My latest release is now available on Amazon, B&N, Kobo, Apple, and elsewhere.
I’m somewhat ashamed of my lack of productivity. Last year (2021) was mainly devoted to worrying about external issues: politics, the Covid-19 virus, society in general, and so on. The best I can say for the whole year was that I learned if you watch too much news, you’re likely to be too depressed to write. When NANO month rolled around, I decided to participate but not to actually sign up. As a result, I wrote All Things in Time in 30 days.
Lest that sound like a lot to you, it only involved writing about 3,000 words per day. That’s approximately the average length of one of my chapters, so it’s not a terribly difficult task.
Well, not difficult if the book is flowing well. I know when I’ve got a good thing going. It’s when the characters tell me what they’re going to do. That means I’ve developed their characters successfully. It’s fun when they do things I hadn’t planned initially. (and, no, I’m not crazy…I think:-)
So, back to the point. All Things in Time was based on the relationship between Kathleen and Cadeyrin’s son Cole and Lola, the Deinonychus chick. If you haven’t read All the Moments in Forever, the idea of intelligent deinonychus (raptor dinosaurs for those of you who also didn’t watch Jurassic Park — and yes, I know those cinema monsters were roughly based on Utah Raptors, but they were somewhat closer to deinonychus size — might sound strange. But, my rationale is if some Amazon Gray parrots have a vocabulary of over 1000 words that they can use appropriately, and some do, then perhaps a prehistoric raptor might have had enough cognitive ability to learn to speak.
The problem with such a rationale is when you once adopt it; it becomes a license to carry it to extremes. Lolita (Lola’s mother) was the first to learn to speak, and she has a distinct personality with a wicked sense of humor. While she uses shortened and often non-grammatical English, her daughter Lola makes her best effort to use correct English. Her reasons are complex. 1. She grew up with Cole as her close companion, and 2. English is her native tongue.
Still, she is a deinonychus, a killer raptor weighing about 110 lbs with the ability to kill prey many times her body weight. Her problem is that she is so close emotionally to Cole that she cannot envision having a mate of her type. On the other side of the equation, Cole admits that he is close to Lola, even that he loves her, but his feelings are tempered by his knowledge that he needs a human female to raise a family. Lola knows that also, and it causes her a tremendous amount of grief.
She repeatedly tries to find a way to cope with the problem, but nothing works. Meanwhile, Cole, off at college in the future, meets a beautiful but narcissistic and sadistically twisted girl. Devonette has a long string of male conquests that she has destroyed on social media, and she sets her sights on Cole. She finds his somewhat exceptional strength and high maturity level irresistible and eventually falls for him…as much as she can.
The story is complicated by the intrusion of the time-traveling Sasquatch elder (first seen in Time Enough to Live). He takes pity on Lola and imparts the Sasquatch method of time-travel through the astral realm. As her first act, she tracks Cole in the future and realizes she has competition for his affection. She is nearly caught in a vast on-going time storm, but the Sasquatch saves her, cautioning her to avoid that area in her travels.
The complication is that Devonette’s father, a multi-billionaire of dubious origin, wants Cole’s mother, Kathleen’s time equation. At his insistence, Devonette sets Cole up for capture with the idea that his mother will give up the equation and other assets for his freedom. This act of betrayal leads to a complex web of actions in which all the characters are entangled. But I’m not going to spoil the story for you.
The underlying message is that external form need not define and constrict true love. Does this sound like it might be a little risky? Well, maybe, but since gender dysphoria is a “thing” in our society, why not species dysphoria?
Given that idea, my challenge was how to write an adult-level novel and circle around Lola’s problem until a successful resolution develops. The restriction was how to keep that resolution within the realm of acceptable actions. My solution became apparent to me as the story developed. It only required a certain amount of death and heartbreak for my characters. In retrospect, I believe if they were asked, the answer would be: “It was worth it.”
The book is available on all ebook outlets and in paperback (if you ask at your local bookstore–it should eventually be available on Zon).
Here’s the blurb for the story:
TRUE LOVE IS PRECIOUS…
But, what if the two lovers cannot possibly make their relationship work?
The two grew up together. Each often knows what the other is thinking. They get along perfectly. Unfortunately, they belong to different sentient species. There is no chance for them as a couple.
Each needs a mate of their own species, but finding a suitable life partner can be problematic. There will almost always be missteps, sometimes even fatal mistakes.
There is no such thing as an impossibility in the infinity of years available throughout eternity. The laws of probability imply that given enough time, any event, no matter how improbable, has a chance of happening.
The ability to jump through time and space can make things easier or more difficult. It also attracts those who will kill to get the secret for themselves.
When all of infinity is available to search for a mate, will it be necessary to go beyond death to find success?
This is the fifth story in the Time-Equation Series.
This post is generally related to world-building for authors, but with a twist. I’ve included a lot of background material on Lucid Dreams and Out-of-Body Experiences. I began studying these many years ago after an intensely personal experience that both frightened and puzzled me. As a trained scientist, I had no ready explanation. This led me to read all I could find on the subject.
Science continually discovers new things about the universe. If everything were settled and known, there would be no need for scientific inquiry. The experiences I’m going to describe are well documented by many people, and their accounts are consistent enough to allow us to draw some general conclusions. I think that if there’s no accepted scientific explanation, but there is enough anecdotal evidence, then a scientific explanation should be sought.
As part of my own exploration of these phenomena, I kept a journal by my bed for many years. I’ll provide some examples taken from it and then analyze them to help clarify the concepts.
After I’ve gone through the types of dreams and associated experiences, I will give an example of how I incorporated the idea into one of my Time-Equation Series books.
Lucid Dreams
Have you ever had a dream of falling or flying? Many people have these types of dreams. How about a dream where you believe you’re awake, but you cannot move your body? These dreams are almost always indicative of an out-of-body experience or a lucid dream. Here’s an example from my journal:
About 4 a.m. I woke up, changed position, and then fell back asleep. I was walking down a sidewalk carrying a U-shaped piece of metal. There was a large pile of rocks located on the edge of a college campus. I went around them and entered a very small cave through a small opening. There was a bed inside. It had drawers under it, and I began looking into them but found nothing of interest, just some vague pieces of machinery.
Then I became aware that there was an old-fashioned kitchen range beside the bed. It had drawers, and I looked in them also. I’m not sure what I was looking for, but whatever it was, it wasn’t there. At this point, I saw a dark door at one end of the cave.
I went through, and suddenly the quality of the dream transitioned to a closer approximation of reality because I became aware that I was dreaming. As a result, I became “conscious” within the dream and had control of my actions.
I looked around at the room that was on the other side of the dark door. It looked like a large, dimly lit barn. There was another door to the right side of the room, and it was very dark. I looked inside the opening and made out the fact that it was a stall for horses, but there were no animals there. To the left, the room became lighter, and there was a large door that was open to the outside. I consciously bypassed that door since I felt that I would wake up if I went through it. After looking around the rest of the barn and deciding that I was satisfied and had seen everything, I decided to go outside. I jumped off a high step and landed right in front of a young man. Our eyes met, and we both smiled.
Was he another dreamer or a figment of my dream? I don’t know. I certainly didn’t expect to see him there. I walked past and turned to the left on the far end of the building. The dream faded, and I lost control and fell entirely out of consciousness and into sleep.
