Visions of angels in Bible were `lucid dreams` claims new sleep study
Baku, December 28 (AZERTAC). Recorded Biblical angels and religious encounters may have just been lucid dreaming suggests a new sleep study that specializes in `out of body experiences.` Asking 30 volunteers to try to re-create a scene out of the Bible where a prophet is aided by an angel during sleep, the researchers taken from the University of California Los Angeles say the majority reported similar encounters. But in their successful scenarios, they say it was all merely a dream. The Out-Of-Body Experience Research Center in Los Angeles, which teaches how to enter and control a `phase` of one separating from their body, according to their website, says that over four weekends, 24 of their 30 volunteers claimed to have experienced at least one lucid or half-awake dream. During those dreams, between November 11 and December 11, they were instructed to try to separate themselves and then while consciously outside their physical body, look for angels in their home. `If a volunteer or practitioner was able to experience the sensation of separating from the body, they were to try to find an angel in their bedroom, and then eat something in order to exactly reproduce 1 Kings 19:4-6 in the Bible...` the study explained. The prophet and story of Elijah, who fell asleep under a tree after fleeing into the woods and prayed for death, was aided according to the Bible after an angel woke him to provide him with bread and water. According to the scripture, retold by the center, Elijah takes the gifts as nourishment and then goes back to sleep. If repeating this phenomenon was not accomplished by the volunteers, they were asked to try again. According to the study, 15 of those 24 dreamers claim they did succeed. Nine of those 15 say they dreamed of both an angel as well as food. Six others said they saw only an angel. `It can be asserted with a high degree of confidence that the majority of biblical events occurring at the threshold of sleep were the products of spontaneous lucid dreams (false awakenings),` the study concluded from these findings in their report. `I soon awoke in order to try to take off my headphones, but quickly realized that they actually weren`t there,` a described experienced practitioner identified as Michael R. explained to the center after both seeing an angel and eating food. `I focused my attention on there being an angel behind the door, and opened it abruptly. The angel wasn`t there - but my grandma was, sleeping on a chair. I turned my back and tried to imagine an angel being there instead of grandma, and then turned back around… Now facing the room again, I still saw grandma there sleeping, but with large gray wings pressed between her back and the chair,` Michael R. retells. The center additionally claims international recognition following an experiment that reached mass contact with both UFOs, or unidentified flying objects, and extra terrestrial aliens in Los Angeles, `...which provided the first experimental evidence that most alien abduction accounts stem from spontaneous out-of-body experiences.` The study concludes that the experiences gained by their volunteers and practitioners of angels and food were caused by the individual`s `general interests or thoughts before falling asleep, and not external stimuli,` such as an actual heavenly ore religious visitation. `A comprehensive investigation of this possibly found no fact indicating that this was not the case. Indeed, nearly every indication and fact supports this conclusion,` the study concludes.
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