WHAT IS SLEEP-LEARNING?

Students have always pored over their books far into the night, hard-working and conscientious in their pursuit of learning.

Today it is possible to be equally conscientious without working nearly so hard. It is, in fact, possible to sleep on the subject—quite literally—and learn it faster and more thoroughly than the most determined application allowed in the past.

This new aid to education is called sleep-learning.

Sleep-learning, a very young science, is based on the receptivity of the subconscious to suggestion and instruction during the sleeping period.

Its principles were known to the ancients. In Egypt, priests recited the scriptures to sleeping novitiates in specially built slumber temples, believing that this method would hasten the learning process. In both Egypt and Greece, people brought their problems to such temples. There, priests whispered helpful suggestions in their ears while they slept. The nocturnal advice dealt with matters of health, general living and the encouragement of confidence.

In informal ways we have been applying the principle of sleep-learning all along. We often decide to "sleep on" a problem we have been unable to solve and awake with the answer.

While we are asleep, some watchful part of us prevents us from rolling out of bed, or pulls the covers up when they have slipped. Mothers who sleep through traffic noises, thunderstorms and husbands' snoring awake at the slightest sound from their babies. The subconscious functions while we sleep and it has been proven that it can be directed into channels of our choice.

In 1932, Aldous Huxley envisioned a new world in which hypnopaedia (sleep-teaching) would be used for purposes of conditioning future citizens along lines considered useful for the state, rather than for intellectual improvement. The methods Huxley described are almost identical with those now in use. He speaks of a continuous, repetitious whisper under the pillow. The degree of his prophetic talent is apparent to people familiar with sleep-learning equipment, in which a pillow-speaker is attached to a clock-controlled phonograph or tape-recorder. The speaker's volume is just loud enough to reach only the ear of the sleep-learner and the material is repeated several times during the night.

More than a quarter of a century later, in Brave New World Revisited, Huxley discussed the facts then known about hypnopaedia. He was concerned about the possibility of misuse but, at the same time, recognized that factual material was being taught successfully to sleeping people.

Responsible proponents of sleep-learning point out that the same possibility exists in many scientific fields, but that this risk should not keep us from making use of the beneficial aspects of this new technique.

The Sleep-Learning Research Association's statement of policy reads in part:

Because we have reported what some are doing in this field, in no way do we mean to imply that sleep-therapy (induced auto-suggestion by the sleep-learning method) is a substitute for medical or psychiatric treatment. Moreover, because some people are not susceptible to suggestion (science says 10% are not), we cannot specifically guarantee that your attempt in sleep-learning will be successful, should you try it. What nocturnal education will do in the future, when all its implications will be realized and exploited, we cannot yet say...

The Association further writes that it finds, despite "a certain amount of hocus pocus," it cannot scoff at the results of the do-it-yourself psychology known as sleep-therapy in view of the many letters attesting astonishing improvement.

Though there is comparatively little factual material available on the subject, research is being carried on to test the theory that one can learn while asleep. Notable among the studies whose findings have led to worldwide experimentation are the work at the University of North Carolina, the University of California, William and Mary, Parsons Training School, U.C.L.A., Georgetown University and the Institute of Logopedics.

There is considerable interest in some medical circles about the pain-reducing or pain-eliminating faculties of sleep-suggestion.