Epigraph

It is not granted to any mortal that God should speak to him except through revelation or from behind a veil, or by sending a messenger to reveal by His command what He will: He is exalted and wise. (Al Quran 42:51)

By Zia H Shah MD

Introduction

Prophets in the Abrahamic religions – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – have reported vivid revelations in which they heard divine voices or saw angelic visions. These prophetic experiences, described in scripture and tradition, shaped the core beliefs of billions. Rather than dismissing such accounts as mere fantasy or illness, it is possible to explore them as genuine altered states of consciousness. Modern neuroscience and psychology recognize phenomena like hypnagogic (sleep-onset) and hypnopompic (sleep-waking) hallucinations that produce realistic visions and sounds. In a sympathetic and scientifically grounded way, this essay examines how prophetic revelations might intersect with these liminal states of consciousness. The goal is to consider a natural mechanism for extraordinary experiences without stripping away their meaning – acknowledging that what a believer calls a message from God could also be viewed as the mind entering a visionary state. By looking at historical examples from scripture alongside current research on the sleeping brain, we can better understand the mysterious space between dream and reality where prophets may have received their inspiration.

Prophetic Visions in Abrahamic Religions

Prophets of the Abrahamic faiths often described encounters with divine messengers or voices. In the Hebrew Bible, for example, the young prophet Samuel first heard God’s call at night while lying down in the temple. He was not fully awake and initially thought the voice calling his name was the aging priest Eli. After this happened three times, Eli realized it was God speaking to Samuel (1 Samuel 3:3–10). The account notes that Samuel was lying down to sleep when he heard his name, a detail suggesting a twilight state of consciousness. Hearing one’s name just as one is falling asleep is, in fact, a classic hypnagogic auditory hallucination, common in the general population . Far from being dismissed as delusion, Samuel’s nocturnal calling is revered as the moment God initiated him into prophecy.

In Judaism, many prophetic experiences occur in dreams or visions of the night. The Hebrew Bible contains numerous examples of God communicating through dreams: Abraham’s covenant vision in a “deep sleep,” Jacob’s dream of a ladder to heaven, Joseph’s prophetic dreams, and Daniel’s night visions, to name a few. The Talmud even teaches that “a dream is one-sixtieth of prophecy,” implying that the dreams we experience are a small taste of genuine prophetic revelation . This fraction underscores a continuum between ordinary dreaming and the heightened insight of prophecy. Moses is presented as a unique case – unlike other prophets, he is said to have spoken with God face to face while fully awake (Exodus 33:11). Later Jewish philosophers like Maimonides emphasized that all other prophets received messages in a trance or dream, with their physical senses suspended, whereas Moses remained conscious . Nonetheless, Moses’s first encounter with the Divine – hearing God’s voice from the burning bush on Mount Horeb – could be seen as an altered state in its own right. He was alone in the wilderness when he saw a bush engulfed in flame yet not burning up, and heard it speak to him (Exodus 3:1-10). Such a multisensory vision (visual fire, auditory voice) in solitude hints at a trance-like experience, even if portrayed as an external event.

In Christianity, prophetic visions and revelations likewise occur at the edges of sleep and awareness. Jesus himself is chiefly known for miracles and teachings rather than receiving prophecies, yet the Gospels describe visionary events around him. For instance, during the Transfiguration on a mountaintop, Jesus is glorified and speaks with Moses and Elijah in brilliant light. Notably, the Gospel of Luke remarks that Peter and his companions had been “weighed down with sleep” just before witnessing this vision – they struggled to stay awake and then “saw His glory” and the two ancient prophets beside him . This suggests the disciples were in a drowsy, borderline state when they experienced the dazzling apparition. Early Christian leaders like Paul also had crucial visions: Paul’s dramatic conversion on the road to Damascus involved seeing a blinding light and hearing Jesus’s voice, experiences that perhaps share features with hallucinatory flash imagery and auditory phenomena. In the Book of Acts, the apostle Peter falls into a trance at midday and “sees heaven opened” in a vision (Acts 10:9-16), again blurring the line between a waking state and a dream. And the Book of Revelation, traditionally attributed to John, begins with the author declaring he “was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day” when a wild series of visions of heaven and future events unfolded – language that suggests an ecstatic or altered state of consciousness. Christianity eventually canonized criteria to discern divine visions from ordinary dreams, but the raw experience of those receiving revelation often resembled an intense dream or trance.

