Fading Light and Sluggish Flight: Making Sense of Anomolous OOBE Features

I delivered a well-received presentation last June at the annual IASD conference in Anaheim, titled, "Fading Light and Sluggish Flight: A Two-Dimensional Model of Consciousness in Lucid Dreams and Out-of-Body Experiences." In it, I address several phenomena that occur in OOBEs that, alone, do not seem to make sense, but together convey an intriguing picture that points to facilitative and disruptive modes of awareness that impact the OOBE in dramatically different ways. In my paper/presentation, both of which can be found on my website under "Recent Events," I make the case that one can prepare oneself to exercise an optimal state of awareness during an OOBE––and fly effortlessly, move through form without resistance, keep the light sources from dimming, and commune with the light that manifests during the experience––all through meditation. I have posted the audio of my presentation, my powerpoint, and my written text. Enjoy!

Dream Groups Going Well, More Planned

I am currently hosting two online dream groups each week. About half of the participants are also seeking certification as DreamStar Dreamwork Practitioners, and getting credit toward their Practicum requirement. It's been a great experience for me working with the two groups, which are comprised of therapists, artists, lucid dream experts, and lay dream workers. It's rewarding to see how co-creative dream work deepens and facilitates a level of engagement and meaning-making that I find often lacking in content-oriented dream work methods.

Meanwhile, I private maintain my middle-of-the-night meditational practice, and achieve lucidity almost 100% of the time, spending up to two hours out of my body on some occasions. Last night, I began meditating around 4 am, went back to bed an hour later, and spent at least two hours going in and out of out-of-body experiences. At one point, I got up and went to the bathroom, and then returned to bed for another multi-chapter OOBE. The interpersonal encounters were rich and fulfilling. Indeed, I encountered two old friends in apparent soul-to-soul encounters, even though I know better than to think that they were conscious of the exchange. I've spent most of my life working out a model of dream engagement that allows for "actual" contact influenced by several other "feeds" that condition the experience according to personal and transpersonal influences. To give you an example, last night I was flying through darkness, expecting to emerge in another star system (which often happens), only to hear loud voices in the darkness that pulled me into a bedroom that I thought, at first, was my own. But it was an ex who was entertaining her two grandchildren in bed. Before I realized it was her, I asked loudly, thinking it was Julie, "Why were you were making so much noise?" The ex reacted, at first angrily at my intrusion, but then became friendly when I explained my error. We visited, and members of her family came into the room and greeted me. Of course, it was not "actual" in the ordinary sense, but I suspect that certain features of the experience drew upon objective information, and that to some extent it was a real soul-to-soul contact that was qualified and distorted by my own filters. Regardless, I emerged from the experience feeling positive and further healed of any unfinished business between us.

New Dream Groups Beginning October

There will be two online (Zoom videoconferenced) dream groups starting in mid-October, one on Friday morning and another on Monday evening. We will have a post or two in each group, so if  you're interested, please email me at gscotspar@gmail.com. For a description of my online DreamStar groups, please see http://dreamanalysistraining.com/page2/styled-10/page3.html. I hope you will consider joining us!

Galantamine Study Results Soon to be Published

I have been working with my colleagues Ryan Hurd (John F. Kennedy University and founder of www.dreamstudies.org and Dr. Ralph Carlson (my stats guru at UTRGV) on writing up the results of our study testing the impact of combining meditation and dream reliving (M/DR) with the ingestion of galantamine. 73 people volunteered for the ambitious eight-night study that involved getting up around 3 am and spending 40 minutes doing a variety of activities. While it would take too long to summarize the entire data, suffice to say that the integrated protocol (M/DR+galantamine) performed better overall than galantamine alone, but wasn't significantly better than galantamine alone. The two galantamine conditions (with and without meditation and dream reliving) blew away the baseline and placebo conditions on six measures--lucidity, reflectiveness (regardless of lucidity), interaction, role/status changes, constructive action, and the presence of fear/threat--showing us just how effective galantamine is.  M/DR+G was especially high on reflectiveness and fear/threat.

