“Sleep is death without the responsibility,” but is sleep death, or at least how near to death is sleep? What is the point in sleep? What have we achieved after lying still for eight hours?
Is it an escape? Does sleep wrap you up in a little cocoon of well being which nothing can penetrate? Or is sleep a little taste of death? Is that why sleep can sometimes be such a terrifying thing? Are dreams in a way our heaven and hell? Some dreams give a sense of happiness and contentment, some just confuse, and some terrify to the point anything seems better than sleep.
But some people find sleep an escape from what is in the world, and escape from the stress and strain of life. This was illustrated when Sir Philip Sidney spoke of sleep as:
“The poor man’s wealth, the prisoner’s release.
The indifferent judge between the high and low.”
It is true that in sleep, as in death, we are all equal. No one can sleep a better or more fulfilling sleep just because he has more money or power; it is needed by everyone alike and no-one can escape its necessity. Just in the same way no one can escape the inevitability of death. Both are something uniting and universal, which everybody has the right to and can benefit from nightly. We can survive a shorter length of time without sleep than without food or water, but thankfully sleep is free and easy to come by, making it a daily escape available to every human.
Without sleep humans cannot function; it is one of the necessities of our existence. If we cannot sleep it can make our life a living hell. Every mother or father woken up nightly by a crying baby will tell you the devastating effect this has on their life. Broken sleep makes us tired, irritable, unmotivated, and unable to function normally. Torturers often use sleep deprivation to break their subjects down, as it is a way of depriving humans of the thing they need most, making them desperate and prepared to do anything. In the long term a lack of sleep has been linked to heart attacks, strokes, reduced immunity, reduced mental capacity, reduced fat metabolism, depression and accelerated aging. This shows how important it is for humans to sleep, but in a society obsessed with work, we often devote too little time to sleep, masking the consequences with high amounts of caffeine. This is a prime example of society today, short-term gain at the cost of long-term goals and happiness. This lack of sleep can lead to a very difficult daily existence and early death, but this doesn’t seem to matter if only we can get another few hours of work done.
The Essay on Analysis of Life, Death and the After-Life in Religion
Do not stand at my grave and weep;I am not there, I do not sleep.I am a thousand winds that blow.I am the diamond glints on snow.I am the sunlight on ripened grain.I am the gentle autumn rain.When you awaken in the morning's hushI am the swift uplifting rushOf quiet birds in circled flight.I am the soft stars that shine at night.Do not stand at my grave and cry;I am not there, I did not die.-- ...
On the other hand, there are those who suffer the opposite problem, an inability to sleep. Insomnia can be one of the most physically and mentally draining illnesses, as many people know. The nightly torment of lying there willing yourself to go to sleep becomes almost unbearable, as do the days of complete exhaustion. Some people live with this day in day out for their entire life whereas others only experience it in times of stress or difficulty, for example during exams where the fear of being too tired the next day is another worry contributing to the insomnia. This kind of thing can be horrible for a few nights, but, for those who suffer it continually, it can be a real living hell. A human deprived of sleep is barely able to live a life at all as illustrated in the film ‘They Shoot Horses Don’t They’ where people compete to see how long they can go without sleep, until they are suffering to the extent where death would be better for them. To go without sleep for any considerable amount of time is not a life; it is merely an existence, possibly little better than death, where at least rest would come.
Death and sleep are so closely linked that it’s hard to establish where sleep ends, death begins and what happens in between. Was Snow White dead or was she simply in a long sleep when the prince brought her back to life? Did sleeping beauty really just sleep for that length of time, mustn’t it be something deeper? Where did Juliet’s deep, heart stopping, sleep brought on by the friars potion, fit in? Sleep has been something used in literature, notably fairy tales, since they began, but still manages to retain that magical mystery, as it is something, even today, scientists are only beginning to understand. This thing, which takes up roughly a third of our lives, is still, to a large extent, beyond our comprehension.
The Essay on Buddhism And Death Life One People
Does Anything Survive Death The Buddha, already enlightened and therefore having reached the state of Nirvana, taught and explained many concepts and principles to his students. He was released from the life cycle, which every individual should seek to escape. He said that in order to be released from the torture of reincarnation, one must cease to desire, for it is the failure to fulfill ones ...