In Islam, the Prophet Muhammad’s revelations offer perhaps the clearest overlap with altered sleep states. Islamic sources describe Muhammad’s prophetic experiences with striking physiological detail. According to biographical traditions, in the period before Quranic revelations began, Muhammad started having vivid true dreams that would come to pass exactly as seen – these were said to be the first glimmers of prophethood, occurring “like the break of dawn” in the early morning . This description suggests hypnopompic visions (coming out of sleep at dawn) that carried veridical insight. The very first Quranic revelation is reported to have occurred when Muhammad was alone in a cave on Mount Hira, meditating and possibly in a light sleep, when the Angel Gabriel appeared commanding him to “Recite!” (Iqra) . He later told his wife that he feared what he had experienced – he wondered if he had gone mad or seen a demon – indicating how profoundly real and overwhelming the encounter felt. On multiple occasions, those around Muhammad observed that receiving revelation was an intense, altered state for him. His cousin described that during inspiration, the Prophet would sometimes suddenly freeze, appearing distant; he would sweat even on a cold day and seem greatly burdened until the message had passed . In one famous hadith (report), Muhammad explains: “Sometimes revelation comes to me like the ringing of a bell, the most severe form, then it departs and I grasp what was said; other times an angel comes in the form of a man and speaks to me” . This ringing sound and feeling of pressure correspond remarkably with what modern sleep research calls sleep paralysis with hypnagogic hallucination – a state where one is half-awake, body immobilized, often hearing a buzzing or ringing noise while sensing a presence . Far from considering it an illness, Muhammad and his followers interpreted these sensations as signs of authentic communication from God (through Gabriel). Indeed, the Quran itself acknowledges different modes of divine communication, including visions and dreams; it notes, “Allah has spoken to some messengers directly; to others, He sent inspiration” . Islam also carries forward the idea that ordinary believers might get faint echoes of prophecy in dreams – “The truthful dream is one-forty-sixth of prophecy” says a hadith – again indicating that nightly visions and sacred revelation lie on a spectrum rather than in separate realms.

Across these three faiths, we see a pattern: prophetic revelations often occur in moments of solitude, darkness, or drowsiness – when the mind is in a receptive, altered state. Whether it is the night-time calling of Samuel, the trance of an apostle, or the cave visions of Muhammad, the prophets were not in ordinary waking mode during many of their encounters with the Divine. They were dreaming, half-asleep, fasting in the wilderness, or engaged in deep prayer. These conditions parallel what we now recognize as conducive to visionary mental phenomena. Rather than undermining the prophets’ credibility, this observation humanizes their experiences: they may have tapped into extraordinary capacities of the human brain, perhaps with spiritual significance, in order to convey messages of great meaning.

The Hypnagogic and Hypnopompic States: Neuroscience of Half-Sleep Hallucinations

Modern science has shown that the boundary between wakefulness and sleep is a fertile ground for hallucinations and unusual sensory experiences. The terms hypnagogic (from Greek hypnos, sleep + agogeus, leading) and hypnopompic (from pompos, sending away) refer to the transitional states as one falls asleep and as one wakes up, respectively . During these in-between phases, it’s common for people to experience vivid perceptions despite not being fully awake – essentially, dreamlike hallucinations intruding into waking awareness . Crucially, these experiences are considered part of normal human physiology, not signs of mental illness. Psychiatrists note that hallucinations at sleep onset or awakening occur in the “normal range of perception” and even the DSM-5 manual of mental disorders lists them as non-pathological phenomena . In fact, studies find they are surprisingly common: by some estimates, around 37% of people have experienced at least one hypnagogic hallucination in their lifetime , and an even higher proportion (up to 80% in one survey) report some type of hypnagogic imagery if broadly defined . These hallucinations can engage any sense and often feel indistinguishable from reality while they last .

