
                      Plane Talk: Astral Meanderings

                by Don DeGracia (dondeg@compuserve.com)

                   Copyright  1996. All rights reserved.

                                January 1996


     Astral Projection or Lucid Dreaming?

     Hi. Welcome to my second column of Plane Talk. As I stated in the
     previous column, throughout this past year I have really become
     much more familiar with scientific views of the projection
     experience. What I want to do in this column is discuss some of
     the stuff I've learned and ask the question: which is the better
     viewpoint: astral projection or lucid dreaming?

     You'll notice I'm not even considering the idea of out-of-body
     experience (OBE). Let's review a bit and put this in perspective.
     In DO_OBE, I drew a broad distinction between the three terms
     most commonly applied to this experience: 1. astral projections,
     2. out-of-body experiences, and 3. lucid dreams. I discussed how
     the term "astral projecting" defines an occult view of this
     experience. Which is to say that when we have this experience we
     have left the physical plane and entered the astral (or one of
     the other planes). "OBE" is a term from parapsychology and for
     the most part implies that some invisible part of ourselves
     leaves the body and is free to travel around in the physical
     world. The term "lucid dreaming" is the psychologist's view of
     this phenomena and this term doesn't even consider the issue of
     whether anything "leaves the body" or not, but states that what
     is happening is that we are aware that we are dreaming while we
     are within the dream.

     In my previous column, I put these three terms in a historical
     perspective. The oldest term is astral projecting. The occultists
     were the first group to take this phenomena seriously and try to
     give it an explanation. Because it is very obvious once you learn
     to project that you are not in the physical world of waking life,
     the occultists concocted the view that, naturally enough, you are
     no longer in the physical world. They naturally enough thought
     that, since you are obviously somewhere doing something, that you
     must be in an altogether different world. This, I believe is the
     basis for the idea of the astral plane and the occult idea of the
     planes in general. Historically, this idea crystallized firmly in
     1895 with Charles Leadbeater's book The Astral Plane. Other
     contributors to this view were Oliver Fox's Astral Projection and
     Muldoon and Carington's The Projection of the Astral Body.

     However, as we progressed from the 19th to the 20th century,
     non-occult folks got interested in the phenomena of projecting.
     This effort began with the British Society for Psychical Research
     (SPR), which was a group of scientists interested in
     investigating claims of paranormal and occult phenomena. The
     "science" of parapsychology grew here in the United States out of
     the approach of the SPR. The parapsychologists here in the United
     States, lead by J.B. Rhine, took a mostly statistical approach to
     things, and their paradigms were never very well defined. It was
     the parapsychologists who created the term "OBE", rejecting the
     older term "astral projection". The parapsycholigsts abandoned
     the occult idea of the nonphysical planes and instead viewed the
     OBE as somehow the person's consciousness could leave the body
     and travel to distant locations in the physical world. The one
     advance the parapsychologists had over the occultists is that
     they tried to test their ideas experimentally. However, the view
     of the OBE as occurring in the physical world never worked out.
     Experiments in which subjects were supposed to have an OBE and
     acquire information from the next room or down the hall never
     produced any clear cut results. The problem with the
     parapsychological view of the OBE is that it rejected the occult
     view of astral projection, and thus cut itself off from important
     sources of information about the nature of this experience. Had
     parapsychologists read occult treatises about astral projection,
     they never would have looked for the OBE in the physical world.
     On the other hand, as I said, at least parapsychologist tried to
     experimentally test their ideas. Occultists never really did
     experiments. The old astral projection authors would learn to
     project and their books mostly describe what they experienced in
     this state - but they never devised ways to test their ideas.

     So, parapsychology as a whole, which got its start in the 1930s,
     chugged along at low steam and never really got off the ground or
     went anywhere. By the late 1970s, parapsychology died. Thus, the
     idea of the OBE never went anywhere. It was a stage in our
     understanding of the projection experience, and it is a stage
     that has been outgrown for the most part. Stephen LaBerge has
     written extensively about how OBEs are actually lucid dreams. If
     you want to see his arguments, which are very reasonable and
     good, then click here