What was surprising is that fear/threat in dreams was higher, not lower, in the galantamine conditions. In our earlier study, based entirely on participants' recollection of their prior use of galantamine, they recalled that their dreams were lower, not higher on the presence of fear, threat and violence (we measured them separately in that study).

Our thinking is that using galantamine has a global positive impact, but that the actual content of dreams, when assessed immediately afterward, shows more fear/threat. The M/DR+G condition showed the greatest elevation of fear/threat, which makes sense in that dream reliving involves reliving a nightmare in fantasy as if one is lucid, and seeing it unfold in a more positive way. By itself, M/DR should increase nightmare content, but in a way that facilitates resolution. So the quantitive measures don't tell us the whole story, by any means. We will need to look at the specific phenomenology of the dreams to see if, indeed, the dreamers are working through the outwardly distressing dream content.

You might not know it, but all of the effective cognitive interventions for trauma resolution involve re-exposure to the original trauma or nightmare, and the reprocessing of the memory so that the level of distress is reduced. Our hope is that M/DR+G may create an optimal dream state for the re-engagement and resolution of unfinished business in general, and trauma in particular. It's an exciting research agenda, and I will be updating you as we find out more.

Visit to Another Star System?

I haven't posted in a while, but I have been continuing my personal exploration of lucid dreaming/out of body experiences. I have had to start recording them on my recorder, since some of them are too long to writ out  Here's one that was particularly memorable and in the spirit of the last posting:

I meditate and return to bed, and begin to hear the gift waves after a while. I roll out, and move up into the darkness. It takes quite a while before I see anything, but a dome of stars appears. Below me I can see a valley and lights, but the scenery is still fairly dark. Suddenly I emerge into an outdoor scene where people are singing a rousing, primitive-sounding song. It’s still fairly hard as I walk through the crowd. A man comes up to me, takes my hands to greet me, and then rubs them, saying, ‘You must be cold from your travel.’

I leave there, and fly upward into the darkness again, this time emerging in another outdoor scene, more brightly lit. People are everywhere, going about their lives. I see stores, and greenery and the scene seems quite peaceful. But I don’t feel that I’ve arrived at where I need to be. So I fly upward again, passing into darkness until I emerge in a beautiful, brightly lit world, which I understand to be another planet in another star system. A young man greets me and gives me a tour of various displays that depicts aspects of his world. Finally, I ask him if anyone has been able to solve the problem of interstellar travel, by working around the limit imposed by Einstein’s theory of relativity. He said that a race of people—the Talens—had solved the problem. He began to describe the solution mathematically, but I laughed and told him that his efforts would be futile. 

Then I asked him if he knew of earth. He paused and look thoughtful. Then he said, “Yes, but it’s very far away.” He went on the add, “Someone should be going there before long.”

Journeys to Proxima Centauri

I’d like to share with you some OOBE experiences I have had over the past couple of years. I hadn’t put them together, but during one of them a couple of weeks ago, I was saying goodbye to a man who I was ostensibly visiting on another planet. I asked him if he knew of Earth, and he said yes, that he’d been there. I then asked him how far away it was from his star system. He said, “52 lunar circles.” When I woke up, I realized that he could have been telling me how far, in terms of light years, which meant 52 lunar cycles, or exactly four light years. I remembered reading that a possibly inhabitable planet had been discovered, so I researched it to find that Proxima B, in the star system of Proxima Centauri, is about 4 light years away. 

There were two other OOBEs from earlier—both over an hour long, and ostensibly on another planet where I spent time with various humanoid beings in an earth like environment, but I never considered the experiences literal in any way. In one, I stood on a hillside with an old woman and a boy at the end, and looked up at their sky, where I saw three suns. When it was over, I thought, “That’s got to be symbolic,” and I dismissed the literal possibilities. Then, in another very long experience in which I spent a long time with a woman and her daughter on another planet (both of whom looked human, but had a feathery-like, retractable organ above their heads that permitted them to "read me." The daughter then asked me if I would be her teacher, but I explained that I was from a different world (which she seemed to know). After saying goodbye to them, a man accompanied me to a place from which I could return to my body and planet. I asked him what it was like to live on his planet. He said, “The seasons are very stable, and the sun never sets.”

