Hypnos.

In Greek mythology, Hypnos (Ancient Greek: Ὕπνος means 'sleep') is the personification of sleep; the Roman equivalent is known as Somnus. His name is the origin of the word hypnosis.

Hypnos is usually the fatherless son of Nyx ("The Night"), although sometimes Nyx's consort Erebus ("The Darkness") is named as his father. His brother is Thanatos ("Death"). Both siblings live in the underworld (Hades). According to rumors, Hypnos lived in a big cave, which the river Lethe ("Forgetfulness") comes from and where night and day meet. His bed is made of ebony, on the entrance of the cave grow a number of poppies and other soporific plants. No light and no sound would ever enter his grotto. According to Homer, he lives on the island Lemnos, which later on has been claimed to be his very own dream-island. He is said to be a calm and gentle god, as he helps humans in need and, due to their sleep, owns half of their lives.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnos

Hypnos, in Greek Mythology, was the son of Nyx, the night goddess, and the brother of Thanatos (“Death”). Morpheus, the god of dreams, was his son. Hypnos lived in the underworld, the realm of Hades, and never saw the sun. His roman counterpart was Somnus (“Sleep”).

On several occasions, Hera asked Hypnos to lull her husband Zeus to sleep so that she could attack his son Heracles. Hypnos usually refused to anger Zeus, possibly because he had already come close to having a thunderbolt hurled at him. He was saved by taking refuge with Night (Nyx), whose power Zeus always respected.

Hypnos is taken directly from the Greek word meaning “sleep”, and as his name suggests, he was indeed the ancient Greek version of The Sandman. He was also a brother of Thanatos, the personification of death, and among his numerous brothers and sisters with Oneiroi, a collection of deities responsible for bringing dreams.

Morpheus, the master of Dreams.

The Greek work “morphe” means “form”. Thus, Morpheus is the god that forms the dreams. Morpheus was the leader of the Oneiroi (Dreams), and he and his brothers were the personified spirits of dreams. Phobetor (or Ikelos) created phobic or scary dreams. Phantasus created unreal or phantasmic dreams. What set Morpheus apart from his brothers was his ability to influence the dreams of Gods, heroes, and kings.

Phrobetor.

Phobetor, whose name originates from the Greek word meaning “frightening”, was responsible for creating nightmares. Still, in some variations, he was instead referred to as Hegellos, and he would make dreams seem more realistic.

Lastly, Phantasos, whose name derived from the Greek word meaning “fantasy,” would be responsible for creative and fantastic dreaming.

It was believed that Hypnos resided in Erebus, the land of eternal darkness, which in some accounts was even considered to be his father. He made his home in a dark cave, blind in opiate blooms, such as the opium poppy and the bread seed poppy.

There is another variation of this cave located under the island of Lemnos, where the river forgetfulness would flow, which ties into the idea that sleep is a time when we could forget our problems. Hypnos would rise into the sky with his mother Nyx and bring sleep to all those below when the night did come.

He would eventually take a wife known as Pasithea, who was the youngest of all Graces, promised to him by the goddess Hera. Pasithea was regarded as the goddess of meditation, relaxation and hallucination. So, naturally, it makes sense that these two gave birth to children who are heavily associated with dreaming.

When Hypnos was depicted as a physical being, he was seen as a young man with wings on his shoulders or even on his brow. The idea of these wings covering his eyes in all the forensic sleep is quite interesting.

He was often depicted carrying around several objects that would aid him to send people into a slumber: a horn that contained sleep-inducing opium that would cause sleep when blown; a branch dipped in the river of forgetfulness; occasionally, an inverted torch and a poppy stem.

There aren’t many mentions of Hypnos in Greek mythology, but he does play a small run Homer’s Iliad during the Trojan War.

Hera wanting to help the Achaean people and the forces of Troy, seduced her husband Zeus and had Hypnos place him into a deep slumber. However, Hypnos wasn’t able to keep Zeus asleep for very long, and when he awoke, he was furious, pursuing Hypnos endlessly until he fled to his mother’s cave.

https://mythologyexplained.com/hypnos-in-greek-mythology/#:~:text=Hypnos%20%28%E2%80%9CSleep%E2%80%9D%29%2C%20in%20Greek%20Mythology%2C%20was%20the%20son,realm%20of%20Hades%2C%20and%20never%20saw%20the%20sun.