     Meanwhile, as we entered the 20th century, there was a new
     science on the block and they called themselves "psychologists"
     and it was their goal to study the human mind. Psychology has
     passed through a number of phases of growth over the past hundred
     years. It began as an offshoot of physiology but began to acquire
     its own identity early in this century. There have been many
     schools of psychological thought. At the turn of the century were
     the psychoanalysts such as Freud and Jung. In the 1920s Gestalt
     psychology was born. Then a little later came behaviorism; then
     transpersonal psychology. And all along, physiological psychology
     - which is a view of the human mind as a product of brain
     physiology - progressed and evolved. And in the 1970s a new type
     of psychology - cognitive psychology - evolved, and is today the
     main approach to academic psychology. Cognitive psychology
     studies how our minds work. And most importantly cognitive
     psychology has dovetailed with neurology (which is the study of
     brain function), and together these sciences (which are quickly
     becoming one science) are painting a magnificient picture of how
     the brain creates the mind. All of these branches of psychology
     represent different views of the human mind. Each has a validity
     in its own right and each is worth considering. The fact that
     there are so many approaches to psychology indicates that the
     human mind is a complex thing. No one view of what we are can
     suffice. There are too many aspects to being human and each of
     these approaches to psychology highlights one or another of the
     facets of humanness.

     Now, what is very important to appreciate is that all these
     differing views of psychology have one thing in common: an
     adherence to the scientific method. The scientific method is
     quite simple actually. It simply is a philosophy that says not to
     believe any idea unless you can find a way to test it . This is a
     simple idea. It doesn't take a rocket scientists to appreciate
     the meaning of applying the scientific method to things. If we
     want to figure out the nature of things, we make up an idea of
     what things are. But we just don't believe the idea; making up
     the idea is only the first step. The next step, which is the
     crucial step, is trying to devise some way to test if the idea is
     true or false. These tests are called "experiments". And by
     testing an idea with an experiment, we can determine if our idea
     has value in describing the nature of things around us, or if the
     idea is just so much hot air. And remember, the goal of science
     is to understand the nature of things. So, in this quest, as we
     devise ideas and then devise ways to test them, some ideas are
     found to be right, and others are found to be wrong. It doesn't
     matter if an idea is right or wrong - it matters that the idea
     has been tested. A scientist who tests an idea and finds it wrong
     is no less a scientist that one who tests an idea and finds it to
     be right. Both are scientists, and both are doing their job
     correctly. So what I want all you readers out there to appreciate
     is this simple fact: using the scientific method simply means
     that you are trying in some fashion or another (i.e. by doing
     experiments) to determine if your ideas are correct or not.

     And there is one more aspect of science we must discuss before
     getting back to the issue of lucid dreaming or astral projecting.
     This is the nature of logical reasoning. Logic itself is simple
     too. The idea of logic is that ideas are related to each other in
     a meaningful fashion. Logic is simply a way of thinking clearly.
     There are two main approaches to using logic: one is called
     inductive, the other deductive. The difference between these is
     as follows. When you are inductive, you begin your reasoning with
     particulars, and from these try to draw generalizations.
     Deduction is the opposite: you start with a general viewpoint,
     and from this try to predict what the particulars will be. These
     are opposite ways to use logic.

     Now, most science is, in general, inductive. What this means is
     you start with a bunch of particular observations, and from these
     try to draw a "big picture" or conclusion. The reason most
     science is inductive is because you test individual ideas by
     doing experiments. Each experimental result gives you one
     particular piece of information. As you piece together more and
     more particulars, a picture emerges, just like when you put a
     jigsaw puzzle together.

     On the other hand, deduction works the opposite way. You start
     with some very broad generalization and from this try to "deduce"
     what the particulars will be. So, with deduction you start with
     the "big picture" and you logic your way to the details.
     Mathematics is mostly deductive, but most science is not. The
     only science that is mostly deductive is physics, and this is
     because physics is mostly mathematics. Physicists and
     mathematicians will sit and concoct "big pictures" and from these
     try to deduce details. Einstein's Theory of Relativity is an
     example of deduction. Einstein made up a set of ideas about the
     "big picture", and, by working through a bunch of math, came to
     conclusions about particular details. Then, experimentalists
     could set up experiments and test these details.

     Now, the point of defining what induction and deduction are is to
     make this statement: the two scientific views of the projection
     experience - the view of OBEs and the view of lucid dreams - are
     inductive viewpoints. The occult viewpoint of astral projection
     is a deductive viewpoint. In the case of parapsychology, it made
     up a bunch of particular ideas and tested them using experiments.
     These ideas proved, for the most part, to be wrong. Thus, this is
     one reason why I am not going to even consider the
     parapsychological view of the OBE as a serious contender to
     explain the nature of the projection experience.