For centuries people have been comparing two of the greatest mysteries; sleep and death. Sleep has been used as a way of understanding and coming to terms with death. It allows us to see it as something we are familiar with and have experienced. It gives us hope, as we know after sleep we wake again to continue refreshed. People talk about finding heaven or being reincarnated as waking again. Just as in the poem “Death Be Not Proud” by John Donne “one short sleep past, we wake eternally.” Here death is called no more than a short sleep between one world and the next. This brings in religious views on life after death in, which, if to be believed, gives another perspective to the thought that sleep and death are very closely linked. If this is to be believed, why is death so much more important than sleep. It is only another pause and awakening. As Professor Dumbledore says in “Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone” “To the well organised mind death is but the next great adventure.” In the same way sleep is an adventure through our subconscious mind.
Death and sleep are themes which writers and philosophers throughout history have drawn parallels between. For example Leonardo da Vince expressed the opinion that “As a well spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.” This is an extremely interesting thought, but we must ask ourselves can death ever be ‘happy’ in the same way sleep is? Does anybody really approach death in the same way they approach sleep at the end of a busy day? Death is something unknown, surely if we had all died before it would not terrify us in the same way. This is one of the reasons we fear it so, in the same way people plagued by terrible nightmares fear sleep. They fear what horror awaits them that night, what their unconscious mind will choose to torment them with.
The Essay on Sleep And Dream Stage One People
Sleep and Dreams Sleep is a behavioral state characterized by little physical activity and almost no awareness of the outside world. Sleep is actually made up of two separate and distinctly different states called REM sleep (rapid eye movement) and NREM sleep (non-rapid eye movement). With NREM sleep it is further divided into stage 1-4 based on the size and the speed of the brain waves. Step one ...
Freud was a firm believer that dreams were ‘a window into our unconscious mind’, an unconscious which he believed dictated all our actions, but which we were almost completely unaware of. He believed dreams were small ideas of our unconscious allowed to surface due to the state of extreme relaxation we were in. Recent medical research contradicts Freud’s ideas, and states that dreams actually occur when our brain becomes so activated, in the deepest cycles of sleep, that we start to hallucinate and this is what we know as dreams.
Whatever the scientific reason for dreams it is widely accepted that they are incredibly confusing and mysterious things. Due to their mystery, dreams are thought, by some, to have great significance. Some view them as prophecies or indications of what is to come. This is often the case when humans do not understand something, they view it as incredibly important, such as the way ancient civilisations worshipped the sun, thinking of it as god, until a scientific explanation of it was produced, therefore until scientists can really make sense of dreams they will be a thing of interest, speculation and possibly fear. The same is obviously true for death, which is often why so many people turn to religion, especially as they grow older; it is the need for answers and explanations. It is inherent in human nature, the need to understand, as we are always, justifiably so, scared of facing the unknown.
As death and sleep obviously have some connection, and so much pleasure is often derived form sleep, should death, as a deeper from of sleep, not bring us even more pleasure? John Donne mentions this idea in the same poem as before when talking about death:
The Research paper on Rem Sleep Dreams Dream Dreaming
An Attempt At Understanding Dreams A few months ago I watched a movie called "The Candyman." It was a horror movie about this psychotic woman who massacres people around her but has no idea what she's doing. An imaginary creature called "The Candyman" is appearing to her and talking to her, and she actually thinks that he's the one who is doing the murdering. Anyway, it was a scary movie and I had ...
“From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure then, from thee much more must flow.”
What do we achieve from sleep but a little idle pleasure? Why is it necessary? As humans we spend one third of our lives sleeping. Think what could be achieved with at extra twenty-five or more years we miss out on. Another third of the worlds problems could be solved; technology and, medicine could be so much more advanced. It seems such a waste of our precious time, which is too little as it is.
On the other hand, sleep is sometimes a necessary escape. This escape can be wonderful. To be able to drift into another level of unconsciousness, another level of being, every so often is probably something to be cherished. Maybe we shouldn’t even try to understand it; just in the same way we should give up trying to understand death. We shouldn’t try to get rid of the inevitable and unavoidable. We should accept them and enjoy the escapes and freedom from life we are given.