Matter of Fact?

If we accept that matter is all that there is and that mind and consciousness are both emergent outcomes then why do we need to have regular periods of unconsciousness? If the body is just a self-repairing biological machine why does it need to go to sleep? Is it not sufficient to have periods of conscious resting and relaxing? Why have two different states of mind: conscious and unconscious? 

According to psychologists like Freud, we are all much more unconscious than conscious and the unconscious is the primary source of human behaviour. Like an iceberg, the most important part of the mind is the part you cannot see. 

But, if matter is really all that there is, then consciousness and unconsciousness must be made of matter and able to be accessed by the physical senses; yet this is not the case, as mind is 'extra-sensory' and invisible!

Noumenon and Phenomenon.

A 'noumenon' is an extra-sensory (mental) object or event, whereas a 'phenomenon' is a sensory (material) object or event that is known via the senses. The philosopher Immanuel Kant proposed that space, time and reality were imposed upon an underlying, noumenal reality in order to make it understandable; in other words, space, time and reality are subjective and not objective. So why  does a physical body need a space-less, dimensionless, timeless dreaming state? What possible purpose could it serve?

Fatal Familial Insomnia (FFI).

FFI baffled researchers for many years, because certain symptoms resemble other conditions, but the key symptom of FFI is the complete inability to sleep. The brain wave patterns of FFI patients go up and down wildly which is in stark contrast to a normal sleep-wake cycle. Sufferers of FFI can display sleep patterns that are indicative of REM sleep but they don't progress through the various stages of sleep that typically precede REM. 

   The most debilitating aspect of FFI is the eventual loss of coordination and other gross motor skills, including speech which precedes a coma-like state and then death. But the most horrific part is that unlike Alzheimer's disease, the I-function remains intact whilst the rest of the body slowly deteriorates. Patients understand that they will die and are able to talk about the fact that their coordination is deteriorating and even when they can't speak they remain fully aware of what is happening.

Pain in the Brain.

The brain cannot feel pain, so a headache occurs in the nerves, blood vessels and muscles that surround the head and neck. The brain simply registers the fact that something has changed such as the swelling of muscles. All that is occurring is that electrochemical signals are being processed by the brain. So if the brain has no feelings, where are feelings; are they just electricity in motion? Is the feeling of love just the outcome of a bunch of neurones firing? Is hate just the outcome of intense electrochemical activity?

Brain freeze occurs when you gulp down something very cold like ice cream. The back of the throat is where the throat meets the internal carotid artery and this supplies blood to the brain and the anterior cerebral artery. This is where the brain tissue starts. It is the rapid contraction of these tissues that produces the electrochemical signals that the brain registers as pain.

Sleep Deprivation.

The main effects of not having a good night's sleep are usually tiredness, a feeling of being mentally sluggish and a strong desire to fall asleep! If someone is deprived of sleep for many days, hallucinations can present themselves and in some cases permanent changes in personality can occur. If the deprivation period lasts for many weeks then serious illnesses start to manifest and in certain cases this can ultimately lead to death.

Out for the Count.

When someone is unconscious, surgeons can perform painful operations and procedures that would be unbearable if the person concerned was fully conscious. A blow to the head can render someone unconscious and a severe panic attack or extreme exhaustion can have the same effect. An unconscious person resembles a dead corpse and without checking for a pulse you would have to see if they were alive by observing if their chest expanded and contracted; which would indicate that they were still breathing. In terms of survival, unconsciousness places someone in a very vulnerable position as they are unable to defend themselves from harm or attack.

Dream World.

If the state of unconsciousness is purely to allow the physical body an opportunity to rest and repair itself then what is the point of dreaming? Why go to all the trouble of paralysing the body and then continue to stimulate the brain into producing dreams? As the brain is just biological like the rest of the body, why not shut down those parts of the brain that have to do with the sense of self and leave active those parts of the brain that regulate and control the body (autonomous nervous system)? This would remove the need to paralyse the rest of the body. As all sensory input is effectively nonexistent during unconsciousness then the brain can't be processing data from the outside world, so what is the brain doing? Why not stop conscious thoughts and let the body get on with the repair and maintenance tasks?