A brief analysis of this dream shows that it 1) started as a normal dream, perhaps clearer and more coherent than most, and then at a certain point, 2) I became aware that I was able to control my actions consciously. This is different than most dreams because we usually aren’t aware that we are dreaming, and we typically aren’t able to control what we do.
There is a slight difference here between my experience and most lucid dreams. In this dream, I didn’t exert any control over the elements in the dream. Usually, lucid dreamers are able to modify anything they encounter in their dreams. Many exercise a significant degree of control, forcing items to mutate or disappear and appear.
After I became conscious in this dream, I had a feeling of happiness and freedom. This was partly due to my sense of mastery of the environment.
I met someone in the dream who appeared to be self-directed. Was he another dreamer? This is an intriguing possibility.
Other people who have had lucid dreams report similar experiences. The critical aspect is that all of us can become conscious and then to control our actions within a dream.
Out of Body Experiences
There are different opinions as to what differentiates a lucid dream from an out-of-body experience (OBE). Lucid dreams can involve any dream environment, while OBEs often involve what I call the RTE, or Real-Time Environment. This is the local space near the dreamer’s body. It is usually the first space they encounter after exiting their body. Their physical body is often present and visible to them. In general, OBEs seem more real than Lucid Dreams and are usually experienced as an objective but different reality.
The first sign of an OBE is that it is often accompanied by an intense sensation of vibration. The second is that it may be accompanied by physical body paralysis. The third is that the dreamer may see their physical body, and the fourth is they find it easy to fly and to pass through physical barriers like walls. Also, OBEs are often accompanied by experienced sounds. Some people wake into these experiences, while others induce OBEs directly from a waking state.
These experiences require a Theta brain state. This is known as the hypnagogic state, the drowsing state before sleep when the brain waves are at a frequency between 4 and 8 cycles per second.
It’s difficult to maintain a hypnagogic state for very long after first going to bed. Most people go through several cycles of deeper sleep followed by lighter sleep or wakefulness in the course of a night. After two or three such sleep cycles it becomes easier to maintain a hypnagogic state. Consequentially you are more likely to have an OBE or lucid dream between 4 and 6 AM.
There is an experiential difference between the OBEs and Lucid Dreams. Despite the extreme freedom of movement enjoyed while experiencing an OBE, it is more like daily experience, since we can’t deliberately morph items into other items the way we can in a lucid dream.
Validating an OBE
Australian author Robert Bruce and psychic suggests that you select a playing card from a deck, making sure you don’t see the card’s face. Place the card on a high shelf somewhere in your house. The shelf should be high enough that you won’t accidentally see the card. When you find yourself in an OBE, remember to go and look at the card. You can then validate your experience when you wake up.
I tried this by placing two cards, one on each of two bookshelves on each side of our fireplace. I was drowsing before getting up.
I rolled over onto my left side and then started to go back to sleep. I suddenly became conscious that my face was bumping against the spines of a long row of books. I realized that I was having an OBE and was near the bookshelf. Then I remembered the cards, so looked and saw that the card was a black four. However, when I tried to see the suit, all I could see was a rectangle with a diagonal line crossing it, the international symbol for “No” that masks a picture of some banned action. After trying to see the suit again, I woke up.
When I checked, the card was the four of spades. The second card surprised me. It was the four of clubs.
The shelves were separated by about two meters, and the cards were on the top shelf above my head level. After thinking about the two fours for a bit, I realized that I couldn’t make out the suit because I’d somehow been trying to see both cards simultaneously and the only commonality was the black four.
This leads me to conclude that our perception is not restricted to natural bodily-imposed limitations.
Common Aspects of OBE
Somewhat more recently, I had another experience that illustrates four of the common symptoms of OBEs. Here’s a brief description:
I was drowsing in a recliner in the bedroom when I suddenly heard my name loudly called twice in a sort of nasal tone. I immediately decided to wake up and became conscious while still in a dream state. I couldn’t move my body or extremities. I know that to recover from this type of paralysis, concentrating on moving your big toe almost always works as a release. I was too panicked to remember this technique at the time. Then I saw that I was floating about 2 feet above my body. I kept trying to merge back into it with no effect.
Suddenly, there was a loud buzz that happened on the surface of my chest right over my heart. It was so startling that I popped back into my body and opened my eyes at the same time.
A brief analysis highlights the four common symptoms. First, I heard a sound–my name. Second, I experienced physical paralysis. Third, I was floating outside my body, and fourth, I experienced a strong buzz or vibration before re-entering my body.
I subsequently read that this type of vibration is attributable to the heart chakra becoming active and releasing enough energy to either start or stop the OBE.
Another experience highlights a few of the features of a typical flying OBE.
I was still sleeping after the sun had risen. Then I shot upwards to what seemed about a thousand feet above the roof of my house. I descended to tree level and proceeded to cruise down our drive and then up near the leaves of a tree. I moved closer to the leaves until I could concentrate on the details of a single leaf. I was elated over the sensation of absolute freedom of movement. Without consciously willing it, I started to become heavy and sank to the ground. Once on the ground, I couldn’t begin flying again. I woke up, regretful that the experience, which had been joyful, was so brief.
There are four aspects of this experience that are common. The first is that I was able to fly easily. The second is that I let my emotions run out of control. The third is that I focused my attention on intricate details and this close focus forced me out of the OBE. The fourth is the feeling of heaviness. Most people attribute this to the physical body recalling the astral body.
Dreaming, lucid dreaming, and OBE states can easily transition from one to the other. However, despite that mutability, the quality of experience is different, and the dreamer can easily sense this difference.
Induced OBEs
The dominant frequency in the EEG pattern is indicative of the current state of the brain. Meditation involves altering one’s brain frequency to a desired state on demand. It can take years to learn the techniques of meditation, but the same effect may be induced artificially since brain waves can be altered by listening to tone frequencies.
Listening to a click played at 4 Hz will cause brainwaves to slow down to the same frequency. This phenomenon is called entrainment or frequency following response. It can be done by playing a series of percussive sounds that gradually slow down to the theta wave level of 4 per second.
An alternate method is to play a pure low-frequency sound. The brain will adjust to match. This works for faster brainwaves but is ineffective for slower brain states because humans cannot hear extremely low frequencies. A special technique called binaural-beats is used to generate the required slow signals.
Parallel Universe Theory
The concept of parallel universes is supported to a certain extent by modern quantum physics. One interpretation states that the universe splits every time there is a choice made on a quantum level. If a photon has the alternative of going through one slit or a second slit in the classic double-slit experiment, it will go through one in one universe and through the other in a second universe. The two universes may then merge into a single universe or not.
Based on this idea, it seems to me, since our brains operate at least partially on a quantum level, that any binary decision we make would result in two universes.
If this is the case, it means that we don’t emerge from our body in the same universe in which our body resides. This removes some limitations and appears to allow our projected mind to move into various levels of the real-time environment as reported by many OBE experiencers.
Writing an OBE into a Story
In one of my novels, my male lead is a Clovis-culture hunter of about 13,000 years ago. While I was writing the book, I, purely by chance, had a rather amazing lucid dream. It was so vivid that I wrote it down and later when it became necessary to give Cadeyrin (my character) a motive for backtracking, I blended my experience into the story.