To appreciate how rich these half-sleep visions can be, it helps to break down typical hypnagogic hallucination symptoms :

• Visual phenomena: Many people see fleeting images, shapes, or even full scenes as they drift into sleep. One might see flashes of light, geometric patterns, or figures. The imagery can be like a moving kaleidoscope or as concrete as seeing a person in the room. Research indicates the vast majority (over 80%) of hypnagogic hallucinations have a visual component . Unlike full dreams, these visuals usually lack a coherent story – they may just be disconnected snapshots . Nevertheless, they can be startlingly clear. For example, someone might “see” a bright light hovering nearby or an apparition of a person standing at the foot of the bed. In a religious context, it’s easy to imagine a prophet perceiving such a light or figure as an angelic presence.
• Auditory phenomena: It’s also common to hear sounds or voices during hypnagogia. Simple sounds like a doorbell ringing, a loud bang, or indistinct voices talking are frequently reported . A very typical experience is hearing one’s own name called out, which often jolts the person awake. Neuroscientists consider this a benign misfiring as the brain relaxes control over perception. Intriguingly, hearing one’s name in that state happened to the prophet Samuel, as noted above – a classic example of an auditory hypnagogic hallucination being interpreted as the voice of God . People may also hear music or a buzzing/ringing noise. The ringing sound described by Muhammad during some revelations fits this category well. Sleep researchers note that a buzzing “electric” sensation is frequently associated with sleep paralysis episodes, likely caused by minor spasms in the middle ear muscles . What is mere biology to a scientist could be a heavenly trumpet or divine voice to a devout experiencer.
• Tactile and spatial sensations: Hypnagogic/hypnopompic states can produce uncanny bodily feelings. Many have felt the infamous sensation of falling suddenly, which often snaps them awake. Others report a floating or weightless feeling, or as if they are vibrating. A common and eerie hallucination, usually tied to sleep paralysis, is the feeling that someone is present in the room or even pressure on one’s chest, as if being held down . This “sensed presence” can be extremely convincing – people might swear an intruder or entity was hovering over them when in reality no one was there. Neurologists suggest this arises from the brain only partially turning off the dream imagery, so a dream figure is felt in the real environment. Such experiences might explain historical reports of night-time demonic attacks or, in a more positive interpretation, angels visiting. In religious literature, prophets often react to encounters by falling on the ground weak or being unable to move, which could reflect a kind of sleep-paralysis response. For example, the biblical Daniel fell powerless during an angelic vision, and Muhammad, as mentioned, sometimes felt a heavy weight and could not move when the revelation came. These physical effects mirror what sleep researchers observe in REM atonia (paralysis) intruding into wakefulness .

Hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations tend to be brief, usually seconds to a minute, though they can recur or string together. They occur during transitions in consciousness, when the brain is partially in a dreaming state (REM-like activity) while the person is still aware of the real environment. Earlier theories hypothesized that these hallucinations were caused by bits of REM sleep dream imagery occurring at the wrong time , though recent research is investigating other mechanisms as well. What’s key is that these experiences carry the full weight of reality for the perceiver – in other words, the person is often convinced they are awake (indeed they may have their eyes open and do perceive the actual room) and that the hallucination is genuinely happening in that waking moment . It’s easy to see how, without modern knowledge of neurology, someone in ancient times would interpret such a vivid and bizarre event as something supernatural. In a way, hypnagogic visions feel like an external force breaking into one’s mind: a voice or image appears unbidden, unconnected to ordinary thoughts, much as one might imagine a divine voice or angelic apparition would occur.

From a neuroscience perspective, these states illustrate how the brain itself can generate extraordinary sensory experiences. The occipital lobes can conjure lights or figures, the auditory cortex can play back phantom sounds, and the limbic system (emotional centers) can imbue a simple hallucination with overwhelming awe or fear. Sometimes, endogenous chemicals might be involved – for example, some scientists speculate that the brain’s production of DMT (a natural psychedelic) could spike during certain sleep phases, contributing to vivid hallucinations . While the DMT theory is not confirmed, it is true that artificially inducing similar states reproduces spiritual sensations. Researchers have used transcranial magnetic stimulation on the brain’s temporoparietal regions and managed to induce out-of-body feelings or sensed presences, showing that our sense of self in space is a construct that can be altered . In short, modern neuroscience confirms that human brains are capable of simulating events that feel real but occur only in the mind – including scenarios that echo classic prophetic visions (bright lights, voices, a presence, a transport to another realm). Knowing this, we can approach ancient accounts of prophecy with fresh eyes: perhaps some prophets were unwittingly experiencing hypnagogic hallucinations or related states, which they earnestly interpreted through the lens of their culture and faith. And yet, importantly, acknowledging a neurological dimension does not automatically invalidate the spiritual interpretation, as we will discuss.

