The world is a-buzz over the death of Osama bin Laden. The thing is… I feel absolutely nothing.  Other than a twinge of sadness.  Sadness that it has gone on this long. Has it really been almost 10 years?!  I guess it has. At times it feels like yesterday. At times it feels like 30 years ago.

I still remember the day vividly, and I still have problems watching the footage. I wasn’t in New York, nor was I near where the plane did or did not hit the Pentagon. But I lived close to both, and had dear friends in New York at the time, and I worked close enough to the Pentagon that what was normally a 30 minute commute home turned into 6 hours.

Was it worth it? Was it worth all of the lives?  All of the American lives? All of the Afghani lives? All of the Iraqi lives?  All of the people everywhere caught in the crossfire? Not to mention all of those disfigured and wounded?

I can’t, in all honestly, say that I believe so. And again, while part of me feels like bin Laden’s death brings some closure, I had hoped that he would be captured alive.  I would have preferred a trial. At the time of the attacks, I wrote a lengthy essay on justice vs. revenge for the company newsletter for a now former employer.

I’m not sure that this is justice, but vengeance.

In the intervening time since the attacks, I’ve moved to California, finished graduate school, and had a host of other things both hideous and wonderful happen to me. I’ve also learned a lot more about Islam than I knew on September 11, 2001.

Five years ago to the day that Osama bin Laden died, I had the following dream.  And it still haunts me:

May 1, 2006

Somehow, I’d wound up (through a series of weird events) training with Osama bin Laden. I remember meeting him in a giant office building, along with Ayman al-Zawahiri. They were particularly interested in me, as I was an American. I’d originally gone simply to meet him, to try to understand what was making him tick. Before I knew it, I was in too deep, and had to play along, and undergo training, with a group of other men. We were given our target, and our orders.

Our mission went horribly wrong. We were supposed to attack some military base or something in Iraq. My comrades either got themselves killed, or deserted. I was captured by American forces, and knew I’d be in trouble. Then there was a loud explosion, and my captors ran off to investigate. I was shackled to something, and when the coast was clear, bin Laden himself came over to free me.

“I knew you would fail,” he told me. “You don’t have the stomach to do this sort of thing to your own people. Yet, I took you in, because I wanted you to understand, so that you can pass this message along to others. Just as you are human, I, too, am human. Just as I am a monster, so, too, are you, monsters.”

He unshackled me, and told me to go, pointing a way out through a garden. The garden became rather maze-like, full of geometrical patterns. The idea was, that as an American, I’d be able to blend back in, and nobody would be any wiser about what I had been through.

————-

Saddam Hussein (who had nothing to do with the attacks) spent his last days gardening and writing poetry. I found this truly fascinating that a man who knew that his role in the world was coming to a close chose to spend the days leading up to his execution taking pleasure in the simple things – nourishing life, and creating.

Part of me can’t help but wonder how bin Laden would have spent his final days.

About the Author:

Kevin Kovelant, M.A., is a dream researcher living in California. He is adjunct faculty at John F. Kennedy University, and has done extensive research into the phenomenon of Visitation Dreams from the dead. Visit his website Dreams of the Dead. If you have had such a dream, he would love to hear your story. He can be reached at kev AT dreamsofthedead DOT com

This time of year, traditionally known as Last Harvest in Europe, and more specifically as the cross-quarter between the Solstice and the Winter Equinox, has a long association with ghosts, goblins and spirits. I’ve explored the Celtic roots of Halloween before, as traditional European culture still plays a heavy hand in how we perceive and celebrate this time of year, even though we often don’t have any idea why we’re doing what we’re doing.  Indeed, giving way food, putting out gourds in the front yard, and dressing up as ghosts are all left-overs from the ancient rites of staying out of the way of spirits as our worlds collide.

So let’s talk about one dreaming source to some of these traditional tales: sleep paralysis. Now, just because someone has a vision during what we today call sleep paralysis or hypnagogic hallucinations does not mean there’s no validity for their experiences. Biology does not explain away inner truths, it only provides a framework for the material correlates to that truth. So, keep this in mind the next time you have a old hag sitting on your chest.