It took several rewrites to get it right, but after I finished, I had added an entire chapter in which Cadeyrin, previously trained as a Shaman, is able to determine the location of Kathleen Whitby, my modern female lead, who has accidentally translated through time to the Younger Dryas Period of the North American Pleistocene.
As an example, here’s a brief section (Copyright 2016) from chapter eight of Heart of Fire Time of Ice. I used italics to indicate where Cadeyrin entered an altered mental state.
Cadeyrin tentatively started off towards the flickering light along an old bison path worn in the prairie grass. After a few steps, he became aware that a friendly animal spirit was leading him.
Wolves suddenly howled in the near distance. The eerie sound led him to recognize his guide as his personal wolf spirit.
Together he and the spirit walked through the grass until they came to a rise, which they ascended. On the other side was the open space with his fire in the middle. It had burned down in his absence and was guttering, sending out flickers of flame as the wind ignited gasses rising from the coals. As he stepped into the open space, he sensed other spiritual entities around the area, but none intruded on his immediate consciousness.
The wolves came closer as he built up the fire, but he felt no threat from them. It was as if they were just curious about his presence and waiting to see what would happen.
The flames grew high, and his spirit guide took on a feeling of wildness mixed with joy. He followed it as it led him on a triple circuit around the fire. The flames shot out sparks, and a larger burst of flame ascended. At that moment, his companion shifted into a huge wolf-like figure. Together they raised their heads and howled upwards, and then he was following the spirit guide, traveling through the sky, far away from the fire circle.
His sense of being accompanied faded, and he ended up in a high location, as if on the peak of an immense mountain. As he looked down, he could see through both time and space. He could see his childhood: his father teaching him to hunt, one of the old women teaching him about medicinal plants, and the tribe’s path across the plains as they came from the east. He could see their excitement as they encountered herds of bison, and he felt the fullness and satiety after a successful hunt. He could see the attackers as they killed his people while he watched, hidden. He saw his path to this current place. He saw himself by his fire and then he could see his path winding into the future. He traveled towards a forest, then back, then a figure appeared, but it was unclear and hazy. He followed it, and it receded into the future. He paused, and it came back. He felt that somehow it gave him a sense of completeness and he yearned for more of that feeling.
I used many of the traditional aspects of the OBE experience in my description.
The scene is intriguing and compelling precisely because it is authentic, having been taken in large part from my own experience. That authenticity gives the reader a sense that Cadeyrin is real. He becomes a character to whom one can easily relate.
This relates to the old advice to “write what you know.” In my experience, this makes for good reading, but it also seems restrictive to may authors. After all, who has traveled in space, or met the spider aliens from Arcturus 5?
My best advice is to search for situations that you know and then use your imagination to morph them into your story. It’s your story, after all, and you’ve got the right to tell it how you want. Just remember, the more authentic it is, the more compelling it is to read.
I hope you found this discussion both interesting and useful.
Thanks for reading.
Namaste.
Cyber-Witch’s medal made the local paper. I’ll take my kudos when and where I can get them (although it’s a poor substitute for massive sales:-)
On another note, I just received the cover art for the sequel to Cyber-Witch. (See below.) Now I have to make a painful decision: What am I going to title this next book?
I’ve thought of Cyber-Magic, Nano-Magic, Cyber- followed by conjurer, shaman, thaumaturge, sorceress, enchanter, magician, witch, warlock, whatever, and nothing seems to work.
This new story has many of the same characters as Cyber-Witch and it takes place some time later after the world has completely changed as a result of what might be termed an AI apocalypse. A new character kind of forced himself into the plot: Snake – a composition of nanobots and biological cells gleaned from his prey. He’s reached a sentient level and is struggling to develop a sense of ethics or a code of behavior for himself.
He is allowing me to play around with what is going to become a very serious real-world question: at what point do we view AIs/robots as deserving of human rights. What are human rights, anyway? How do we interact ethically with other creatures in general? With other humans-especially those that are not in our personal group?
It’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt. Snake is a bit of a baby and mostly wants surcease from his personal suffering. He wants someone to be nice to him – in short, he has decided that he – an artificial construct – wants a mother. (Notice the little element of pathos there?) I’ve had a bit of a problem with his speech. He can’t speak terribly clearly and his syntax is lacking, not from ability, but from opportunity to learn, and that poses a challenge to write.
I am enjoying the journey of discovery with him. Will he get what he wants? Will he find a mother? Will he turn out to be one of the artificial constructs we humans use: good or evil?
Still, that doesn’t help me with the dratted name.
I’m probably going to go with Cyber-Magic for lack of anything better. Suggestions welcome.
Here’s the new artwork:
You can see how it echoes the colors in the cover for the first story.
The introductory speculation (first sentence, above) probably makes more sense to other authors. I’ll elaborate.
The problem is: writing a reasonably good book is only half the equation. The book still has to find readers and that requires marketing–aggressive marketing. At the current rate of change in the book marketplace, doing a reasonably good job of marketing requires all of your time, so how does one find the time to write?
I’d rather be writing. It’s fun to develop a book and watch the characters you’ve imagined develop. It’s enjoyable to tell an entertaining story. Getting positive feedback is wonderful.
On the other hand, marketing is expensive, a lot of drudgery, boring (at least to me), and frustrating. The learning curve is very steep and to make matters worse, the topography of the available venues and tools changes continuously.
Then there is the competition — millions upon millions of books, who knows? Thousands, maybe even tens of competitors are searching for your perfect reader. (Trying to be funny here.) In point of fact, the better you narrow down your optimal market, the fewer the competing books, but then the fewer the buyers also.
Heart of Fire Time of Ice seems to enrage some readers, while others find it so enjoyable they immediately start on the sequel: All the Moments in Forever. I can live with that, if I have to, that is.
Then there’s Cyber-Witch: The Origin of Magic <sigh>. It won the silver President’s medal from the Florida Authors and Publishers Association this year (2018). People who read it like it, but readers aren’t finding it or are bypassing it for some reason. Few sales to date and I’m deep in the end stages of writing a sequel.
Why am I doing this? I mean writing a sequel for a book that doesn’t sell. Why??? <insert mental picture of a man choking himself with his own hands>
Two reasons really. One is that Cyber-Witch is really close to potential reality. It is a possible version of our world at the very beginning of the AI apocalypse. The sequel extends that world into an interesting future.
The other reason is I think the basic idea is a good one and the characters deserve their story to be told.
The two books are entertaining and hopefully thought-provoking. The reader is led to contemplate questions about sentience and whether an AI can be considered to be equivalent to a human. I’m not positive yet, but I’m pretty sure that the character “Snake” in the second book will tug at the reader’s heartstrings with his (its-although he has decided that he has masculine characteristics) struggles.
As I write, I’m continually amazed at the plot twists that develop seemingly without my active intervention. Things just suggest themselves as part of the story. I’m left wondering how I can blend the various elements into a seamless whole, but they are resolving nicely at this point. Still, I want to be done–just to see how it all turns out.
The one thing I’m sure of is I’m not making much money out of all this effort. However, I still love to write.
Still writing on the sequel to Cyber-Witch. Somehow it’s turned into a difficult task, although once I get to writing, the words flow well.
