Michael Prescott's Blog

In the dreamtime

Sometime on Saturday morning I had my first lucid dream. I'd read about these things, but never experienced one. However, my reading probably came in handy, because it allowed me to recognize that I was in a dream state.

In the dream, I was expecting the mailman to deliver a package to me. (In reality, I was expecting a package to arrive on Saturday, so this thought was obviously on my mind.) As I went through my home toward the door, I suddenly realized that the foyer was completely different from anything in my actual residence. At this point, realization struck, and I said to myself, This isn't real. It's a dream. I'm having a lucid dream!

As I said, reading about lucid dreams probably played a key role in my ability to become self-aware at this moment. One of the points made in lucid-dream literature is that you should be on the lookout for things that don't match up with reality. If you suddenly notice that there's something wrong with your environment, something that doesn't match your knowledge and recollection of the physical world, then you should say, Maybe this is a dream. And as you can see, that's exactly what happened here.

I was pretty excited to be having a lucid dream, and immediately I started to worry that I would lose it somehow -- that my concentration would fail and I would slip out of the lucid state. I remember touching the wall of the foyer and feeling its solidity and texture while watching my hand against the wall. All of this was intended, of course, to keep me "in the moment" as long as possible.

Now self-aware, I went to the door and opened it. What I found outside was not my actual street, but a breathtakingly beautiful view of a wide expanse of blue water -- possibly the ocean or a vast lake or bay. The weather was bright and clear, and the color of the water was almost painfully lovely.

Excited, I set about exploring the rest of my house. Although the details have faded somewhat, I recall walking through a series of spacious and beautifully appointed rooms, much larger and nicer than my actual home. I think I passed a very large flatscreen TV mounted on a wall (I don't actually own one of these), so evidently there is television in dreamland!

Since I was self-aware, I knew I was seeing an idealized dream-picture of a place to live, and that mundane reality couldn't equal it. While I don't remember climbing any stairs, apparently there was a second floor, because I remember looking out through a rear window and seeing the ocean or lake (dotted with white sails)  in one direction, a large sparkling community swimming pool in another direction, and directly across from me, a meticulously tended greensward dividing the rear of my home from a row of tree-shaded townhouses. I believe there were some (unidentifiable) people on some of the decks and patios.I had the impression that this neighborhood was ideally situated between the beach and a forest.

Incidentally, I felt pretty sure that my home was also a townhouse, not a detached structure. It might seem odd that I would picture a condo as opposed to a single-family home, or see a community swimming pool instead of my own private pool. But I've lived my whole adult life in apartments and condos, so I guess this is what feels most natural to me.

During my inspection of my fancy new digs, I occasionally reached out to touch a wall (one of them had very nice wood paneling) and thereby ground myself in the environment. There was no sense of being disembodied, but the only part of my body that I clearly visualized was my right hand as it touched the walls. I did pay particular attention to my hand, because the lucid-dream literature had advised me to do this in order to maintain focus. As you can see, I was thinking pretty logically, reviewing what I knew about lucid dreams and taking the recommended steps.

The whole experience was highly enjoyable, and I did my best to prolong the event -- but eventually my thoughts started to wonder, and to my regret I found I was slipping out of the lucid state. I don't remember anything afterward, though presumably I continued to dream in the normal way.

When I awoke, I recalled the dream in a fair amount of detail, which is unusual for me; normally I remember only disconnected fragments of dreams. But at no time, either during the dream or when thinking about it afterward, did I ever imagine that it was a "real" experience. I knew it was a dream while I was experiencing it, and I knew it was a dream when I recalled it upon waking. In this respect, at least, the experience was different from many reported near-death experiences and out-of-body experiences, which very often are described as being not dreamlike at all, but rather being real -- in fact, "realer than real."

Maybe some lucid dreams have this "realer than real" quality, but mine did not. I would not describe the experience as being real, although it did stir some strong emotions -- mainly of aesthetic appreciation for the décor of my home and the natural beauty surrounding it. Even while I was engaged in the exploration of my dream home, I was quite aware that I was dreaming and that the perfection of my accommodations was wishful thinking on my part. As far as I know, virtually no NDErs feel this way about their experiences, and a great many OBErs also draw a sharp distinction between their out-of-body excursions and even the most vivid dreams. (The closest thing I've had to an OBE was a strangely intense dreamlike experience that I described in an earlier post. I don't know if this was a legitimate OBE or not.)