Some common sleep paralysis entities

Vampires

Christopher Lee vants to suck your bluuud

Vampires are not an invention of Romantic era in Europe. They’re a cross-cultural phenomenon. They often are first seen in doorways or thresholds in sleep paralysis, which may be one experiential root to the myth that you have to invite them in. They have long teeth and they bite your neck and steal your vital energies. Sexual vampires, or succubi, are a sub-class of this kind of entity (see below). Bram Stoker’s Dracula was probably inspired by sleep paralysis, by the way. This passage speaks for itself:

“There was in the room the same thin white mist that I had before discovered . . . I felt the same vague terror which had come to me before and the same sense of some presence . . . Then indeed, my heart sank within me: Beside the bed, as if had stepped out of the mist—or rather as if the mist had turned into his figure, for it had completely disappeared—stood a tall, thin man, all in black.  I knew him at once from the description of the others.  The waxen face: the high aquiline nose, on which the light fell in a thin white line; the parted red lips, with the sharp white teeth showing between; and the red eyes . . . I would have screamed out, only that I was paralyzed.” ¹

Little people

The Brownie is mischievious and playful

Fairies, goblins, and dark elves are common entities to encounter during sleep paralysis visions.  In German, the word nightmare, “albtraum,” literally means “elf dream.” I wrote more about the connection of elves and paralysis here. These entities are typically playful although they can be ghastly to look at. In Germanic traditions, the goblins known as Brownies are blamed for lost objects and other poltergeist activity in homes. Tricksters by nature, they may poke their hands into places where they shouldn’t.

The Dead (and the Undead)

Many SP visons start with the sound of shuffling feet, chains or other strange noises

Dead people show up in sleep paralysis all the time. A common vision is to see the individual standing by the side of the bed. They are often mute. If you have repetitive encounters with these silent entities, they can be quite communicative if you ask (in your mind) “How can I help you? What do you want?”

A classic hypnagogic-inspired tale of a ghost visitation can be found in Dicken’s Christmas Carol. In this tale, Marley’s visit takes on many of the classic characteristics of a visitation, such as the feeling of presence in the room, followed by the sound of chains and approaching footsteps, and the narrator’s adamant conclusion that he is awake despite the otherworldly nature of the encounter. In Ireland and Hawaii, ancestors are often heard in SP as they traverse “spirit roads.” In these cultures, it’s recommended to not look the creatures in the eye as they pass.

Here’s another account collected from Japanese researchers in the journal Dreaming:

One night in July 1961, Mr. Ishida, a chief mechanic, had a dream of a sailor while he was sleeping in a dormitory room at Tsuiki Air Force Base, Kitsuki County in the nap room of the Tsuiki Airforce Base, Fukuoka Prefecture, which was a commando-type air force base during World War II. The sailor wore a uniform and said he had been killed by being caught in a spinning airplane propeller. While he was dreaming, Mr. Ishida felt a heavy weight in his breast and couldn’t move an inch, though he struggled to. Mr. Ishida examined the history of this air force base and learned that had been such an accident in the past.²

Succubi

This 16th Century sculpture representing a succubus hung outside a brothel

In medieval Europe, accounts suggest that demons could sit on the sufferer’s chest and sexually molest them against their will.  These demons were known as the Incubus (male) and the Succubus (female). The Malleus Maleficarum (“the Witch’s Hammer”), a guidebook written in 1486 and used to prosecute pagans and witches during the Inquisition, suggests that witches are those who voluntarily submit themselves (and have intercourse) with the Incubus demons. Some succubi legends suggest female demons collected men’s sperm during forced intercourse at night.

These encounters still happen today, and according to the accounts I’ve collected, they are not necessarily unpleasant. These entities, who can look undead, or half-human, or even like alien greys, may want to have sex with you while you are paralyzed… yet oddly aroused. In such cases, they may succeed. Orgasms are frequently reported, for both the spirit and the “victim,” although I’m not sure how to tell if the spirits are faking.