Overlaps Between Visionary States and Prophetic Revelations

The parallels between documented hypnagogic/hypnopompic phenomena and the descriptions of prophetic visions are striking. Consider a few key features that appear in both:

• Hearing a disembodied voice: Many prophets report hearing a clear voice when no one else is present – Samuel hearing his name at night, Isaiah hearing God’s voice in the Temple, Jesus hearing the Father’s voice during baptism, Muhammad hearing the command to Recite. In neuroscience, the hypnagogic state commonly produces auditory hallucinations of voices or one’s name . The British Journal of Psychiatry even noted that “hearing one’s name called when falling asleep” is a typical example of a hypnagogic hallucination . The young Samuel’s experience precisely fits this mold, yet within the religious narrative it is the voice of Yahweh. This suggests that what is neurologically a spontaneous brain-generated voice can, in a religious context, be interpreted as an external divine voice. The two perspectives are not mutually exclusive – one might say that if God were to speak to someone, the brain’s auditory circuits must be activated in any case, perhaps making use of the same pathways that also produce hypnagogic sounds . As one scholar wrote regarding Samuel, “the possibility that [he] experienced hypnagogic hallucinations is not incompatible with a belief that he heard God through them” .
• A radiant light or figure appearing: Biblical prophets frequently mention bright lights or otherworldly figures in their visions. Ezekiel, for example, saw visions of a brilliant amber glow; Paul saw a light from heaven that blinded him; the three disciples saw Jesus’s face shine like the sun at Transfiguration; Muhammad on some occasions reported seeing an angelic presence filling the horizon. Hypnagogic hallucinations, too, “frequently include sensations such as the feeling that someone is in the room with you or that the room is filled with bright light.” . A person in a half-dream state might see a human-like shape or a glow. Historically, figures who experienced night-time visions often struggled to classify them as either dreams or waking events . The angelic visitor of Joseph Smith (founder of Mormonism) is a case in point: he insisted it was “not a dream” although it was night in his bedroom, and a companion described the room lighting up during the angel’s appearance . The Lancet Psychiatry essay on hypnagogia and religious experience suggests that many such reports – mixing dream and vision language – might reflect witnesses genuinely experiencing a state between sleep and wakefulness . The imagery of angels with bright lights could well emerge from the brain’s visual cortex firing erratically as one teeters on sleep, giving the visionary raw material that faith then interprets as a messenger of God.
• Feelings of terror, peace, or presence: Prophetic encounters are often accompanied by strong emotions and bodily reactions. The Book of Daniel says the prophet felt fear and lost strength when a vision came (Daniel 10:7-9). The disciples at the Transfiguration fell to the ground in fear until Jesus comforted them. Muhammad sometimes would suddenly feel a great heaviness or sweat profusely. These sound like the physiological effects of an adrenaline surge and the autonomic nervous system in overdrive – which can happen during sleep paralysis episodes, where people often feel a crushing weight on their chest and intense fear (traditionally called the “night mare” or an attack of a jinn). On the other hand, some prophetic experiences are marked by feelings of ecstasy and peace – for instance, mystics describe blissful union with the divine in visions. Hypnagogic experiences can also range from terrifying (if the person feels an evil presence) to ecstatic (some report euphoria or a sense of cosmic insight). The interpretation and framing make a huge difference. A believer surrounded by a supportive religious context might experience even an initially frightening hallucination as ultimately meaningful or comforting – “Fear not,” say the angels in Scripture. It is notable that once prophets recognize the phenomenon as divine, their fear often gives way to acceptance. Neuroscience would say the amygdala (fear center) was activated by the unexpected perception, but the cortex can then reappraise the experience as positive or meaningful. In religious terms, the person might say an angel reassured them or God’s presence gave them strength. Both descriptions can be talking about the same event, one from inside the brain’s workings and one from the subjective meaning.
• Complex messages received in dreams and visions: One challenge in linking hypnagogic hallucinations to prophecy is that the former are usually fragmented and brief, whereas prophetic revelations can be lengthy and detailed (e.g. entire prophecies or scriptures dictated). How could an experience lasting only moments yield extensive scripture? One possibility is that an initial hypnagogic trigger (like a voice or flash) could lead the person into a full dreaming state or trance where a more elaborate scenario plays out. For example, after Samuel heard his name and responded, the Bible says God gave him a longer message that night . Some commentators consider that part a “dream theophany” – essentially, Samuel fell fully asleep and dreamed the content after being primed by the auditory hallucination . In Islam, several passages of the Quran were revealed to Muhammad during sleeping visions or dreams (one famous example is the Night Journey vision of traveling to Jerusalem and heaven). A hypnopompic state upon waking can also imprint a powerful narrative; someone might recall a very cohesive dream that they believe was more than a dream. It’s also worth noting that lucid dreaming (being aware one is dreaming and able to observe or guide it) can occur during these in-between states. A prophet in antiquity wouldn’t have the term “lucid dream,” but might simply report that in a vision or dream they saw such-and-such and learned a message. In any case, the content of a revelation – its linguistic or symbolic information – still has to come from the person’s mind (or, believers would say, from God via the mind). The hypnagogic state might unlock creative and subconscious depths, allowing new insights or symbols to bubble up. This could explain the rich symbolism in prophetic dreams (like Pharaoh’s dreams in Genesis, or apocalyptic imagery in Revelation) – the sleeping mind thinks in images and metaphors.