Meanwhile, here’s a fun word – one of my favorites, although I like them all:
Absquatulate — meaning to leave somewhere abruptly.
For some reason it always reminds me of the early Tarzan movies where Tarzan would say, “Umgahla.” (Or something like that.) The result was always that the elephant he was riding and any other nearby animals would abruptly leave the scene.
Based on that observation, Umgahla (or whatever it was that he said that sounded remotely similar) is Tarzanese for Absquatulate.
It’s just that having Tarzan holler, “Absquatulate!” seems a little out of character. It might have worked though. I’m of the opinion that most of the audience for those movies wouldn’t have known the difference. I could be wrong on that.
That’s enough rambling. Time to get back to Sophie and her problems. Most recently she’s been faced with a surreptitious attack that exploits her previous drug addiction. I’ve got to write the next few scenes in order to find out how she handles it.
On the other hand, it’s probably a good idea to write a section about another character and leave Sophie writhing in pain until I can get back to her. I’d like to find out how Snake is dealing with his (its?)* involuntary enslavement by Abubecar.
(its?)* — I can’t quite make up my mind how to deal with Snake, inasmuch as he/it is a nanite-based AI construction with some organic parts created from cells extracted from other creatures. The only thing I know is he is somehow becoming convinced that Sophie will be good to him if he ever contacts her again, despite his origin as part of a nanite-dragon that she mostly destroyed.)
The weird and strange way this story is developing is starting to get a little intimidating. Hope it works out the way I think it will.
I was pleasantly surprised on July the 3rd by an email that informed me that my last book: Cyber-Witch: The Origin of Magic has been selected as one of the finalists for the Florida Authors and Publishers Association President’s Award. It seems that Cyber-Witch is going to receive a medal in the Adult Fiction-Genre: Sci-Fi and Fantasy. There has been, to date, no mention of whether it will be awarded Gold, Silver, or Bronze, but I still feel like it’s a significant accomplishment.
I’m working on the sequel to that book. Cyber-Witch spins today’s science (AI, speech-recognition, CRISPR/genetic modification, hacking, encryption) together with a little imagination into a new world where science-based magic is commonplace. The results are nothing short of catastrophic, resulting in an almost complete destruction of the old power structure while forming a new magic-based and almost feudal structure that replaces the old.
The results give free rein to an almost infinite expansion of the author’s imagination and I’m letting mine roam and explore as I write the sequel. At this point, I’m just completing the first half of the book and the threads of numerous conflicts are tracing out their convoluted paths and (hopefully) leading to an amazing conclusion. I planning for the sequel to leave its readers with a feeling of satisfaction as intense as the one experienced in reading Cyber-Witch.
I’d be pleased if some other authors based stories in this new world. There’s plenty of room for fantasy there.
A brief note: Cyber-Witch is adult reading with drugs, violence, and sex.
I’m now working on my eleventh book “Cyber-Magic.” <see the cover concept to the left> It’s the sequel to my cyber-punk novel “Cyber-Witch”. Which hasn’t been getting much attention, by the way, although the people who’ve read it like it (note the clever use of homophonic alliteration;-)
Anyway, this one has become a problem. I’ve ventured away from what I view as hard to semi-hard science fiction and fallen out of cyber-punk gritty reality (with a drug-addicted MC) into a post-modern world where civilization has totally changed due to A.I. mediated “magic.” It’s essentially a fantasy and this is my first foray into this genre. I’m finding it difficult to gather all the strings together.
One of the problems is that “magic” allows the author to define the rules of the world. My version of magic is so powerful that there are few rules. With enough ability, a character can do almost anything. That’s not a good story line. It leads to the reader thinking, “Why not just wave your hand and solve all of the problems in chapter one? Then I wouldn’t have to waste time reading the entire book.”
Well, it’s not really that bad, but I’m seriously having difficulty defining the scope of what is possible.
Today my goal is to get my WIP in progress again.
I’m sitting on 25k words, six magicians (1 evil, 1 bad, 2 neutral or possibly allies, and 2 superstars), trolls that breed like tribbles (for you Trekkies out there), one fairy, a were-bear, an A.I. creature in the form of a snake, and an implacable dark force in the form of a distributed AI and my plot line suddenly seems inadequate, so I’ve been wandering in the wilderness for a while.
Besides paying business has picked up greatly and gets in the way. Then I’m moving. It looks like it may rain and the grass might grow and need attention. <Delete more excuses and cue sad violin music.>
This is what writer’s block looks like and I DON’T LIKE IT. I don’t like it in a box. I don’t like it with a fox. I will not tolerate Writer’s Block. I will not, Sam-I-Am.
More about this struggle to come soon. <Provided the grass behaves.>
I had a great time writing All the Moments in Forever. It was the direct result of a reader’s request for a sequel for Heart of Fire Time of Ice. (Yes, I actually do pay attention to my readers.) Since part of the action happens in the Cretaceous period – around 100MYA, I decided to post the information I used (including my authoring decisions) about some of the creatures in the story.
ACROCANTHOSAURUS – THE FUZZY YELLOW DUCK
Acrocanthosaurus was a theropod dinosaur from what is now North America. It was similar to an Allosaurus in that its skull was long, narrow, and relatively flat. The Acrocanthosaurus was one of the largest theropods, measuring up to 11.5 meters from snout to tail tip and weighing up to 6.2 tons. Its skull was about 1.3 meters in length, only slightly shorter than that of the largest known Tyrannosaurus Rex, although the Acro’s total size and weight were less.
The distinctive feature of this creature was a rather high ridge along its spine caused by extensions that were more than 2.5 times the height of the vertebrae from which they extended. The creature was bipedal with a long heavy tail. Its legs suggested that it was not a particularly fast runner, despite being the apex predator of its time and location.
My description of the creature as being covered with yellow down and making a cheeping noise was prompted by my sense of the absurd and is almost certainly not accurate.
ASTRODON
Astrodon was a genus of large herbivorous sauropod dinosaur, related to Brachiosaurus, that lived in what is now the eastern United States during the Early Cretaceous period. Paleontologists have estimated adult astrodons to have been more than 9 m (30 ft) high and 15 to 18 m (50 to 60 ft) long. The creatures most likely inhabited broad, flat plains with rivers, similar to coastal regions of southern North America. Astrodon lived in the same locations as the dromaeosaurid Deinonychus and the carnosaur Acrocanthosaurus. It was most likely a primary prey source for both predators.
CRETACEOUS PERIOD
During the Late Cretaceous, starting about 106 million years ago (mya) and lasting to 66 mya, the climate was warmer than it is today. The long-term trend for the period resulted in gradually cooling temperatures that restricted he tropics to equatorial regions. Northern latitudes experienced markedly more seasonal climate.
Dinosaurs reached their apex during this period and there were many species. In this story, I’ve limited the fauna to some of the more common (by the fossil record) types that would have been found in what is now North America. Both primitive birds and pterosaurs could be found in the skies during this period, although they did not seem to overlap ecologically. The birds became increasingly common and diverse, diversifying in a variety of forms.
The fauna was made more diverse by the presence of cimolodonts and multituberculates which were the two most common mammals in North America. Flowering plants began to appear during this time.
The Cretaceous ended with the K-T extinction event that occurred about 66 mya. Before that time, the fossil record shows dinosaurs. After that time, it shows mammals, birds, fish, and reptiles, but no dinosaurs.
