If lions, tigers, leopards etc., had all been vegetarian, humans would still have evolved. But maybe into a world with no concept of evil or the devil, and therefore no religions.

(So we know who to blame).

Here’s a more detailed version of my understanding of NTs.

Big cats (say lions) as you say, do habitually stalk and attack from the side or back. But that is only part of the story. Once the kill is over other lions will come to eat.

Game animals would have been the lions’ preferred target, but early humans would still be vulnerable, especially at night when the hunting takes place and the humans sleep.

The foetal is the safest sleeping position as vital areas like throat and stomach are protected. Possibly very few humans were actually killed by night-time predation, but the threat, the danger, the menace, was always lurking in the darkness. Any moment, you might be ripped to pieces by something you cannot even see. And this would have been the case for countless generations.

These days, the conscious mind has forgotten all these ancient dangers, so you may choose to sleep in a relaxing supine position. At some point in the night you wake and during the usually smooth transition from sleep to wakefulness the subconscious (acting on instinct, not logic) may remember the risks and try to move your body to the safer foetal position. Forgetting to disengage the paralysis that stops us from acting out our dreams. Safety is its priority. The conscious mind will then feel the imperative to move but cannot.

In my experience this is the trigger for Night Terrors.

Panic feeds back to the subconscious, convincing it you are on some dark savannah tens of thousands of years ago, falling prey to some kind of animal standing on your chest to stop you escaping.

A quote from the Wikipedia link Arpana posted:

“There is a sense that the individual is trying to protect himself and/or escape from a possible threat which threatens bodily injury.”

I started to do martial arts at around the same time I was experiencing NTs, and a technique we practised involved defence against someone holding you down and trying to strangle you. I just made some simple connections.

In the interview Osho speaks of the importance of understanding over belief. This understanding cured me of NTs. ‘Believers’ may say ‘No, they are the work of the supernatural (or attempted alien abductions)

I find my explanation more plausible. That’s all I claim.

Many children suffer NTs and the first point of contact for any help is a doctor. If medical science accepted my explanation then that doctor would have to explain to the parents NTs happen because their child is a product of evolution.

But what if the parents are (as many would be) religious?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_terror

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavor_nocturnus

I have taken my time to go carefully through what you have written.

I do believe that NT’s are a legacy of relentless night-time predation against countless generations of early humans. That’s why different cultures over thousands of years have reported the same experience. We all have the same ancestors.

It is well known that the body is put into a state of paralysis when we sleep to stop us acting out our dreams. I trust my own experience that the weight on the chest is the subconscious replicating what it believes to be some type of big cat just about to kill its capture. Which is why they are so frightening as there will be no mercy or escape.

Much of what you’ve said seems to relate to loneliness, darkness and fear.

We know the universe is a vast, dark, cold, mostly empty, space. So maybe the universe itself feels lonely? I just accept that loneliness may be a fundamental characteristic of existence. Or more accurately, the price you pay for consciousness.

Fear is more difficult to quantify as it is relative. (I fear QPR dropping back down to the Championship, but should that count?)

When I realised that there was no after-life many of my fears simply vanished.

Arps recently posted a link to a book, and scrolling the quotes this is the only one that stood out for me: “Enlightenment is the ego’s ultimate disappointment” -Trungpa Rimpoche.

Nothing continues after the death of the physical body. I am telling you explicitly what this guy is telling you indirectly.

The video cannot be shown at the moment. Please try again later.

The evolutionary explanation is that sleep paralysis developed because otherwise, when dreaming, we (and all mammals) wouldn’t just be lying in bed, we would act out our dreams, thus the night-time streets would be a riot of people running away from wild animals, jumping out of windows, fighting, attempting to fly, trying to throttle their mothers-in-law, and Shantam would be out and about in his mal-fitting chuddies, chasing through the streets of Jullundur in hot pursuit of Kate Winslet and Heidi Klum….