Given these overlaps, some scholars have hypothesized that founders of religions were particularly prone to such spontaneous visionary states. One philosopher argues that prophets and apostles “were naturally prone to sleep paralysis and out-of-body experience,” and that they interpreted these honest, sincere hallucinations as supernatural events . This view suggests that honest and sane individuals throughout history have had exceptional experiences during phases like hypnagogia, and lacking any other framework, attributed them to gods or spirits . We might look at figures like Ezekiel (with bizarre symbolic visions), or St. John the Divine (author of Revelation), or Joseph Smith (with his nocturnal angelic visitor) as cases where a predisposition to vivid imagery and perhaps sleep-related visions created the seeds of a new religious message. Even Jesus’s forty days of fasting in the wilderness, after which he experienced an encounter with Satan offering temptations, could be seen in psychological terms as a visionary episode brought on by extreme physical and mental stress (starvation and isolation, known to induce hallucinations) – yet in the Gospel narrative it is a real confrontation with a spiritual being. The difference is in the interpretation and context. A modern neuroscientist might say Jesus had an internal struggle manifesting as visions; a believer says he actually met the devil and resisted him. Both agree he genuinely experienced something profound.

Crucially, recognizing these parallels does not require dismissing the spiritual importance of prophetic experiences. On the contrary, it can inspire awe at how the human mind is capable of touching such depths. The British psychiatrist Christopher C. H. Cook notes that voices and visions are reported in all major faith traditions and that even if they have hallucinatory aspects, this “does not necessarily invalidate the value and significance of the experience” . These experiences are typically interpreted through a religious lens as “revelatory”, meaning they are understood to convey some communication from a higher power . Cook points out that throughout history, revelations via voices or visions were deemed miraculous, but in contemporary times we can consider neurological explanations without automatically branding them delusional . In other words, a single experience can be described in two languages – one of neuroscience (neuronal firings, sensory hallucination) and one of theology (divine message, angelic visitation) – and both descriptions can hold truth in their respective contexts . As an example, if a prophet’s brain entering a hypnagogic state allowed them to perceive a coherent message that guided or helped people, the source of that message might be debated, but the impact and meaning of it remain. A religious person might even say that the Creator designed the brain with the ability to experience His presence in these subtle ways.

Visionary Experience: Bridging Faith and Science

Modern scholarly literature in neuroscience, psychology, and comparative religion has increasingly taken an interest in these boundary-state experiences and their spiritual interpretations. Neuroscientists publish studies on how sleep disorders or fragmented sleep can lead to hallucinations, finding that people who experience more broken sleep tend to report more unusual sensory events (including religious visions) . Psychologists like Oliver Sacks have documented how normal people (without mental illness) can have benign hallucinations – for instance, bereaved individuals sometimes hear the voice of a deceased loved one, or someone under stress might momentarily see a figure that isn’t there – and these are understood as part of the human condition. Sacks emphasized that there is a stigma to the word “hallucination,” but these experiences are not always pathological . In fact, they can be meaningful and integrated into a person’s life narrative in healthy ways. Comparative religion scholars, for their part, have noted patterns across different faiths: the prophet or shaman figure who goes into isolation, fasting, or prayer and emerges with a transformative vision is a cross-cultural archetype. Often, such individuals use techniques (sleep deprivation, chanting, meditation) that likely induce altered states of consciousness akin to hypnagogia. Anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann’s research with contemporary religious practitioners found that some evangelical Christians intentionally engage in deep imaginative prayer that can lead to hearing God’s voice or seeing Jesus in a vision – essentially training themselves to have mild, controlled hallucinations in a religiously accepted manner . These believers, of course, don’t see it as “hallucination” but as spiritual communion. Luhrmann notes these experiences are not uncommon among devout practitioners, though usually they are subtle and not as dramatic as biblical prophet visions . This shows that even today, in our brain-science-informed age, many sane and healthy people report God speaking back to them when they pray intensely – a phenomenon that psychology can study (as a form of auditory imagery or hypnagogic-like state) while theology interprets it as the living voice of God. The two perspectives coexist.