Demons and Animal Monsters

An 18th century engraving

Some sleep paralysis entities are really terrible creatures. They may have red glowing eyes or long claws. Some take on the shape of animal hybrids, such as BirdMan, SpiderWoman, and WolfBoy. They have bad manners and sit on your chest and drool on your face. Their breath stinks too. Insect hybrids tend to be more taciturn than mammal hybrids.

Here also are the Alien Greys, with their long limbs, waxy skin, and shiny black eyes.  Aliens have a preference for power tools and medical technologies. These creatures come with purpose. Center yourself and negotiate, or wake yourself up before they bore into your skull.

Sleep paralysis is the original spooky. With nightmares like this, who needs horror movies?

This article is adapted from my book Sleep Paralysis: A Guide to Hypnagogic Visions and Visitors of the Night.

Sources

¹Stoker, B. Dracula. p. 267

²Furuya, H., Ikezoe, K., Shigeto, H., Oyyagi, Y., Arahata, H., Araki, E., and Fujii, N. (2009). Sleep- and non-sleep-related hallucinations—relationship to ghost tales. Dreaming, 19(4), December 2009, pp. 232-238.

First Image: “One summer’s evening…” by John Baeur, 1913. Illustration for “The Changeling” by Helena Nyblom in the anthology Among Pixies and Trolls.

Imabe by ~diP

In my last article about dreams of the dead, I gave short shrift to dreams of bereavement, which is a subset of dreams where we are visited by the deceased.  Often, all visitation dreams are interpreted to be grief dreams, despite the wide range of characteristics shown in these bizarre experiences.   So, now let’s take a look at dreams of the recently departed that do seem to be part of bereavement, offering up healing, closure and emotional release that aids the grief process.

Like visitation dreams, bereavement dreams center around a face-to-face with the deceased, with a steady narrative of meeting, exchange, and dissolution of the dream.  Unlike all visitation dreams, however, bereavement dreams tend to come more or less promptly after the death of a loved one.  Sometimes the night afterward, sometimes a week or month, or even three months later.  Bereavement dreams indicate that grieving is still doing its slow digestive work. In waking reality, the loved one is very much a part of the dreamer’s daily thoughts.

Some bereavement dreams do not have the cognitive clarity or lucidity that other visitation dreams have; instead they can be highly emotional, resulting in waking up in grief and tears, sometimes mixed with elation. These dreams are not always positive on the onset, and they can actually be quite disturbing and confrontational.

Because these dreams begin with symbolic and visual representation (the contact with the deceased) and often end with strong emotions, some psychologists refer to these experiences as transformative dreams. Here is a dream published in Joseph Hart’s book the Functional Theory of Dreaming:

I was walking somewhere outside and I saw my father.  I don’t remember whether I clearly knew if I was dreaming, but I knew he was dead, or was dying, that I wouldn’t see him anymore. (Patient’s father has died that year).  I was sad for him, then for myself.  I cried –the feeling was stronger the more I cried.  I felt very sad that we didn’t have more contact, that I had wanted to feel more with him than I had.  Then I was very sad that I would die and all feeling would stop.  I cried openly, deeply, and in my dream I couldn’t see anything anymore.   I was inside my body.  My father’s image disappeared, there was just my feeling, a deep sobbing feeling in my chest.  That was the most deeply that I had ever cried.

Note how the dream proceeds from image to feeling, leading to a remarkably deep heart opening.