According to emergentism, mind and consciousness are produced by biology and specifically the electrochemical activity of the brain; so what produced unconsciousness? If unconsciousness is also an emergent property of matter and dreams can occur during periods of unconsciousness, then what is the purpose of dreaming? Most dreams are pure fantasy and a few are completely bizarre. Some dreams do seem to be used to problem solve as inventors who are struggling to solve problems often wake up and hastily scribble down the contents of a dream they have just had in which they successfully solved the problems that they were wrestling with during their waking hours. Some dreams seem to be prophetic and foretell future disasters.

The key point to note about dreaming is that it is a conscious process - you are consciously aware of your dreams at the time of dreaming - and this means that during unconsciousness 'something' is still consciously creating and interacting with dreams. If the brain is just randomly firing neurones then the result would be a chaotic and meaningless succession of images, but dreams have a structure, a narrative and an emotive effect on the immobile and unconscious person who is dreaming. Time either ceases to exist during dreaming or seems to be 'elastic' and a dream that seems to last for many hours may have only taken twenty minutes of 'real' time to unfold. 

Sleep involves transitions between three states: 

1. Wakefulness.

2. Rapid eye movement sleep (REM).

3. Non-rapid eye movement sleep (N-REM).

People who suffer from REM Behaviour Disorder (RBD) act out their dreams and physically move their limbs, talk in their sleep, shout and scream, hit and punch the air and even get up out of bed and move around the bedroom. 

Somnambulism, or sleepwalking, is the most extreme version of RBD and not only do sufferers walk around their own home performing tasks such as emailing friends with meaningless emails, they do irrational things like go outside stark naked and start mowing the lawn in the early hours of the morning. Some even get into their car and successfully drive it. Lee Hadwin a day nurse, has been nicknamed 'Kipasso' as he is able to draw highly detailed works of art in his sleepwalking state; something he can't do whilst awake.

Source: Odee.com - 10 unbelievable Sleepwalking Stories.

http://www.oddee.com/item_96680.aspx

It isn't only humans that sleepwalk and Bizkit the sleep walking, barking dog has over six million hits on You Tube!

Source: Bizkit the sleep walking barking dog.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-0dzKH1Rfs

Day Dreaming.

Daydreaming is the stream of consciousness that detaches from current, external tasks when attention drifts to a more personal and internal direction. This phenomenon is common in people's daily life shown by a large-scale study in which participants spend 47% of their waking time on average on daydreaming. There are various names of this phenomenon including mind wandering, fantasy, spontaneous thoughts, etc. 

According to several studies, daydreaming appears to be the brain's default setting when no other external task is occupying its attention. A group of regions in the brain called the default mode network is lit up only when the brain is left in a sort of ‘idle’ state. These areas of the brain light up in sequence only while daydreaming is commencing.

In one study, it was observed that up to 60–80% of brain energy was consumed while the brain was not actively engaged in any external task. In other words, daydreaming consumes as much brain energy as other complex external tasks. 

Rude Awakening.

Comatose comes from the Greek word 'koma' which means 'deep sleep' or 'in a deep state of unconsciousness'. Someone who is in a coma cannot be awakened and does not respond to pain, sounds or light in the normal way and cannot react with the surrounding environment.

Mother wakes from coma believing she is teenager again.

Sarah Thompson suffered a burst blood clot on her brain which effectively wiped out 13 years of memories. When she regained consciousness she assumed that her husband was a hospital worker and she didn't recognise any of her children. She had to come to terms with the fact that the world had changed, that total strangers were her family and try to remember her life before the blood clot burst.

Source: Mail online. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2208295/Sarah-Thomson-Mother-32-wakes-coma-believing-1998-shes-teenager.html

Croatian teenager wakes from coma speaking fluent German.

A 13 year old Croatian girl woke up from a coma and was unable to speak Croatian yet was able to speak fluent German; a subject she had only been studying at school prior to the 24 hour coma.

Source: The Telegraph online. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/croatia/7583971/Croatian-teenager-wakes-from-coma-speaking-fluent-German.html

The state of consciousness is defined as: 'the state of being aware of and responding to one's own existence, to surroundings, sensory data and the physical world.'