     Now, lets get back to psychology. Psychology, like most sciences,
     is inductive. Some of the approaches above were deductive because
     they started with a big picture - such as Freudian or Jungian
     psychoanalytic theory. But for the most part, psychology has been
     an inductive science. It begins by coming up with ideas about
     particular details, testing them, and, as time goes on, begins to
     construct a big picture about how the human mind works. For the
     sake of our discussion, we need to focus on two of the areas of
     inquiry of psychology. One is the area of sleep research, the
     other is the area of dream research.

     We all know sleep and dreams go hand in hand. However, the
     scientific views of sleep and dreams have at times been together
     and at times separated. This is because sleep is something that
     happens to our whole body but dreams are something that are in
     our mind. In the Freudian theory of dreams, there is minimal
     emphasis on the role of the body and dreams are seen as purely
     psychological things. Early in this century, sleep research too
     was separated from dream research. Sleep researchers were
     physiologists working with rats and cats, trying to understand
     what goes on in the body when the body falls asleep.

     It was during the 1950s when these two aspects came together. In
     the 1950s, it was discovered that our brains cycle through
     regular patterns of electrical behavior when we sleep at night.
     These patterns of electrical behavior are called brain waves, and
     names of these brain waves are pretty much common knowledge.
     There are alpha (slow waves), beta (fast waves) and delta (real
     slow waves) waves emitted by the brain. Now, during sleep, it was
     discovered that the brain cycles through 5 phases of brain wave
     patterns, and then repeats the cycle. The 5 phases of brain waves
     are called:

     1. Stage 1

     2. Stage 2

     3. Stage 3

     4. Stage 4

     5. REM sleep

     During sleep stages 1-4 the brain waves transform from alpha
     waves to delta waves. That is, the brain waves get slower and
     slower and also become much more rhythmical. However, during REM
     sleep, the brain waves all of a sudden become very fast and
     nonrhythmical and they look very much like the brain wave
     patterns of a waking person. Thus, REM sleep has also been called
     "paradoxical sleep" because, even though the person is asleep,
     their brain waves look as if they are awake. And most
     importantly, things happen to our muscles during REM sleep. All
     our muscles become paralyzed. People say that this is so we don't
     hurt ourselves when acting out our dreams by actually moving our
     sleeping body. However, not all our muscles become paralyzed -
     two sets do not: those that move our eyes and those that move our
     lungs. Moving our lungs is pretty obvious - we sure don't want to
     quit breathing while we sleep! However, why our eyes do not get
     paralyzed is less clear. But the fact that our eyes are not
     paralyzed during REM sleep is where the stage of REM sleep gets
     its name. Because our eyes are not paralyzed during REM sleep,
     they move around. This motion is called "rapid eye movement".
     Thus, REM sleep derives its name from the eye movements that
     occur during the stage of sleep when we dream most and when the
     brain wave patterns look as though we are awake.

     This whole sleep cycle takes about 90 minutes to happen. And, as
     the night progresses, the Stages 1-4 take up less time in the
     cycle and REM takes up more time. So, when you first fall asleep,
     REM may only last for 15 minutes of the 90 minute cycle. But by
     the end of the night, REM may last for perhaps 60 minutes out of
     the 90 minute cycle.

     Now, and this is probably no news to many of you, the study of
     dreams and of sleep came together shortly after the sleep cycle
     was discovered when it was next discovered that dreams tend to
     occur most often during the REM stage of sleep. Now, as it turns
     out, our minds are active during the whole sleep cycle. But the
     things we normally think of as dreams occur mostly during REM.
     REM dreams are the ones where we are somewhere doing something -
     which is what we normally think of as dreams. During the nonREM
     stages, our mind is active, but it is usually just thinking
     things, but it is not somewhere doing something.