DEINONYCHUS
Evidence suggests that the dromaeosaurid Deinonychus inhabited a floodplain or swamp like habitat by preference. The land was covered by tropical or sub-tropical forests, deltas and lagoons, not unlike Louisiana. Other animals Deinonychus shared its world with include various herbivorous dinosaurs and the large theropod Acrocanthosaurus.
The Deinonychus had an adult mass of 70 to 100 kilograms which places them roughly in the human spectrum of weight. They ranged to about 3.4 meters in length and stood approximately waist high to a human. Its skeleton suggests that it was an active and nimble predator, capable of outrunning a human. It most likely hunted as an ambush predator, lying in wait and dashing out when a prey animal came near. There is good evidence that the Dromaeosauridae family had feathers. Multiple fossils of Microraptor have been found with feathers and that animal is in the same family, although more primitive than Deinonychus.
Eggs from the Deinonychus species are estimated to have a diameter of 7 centimeters (2.7 inches). Skeletons of various sizes have been found together, indicating that the creature cared for its young and possibly hunted in packs. Its primary prey seems to have been the ornithopod dinosaur Tenotosaurus, although it was possibly capable of bringing down larger animals. The tenotosaurs were larger animals, ranging between 1 to 4 tons and most likely unkillable by a single Deinonychus, thus the supposition that they hunted in packs.
The most noticeable aspect of the Deinonychus was its large, sickle-shaped talon on the second toe of each hind foot. This talon has been reconstructed as being nearly five inches in length (120 mm). This fearsome talon has been hypothesized to be the creature’s main weapon.
It has been estimated that the related creature, Velociraptor, was approximately as intelligent as a rather dull chicken. In order to add interest to this story, I made an artistic decision that the Deinonychus was more intelligent than a modern African Grey Parrot. African Grey’s have been shown to be able to learn vocabularies of more than 1,000 human words and can use the words correctly and even creatively to express thoughts, including humor. If the Deinonychus was on that level of intelligence, then my Deinonychus characters become more believable. Regardless of the realism or lack thereof, I had a lot of fun writing about them.
GASTONIA
Gastonia is an herbivorous ankylosaurian dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous of North America. Low and flat, it had heavy armor in the form of a bony shield across the lower back and large shoulder spikes. It was medium sized in terms of its relatives, with a length of about five meters and a weight of approximately two tons. It probably was more or less indifferent to attacks from all but the largest predators. Its armor and spike weaponry would have been sufficient to discourage any but the hungriest carnosaur. The tail was moderately long and lacked the tail club that similar species displayed.
HOMO HEIDELBERGENSIS – THE FOREST GIANTS
Homo heidelbergensis is an extinct species of the genus Homo that lived in Africa, Europe and Asia up until about 600,000 years ago.
The skulls of this homonin indicate that its brain was nearly as large as that of Homo sapiens. Homo heidelbergensis appears to have been the ancestor of Neanderthals, Denisovans, and modern humans (which arose around 130,000 years ago). Homo heidelbergensis appears to have migrated into Europe and Asia somewhere around 125,000 years ago. It is not known to have found its way to North America.
Males of the species averaged about 1.75 m (5 ft 9 in) tall and possibly weighed a light 62 kg (136 lb). Females averaged 1.57 m (5 ft 2 in) and 51 kg (112 lb).This is based on a reconstruction of limb bones. However, according to Lee R. Berger of the University of the Witwatersrand, significant fossil findings show that the species had some populations that averaged over 2.13 m (7 ft) tall. If these taller individuals weight was proportionate to their height, they would have been as large and possibly heavier than the largest modern humans.
My Forest Giants are the result of my speculation that a population of such creatures somehow survived the advent of modern humans by retiring into wilderness areas where humans seldom came. They could have migrated to the new world earlier than humans. If they survived, using the same reclusive strategy, they could have been present at the time this story begins. Tails of their presence along with modern humans could have been handed down verbally from generation to generation, resulting in the ongoing belief in Sasquatch/Bigfoot.
If these creatures were few in number and extremely reclusive, they could find areas of wilderness in North America where they could survive relatively unnoticed.
IGUANODONS AND HADROSAURS
Iguanodontoids are often included in the Hadrosauroieda superfamily. The Iguanodons were large herbivores that could stand upright, but probably preferred to walk in a quadrupedal mode. They have been estimated to weigh 3.5 tons and to be about 10 meters (33 feet) in length.
My usage of them in this story is problematical. The characters could have mistaken one of the various hadrosaurs for iguanodons, although the observation of a thumb spike would be a good indication that the animal was actually an iguanodont.
MICRORAPTOR
Microraptor was one of the smallest non-avian dinosaurs. Adult specimens can be up to 83 centimeters long (2.72 ft) and possibly weighed 1 kilogram (2.2 lb). They were also among the first non-avian dinosaurs discovered with evidence of feathers and wings. Their feathers included long flight feathers on their legs as well as on their wings and their bodies were thickly covered with long plumes on their head.
Careful analysis of their remains indicates that they displayed a black, glossy coloration similar to many modern birds. Their feathers may also have shown iridescence. Microraptors may have been nocturnal predators and the dark coloring might have helped them ambush prey. They were an ancestral species to the Deinonychosaurs although the two may have overlapped and been present at the same time.
SANGAMON PERIOD
The Sangamonian Interglacial Stage is the term used to designate the last interglacial period in North America. It ranged from 75,000 to about 125,000 years ago. It was a period of diverse mammalian species in North America, where the large animals roamed freely prior to the arrival of human populations. The climate was favorable and winters were generally mild in lower latitudes.
TENONTOSAURUS
Tenontosaurus was a medium-to large-sized herbivorous ornithopod dinosaur. It was about 6.5 to 8 meters (21 to 26 ft) long and 3 meters (9.8 ft) high in a bipedal stance, with a mass of somewhere between 1 to 2 tons. It had an unusually long, broad tail, which was stiffened with a network of bony tendons.
TROODON
Troodon were smaller dinosaurs, standing possibly waist high to a human and stretching up to eight feet in length, a good part of which was neck and tail. They may have weighed up to around 100 pounds and the largest specimens are similar to Deinonychus in size, although they probably averaged smaller. Their limbs suggest that they were quick and agile. The retractable curved claw on their foot reinforces the idea that they may have been predators. Their eyes were large enough to allow them to hunt at night and they also had some amount of depth perception. Troodon had a large brain relative to their body size. They were probably a match in intelligence to some modern birds. They seem to have matured into their full size by 3 to 5 years of age.
I decided to include this post (even though it’s a long read) in my continuing series on this site. It offers some insight into the depth of research I devote to my stories and also how I tend to blend in personal experience.
I devoted a section in Heart of Fire Time of Ice to the Clovis hunter, Cadeyrin, as he had a spiritual experience. His experience was actually drawn from one of mine, although there are significant differences, since his was designed to blend in with the story.
I’d like to start with a warning: This post contains ideas that may run counter to your personal beliefs. These beliefs may be religious or rooted in the common opinion that out-of-body experiences (OBE) have no scientific basis.
