“To understand the nature of dreams, I drilled into the skull and inserted a chip.”

Scientists explain the nature of prophetic dreams quite prosaically. Every second, the brain records events occurring in our lives and processes gigabytes of information, which is often filtered out by consciousness as unnecessary, but which comes to the fore in our dreams, which leads to unexpected results. This happens thanks to the subconscious, which never sleeps. People usually perceive such dreams as a prediction sent from above. In addition, often in their dreams they replay events in their heads that they would like to see in reality.

“It’s quite easy to explain most prophetic dreams,” says psychologist Vasily Osinovsky. – Imagine that you went out of the house into the yard. A person is coming towards you, you, of course, pay attention to him. You will also probably remember the car passing by. But the rustling of leaves or the creaking of snow, most likely, is not, and a cat running in the far corner of the yard may also escape your attention. However, the brain has already recorded all this information, and it can appear as a vivid picture during a dream. And if the next day you see all this in your yard, then, of course, you will be very surprised, although you might have seen the same details before, you just didn’t pay attention to them.”

British scientists look at the nature of dreams from a completely different point of view: they believe that our brain is a generator of virtual reality, and in a dream it projects and runs our model of the world. So it is not surprising that what is taken away at night then comes true during the day, they say.

Studies have shown that women have more prophetic dreams than men, and older people than young people. The level of education and religiosity also have their significance: the higher the intelligence, the less a person is inclined to look for mystical meaning in his dreams. And on the contrary, religious people often try to decipher the mystery of their dreams, although the Orthodox Church condemns the passion for mysticism and superstition, considering this a great sin.

By the way, Christmastide – the period from Christmas to Epiphany Eve – has always been considered the most mysterious time of the year in Russia. Our ancestors believed that these days God, rejoicing at the birth of his son, releases the souls of the dead to earth to visit relatives. Although people were afraid of meeting with otherworldly forces, they nevertheless tried to look into their future with their help. Some used fortune telling for this purpose, others looked for answers to their innermost questions in prophetic dreams.

And yet, science cannot explain many of the mysteries associated with prophetic dreams. The most common example: a person sees in a dream the death of a relative that occurred a thousand kilometers away from him. And in the morning they call him and inform him about this, and what he saw in his dream completely coincides with what actually happened. This cannot be attributed to the fact that he supposedly already saw all this, the information was simply hidden in the subconscious.

American President Abraham Lincoln even dreamed of his own funeral a few days before his tragic death. He dreamed that he was walking through the White House and heard someone’s sobs, in one of the rooms there was a coffin, people crowded around it. And when he asked who was being buried, he was told that the president. And 10 days later the dream came true: during the performance, an attempt was made on Lincoln’s life, he was shot in the head, and he died without regaining consciousness. It is unlikely that his brain could generate such a tragic model of the world for itself.

But where official science reaches a dead end, researchers who are ready to use the most extreme methods to find the truth go into battle. For example, our compatriot from Novosibirsk, Mikhail Raduga, decided to undergo craniotomy and implant a chip into his brain in order to influence his dreams, drilling his own skull with a drill under local anesthesia.

Until the very last minute, Mikhail kept his plan secret from everyone, because he was afraid that he would simply be thrown into a psychiatric hospital.

“I hoped that the operation would last no more than an hour, but it took me four, and I lost a liter of blood before I drilled a hole in the skull and installed electrodes,” the researcher told the MK correspondent.

According to him, most of all he was afraid of missing the implantation site and damaging the cerebral cortex.

“But I was ready for any outcome. Just not to give up my life’s work. I hope that my experiment will serve science and help advance the study of the human brain,” he says.

At the age of 16, Mikhail experienced a condition called sleep paralysis. At the moment of falling asleep, his muscles suddenly became paralyzed, he could not speak, but he clearly remembered everything that happened to him. Mikhail says that, unexpectedly for himself, he soared above the bed and flew out the window, and then a blackout occurred. In the morning he woke up in his room as if nothing had happened.

Since then, he began to fly almost every night in an imaginary reality. Mikhail wrote his first book on how to control dreams and make out-of-body travel at the age of 20. Now he has 15 books on this topic, has his own laboratory, and serious scientific journals (mostly foreign) publish his articles.

“I want to have complete control over my dreams. This can help people with disabilities who cannot move their arms or legs – everything will be available to them in their sleep. Or take, for example, you and me. Don’t you want to fly like children fly in their dreams? My method will also help cope with nightmares and insomnia,” Mikhail Raduga explains the meaning of his experiments.

Indeed, there is a certain reason in his words – we spend a third of our lives in sleep, and it would be nice to learn how to influence it with the help of various practices.

“I decided that the most effective method of influence is the method of implanting a chip into the motor part of the cerebral cortex. That’s why I inserted a chip into my own skull, and with the help of implanted electrodes I began to influence the world of my dreams.”

According to Mikhail, the electrode was located in the area of ​​the cerebral cortex responsible for extending the fingers. When he took an object in his hands in a dream, at that moment a current was applied to his cerebral cortex, and his fingers unbent in his sleep, and the object fell to the floor. True, the scientific experiment had to be interrupted soon, as the electrodes began to grow in, and they had to be urgently removed.

“I don’t advise anyone to repeat my experience. To be honest, I myself don’t know what else this could turn out to be for me,” admits Mikhail; nevertheless, he is confident that he has made a serious scientific discovery, or at least taken a real step towards revealing the nature of dreams.

Mikhail does not divide his dreams into prophetic and ordinary ones; he believes that it is much more important to strive for lucid dreams, with the help of which one can make out-of-body travel both into the future and into the past.