It would seem to me, then, at least based on this one experience, that there is a qualitative difference between a typical NDE and a lucid dream. That doesn't mean an NDE couldn't be some other kind of hallucination, but whatever it is, I doubt it is of the lucid-dream variety.

The snake in the garden

I've just read Supernatural by Graham Hancock, a highly enjoyable and thought-provoking exploration of altered states of consciousness brought about by the ingestion of psychoactive chemicals. Previously, I had read only one other book by Hancock, Fingerprints of the Gods. I enjoyed it for his lively writing style and boundless speculation, but I wasn't convinced by his arguments. Supernatural, however, is for the most part more firmly grounded, and I felt it to be a superior effort.

Hancock begins with a discussion of prehistoric cave paintings, which, he argues, can best be understood as a visual record of the shamans' hallucinatory experiences. To drive home this point, he compares the cave imagery with accounts of vision quests by contemporary shamans. He also went to the considerable trouble of ingesting some of these potions himself, usually under the watchful eye of an experienced shaman, and he reports seeing much of the same imagery. He recounts Rick Strassman's controlled experiments in which volunteers were injected with the psychotropic chemical DMT, which had effects similar to those of the concoctions consumed by the shamans. He goes on to relate these hallucinatory experiences to the considerable body of folklore pertaining to "little people" -- sprites, pixies, fairies, gnomes, leprechauns, and so forth -- and to the modern phenomenon of "alien abduction," which has much in common with the older legends.

In short, he makes a plausible case that altered states of consciousness -- often the result of ingesting psychedelic plants, but also occurring in other contexts -- can bring up images and narratives that remain strikingly consistent despite wide differences in culture. Snakes, for instance, show up repeatedly in these experiences, as do smallish nonhuman creatures with oddly shaped heads, whether they are construed as fairy folk or as extraterrestrial "grays."

Now, I've previously speculated that so-called alien abductions may be a subset of out-of-body experiences (an idea that, of course, is not original with me), so I have no problem with the idea that these bizarre adventures are, in some sense, hallucinatory. By "hallucinatory," I don't mean that the experience is necessarily unreal, but that it involves -- or may involve -- perceptions of another plane of reality, one that is ordinarily opaque to us but which can be accessed via a dramatic shift in consciousness. Hancock himself inclines in this direction.

What struck me about many of these experiences, as recounted by Hancock, by so-called alien abductees, by DMT research subjects, and by shamans, is how scary and nightmarish they tend to be. There are frequent encounters with bizarre, nonhuman beings who rarely project love, compassion, or empathy; more commonly, these beings are perceived as either coldly indifferent or actively hostile to human welfare. Cave paintings sometimes feature the motif of the "wounded man," apparently a shaman whose body has been pierced by multiple spears. This imagery is reflected in the hallucinogenic experiences themselves, which not infrequently subject the experiencer to torture, surgery, and vivisection. Both alien abductees and shamans report being cut open so their captors can insert small objects into their bodies. Other nightmarish elements of these experiences involve being beset by numerous inhuman creatures, being subjected to sexual congress with them, being carried off to a cave, laboratory, spaceship, etc., as well as the strange recurring motif of hybrid babies with human and nonhuman characteristics. Often these "changeling" babies are described as grotesque.

There is also repetitive imagery of humanoid figures with animal features, as seen in some prehistoric cave art. People who ingest psychoactive substances are prone to seeing creatures that are part human, part animal -- a man with the head of a bison, for instance. In some cases, the experiencer believes that he himself has been transformed temporarily into an animal or a half-human, half-animal hybrid.

When reading these accounts, I was reminded of similarly bizarre episodes described by Robert A. Monroe, who learned to initiate out-of-body experiences at will and eventually set up an institute to study the phenomenon. As I've written elsewhere, some of Monroe's alleged adventures are so fantastic and disturbing that they seem more like vivid nightmares than any kind of spiritual experience. I would characterize much of the material recounted by Hancock in Supernatural the same way. Though he talks about the important spiritual insights that practitioners of these extradimensional travels can attain, I didn't see much in the way of valuable life lessons in the experiences he describes. The only lesson would seem to be that reality is a deeply strange and deeply terrifying place, largely hostile to human beings and not very conducive to spiritual growth. The shamans themselves insist that their ancestors learned to use psychotropic plants by following recipes given to them by spirits during these vision quests. Even if this is true, it does not necessarily establish that the "spirits" meant well, or that the psychotropic plants are beneficial.