     We need to do one more digression before we tie all this
     together. In 1913, a psychologist named van Eeden coined a term:
     lucid dreams. van Eeden described these lucid dreams as dreams in
     which he knew he was dreaming and where he could very consciously
     interact with the things going on in his dream. However, back in
     1913, which was the heyday of Freud's theories, and the earliest
     beginnings of behaviorism, nobody really took van Eeden's
     observations and studies of his own lucid dreams very seriously.
     As a matter of fact, some people tried to explain away van
     Eeden's idea of lucid dreams by claiming that there was no such
     thing as a lucid dream and that van Eeden must have woken up
     during the middle of the night and had very vivid memories of his
     dreams.

     And the study of lucid dreams went pretty much ignored by sleep
     and dream researchers until the late 1970s when two groups of
     researchers put two and two together. Both groups reasoned as
     follows: First, during a lucid dream, one is conscious and can do
     things voluntarily during the dream just like when awake, and 2.
     during REM sleep, the eyes are not paralyzed. Therefore, if lucid
     dreams occur during REM sleep (which makes sense because - like
     ordinary dreams, one is somewhere doing something), maybe one can
     voluntarily control the movement of their eyes during a lucid
     dream. Now, the beauty of this idea is that it could be
     experimentally tested. You can tape electrodes to your eyes when
     you are asleep and measure the movement of your eyes. You can
     also measure your brain waves as well to determine what stage of
     sleep you are in. The two groups that tested this idea were Keith
     Hearne in London and Stephen LaBerge here in the United States.
     For a full account of the history of this research, I highly
     recommend Stephen LaBerge's book Lucid Dreaming (Ballantine
     Books, 1985).

     To make a long story short, both of these laboratories discovered
     that yes indeed, the lucid dreaming person can control their eye
     movements from within the dream during REM sleep. This was a
     gigantic step forward in the study of dreams and sleep, and the
     impact of this research has not fully hit the general scientific
     community, even now, 16 years later. What this means is that the
     person experiencing the lucid dream can COMMUNICATE with people
     who are awake here in the physical world. They can do this by
     setting up a predefined code for eye-movements, and the eye
     movements are measured by electrodes that people awake can read.

     Ok, then so what is the big deal? The big deal is this: the idea
     of lucid dreaming and the idea of astral projection are two
     different ways to explain this phenomena of projecting, or lucid
     dreaming, or whatever you want to call it. All of a sudden, with
     the work of LaBerge and Hearnes, we now have an experimental tool
     to explore this state. I cannot begin to overstate what a big
     deal this is. If you want to think of this experience as an
     astral projection, then you can think of what LaBerge and Hearnes
     have done is give us a way to communicate with people in the
     astral plane. If you want to think of the experience as a lucid
     dream, then you can think of this tool as a way to communicate
     with people who are lucid in their dreams. What this really means
     is that - for the first time ever - we have a tool to let us test
     our ideas about the nature of this state.

     And researchers have indeed utilized this tool to test the nature
     of this state. And what has been discovered? A lot actually.
     There is no way I can summarize all the results here. Those of
     you interested in this work can dig up references, and also check
     out Dr. LaBerge's web site . The important finding though is that
     this idea of lucid dreaming works very well at explaining the
     nature of this experience. The evidence to date indicates pretty
     clearly that lucid dreams are ordinary dreams in which the
     sleeping person is "lucid" within the dream. This ties in
     directly with how I defined astral projecting in DO_OBE. There I
     said this:

     "ASTRAL PROJECTION IS A CONTINUITY OF MEMORY BETWEEN YOUR WAKING
     AND DREAM PERSONALITIES....

     ...AN ASTRAL PROJECTION IS A DREAM IN WHICH YOU ARE FULLY AWARE
     OF YOUR WAKING LIFE."

     In other words, an astral projection IS a lucid dream.

     Now, for all of you with the stamina to read this far, we have
     finally built up the case to delve into the main question I asked
     at the beginning of this column: which is the better viewpoint:
     astral projection or lucid dreaming?

     Again, we are dealing with two very different viewpoints here.
     The occult view is a deductive view. It begins by defining a "big
     picture" which is that the physical world is not the only world
     there is, but that there are other, nonphysical worlds, and that
     we humans have the ability to visit these nonphysical world. On
     the other hand, the lucid dreaming view is an inductive view
     built up from many pieces of a very large and complex puzzle. For
     not only does sleep and dream research come to bare on the lucid
     dream viewpoint, but all of the inductive evidence about the
     brain and body are relevant to this discussion.