Not all bereavement dreams are so plainly cathartic.  Sometimes they bring up other emotions and realizations.  Here is a touching example of a bereavement dream that was provided by one of my readers in a public comment:

my beautiful 19 year old step daughter died in a gymnastics accident on the 19/6/09, it was devastating and really hard to come to terms with.  My nights became blank until the 22/7/09 when I had a dream.  I was sitting on the lounge looking down at the coffee table and for some reason I looked up to see M. standing on the other side of the table looking down so her long blonde hair was covering her face.  I said “M. that’s you,” (then she lifted her head and shook the hair out of her face and smiled) “you’re here.”  At that point I remember feeling so relieved that all the other stuff was a dream.  I got up and walked around the table and grabbed M. and kissed her. then I sat back down on the lounge with M. on my lap just hugging her.  She was solid in my arms and was happy. I thought it was reality and after that I woke up and had sinking feeling when I realized it wasn’t.

What strikes me about this dream is how real it seems to the dreamer at the time, so real that in the dream he knows that his daughter is still alive and “all the other stuff was a dream.”   When he awakens, this reality does not hold up to the harsh morning light, but this cognitive dissonance does not mean that the dream is merely a wish fulfillment.  First, the dream’s effect is a forced acknowledgment of this painful loss.  Also, the dream illustrates how his daughter is still alive in the dreamworld, and he still can connect with her there.  We often say that our dearly departed lives in our heart;  this dream shows that this can more than a metaphor.

The Unfinished Business of Grief

Because dreaming is as real as waking life to our minds and hearts, experiences like this allow for many possibilities of completing the “unfinished business” that comes with loss.  Psychologist Patricia Garfield has studied bereavement dreams in her private practice, and she writes in her powerful book The Dream Messenger: how dreams of the departed being healing gifts that:

“Our relationship with the dead endures. In our dreams, the dead have messages for the living.  The living also have messages for the dead that can be delivered in dreams.  Conflicts left pending when the death occurred can sometimes find resolution in the dream world.”

Sometimes these conflicts can be pretty ugly.  Dreams of anger, fighting, and reliving past hurts is possible after a loved one has passed on.  There is no shame in these dreams; they are reminders of the complexity of our relationships and the emotional burdens that come with being close to another.  These moments offer reconciliation, or letting go of bitterness and old grudges.

Grief work is messy and painful.  After all, love brings with it a willingness to be hurt. As Rumi writes, “the heart breaks…. open.”

Other times, like the father’s dream for his daughter above, the conflict can be about accepting the death.  This can included unsettling imagery.  It is not uncommon to have a dream where the deceased looks undead, or ailing from some horrible affliction.   Patricia Garfield suggests that this kind of dream, while unpleasant, helps the dreamer remember that the person has passed on.  This too is a call for acknowledgment, which may be more of an issue if your loved one passed suddenly and tragically.

Bereavement dreams stir up our grief as much as they comfort us.  In this way, dreaming sometimes offers a balance to waking life thought, where we like to stay in control and our “window” for emotional healing is often small.  The dreams prod us on to acknowledge our loss at the beginning of the day, and remind us that our love is still very much alive.

These dreams are gifts.  Let them sit with you; let them show you the way to your heart and your grief.   Sometimes the way in is the way out.

With Halloween on its way, it’s high time to take a look at visitation dreams, or dreams we have of the departed.

For hundreds of years, early November (conveniently poised between the Fall Equinox and the Winter Solstice) has been celebrated as a time of harvest and plenty, and also a time when the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead is thin. Is it the death of summer, the lengthening nights, or the dark knowledge that some won’t make it through the hard winter to follow?

Who can say, but the metaphor connecting the harvest and the dead is part of the myth of agricultural societies around the world, as disparate as the ancient Celtic cultures with their celebration of Samhain and the Mexican celebrations of the Day of the Dead.

Spirits and Dreams Go Way Back

It’s no secret that a preferred method of contact with the departed in these bridging times is through dreams and hypnagogic visions.  As writer Robert Moss has noted, the dead come calling for different reasons, and not all of them seem to be about satisfying the grief process, as some psychologists have wanly suggested.

In fact, dreams of the dead can differ wildly in content, emotional embrace, and timing.  Perhaps something else — something  a little more ancient – is at work.