Historians and theologians also revisit classic prophetic stories with an eye to psychological plausibility. The example of the prophet Ezekiel is illustrative: his visionary book includes elaborate allegorical scenes (wheels within wheels in the sky, fantastic creatures full of eyes) that some modern commentators thought to be signs of mental illness (like schizophrenia or epilepsy). However, others argue Ezekiel could have been experiencing something like temporal lobe epilepsy or hypnagogic hallucinations during intense prayer – conditions that might generate vivid images yet leave him otherwise coherent and functional. Similarly, some medical scholars have speculated whether Muhammad’s experiences had a neurological component (e.g. epilepsy has historically been floated, though there’s little evidence for classic seizures in his case; the described symptoms align more with sleep paralysis or syncope). These retroactive diagnoses can never be confirmed, but they highlight an evolving willingness to examine prophets as human beings with human brains and bodies, without automatically dismissing their legacy. After all, whether the voice that said “Recite!” came from an angel or Muhammad’s own mind, the Quran that resulted has real existence and profound meaning for believers.

Comparative studies have also found it fascinating that different religions often concur that dreams and visions are a legitimate pathway for the divine to communicate. We’ve noted the Talmud and Islamic hadith which both quantify dreams as a fraction of prophecy . In the Christian New Testament, the Apostle Peter, quoting the prophet Joel, declares that with the coming of the Holy Spirit “your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions” – suggesting that revelatory dreams would proliferate. The common thread is the intuition that whatever the ultimate source (God, angels, etc.), the human faculty that receives prophecy is closely linked to the faculty of dreaming and imagination. The 13th-century Sufi mystic Ibn Arabi wrote extensively about the “imaginal realm” – an intermediate world accessed in dreams and visions where meanings take on images – essentially a sophisticated theological model of what we might call a controlled hypnagogic state, where the soul interacts with symbolic visions. Such perspectives indicate that religious thinkers to some extent recognized the ambiguity of these experiences: they knew a vision lies between waking and sleeping, requiring interpretation and discernment.

Embracing Multiple Perspectives

Looking at prophetic revelations through the lens of hypnagogic/hypnopompic phenomena allows for a rich, dual appreciation. On one hand, it grounds these extraordinary reports in the natural capacities of the human brain – demystifying them just enough that we can discuss them in a scientific forum. On the other hand, it highlights the specialness of those moments – after all, if half the population hears random sounds when drifting off, but only a tiny few across centuries have founded enduring moral movements based on their visions, then something about those particular experiences (and persons) was truly remarkable. Perhaps the difference was in the content and impact of the message. A hypnagogic hallucination that simply startles someone is soon forgotten, but one that aligns with a deep spiritual context and transforms a person’s life may become the seed of revelation. The interpretation of the experience begins immediately as the person wakes. As Professor Cook observed, “experience is not separable from interpretation” – a religious individual will filter the raw event through their faith and might conclude it was an encounter with the divine, whereas a secular person will chalk it up to physiology. Each will then remember and possibly even embellish the experience in light of that interpretation. This does not mean the prophets “made up” their stories; rather, they processed their experiences using the conceptual tools available to them (angels, demons, God’s voice, etc.), much as we today use the language of neurons and REM sleep.

A sympathetic approach accepts that the prophets were authentic in describing what they felt and saw. They lived in worlds where the voice of God was an expected reality for chosen individuals – thus when they heard a voice internally, it made sense to them to attribute it to God. And who are we to say with certainty that they were wrong in that attribution? Science can say how it might have happened (the mechanism), but the *question of ultimate origin or meaning lies outside its scope. As the psychiatrist on the Samuel case put it, scripture’s concern is the message and its impact, not a “diagnosis” of the method . In a beautiful concession, he concludes that it doesn’t matter if Samuel was hallucinating or dreaming, because “this does not matter, for it is the prophetic message…that scripture is concerned with, not diagnosis” . What mattered was that the experience, whatever its mode, led Samuel to become a just and wise prophet for his people.