My position on this is first, that religious dogma is something generated by men to control other men. Good religious teachings lead us towards the personal experience of divine spirit. Since I believe there is only one underlying divine reality, all good religious teachings are attempting to bring us closer to that reality. If your belief conflicts with reality, then your belief is most likely not serving you in the best possible way.
Secondly, science is always discovering heretofore-unknown things about the universe. If everything were settled and known, there would be no need for scientific inquiry. The experiences dealt with in this essay are well documented and offer enough consistency to allow one to draw some general conclusions. The scientific reason for them is still open for speculation.
If it’s true, it’s true, and it doesn’t matter what package it comes in. If there is conflict between belief systems, it’s because they arise from different cultures and because men put their own spin on the truths in an attempt to control their own followers.
Lucid Dreams
Have you ever had a dream of falling or flying? Many people have these types of dreams. How about a dream where you believe you’re awake, but you cannot move your body? These dreams are almost always indicative of an out-of-body experience or a lucid dream. With a little practice almost all people can have dreams in which they become aware and able to control the dream to some extent. Here’s an example from my own recent experience:
About 4 a.m. I woke up, changed position, and then fell back asleep. Shortly I was walking down a sidewalk carrying a U-shaped piece of metal. There was a large pile of rocks located on the edge of a college campus. I went around them and entered a very small cave through a small opening. There was a bed inside. It had drawers under it, and I began looking into them but found nothing of interest, just some vague pieces of machinery. Then I became aware that there was an old-fashioned kitchen range beside the bed. It had drawers and I looked in them also. I’m not sure what I was looking for, but whatever it was, it wasn’t there. At this point I saw a dark door at one end of the cave. I went through, and suddenly the quality of the dream transitioned to a closer approximation of reality because I became aware that I was dreaming. As a result, I became “conscious” within the dream and had control of my actions.
I looked around at the room that was on the other side of the dark door. It looked like a large, dimly lit barn. There was another door to the right side of the room, and it was very dark. I looked inside the opening and made out the fact that it was a stall for horses, but there were no animals there. To the left, the room became lighter, and there was a large door that was open to the outside. I consciously bypassed that door since I felt that I would wake up if I went through it. After looking around the rest of the barn and deciding that I was satisfied and had seen everything, I decided to go outside. I jumped off a high step, and landed right in front of a young man. Our eyes met and we both smiled. Was he another dreamer or a figment of my dream? I don’t know. I certainly didn’t expect to see him there. I walked past and turned to the left on the far end of the building. At that point the dream faded, and I lost control and fell fully out of consciousness and into sleep.
A brief analysis of this dream shows that it 1) started as a normal dream, perhaps clearer and more coherent than most, and then at a certain point, 2) I became aware that I was able to consciously control my actions. This is different than most dreams, because we usually aren’t aware that we are dreaming, and we usually aren’t able to control what we do.
There is a slight difference here between my experience and most lucid dreams. In this dream, I didn’t exert any control over the elements in the dream. Usually, lucid dreamers are able to modify anything they encounter in their dreams. Many exert a large degree of control, forcing items to mutate or disappear and appear.
Carlos Castaneda’s mentor, Don Juan, warned Carlos that one of the dangers of becoming conscious in one’s dreams was that the infatuation with control could capture his attention.
In the above dream, after I was conscious, I had a feeling of elation and freedom. This was partly due to my feeling of mastery of the environment.
I met someone inside the confines of the dream who appeared to be self-directed. Was he another dreamer? This is an intriguing possibility.
At the end of the dream my conscious control faded, and I went into a deeper level of sleep. When this happened, the whole dream became fuzzy and disjointed and then disappeared.
Other people who have had lucid dreams report similar experiences. The key aspect is that we are able to become conscious and control our actions within the dream. I’ve found the book, “Lucid Dreaming,” by Robert Waggoner, to be comprehensive and a good summary of the phenomenon.
For additional discussion on lucid dreams, Wikipedia has a fairly good article.
Out of Body Experiences
There seems to be a slight variation in opinion among authorities in what differentiates a lucid dream from an out of body experience (OBE). Generally speaking, I think that OBEs are qualitatively different from lucid dreams. Lucid dreams can involve any dream environment, while OBEs usually involve what I call the RTE or Real Time Environment. This is local space near the experiencer’s body and usually involves them exiting their body and finding themselves in close proximity to it.
There are several clear signs of an OBE. The first is that it is usually accompanied by a strong feeling of vibration. The second is that it may be accompanied by physical body paralysis. The third is that the experiencer may see their physical body and the fourth is that the experiencer finds it very easy to fly and to pass through walls. OBEs are also often accompanied by sounds. OBEs also seem more real and are usually seen as objective reality.
Both lucid dreams and OBEs may be involuntary or induced. Some people awake in either of these experiences and some can actually induce OBEs directly from a waking state. Moving directly into an OBE becomes easier with deliberate practice.
Both states are dependent upon the brain’s being in the Theta state, often known as the hypnagogic state. In this mode, the brain is cycling at a frequency between 4 and 8 cycles per second. This state is the one most people fall into just before falling asleep.
When you are tired as you first go to bed, it’s difficult to maintain a hypnagogic state for very long because it quickly degenerates into deeper sleep. Most people go through several cycles of deeper sleep followed by lighter sleep or wakefulness in the course of a night. After two or three such sleep cycles it’s much easier to maintain a hypnagogic state and consequentially you are more likely to have an OBE or lucid dream between 4 and 6 AM.
Personally, I normally have lucid dream experiences, but I’ve had several memorable OBEs. My OBEs are almost always dream induced, meaning that I transition from a dreaming sleep into an out-of-body state.
Some might call this a lucid dream, but there is a qualitative difference between the two. Despite our extreme freedom of movement while experiencing an OBE, it is more like our daily experience in that we can’t deliberately morph items into other items the way we can in a lucid dream. Here’s a brief description of one of my OBEs:
Robert Bruce mentions an interesting technique in one of his discussions. Select a playing card from a deck, making sure you don’t see the card’s face. Place the card on a high shelf somewhere in your house. The shelf should be high enough that you won’t accidentally see the card. When you find yourself in an OBE, remember to go and look at the card. You can then cross check when you wake up.
I did this, but I was a little too enthusiastic and put out two cards one on each of two bookshelves on each side of our fireplace. Nothing happened for a few weeks. Finally, one morning, I waked and rolled over onto my left side and then started to go back to sleep. I suddenly became conscious that my face was bumping against the spines of a long row of books. I said to myself, I’m having an OBE and I’m near the shelf, so I’d better look at the card. I did and became aware that the card was a black four, but when I tried to see the suit, all I could see was a rectangle with a diagonal line crossing it. This was sort of like the international symbol for “No” that you often see across a picture of a cigarette. After trying to see the suit again, I woke up.
I immediately woke my wife and told her I’d seen the card. She suggested I check it and I went and got the first card. It was the four of spades! I took it and showed her. Then I decided to check the second card. It was the four of clubs! The shelves were separated by about 8 feet of space and were about 7 feet in the air. I concluded the reason I couldn’t make out the suit was that I’d been trying to see both at the same time.
It appears that our perception is not restricted to our common bodily-imposed limitations.
