The Eternal Sleep of Kumbhakarna

https://borderlessjournal.com/2024/11/14/the-eternal-sleep-of-kumbhakarna/

I reported to Kuala Pilah District Hospital on 11th August 1989. Just having passed out from medical school a year earlier, followed by a year of housemanship training, I was rearing to go. Like Dr. David Livingstone, who explored the interior of Africa to treat the needy (and convert them), I thought I would change the world.

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As I lay me down to sleep...

 The Persistence of Memory, 1931.
Salvador Dali

I thought I had found the best way to rejuvenate myself after immersing myself deep into my studies during those long days of uncertainty before the public examinations. I would engage in short slumber breaks. Just as I would feel slowly being dragged into sleep, I would suddenly smack myself awake. I would curse myself for sleeping too long only to realise that I had hardly slept. I would, however, be feeling quite fresh by then and would abandon my plans to snooze. These short power naps were a game changer. They managed to fuel me to sail through all those trying times.

I later came to learn is that that state was known as the hypnagogic state of sleep as we transit between wakefulness to sleep. And it was a normal phase of sleeping. 

Then one day, a friend who in his own mind thinks he is an interpreter of dreams ala-Freud, tried to analyse that sensation that I felt as the mind's indicator that it is in a constant state of fear; afraid of being left behind and dropping out in the race of life. Metaphorically, the mind screams of me of being an over-achiever, living in a constant fear of losing out! But then, it is no dream at all. I have not reached REM sleep yet.

Now, researchers are saying that the hypnagogic state is a time of creativity and possibly a time of problem-solving. Painter Salvador Dali used to use sleep holding keys so that it would drop as he was in hypnagogia to paint his creations. Thomas Edison held ball-bearing to that same effect.

Throughout history, people have had said to have undergone multiple experiences, hallucinations, premonitions and even prophesies during this phenomena. Scientists have described hypnagogia as involving a ‘loosening of ego boundaries', openness, sensitivity, ‘ heightened suggestibility, and a ‘fluid association of ideas'. The 'Dreamcatcher' project is aimed at tapping its full potential.

 https://asok22.wixsite.com/real-lesson 

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Strange...

Sleepy Hollow, Kazakhstan
RT Documentary 2014
A small village of Kalachi, 200 miles from Kazhakhstan's capital, Astana, recently hit the headlines for a strange occurrence. Over the past 2 years, unofficially, 200 people have been affected by a benign sleeping disease. People of different age groups, toddlers to the elderly have had the sudden urge to sleep after feeling heavy in the legs. They would sleep unarousable for one complete week and would recover without any morbidity save for initial staggering 'drunken-like' gait.
Examination by the medical personnel did not reveal any neurological symptoms except for transient cerebral edema on CT scans. Biochemical analyses, toxicological studies and samples of water, soil and agricultural thus far had failed to pinpoint any anomaly.
There is a disused uranium mine in the village but Geiger-Muller counts were normal. The only aberrant finding is marginal high level of lead in the water. Experts are still working on the cause of this bizarre disease.