“Amid disquieting dreams in the night, when deep sleep falls on people, fear and trembling seized me and made all my bones shake. A spirit glided past my face, and the hair on my body stood on end.” This quote from the Book of Job (4:13–15) could be describing sleep paralysis, according to authors of the religious journal Christian Pure. However, this phenomenon is not directly mentioned in the Bible.
While some Christians perceive sleep paralysis as a type of spiritual attack, the authors of the article adhere to a more modern approach, noting that this condition has purely physiological causes and one should not hesitate to see a doctor if they experience it. Nevertheless, they also propose prayer as the main method of treatment—again, relying on quotes from the Bible.
Interestingly, a scientific article on the power of prayer was published at the same time by American scientists Schille-Hudson, Weisman, and Luhrmann, who reviewed three studies on this topic. They found that the more time a person spends in prayer, the more frequently they experience events characterized by a spiritual presence. However, prayer does not affect sleep paralysis or out-of-body experiences (i.e., phase states).
Additionally, in 2011, the REMspace team conducted an experiment in California in which they invoked a biblical miracle—the vision of the prophet Elijah. A group of people have had similar visions in the phase state.
Have you used prayer to enter or exit a phase state?
The article was published in December 2024 in Cognitive Science.
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