     I am about 4 months away from acquiring my Ph.D. in physiology. I
     can assure you that the study of the human brain and body, and
     how these pertain to sleep, dreams and lucid dreams, is extremely
     complex. There is literally a mountain of evidence to support
     scientific views of the nature of the brain and how the mind
     works, and the nature of sleep and dreams. In comparison, the
     evidence that supports the occult viewpoint of astral projection
     is a mere mole hill.

     However, a mole hill is more than nothing; anything is bigger
     than zero. What kind of evidence is there that supports the
     occult viewpoint nowadays? Well, occultists have done almost
     nothing to test their ideas about the planes and the theory of
     astral projection. That means that occultists have literally
     produced practically no evidence whatsoever to support their
     contentions. Nothing has changed in occultism since the original
     books were written almost 100 years ago.

     Now, what is extremely surprising is that the little bit of
     evidence in favor of an occult view that does exist comes from
     science itself. There are two types of evidence: positive
     evidence and negative evidence. The negative evidence is the fact
     that scientists have done nothing to rule out the existence of
     the planes or occult theories. In fact, this is lame evidence
     because the scientific theories of the brain, the mind and how
     these relate to sleep, dreams and lucid dreams has NO NEED to
     postulate occult ideas to explain all the phenomena that have
     been observed. Believe me, the brain is more than complex enough
     of an organ that we can explain dreams and lucid dreams solely on
     the basis of the action of the brain.

     Those of you who have read DO_OBE will recognize that I have done
     a complete "about face" in regards to what I wrote there. In
     DO_OBE, I argued that scientific views cannot explain our
     consciousness. Well, the fact is, I didn't know what I was
     talking about. That is the thing when you are ignorant: you just
     don't know what you are missing. Luckily, ignorance is not a
     permanent condition, and, as I've stated, I've spent the past
     year doing nothing but studying the brain and how it works - not
     only with regard to sleep and dreams, but just in general, how
     the brain works while we are awake and in a variety of
     pathological situations. So, I'm not apologizing for switching to
     a view opposite what I expressed in DO_OBE. Hopefully it will
     stand as a lesson of other things I say in DO_OBE, particularly
     what I say about being open minded and never stop learning about
     things related to projection. I practice what I preach.

     Now, my shift in viewpoint is not that extreme however. I have
     not come to the point where I reject occult ideas and I have not
     become as staunch materialist who thinks that the brain creates
     our consciousness. I know too much about occult views and I know
     too much about what science doesn't know to fall into the trap of
     rejecting occult ideas at the expense of scientific one.
     Truthfully, I have not deviated one iota from my stated goal of
     mixing scientific and occult views. However, I have vastly opened
     my mind to the evidence of science and found it extremely
     pertinent and useful. And this has forced me to be less naive
     about occult views and much more critical of them. However, I
     still believe they are worth learning, so I have no regrets
     whatsoever about the material in DO_OBE. It is a necessary
     learning stage and I am glad I have made this information
     available to people.

     Now, I said, the negative evidence that supports the occult view
     is science's general ignorance about aspects of nature we
     currently don't understand. And again, this is a lame line of
     thought. Science is very robust and this kind of logic in defense
     of occultism is nothing more than whining and ignorance.

     Now, what is really surprising is the positive evidence that
     supports the occult world view. As I said, occultists did NOT
     create this evidence. The surprise is that the evidence that
     suggests there may be some truth in occult viewpoints stems from
     modern physics. To explain this, I need to tangent off once
     again.

     As I have sat in these graduate level Ph.D. classed in
     physiology, I have been amazed by how little scientists from
     different fields influence each other's ideas. By no means though
     is this a general statement. Its more a historical statement than
     anything else. The process of diffusion of ideas from one
     scientific field to the next is always a process in progress. New
     ideas in physics are not immediately applied outside of physics.
     It takes time for ideas to spread. And also, there is a critical
     factor of generational differences. The people who taught me
     physiology are 50 years old. They learned physiology 20 or 30
     years ago, before many of the ideas in physics that exist today
     even existed! So, its the "you can't teach an old dog new tricks"
     idea. These old folks are just not up on the latest - the
     majority of them at least. Some are, however, and these folks are
     brilliant and are creating a new type of science by mixing
     physiology and physics.