While I was thinking about this today, I happen to read an article by NDE researcher Michael Sabom about the religious implications of near-death experiences. The article, "Response to Gracia Fay Ellwood's 'Religious Experience, Religious Worldviews, and Near-Death Studies'," is included in the NDE papers uploaded by Markus Hesse at this location.  

Sabom, a committed Christian, draws a sharp distinction between spontaneous and deliberately initiated paranormal experiences. He believes that the former can give us insights into deep spiritual truths, while the latter are largely the realm of deceptive and malign entities. Thus he counsels against deliberate involvement with the paranormal. To some extent, this opinion simply reflects the view common among conservative Christians that mediums and psychics are trafficking with the devil, and perhaps it can be dismissed as a mere prejudice. Sabom, however, develops his argument somewhat further by giving specific examples of cases in which harmful effects arose from dabbling with the paranormal. And in fact, many such examples can be supplied. Included in his case histories is the above-mentioned Robert Monroe, whose OBEs were sometimes terrifying. Also included is author Whitley Strieber, who described the disorientation and helplessness he felt in his "abduction" experiences.

One case Sabom doesn't mention is that of Joe Fisher, author of The Siren Call of Hungry Ghosts, whose involvement with a medium led him to believe he'd been targeted by malicious supernatural entities. Fisher became convinced that these demonic creatures were ruining his life. Although the circumstances of his death are ambiguous, it is widely believed that he committed suicide.

With such disturbing cases in mind, perhaps we should not be too quick to reject the idea that there is a qualitative distinction to be drawn between spontaneous and intentionally induced paranormal experiences. And yet any such hard-and-fast distinction would surely be too restrictive. There are, after all, many cases of a deliberately induced altered state of consciousness that have yielded powerful evidence for life after death, as well as uplifting spiritual messages. The trance mediumship of Leonora Piper or Gladys Osborne Leonard shows little sign of malign influences.

How, then, do we explain these different varieties of spiritual experiences? On the one hand, we have shamanic vision quests, alien abductions, DMT trips, deliberately induced OBEs, and the like, which frequently include nightmarish and grossly distorted, sometimes animalistic imagery, along with painful and traumatic experiences. On the other hand, we have NDEs, trance mediumship, deep meditation, spontaneous OBEs, and the like, which for the most part (and with some undeniable exceptions) consist of nonthreatening imagery and uplifting experiences or lessons.

I'm not sure there's any easy answer to this question. But possibly -- just possibly -- the way in which we arrive at an altered state of consciousness determines whether our resulting experience will be predominantly positive or negative. Possibly the ingestion of psychotropic drugs, which are used as a kind of shortcut to enlightenment, is counterproductive, and is more likely to lead us astray, by bringing on an experience that is troubling, not comforting; hellish, not heavenly; irrational, not lucid; traumatic, not blissful.

Perhaps there is no shortcut, and our attempt to find one only leads us down a blind alley or, worse, into a dark cellar. And perhaps people who've experienced so-called alien abductions or frightening OBEs have learned (even if unconsciously) the wrong way of altering their state of consciousness. To put it in spiritualistic terms, we might say that instead of "raising their vibrations," maybe they are "lowering their vibrations." Instead of "going toward the light," maybe they are going away from it.

If so, then there may be some merit to the idea that deliberately induced paranormal experiences are dangerous. No, not all of them, but those that are induced in the wrong way.

Reading Supernatural, I couldn't help thinking of the Garden of Eden. In this biblical story, Adam and Eve live unspoiled lives of simplicity and innocence. But then a snake enters the picture. (Remember that snakes figure prominently in the imagery of hallucinogenic experiences.) The snake offers Eve an apple. (Remember that ingestion of new and unknown substances is what brought about the hallucinogenic experiences.) Eve and then Adam eat the apple, and their eyes are opened to a new way of looking at the world. (Remember that shamans and others who experiment with these psychotropic substances believe they have gained important new insights.) But their newfound enlightenment doesn't benefit them. They are cast out from the garden (remember that gardens are among the most prominent "heavenly" locals in NDEs) and sentenced to a lifetime of pain and drudgery terminating in death.