The state of unconsciousness is defined as: 'the state that is lacking in awareness and the capacity for conscious, sensory awareness.' It is of course, the opposite of consciousness.

When you dream you are conscious of your dreams; yet you are in an unconscious state so how can you be conscious as well as being unconscious? (!)

Lucid Dreaming.

The term 'lucid dreaming' was first coined by the Dutch psychiatrist and writer Frederik van Eeden. When you have lucid dreams, you are aware that you are dreaming; which means that you are aware of (conscious of) which state you are in! You can alter the dream at will if you wish or force yourself to wake up if the dream is an unpleasant one.

Hypnagogia.

Hypnagogia is the experience of the transitional state from wakefulness to sleep: the hypnagogic state of consciousness, during the onset of sleep. Its opposite state is described as hypnopompic — the transitional state from sleep into wakefulness. Mental phenomena that may occur during this "threshold consciousness" phase include hypnagogic hallucinations, lucid thought, lucid dreaming, and sleep paralysis. The latter two phenomena are themselves separate sleep conditions that are sometimes experienced during the hypnagogic state.

The word hypnagogia is sometimes used in a restricted sense to refer to the onset of sleep, and contrasted with hypnopompia, Frederic Myers's term for waking up. However, hypnagogia is also regularly employed in a more general sense that covers both falling asleep and waking up. Indeed, it is not always possible in practice to assign a particular episode of any given phenomenon to one or the other, given that the same kinds of experience occur in both, and that people may drift in and out of sleep. In this article hypnagogia will be used in the broader sense, unless otherwise stated or implied.

Other terms for hypnagogia, in one or both senses, that have been proposed include "presomnal" or "anthypnic sensations", "visions of half-sleep", "oneirogogic images" and "phantasmata",  "the borderland of sleep", "praedormitium", "borderland state", "half-dream state", "pre-dream condition", "sleep onset dreams", "dreamlets",  and "wakefulness-sleep transition" (WST).

Threshold consciousness (commonly called "half-asleep" or "half-awake", or "mind awake body asleep") describes the same mental state of someone who is moving towards sleep or wakefulness but has not yet completed the transition. Such transitions are usually brief but can be extended by sleep disturbance or deliberate induction, for example during meditation. 

The hypnagogic state can provide insight into a problem, the best-known example being August Kekulé’s realization that the structure of benzene was a closed ring while half-asleep in front of a fire and seeing molecules forming into snakes, one of which grabbed its tail in its mouth.  Many other artists, writers, scientists have credited hypnagogia and related states with enhancing their creativity. A 2001 study by Harvard psychologist Deirdre Barrett found that, while problems can also be solved in full-blown dreams from later stages of sleep, hypnagogia was especially likely to solve problems which benefit from hallucinatory images being critically examined while still before the eyes.

A feature that hypnagogia shares with other stages of sleep is amnesia. But this is a selective forgetfulness, affecting the hippocampal memory system, which is responsible for episodic or autobiographical memory, rather than the neocortical memory system, responsible for semantic memory.  It has been suggested that hypnagogia and REM sleep help in the consolidation of semantic memory, but the evidence for this has been disputed.  For example, suppression of REM sleep due to antidepressants and lesions to the brainstem has not been found to produce detrimental effects on cognition.

Hypnagogic phenomena may be interpreted as visions, prophecies, premonitions, apparitions and inspiration (artistic or divine), depending on the experiencers' beliefs and those of their culture.

The Svefnthorn.

The Svefnthorn (Old Norse svefnþorn, “sleep thorn,” pronounced “SVEFN-thorn”) is a symbol that features in several of the Norse sagas and in folkloric magical formulas recorded long after the Viking Age.

Its visual form, when described or depicted at all, varies considerably from source to source. Unlike most ancient Norse symbols, it doesn’t seem to have had any one definitive shape. There are also significant differences in how one would go about applying the Svefnthorn to someone, as well as the exact effects that the Svefnthorn would bring about once applied.

But the mentions of the Svefnthorn in the literature all have one thing in common: the Svefnthorn was used to put an adversary into a deep sleep from which he or she wouldn’t awaken for a long time.