Historically-speaking, dreams of the dead are some of the earliest transcribed accounts of dream life.  Aristotle mentioned them, as did Lucretius, in part to comment on the widespread folk psychology that the characters in people’s dreams actually seem to be the spirits of the departed.

Don’t forget that in the ancient world Thanatos (God of the Dead) and Hypnos (God of Dreams) are brothers.  I could go on to cite ancient China and Egypt, as well as hundreds of contemporary indigenous cultures, who also have made the link between dreams and ancestors, but suffice to say that dreams have always been noted as a natural place for the deceased to mingle with us.

Mythologically speaking, dreams take place in the underworld of our minds.  Cognitively speaking, themes of mortality, depression, and sickness outnumber themes of happiness, bliss, and rapture in dreams 4 to 1.  It would seem we are predisposed to go down the dark road when we dream –- in fact, one recent dream research study found that the longer a dream narrative is, the more negative in theme and emotional content it becomes.  The road to the land of the dead is paved with strong emotions, both positive and negative.

But Aren’t Dreams Made of Cinnamon, Spice and Everything Nice?

I love to bring this point up, because our culture defends itself against the dark truths of dreaming cognition with the cheap belief that dreams are light & fluffy, random, and mostly about our mother’s sex appeal.   And what to make of the Euro-American re-scripting of the very word “dream” to mean idle fantasy, wishes of kisses, and hopes of happiness?

But behind the strained smile of the newscaster’s sound bite, there is an uncomfortable silence. It is in this silence, before being laughed off as “what a crazy dream!” that the power of the dreaming mind takes hold.

Common Traits of Visitation Dreams

Meanwhile, ordinary people around the world continue to have visitation dreams that greatly affect them.   Some say the dreams actually change their lives forever. According to Kevin Kovelant, a consciousness studies professor at JFK University, visitation dreams often have these features:

• The dream feels more real than the usual dream: more clarity, focus, and steadiness of mind.
• A “felt sense” that the person is really them, not just  a memory. “That was grandma – I know it was her.”
• Very little plot: usually the dream narrative consists of the interaction between the dream ego and the figure of the deceased person.
• Strong emotions are commonly reported: love, forgiveness, anger, fear.
• A “physical” touch between the spirit and the dreamer, usually a hug or a reaching out.
• The deceased dream figure often looks younger and healthier than when they passed on.
• Sometimes accompanied by the feeling of “weight” or “presence” on the dreamer’s bed.

Dreamworker Robert Moss breaks down visitation dreams into 13 themes. Here’s my favorites from Moss’s interesting book The Dreamer’s Book of the Dead.

5 Reasons Why We Dream of the Dead

The spirit comes for forgiveness – either to give it or asking for it.

The spirit brings a warning related to the dreamer’s health.

The spirit bring helpful information for the dreamer.

The dead has a message for the dreamer to pass on.

The spirit needs guidance from the dreamer.

But Is it Really Them?

Of course, the question begged is whether or not the dream means something about life after death,  especially after the dream visitation passes on information that the dreamer did not previously know and is later verified.  These uncanny stories will never convince a skeptic… until the skeptic gets a knock on the dream door himself.

Kovelant, who is lecturing about visitation dreams on Halloween in Fremont, CA, recently related the following documented story:

In 1925, a North Carolina man awoke from a dream in which his late father — looking very much alive — instructed him to “find my will in my overcoat pocket.” Checking the pocket, the dreamer discovered a note leading him to a certain chapter in the family Bible. Between two pages in that chapter, the will was cached, according to 1927′s Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research.

Kovelant also has noted that there has been little serious research into the actual phenomenon of visitation dreams.  Rather, most publications use the subject to advance (or denigrate) a pet theory on the nature of the universe, such as the existence of an after-life, or of the possibility of soul travel.

More often than not, of course, is the cultural narrative that dreams of the dead are “part of the grieving process.”  This perspective does have validity, of course: dreams of the recently passed can be very comforting to mourners.  These bereavement dreams are surely a sub-set of what we largely clump together as “visitation dreams” today.  However, sometimes the visitation dreams comes 20 to 30 years later….long past the traditional “stages of grief” have passed.

