and a cause of significant iatrogenic disease. So, too, can a type of European tree bark, when prepared and then applied.

While quite a bit of native and ancient folk wisdom doesn’t stand up to the rigors of modern testing, enough does that this should be viewed as a continuing source of potential medical discoveries.