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Old 06-January-2009, 07:01 AM
WayneFrancis WayneFrancis is offline
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You are not crazy but just subject to how the mind actually works. Just like while you are dreaming things "seem" normal enough (very few of us in our dreams think, while dreaming, "this is really strange")

When you wake up the brain still is hard at work rationalizing everything. This means you can still see, hear, smell, taste and even feel things that might not really be there. Your brain is just filling in the gaps to make its current state make a bit more sense. There are well documented cases where people that have had things like a leg amputated will deny their leg is gone. They still "feel" it because of damage to the remaining nerve tissue. Because of this it is thought that they then build up elaborate explanations to reconcile what is going on in their brain.

Many "alien abductions" probably can be attributed to this same effect. People assume if they are awake then their brain can't play the same types of tricks on them as it does when they are sleeping. In some cases you could think of it as better tricks. Normally the brain creates all the things you normally sense while dreaming. If you are awake the brain has to try to reconcile what is actually coming to it from outside to what it is playing around with inside.

I'll give you my own personal experience of this happening to me. While in the USMC I was in NCO school. We had about 20 minutes before the next class started so I decided to take a quick nap. I laid down on my cot and had my right leg hanging off the edge. Now the cot has an aluminum frame. That frame was right where my butt ended and my leg began with the weight of my leg pulling down this was enough to cut off most of the circulation of my leg. Now most people know what happens here. Your limb goes "dead" or "falls asleep". It is numb and you can't do much with it and as the blood rushes back all the nerves give you a feeling of "pins and needles". Well I didn't know my leg fell asleep. Someone said "Hey Francis, its time to go." Being half awake and with the next class on my mind I jumped up to go to class. Well I don't know if you have ever tried to stand when one of your legs is "asleep" but you are just asking for trouble. My other leg not expecting to have to hold and balance my whole body didn't do the job and WHAM fall down at the side of my cot. I quickly try and get back up and did for a second before putting weight on that leg again and WHAM I go down for a 2nd time. It is at this point where my brain kicks in and tries to reconcile what is happening with what it perceives as happening. I look down and I swear to god that I saw a hole in the ground. To me my leg wasn't giving out. My leg was just falling into that hole making me fall. I even said out loud "What the #*$@ is that hole doing there?" and had a few other people, already wondering why I kept falling down, ask me if I was ok. As one of the others came over and started helping me up I started feeling the pins and needles and that hole in the ground faded away.

I actually saw, while awake, something that wasn't there. This is because my brain was trying to rationalize what had happen and in the process invented other sensory stimulus to fit the rationalization.

Welcome to the wonderful world of the mind