Early in the 21st century, visitation dreams invite more questions than answers.  And as the veil between worlds grows thin tonight, maybe you should prepare yourself for a visitation.

You won’t be alone.

Are spirits real, or are they just irrational stories meant to explain things that science now explains better? This is the way the question of spirits is framed by many. According to many recent polls, belief in ghosts in the West hovers around 60%, and one British poll found that more people believe in ghosts than God. These statistics are then typically melded to reinforce the idea that “we hold irrational belief despite all the math we’ve done,” such as this statement from Live Science:

Indeed, humans are prone to believing in things they can neither see nor find logical evidence for.

What this pedantic little reduction does, of course, is ignore all those who turned towards a belief in spirits based on their own extraordinary experiences. In other words, evidence informed not by a belief in spirits (or a belief in logic) but by the senses. In the old days, this was called empiricism.

Extraordinary experiences are the key to another view: This was the topic discussed last week by American anthropologists in San Francisco. It was an inspiring collection of papers titled, “Encounters of Spirits – Towards a New Paradigm.” The anthropologists told their extraordinary stories of contact with the “more-than-human” realm, and how these encounters changed their lives.

Features of Sleep Paralysis

A 16th century wooden bracket from Cambridge depicting a Succubus, a sexual entity long associated with sleep paralysis

David Hufford’s paper on sleep paralysis is a case-in-point. (Unfortunately, Hufford himself cancelled at the last minute, so his paper was read, thus invoking an invisible, disembodied presence of expertise.) Hufford suggests that sleep paralysis is marked by features that are similar in all cultures, including:

• awakening
• hearing or seeing someone/something come into the room and approach the bed
• being pressed on the chest or strangled
• being unable to move or cry out

The uniformity of the experience from Polynesian villagers to middle class Americans suggests a biological origin of sleep paralysis, which Hufford has explored as a medical anthropologist for 30 years.

The result of this terrifying experience is that it is usually interpreted as a spiritual experience, whether or not there is a cultural narrative in place to be reinforced.

The Reality of Visionary Experiences

Hufford goes on to argue that sleep paralysis is an example of visionary spiritual experiences that cannot be explained away by irrational beliefs. Besides SP (also known as night terrors, the Old Hag, the incubus effect and scores of more culturally-specific terms), other visionary experiences that have a stable, cross-cultural phenomenology are bereavement visits, and near death experiences. I would add archetypal dreams to this list, as well as out-of-body experiences.

Hufford’s quest is to make sure that Western medical practitioners do not misdiagnose these events as psychotic hallucinations (or culturally-derived stories), but rather view them as encounters that are common to many, and compellingly real. In other words, his concern is not if the entities are ontologically real, but that they are recognized as psychologically real in that they inform personal belief systems, effect behavior, sculpt cultural narratives, and generally make the world go ’round.

Back to the recent headlines (that are timed to promote the new X-Files DVD, by the way), maybe 60% of Westerners believe in ghosts and aliens because of their personal experiences, not their fool-hearty archaic beliefs.

We have to start from this understanding: we personally experience many things that we cannot rationally account for, and ignoring them (or explaining them away by focusing on their biological mechanisms) does not make them go away. We have to work with the cognitive framework we inherited – and we are rewarded when we do so.

For more on transforming sleep paralysis into its full expression as shamanic lucid dreams, check out more of my writings on dealing with sleep paralysis.

But we are also culturally predisposed to dream darkly, or at least confrontationally, during this holiday.

The Origins of Halloween

Halloween is the Anglicized celebration of the Celtic new year, known today as Samhain. Early November is traditionally the final harvest in Europe, and also marks the calender as a “cross-quarter day,” in this case in between the fall equinox and the winter solstice.

So, we can say that Halloween is the marking of an important crossroads, into winter, into darker nights, and into days of eating a lot of boiled turnips and oatmeal.