What blew my mind was finding out later from my research, that if one were to stand on the surface of Proxima B, he would see the double star of Alpha Centauri, as well as Proxima Centauri—three suns! And what’s more, astronomers believe that Proxima B always faces Proxima Centauri—it circles the star very 11 days, and (similar to our moon) has a light and dark side.

What are the chances that all of these things could be literally true of an actual star and planet? I thought you’d get a kick out of this. Stay tuned to more (apparent) excursions beyond the body!

For more about Proxima Centauri and Proxima B, see the SETI site at http://www.seti.org/seti-institute/news/proxima-centauri-b-have-we-just-found-earths-cousin-right-our-doorstep

Out-of-Body Journeys

I haven't written about my recent explorations of the out-of-body realms, because there is so much to write down that I don't have time to do it. Last night was a representative experience, and might be of interest to you. I awoke at 4:30 after going to bed around 11, which was the "sweet spot" for meditation in the middle of the night--4-5 hours after going to bed. I took galantamine--8 mg--and meditated for a while before drifting off. It wasn't long before I was lucid and flying low over an unfamiliar terrain. It was difficult at first to remain buoyant, and as I flew across a highway, I was too low to avoid an oncoming car. The driver stopped as I touched down and then lifted off again. I moved upward into the sky, and all imagery disappeared for a while. As I traveled through a gray emptiness, I meditated and prayed, waiting. Then, finally, the gray began to give way to vivid sky and lush terrain below me. A young man flew up to me and greeted me. He said that he was my guide. So we held hands and proceeded to fly further south. He advised me to breathe deeply in order to overcome the gravity and sluggishness. Soon we were speeding through the sky.

We came down eventually amid crowds of people, and went inside a large building. As I stood beside him, I decided to ask him his name. I said, "Who are you?" I leaned closer so I could hear his answer. He said nothing, but rather blew air in my ear, as if to say, that's a silly question. My name does not matter. I got it, and turned my attention to the people around me. I met up with a family who showed interest in me, and seemed to understand that I was from another realm. They were very warm toward me, and the daughter, who seemed around 40, felt familiar and soulfully connected with me. We spent time in a crowd who were gathered around a gourmet cook who was preparing a special meal, and who gave out samples. I was aware that I could not eat, though, so it was awkward to pretend to do so. When I said goodbye to the family, it was with some sadness, because I knew that we would probably never see each other again. The woman and I looked at each other, and bid farewell with a certain existential recognition that such meetings are fleeting and impermanent, but richly rewarding.

At some point, I was with another woman, and said, "You know, don't you, that I am not from this realm, that my body is a projection into your world." She seemed puzzled, and dazed by the disclosure, so I backed off and enjoyed the fellowship.

I came back to bed for a while, because my back was hurting. After turning over, I relaxed and soon found myself fully conscious and back in the same realm. I spent some time with another woman who introduced me to a female teacher/friend, who looked Indian, and who had a charismatic presence. She greeted me with enthusiasm, and then we parted after a brief visit. Finally, I turned to a large picture window and floated toward it. I saw the family with whom I had spent time earlier, but I did not look their way, knowing that we'd already said goodbye, and that it would hurt too much. I passed through a picture window, and floated above a crowd of people. I started to breathe deeply, and rise up into the sky, until finally I returned to my body intentionally.

In many ways, this experience was unremarkable. But I have had so many spiritual encounters in the lucid dream/out-of-body state that I am always interested in making myself available to it. One never knows when an opportunity to bless another soul, or to receive a blessing, will arise during these inexplicable, and yet natural-feeling states of awareness. They break up the tension of ordinary life, and remind me that there's much more than the latest news, the most familiar worry, or the ever-present sense of mortality.