There are many ways of interpreting this famous -- and famously ambiguous -- story. It may simply be an attack on the goddess religions that competed with early Judaism; the snake was a favorite symbol of these faiths. But suppose the origin of the story lies elsewhere. Suppose it reflects an intuition that the shamanic vision quests made possible by chemically altered states of consciousness can be dangerous. Suppose it is a warning against meddling with otherdimensional beings who, like the snake, can be highly seductive but do not have our best interests at heart.

Graham Hancock believes that ingestion of psychotropic substances expanded the consciousness of our prehistoric forebears and allowed them to begin the long march toward culture and civilization. He believes that these otherworldly journeys still have much to teach us, and that we should be opening the doors of perception to learn from the extradimensional beings who inhabit this other plane of reality.

Maybe so. Then again, maybe some doors shouldn't be opened.

To OBE or not to OBE?

Currently I'm reading Adventures Beyond the Body, by William Buhlman, an interesting look at the author's many out-of-body experiences. With a book like this, you are asked to take the author at his word; he says he has had hundreds of OBEs and has taught other people how to do it. I have no reason to doubt him, but as far as I know, he has not been tested by parapsychologists, so there is no independent confirmation. He maintains a Web site and offers seminars on OBEs.

Reading his book, I was reminded of two experiences of my own that had possible features of an OBE.

Some years ago I tried using a relaxation tape made with Hemi-Sync technology. The tape was very effective; I was aware of being more relaxed than I could ever remember. Suddenly I began to notice this strange vibrating, buzzing feeling throughout my body. Perhaps it was the prelude to an OBE. Many people, including Buhlman, report that an OBE often starts with a humming, buzzing, or vibrating sensation. They also say that if you are alarmed by the sensation, the OBE will stop. In my case, I was sufficiently unnerved by the feeling that I slipped out of my state of relaxation. Nothing further happened, so if an OBE was about to commence, I must have aborted it.

I've listened to the same tape several times since then, but I've never become relaxed to the same degree. Subconsciously, I may be wary of doing so.

On another occasion, also several years ago, I had what might have been an OBE, though it may also have been simply a vivid dream. I had fallen asleep on the sofa in my living room. In the dream (if it was a dream), I floated out of my body, then floated over to the stairs and proceeded to float up the stairway to the second story of my home where, for some reason, I detoured into the walk-in closet in my den. I don't recall if I opened the closet door or simply passed through it.

I remember three things very clearly about this dream: first, my progress up the stairs was very exciting, because I could feel that I wasn't actually touching the steps but was sort of "treading water" in the air; second, there was a continuous electric tingle that I felt all over my body throughout the time when I was floating around; and third, a strange yellowish-golden light seemed to travel with me wherever I went, illuminating my immediate environment. (I also remember being in contact with a spiritual presence who gave me some meaningful personal information, and that the electric tingling sensation increased noticeably during this communication, creating a kind of euphoria or mystical, transcendent feeling, the equivalent of thinking "it suddenly all makes sense.")

Usually I forget my dreams almost immediately, but I've never forgotten this one. Was it a dream, or was it an OBE? I don't know. But from what I've read, an actual OBE can have some of these features.

Of course, the mere fact that I cannot be sure if it was a dream or an OBE points up the difficulty inherent in this subject. Could all OBEs be nothing more than dreams? Conversely, could some so-called dreams actually be OBEs?

Many of the experiences described by Buhlman (and by fellow OBEr Robert Monroe) sound a lot like lucid dreams. Indeed, at one point in his book, Buhlman speculates that lucid dreams might be OBEs. He notes, "Physicist and author Fred Alan Wolfe postulates that lucid dreams are actually visits to parallel universes. He has repeatedly stated that lucid dreams might better be called 'parallel universe adventures.'" (p. 114) But one might just as easily argue that OBEs, or at least some of them, are lucid dreams misinterpreted as metaphysical explorations.  

Perhaps this is an area where the boundary between subjective experience and objective reality blurs or even breaks down altogether. If so, it would hardly be the only realm of psi phenomena to challenge our basic conceptions of how reality works.

Out of this world

How common are out-of-body experiences? Are there other experiences we don't normally think of as OBEs that nevertheless might fit into the same general category?