Somewhat more recently, I had another experience that illustrates four of the common symptoms of OBEs. Here’s a brief description:
I was drowsing in a recliner in our bedroom when I suddenly heard my name loudly called twice in a sort of nasal tone. I immediately decided to wake up and became conscious at that moment. I couldn’t move my body or extremities. I know that to recover from this type of paralysis, concentrating on moving your big toe almost always works. For some reason I was too panicked to remember this technique at the time. I saw that I was floating about 2 feet above my body and I kept trying to merge back into it. Suddenly, there was a loud buzz that happened on the surface of my chest right over my heart. It was so startling that I popped back into my body and opened my eyes at the same time.
A brief analysis highlights the four common symptoms. First, I heard a sound-my name. Second, I experienced physical paralysis. Third, I was floating outside my body and fourth, I experienced a strong buzz or vibration which led to me re-entering my body. The vibration was similar to that of an old-fashioned doorbell in speed. It was around 1000 cycles per second by my reckoning.
This type of vibration is attributable to the heart chakra becoming active and releasing enough energy to either start or stop the OBE. Many people feel a vibration on starting the experience.
In my experience, the toe moving technique is very effective at reuniting you with your body. The only problem is that you often panic when you can’t move, and it’s difficult to remember to concentrate on your toe. The take home lesson is to set your intent to remember to move your toe.
Another experience highlights a few of the features of a typical flying OBE.
I was still sleeping after the sun had risen when I shot upwards to what seemed about a thousand feet above the roof of my house. I then went down to tree level and proceeded to cruise down our drive and then up to the leaves of a tree. I moved close to the leaves until I could concentrate on the details of a single leaf. I was exultant over the sensation of absolute freedom of movement. Suddenly I started to become heavy and gradually sank to the ground. Once on the ground, no amount of effort could start me flying again. I woke up.
There are four aspects of this experience that are common. The first is that I was able to fly easily. The second is that I let my emotions run out of control. The third is that I focused my attention on intricate details and that close focus forced me out of the OBE. The fourth is the feeling of heaviness. Most people attribute this to the physical body recalling the astral body through the silver cord.
Some people think that OBEs are simply the result of our normal perception being shut off while we’re conscious. They believe that the brain then generates a semblance of reality. I don’t think this is correct because of my card OBE described above and because of this one:
I was sleeping and dreamed I was sitting on my back porch. I was throwing fireworks into some tall, dry grass and there was a lot of smoke. This is something I would never do in my daily life. The incongruity of my actions brought me to consciousness. I moved off the porch and went to investigate. It became apparent to me that I’d somehow incorporated the firework explanation to account for the “smoke” I saw. The grass was actually wet with dew, and the smoke turned out to be a dense fog when investigated from my OBE perspective. I relaxed and slipped back out of consciousness.
I awoke and dressed to take the dog out and was somewhat amused to see that it was, indeed, a very foggy morning.
This experience has some of the elements of a lucid dream, but once I became conscious within the confines of the dream state, I moved into an OBE state. In that state I was able to move about in the area near my home. My perception became more normal and I ascribed a correct cause to what I saw. I wasn’t able to mutate the fog back into firework smoke again. The tall grass, incidentally, was in front of the house and not in back as I’d dreamed.
My point is that dreaming, lucid dreaming, and OBE states can easily transition from one to the other. However, despite that mutability, the quality of the two types of experience is completely different, and the experiencer can easily sense this difference.
Robert Bruce provides an interesting explanation of the OBE. He states that what actually happens is that an OBE is a result of a mind-split. One part of the mind remains in the body, and as the physical body falls asleep, the mind splits and an image of consciousness is projected into the etheric body that is located in and around the physical body. While the physical mind dreams, the etheric mind can be held in a hypnagogic state. When this occurs, it may project yet another copy of consciousness into the real-time zone. When this occurs, the mind is then split into the dreaming mind that remains in the physical body and the second image of consciousness that is in the energy body projected into the real-time zone. This split-off consciousness is fully capable as a second entity. Bruce states that this split can occur several times, each split-off consciousness carrying a higher level of energy. This means that higher and higher levels of astral reality may be accessed.
The problem is that the consciousness of the etheric body doesn’t realize that the split has occurred and will usually believe that it has failed in the projection attempt and then go to sleep. At the time of reintegration of the split-off consciousness with that remaining in the etheric and physical bodies, the strongest set of memories will prevail. Unfortunately, the strongest set is usually that of the physical body, since its memories have already been recorded in the physical medium of the brain. Keeping projections very short is one step that Bruce recommends as helpful to remembering the shadow memory of the higher energy consciousness upon termination of the OBE.
Brainwaves: EEG and the brain’s state
EEG (Electroencephalography) technology is used to measure brain’s electrical vibrations from the scalp. The resulting EEG record will contain frequency elements that are categorized into four states as follows:
State
Frequency
State of Mind
Delta
0.5Hz – 4Hz
Deep sleep
Theta
4Hz – 8Hz
Drowsiness/light sleep
Alpha
8Hz – 14Hz
Relaxed but alert
Beta
14Hz – 30Hz
Highly alert and focused
The dominant frequency in the EEG pattern is considered to be the current state of the brain. Meditation is about being able to alter one’s brain frequency to a desired state on demand. In the past it often took several years to learn the techniques of meditation, but now you can have the same effect with brainwave entrainment. The benefit is that no special training or discipline is required.
Brain Entrainment
By listening to sounds of various frequencies, it is possible to shift the brain frequency from one stage to another. For example, if a person is highly alert and listens to a click stimulus of 4 Hz for some time, their brain frequency will change towards the stimulus frequency. The effect will be relaxing to the person. This phenomenon is called entrainment or frequency following response.
When the brain’s frequency starts close to the desired stimulus, entrainment works more efficiently. Thus, when doing a sweep from one frequency to another, the starting frequency should be as close to the current brain state as possible. This is why the frequency starts at a high rate and then gradually slows down. If the subject is wide-awake, a decreasing frequency will gradually bring his brain activity down to a drowsy, theta level. Of course, the effect is dependent upon motivation. Just as people can refuse to be hypnotized, they can refuse to submit to this effect for the most part.
The most common way of applying a frequency stimulus to the brain is via sound. One way of accomplishing this is simply to play a series of percussive sounds that gradually slow down to theta levels of about 4 per second. This technique can be used in conjunction with a guided meditation for good effect. The click sounds will usually conflict with music since there are then two rhythm sources with clashing beats. This brings us to Binaural-Beat technology.
Binaural-Beat Technology
Another way of applying a frequency stimulus is to play a pure sound that is at a low frequency. The brain can then adjust its frequency to that of the sound. This might work for higher states of consciousness, but it won’t work for slower brain states. The problem is that humans cannot hear sounds low enough to be useful for brain entrainment to theta levels. Fortunately, a special technique called binaural-beat frequency can be used.
The way binaural beat technology works is to present the left ear with a steady tone of a certain frequency and the right ear a steady tone of a different frequency. Within the brain, these two tones are combined into their beat frequency. This signal is formed entirely by the brain and can be adjusted to the exact speed required, so a frequency of 4 cycles per second is easily achievable. When using stereo headphones, the left and right sounds mix together in the brain and form what is called a binaural beat.
Just passively listening to binaural beats does not necessarily alter your state of consciousness. For example, willingness and ability to relax and focus attention determines how effective the binaural beat stimulus is for inducing state changes. This means that you must actively try to engage in the meditation and not fight or resist it.