In Celtic mythology, this dayworld shift is mirrored by another cross-roads, a time when the waking world and the Otherworld, the realm of the dead, intersect. Halloween was also known as Puca Night. An Irish folklorist from the 1870s suggested, “the dark and sullen Phooka is then particularly mischievous and many mortals are abducted to fairy land.” (from Wilson, p. 90). This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, as the successful voyager between realms was often given a gift, such as music, greater intelligence, or a new sense of life direction.

Dreams of the Underworld

Dreams played deeply into this time of year in traditional Celtic cultures, because it is often in dreams that the crack between worlds reveals itself. Ancestors, both benevolent and snarky, show up, and for those who are not afraid to listen, knowledge is loosened from unexpected sources.

In dreams, trips to the underworld have been recorded in many cultures beyond the Celtic framework, suggesting a neurotheological substrate to this mythology. But in the West, descent is not valued, and even vilified. To paraphrase wilderness guide Bill Plotkin, our culture celebrates going up (towards transcendence, and the white light of spirit) but hates going down (toward the earthly truths, and soul).

We already prime ourselves for confrontational dreams during Halloween, especially through the ritual of watching scary movies before bed.

So, if the dream arises, take the staircase down into the basement: who waits for you there?

references:

Devereux, Paul. (1996) Revisioning the earth – a guide to opening the healing channels between mind and nature. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Plotkin, Bill. (2003) Soulcraft: crossing into the mysteries of nature and psyche. Novato: New World Library.

Wilson, Peter Lamborn (1999) Ploughing the Clouds: search for the Irish Soma. San Francisco: City Lights Press.

I wrote about the creepiness of night terrors about a year ago on my culture shock blog, so I won’t go on at length here. Even though the REM paralysis is probably what is happening on the “exterior” levels of our reality, we really can’t reduce the entire experience of night terrors to biomechanics. After all, many people throughout history have described intense visitation dreams that follow from the initial feeling that “someone else is in the room.” These night visitors have ranged from dead relatives to benign ghostly apparitions to scary demonic entities to figures of light and peace.

These meetings have provided countless dreamers with deeper understandings of the psycho-spiritual realms that may be open to them. From my perspective, this isn’t evidence of the “supernatural” but an indication that we still need a more radical materialism to account for what is natural.

So rest assured that the experience of night terrors doesn’t have to be nightmarish. The best thing to do is to try to relax as much as possible, and if that doesn’t work, dig deep into your belief structures and find a way to trust in the moment. The experience will open up like a flower and you may find yourself in a whole kind of new dream.

I just spilled pickle juice all over myself so I gotta run.

Update: check out the comments to the previous post for Gyrus’s clarification about the distinction between these two states of consciousness.

Recommended Reading:

The Terror That Comes in the Night by David J. Hufford
Wrestling with Ghosts by Jorge Conesa Sevilla

Here is Kovelant’s explanation:

I am currently working on my Master’s Thesis at John F. Kennedy
University, in Pleasant Hill, California. I am collecting stories of
people’s experiences of dreams of the deceased. Have you ever had a
dream of a dead friend or relative that felt like it was “real Have
you dreamed of someone, only to find out the next day that they had died
during the night? If so, I would love to hear your story. Right now, I
am soliciting dream reports of these types. Based on the reports I
receive, I may be interested in talking further with you in a series of
interviews.

If you are interested in participating in this research, have a dream to
share, or have any questions, I can be reached at
study@visitationdreams.net.

We all have stories like this, but only by sharing them can we work towards greater understanding of what is usually called “psi”. Instead of simply constructing theories that mirror our own worldviews, maybe it’s time we returned to the phenomenal experiences themselves?

Daniel Dennett – armed with his heterophenomenology – would remind me here that, although we can listen to the dead, we can’t really believe anything they say. Personally, I recommend a little gratitude, not Cartesian doubt, when in conversation with one’s ancestors.