What got me thinking along these lines was the book Abduction by John Mack, the controversial study of people who claim to have been abducted by extraterrestrials. Right off the bat, I should say that I'm no expert on this subject; in fact, I know very little about it. So far I haven't even read all of Mack's book, just the opening and closing sections.

I should also say that I'm not convinced that Dr. Mack, though he was undoubtedly well-meaning, was entirely able to separate his duties as a psychological therapist from his duties as a scientist. As George Hansen notes in an article on a famous, but badly flawed, abduction case:

The outside critic who is not directly involved in such activities almost never recognizes how difficult it is to serve as both a therapist and as a scientist. Those persons trying to help abductees emotionally need to provide warmth, acceptance, and trust. The scientist, however, needs to be critically open minded and somewhat detached and analytical. The two functions are not altogether compatible.

Even so, as Hansen notes in the same article, it seems apparent that there is something to many of these claims, even if they are not necessarily evidence of contact between human beings and space-traveling ETs. But if they are not events of this kind, then what are they?

What I found interesting, and rather unexpected, about Mack's book was how closely the so-called "abduction experiences" resemble OBEs, at least in many important respects. Mack's patients reported that their experiences often began with a humming or buzzing sensation; they then found themselves floating out of bed and through the house while perceiving strange new sources of light around them. If they tried to rouse the person sleeping in bed with them, they would find the person unresponsive. Often they would float through a solid wall in order to get outside. Frequently they reported heightened senses, the feeling that the experience was more real than ordinary reality. When they encountered the so-called aliens, they perceived some of them as luminous beings, creatures of light. Their communication with these "aliens" was telepathic. In some cases they reported becoming aware of a lifelong relationship with an alien who had served the kind of role ordinarily assigned, in a more overtly spiritual context, to a "spirit guide." Moreover, some of these "abductees" remembered seeing flashes of past lives during their experience, while others felt they were being given a glimpse of omniscient knowledge. Some of them reported seeing Earth from space, or having visions of impending global catastrophe, usually of an ecological kind.

All of this strongly reminds me of a mixture of astral projection and an intense mystical experience -- the sort of events reported by Sylvan Muldoon, Robert Monroe, and other accomplished OBErs. To me, the "abduction experience" does not sound like a physical event at all. It sounds as if the person's astral body left the physical body, moved around on the physical plane for a while, and then (maybe) entered what Monroe calls Locale II -- essentially a realm of alternate universes or parallel realities. Perhaps it was in Locale II that the experiencers entered "spaceships," were subjected to invasive surgery, learned about human-alien hybrid breeding experiments, and encountered reptilian creatures and small gray aliens with bulbous heads. It all sounds pretty crazy, but if Monroe's reports are accurate, some of the stuff going on in Locale II is a lot stranger than that.

Or perhaps it would be more reasonable to assume that some of the more exotic details of the experience were the product of misinterpretation or fantasy. Throughout history there have been stories of people who were abducted and carried away to a secret realm of fairies, sprites, pixies, elves, leprechauns, etc, where they were subjected to various indignities before their release or escape. Could these stories have their origin in OBEs in which the experiencer encountered another plane of reality, which he was able to interpret only in terms of folklore familiar to him? Extraterrestrials and spaceships, after all, are part of our modern folklore, just as forest nymphs and flying chariots were part of the folklore of an earlier age. It is interesting to note that so many of these folkloric figures are small, even miniature, and that the most commonly reported "aliens" today are the "grays," which are said to be small in stature.

I admit that other elements of the "abduction experience" are less suggestive of OBEs. Mack's patients sometimes claimed that there was physical evidence of their experience, such as bits of metal inserted under the skin, or strange lesions or nodes on their bodies, or marks on the ground indicating where the UFO landed. And there have been reports of so-called "abductees" going missing during the time when their experience was taking place, and of UFO sightings that were reported around the same time by people who were not "abducted."

Trouble is, I don't know how reliable such reports are. Many of them seem to depend on the investigative work of Budd Hopkins. George Hansen, in collaboration with Joseph Stefula and Richard Butler, has written an entertaining account of an "abduction" that Hopkins looked into; it's the same article I quoted earlier. To put it mildly, the account does not show Hopkins in a favorable light, and I urge all interested readers to take a look at it. The three authors raise serious questions about Hopkins' investigative skills and even his basic contact with reality. (The fact that Mack relied pretty heavily on Hopkins as an authority is another reason to approach Abduction with caution.)