One can therefore appreciate prophetic revelations on two levels. On one level, they are instances of human consciousness touching something transcendent, often during altered states like dreams, trances, or half-sleep. On another level, they are a testament to the creativity and power of the brain’s imagination, which can present ideas to us in dramatic audiovisual form. The zone between sleep and wake is a mysterious one – the “consciousness gap” as some researchers call it – and perhaps that gap is where our rational minds relax enough for deeper insights or intuitions to surface. It might be compared to how a solution to a problem suddenly appears in a daydream or how artists get inspiration in that groggy period after waking. For the prophets, those insights just took on a more authoritative voice.

Conclusion

In exploring prophetic revelations alongside hypnagogic and hypnopompic phenomena, we find a compelling intersection of faith and science. The altered states of consciousness that neuroscience now documents provide a plausible natural canvas for the vivid strokes of prophetic vision described in Abrahamic traditions. Rather than labeling prophets as “mad” or dismissing their sacred experiences, we can view them as human beings endowed with extraordinary experiences that their brains and cultures worked together to interpret. A late-night voice calling one’s name could be both a quirk of a drowsy brain and the call of a loving God – these perspectives address different aspects of the experience, one about mechanism, the other about meaning . By remaining thoughtful and non-dismissive, we allow that mystery and biology might coalesce in these seminal moments of religious history.

Current scholarly research reinforces this integrative view. Psychologists have shown how common (and normally occurring) hallucinations are, especially around sleep, and how context shapes their impact . Scholars of religion note that believers have always found ways to validate profound personal experiences, weaving them into the fabric of spiritual narrative. We now understand that an experience can be “real” to the mind without corresponding to an external physical event – yet its effects on the person’s life can be completely real. In that sense, whether prophets were communing with God or experiencing their own inner consciousness in a heightened form, the truth they accessed can be judged by the wisdom, ethics, and inspiration that flowed from it. As William James famously argued, the value of a religious experience lies in the “fruits” it bears for life, not solely the “root” of how it occurred.

The relationship between prophetic revelation and hypnagogic hallucination is an intriguing one, inviting us to neither reduce one to the other nor to keep them utterly compartmentalized. It suggests that our brains are wired for encounters with the numinous – that the same doorway we all pass through in sleep might, on rare occasions, open into a hall of transcendent insight. In the end, exploring these ideas can deepen our respect for the prophets of old: they endured the terror and ecstasy of these liminal states and brought back messages that still speak to millions. Understanding the possible biology behind their visions does not diminish their role as vehicles of profound truth. Instead, it highlights a unity of human experience – from the nightly flicker of a hypnagogic image to the dawn of a new religious epoch – all connected by the delicate dance of our consciousness between worlds.

Sources:

• Cook, C. C. H. Hallucinations and Spiritual Experience: Voices, Visions and Revelation. Royal College of Psychiatrists Spirituality SIG, 2018.  
• British Journal of Psychiatry. The prophet Samuel, hypnagogic hallucinations and the voice of God (discusses 1 Samuel 3 in light of sleep-onset hallucinations).
• Powell, A. J. “Mind and spirit: hypnagogia and religious experience.” The Lancet Psychiatry 5(6): 473-475, 2018. (Summarized in Hearing the Voice blog). 
• Holy Bible, e.g. 1 Samuel 3:1-14 (Samuel’s call), Luke 9:32 (Transfiguration) , Acts 10:9-16 (Peter’s trance).
• Qur’an 4:163-164 (modes of revelation, Moses spoken to directly) ; Hadith in Sahih Muslim (Muhammad describing types of revelation).
• Talmud Berakhot 57b and Sahih Bukhari/Muslim hadith (dreams as fraction of prophecy) .
• Sleep Foundation. “What Are Hypnagogic Hallucinations?” (2022) – overview of hypnagogic symptoms .
• Philosophy Now, Issue 91. Hallucinatory Experience & Religion Formation (2012) – discusses sleep paralysis and OBEs in religious founders.
• Hearing the Voice project. God of the (Consciousness) Gap (2016) – research on auditory hallucinations in hypnagogic states.