The point of this technology is that experience and practice of a certain brainwave state will assist the brain in learning how to change its frequency. This makes it easier for the practitioner to produce the desired brainwave state at will. Using this technology, one can learn to achieve a deep level of meditation, and, after practice, this can be attained even without listening to the entraining sounds.
The Monroe Gateway Experience
Now you have the scientific basics behind the Monroe system, so we can go on to discuss the Gateway Experience. I’ll start with some additional background.
In the 1950’s, Robert Monroe was a radio executive living with his wife and family in Virginia. One afternoon he remained at home while his family went to church. He was drowsing when a bright ray of light came out of the north and illuminated him. He felt strong vibrations and also seemed to be paralyzed. When he finally forced himself to move, the light and vibrations ceased. Over the following few weeks, the same thing happened nine times. Since he’d never heard of such a thing, he became quite concerned and fearful that he was going crazy or was very ill.
He went to his doctor, but was told that his health was fine. The experiences continued, and he gradually became used to them and even began to anticipate them. One night, he was in bed when the sensations started. His arm was hanging over the side of the bed, brushing the carpet. As the sensations continued, his fingers seemed to go through the floor and brush a nail on the other side. Then they felt wet. This startled him, and he terminated the experience by pulling his arm back. The experiences progressed until he became aware that he was floating up against the ceiling of his bedroom. When he looked down, he could see his body in bed. He dived back in and opened his eyes. This experience was quite frightening to him, but after consulting a friend who happened to be a psychologist, he began to try to leave his body systematically.
He gradually became able to leave his body at will and then began to visit friends while he was out-of-body. He sought for validation of his experiences by comparing what he saw with his friends’ memories. He was usually partially correct in what was happening. Sometimes he saw other people who weren’t in the room, sometimes he heard his friends say something they had not said, but there was enough correspondence in their memories to allow him to feel confident in his abilities.
As a result of his years of practice, he developed a concept of the structure of the non-material world. He states that there are three locales. Locale 1 is closely related to what we call the real world. Travel in this locale is sometimes easy and sometimes difficult. The experiencer finds that they have some unusual abilities which allow them to fly, to pass through walls, and to move almost instantly from one location to another.
Locale 2 is much deeper, and the experiencer is likely to meet predeceased people he knows. This is the level of thought, and the principles of thought apply. Like calls to like. When one desires to move, one simply thinks of the destination and is there. Inner desire to arrive at a location is most important. This is very similar to the law of attraction that allows us to successfully generate results in daily life. Monroe found that communication with entities he met at this level was usually by means of passing a “thought ball” of understanding from one to the other. Linear communication was not necessary. If you’ve meditated much, you might have found that you sometimes arrive at a complex understanding instantly without going through the linear sequence of thought. This is much the same thing as Monroe found in Locale 2.
Locale 3 is a level he found which seems to parallel that of our normal Earth. There were significant differences in technology, however. He explored this level mostly by merging with his double who lived there.
In his books, he gives a description of his ‘second body.’ It has some weight, is sometimes visible to his friends, and he can produce a sensation of touching his friends. The second body is formless but may take on any form required. He tried to locate the traditionally described silver cord connecting his second body with his physical body but was usually unaware of it.
Should you decide to read his three books, they must be read in sequence. If you were to start with the third book, you’d probably throw it down thinking that the author was crazy. One warning I will give is that the first book describes some of his more frightening experiences. He took his own biases and fears with him, and they show in his writings. For example, he recounts sensing some small, soft entities clinging to his back. He describes going through extreme maneuvers to dislodge them under the assumption that they meant him harm. Finally, he realized that they were his cats that had died and were clinging to him for their own security. This allowed him to deal with them without fear.
As an example of the odd sorts of experiences you may have, here’s another of mine:
I was sleeping, and it was well after midnight. I woke up lying on the floor beside the bed with my head at the foot of the bed. There was about five feet between the bed and the wall, so there was plenty of space for my body. I looked around a bit in surprise because I didn’t remember getting out of bed and certainly didn’t remember lying down on the floor with my head pointed towards the closet door. At this time, I realized that I was out-of-body. The room was dark, but there was enough light to see the furniture. As I looked, I saw a cat standing on the floor near my head. Without thinking I began to rub its head. It started to purr and acted very content that it was getting attention. At the time, we had a Siamese cat, but this was a strange cat. It was rather large and was marked in black and white tuxedo colors, except that the black was more tabby striped. I didn’t know the animal, but it was friendly, and I was happy to pat it. After awhile the cat left, and I moved back towards my bed. It was my intent to go back to sleep, and I must have reached that point prior to reintegrating with my physical body, since I don’t remember reentry.
The interesting thing about this experience was that my son, who was living over a thousand miles away, had just adopted a cat. I had no idea what it looked like, not having seen a picture at that time. When I finally visited him, his cat was marked exactly like the cat I’d seen in my OBE. The markings were not that common either. The black part of the tuxedo pattern was actually gray with tabby stripes appearing near the white part of its coat. My assumption is that the cat came to visit me, but I’m not sure why.
This experience was interesting but not exactly earth shattering in spiritual terms. Other times, I’ve received guidance in such a way that I was aware that it was coming from sources outside of my immediate body of knowledge. Usually, this type of guidance is accompanied with a spiritual boost that can lead to increases in insight.
Parallel Universe Theory
I have an alternate theory of OBE. Some of the reported experiences that I’ve mentioned above and that don’t have an easy explanation in conventional thinking may be reconciled with the aid of the concept of parallel universes.
The idea of parallel universes is supported by modern quantum physics. There is one theory that explains the odd ways in which quantum particles behave. Very briefly, it implies that the universe splits every time there is a choice made on a quantum level. For example, if a photon has the alternative of going through one slit or a second slit in the classic double-slit experiment, it will go through one in one universe and through the other in a second universe. The two universes may then merge into a single universe or not. This is a gross over-simplification, of course, but it’s adequate to advance my idea.
I first began thinking about this concept while rereading Robert Bruce’s description of the mind split effect. It seemed to me that since our brains operate at least partially on a quantum level, that it would be likely that any binary decision we make would result in two universes. In one universe, we would do one action and in the other, we would do the action corresponding to the other half of the binary decision.
What this might mean is that when we project out of our body, we don’t project into the same universe in which the part of us that remains in our body resides. This split allows us to move into numerous alternate universes. These universes have traditionally been classified as various levels of the real-time zone and the astral zone and others.
This provides a possible explanation of Monroe’s locales and the fact that he often saw things that did not occur in the “real” universe. In some universes, his friends might be saying the things he heard and reported. In others, they may not. In some, there might be additional people present, or the building or décor might be different. The implication I draw is that OBEs are real and possibly scientifically explainable events.
Conclusion
There are numerous other resources available on the Internet for those who want to study this topic. It’s an interesting subject and one that you can easily experiment with in the privacy of your own home.
Cyber-Witch’s medal made the local paper. I’ll take my kudos when and where I can get them (although it’s a poor substitute for massive sales:-)
You can see how it echoes the colors in the cover for the first story.
People who read it like it, but readers aren’t finding it or are bypassing it for some reason. Few sales to date and I’m deep in the end stages of writing a sequel.