So how good is the physical evidence for abductions? In the Hansen article we are told that well-known NDE researcher Kenneth Ring and his colleague Christopher Rosing carried out a study of "abduction experiences" from the standpoint that something non-objective (in terms of ordinary physical reality) was going on. The article drew an angry response from history professor David Jacobs, an associate of Budd Hopkins. "Jacobs was bitterly critical of Ring and Rosing, saying that they ignored 'cases of witnesses seeing others being abducted while not being abducted themselves.' Surprisingly, Jacobs gave no citations for any of these cases. Hansen wrote to Jacobs requesting such citations but received no reply." Jacobs' apparent inability to substantiate his claims does little to encourage confidence in the "objective" nature of these events.

Indeed, while accepting that "abduction" is typically a genuine subjective experience and not a hoax, Hansen et al conclude:

Because the argument for the "objective reality of UFO abductions" relies heavily on [Budd] Hopkins’ work, our findings call into question this entire theoretical perspective.

In other words, the experience is subjectively real and worth investigating, but there may not be much, if any, reliable evidence to support its objective reality.

If for the moment we discount the purported physical evidence, what we are left with seems to be very much consistent with OBEs. Remember that the "abductees" often said their experience began with a humming or buzzing sensation. Many people have reported that an OBE begins just this way.

Quite a few "abductees" reported a strange glowing light that suffused their environment from the moment they started floating through the air. This reminds me of a case I once read about, though unfortunately I've forgotten the details and cannot cite the source. In this case, a person felt strongly that he was experiencing an OBE; he moved about his house at night and clearly perceived the objects around him, making particular note of the fact that some of them were illuminated by moonlight. However, upon waking, he discovered that there was no moon. Accordingly, he chalked up the whole thing to a vivid dream.

Maybe it was. But if there are sources of illumination apparent to us in an OBE that are not normally apparent in our waking state, then possibly what the person perceived as moonlight was actually some other form of luminescence.

Indeed, many people who have enjoyed intense mystical experiences say they suddenly perceived the world as bathed in a strange new light. And of course people who report near-death experiences frequently talk about a bright light. So perhaps it would not be unusual, during an OBE, to perceive some light that isn't there in any ordinary sense. The "abductee" accounts might shed some light, so to speak, on this aspect of the OBE phenomenon.

Obviously, the "abductee" reports of floating through the air and passing through solid walls are strongly reminiscent of OBEs. Even the fruitless attempts of "abductees" to rouse sleeping persons in their beds have some parallels in OBEs and NDEs. A report of an NDE published in 1917 contains a description of the frustrated NDEr trying to communicate with her sleeping fiancé. Robert Monroe also reported unsuccessful efforts to make people aware of his presence while he was out of body.

Heightened perception and telepathic communication, two other features of "abductee" accounts, are also frequently reported by OBErs and NDErs. Contact with a "being of light" is, of course, a very common feature of NDEs, as is the sense of a deep personal connection with the "being" in question. Scattered memories of previous lifetimes and/or a sense of being immersed in total knowledge of the universe are also reported by some NDErs; a sense or glimpse of all-encompassing knowledge is also frequently reported by people who have undergone transcendent mystical experiences or achieved "unity consciousness." Occasionally NDErs will report seeing Earth from space (see Carl Jung's NDE), and not infrequently they will remember apocalyptic visions (see Damian Brinkley's NDE).

In some cases, two or more individuals claimed to be "abducted" together. Could these be cases of shared OBEs? Robert Monroe would teach his students to meet up while out of the body and then compare notes upon their return; if his research is to be trusted, shared OBEs are not only possible, but rather easy to arrange.

The bottom line is that the OBE phenomenon may be considerably more complex and multifaceted than we might assume at first glance. It may take in not only "ordinary" OBEs, but "alien abductions," as well, and perhaps even the curiously persistent legends of "little folk" of various kinds who have a penchant for carrying off unwary mortals.

Who knows? As I said at the outset, I know very little about "alien abduction" and am certainly not qualified to speak authoritatively on the subject. All I can do is toss out a few speculative ideas. But I doubt that the many similarities between "abduction experiences" and out-of-body experiences are entirely coincidental.