     So, this said, here are the observations from physics that have
     direct bearing on brain physiology and therefore on the nature of
     lucid dreams, and how the mind works in general:

     1. Our brain is a chemical system. The cells in our brain (called
     neurons) are made of molecules (such as DNA, RNA, protein,
     sugars, fats, etc.). These molecules are made of atoms. Atoms are
     defined by quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics is really weird
     and has more in common with traditional occult views than most
     people suspect.

     Now, it is increasingly being recognized that quantum mechanical
     considerations have a direct affect on brain activity. People
     used to think that because cells are so big compared to atoms
     that quantum mechanics plays no role in cell function at all. It
     turns out that this is not true. It seems that to be able to
     explain the behavior of the protein molecules embedded in nerve
     cell membrane that allow neurons to conduct electricity requires
     quantum mechanics. These proteins are called "ion channels" and
     experiments have clearly shown that they are little quantum
     mechanical devices.

     What this broadly implies is that quantum mechanical effects will
     affect the behavior of cells. Depending on how far you want to
     take this conclusion, we can end up with Alice in Wonderland.
     What this kind of evidence suggests is that reality as we
     understand it is a lot more complex and weirder than traditional,
     kind of cozy ideas of molecules and cells would have us believe.
     However, this kind of thinking has to be balanced by the
     realization that there absolutely has to be a predictable
     consistency to large scale biological structures such as brains
     and human beings. Otherwise, they wouldn't work at all. However,
     within a certain degree of predictability, there is a lot of
     leeway for unpredictability. This is emerging as a general
     principle of biological system. Hence, one cannot draw on older
     scientific ideas to banish occult ideas per se.

     The other level physics plays a role is with all these "Grand
     Unified Field Theories" that these physicists are concocting.
     These GUFTS, as they are called, are very strange and paint a
     picture of the nature of things much closer to the old occult
     views than the old scientific views. The "old" scientific views,
     including Einstein's view of space and time, define space and
     time as pretty much what our sense deliver: three dimensions of
     space and one dimension of time. However, these GUFTS are
     multidimensional models. One of them, a particular variation of
     super-string theory, sees nature as being 26 dimensional. It
     doesn't take a brain surgeon to come to the notion that these
     extra dimensions in the GUFT models could actually be the planes
     that occultists described.

     However, this line of thought is PURE SPECULATION. Mainly because
     these GUFTS are pure speculation. However, as physics progresses,
     one of the GUFTS is going to turn out to have a more accurate
     correspondence with experiments than any of the other ones. If
     the winning GUFT is only 4 dimensional, then this will kill
     occult ideas. If the winning GUFT is one of these multi
     dimensional models, then it will probably be reasonable to say
     that physicists have finally discovered the occult planes. Only
     time will be able to decide this one.

     What I am doing here is trying to paint a picture for you readers
     to illustrate that the occult view of astral projecting does not
     need to be seen as contradictory to the scientific view of lucid
     dreaming. Given what is both known and not known today, it seems
     likely that these two viewpoints are going to converge into one
     unified viewpoint. And this unified viewpoint will probably be
     much different from either the standard occult view or the
     standard view of lucid dreams.

     But the fact is, this picture needs to be created. And it will be
     created by people testing their ideas by doing experiments, not
     by people who sit around and parrot ideas that are 100 years old.
     What I am spelling out here is a NEW OCCULTISM. Its time to
     transcend the old ideas, and transcend the old limitations of our
     thinking, its time to transcend the black and whites that have
     prevented us from seeing new associations in things. It's time to
     be creative, be open minded, and most of all - be well informed -
     of the evidence that exists out there right now. And to put this
     evidence to work to devise new way of looking at this stuff and
     of trying to find new ways to test these ideas. Believe me, this
     story is not finished. It is only just now beginning.

     So, let me wrap this up. And let me be blunt about it. The idea
     of the OBE is dead. This idea killed itself, which is fine. The
     idea of lucid dreaming is very, very strong. It deserves our
     attention and our careful consideration, and it deserves
     refinement and continued experimentation. The old occult ideas of
     astral projection are just obsolete in some respects. There is
     still value in learning the old occult ideas, but learning these
     ideas can no longer be viewed as an end in itself. Learning these
     ideas has to be viewed as a stage to open our mind to broader
     endeavors and thinking. The old occult ideas are like a type of
     intellectual training wheels. They will serve to open your mind,
     but once it is open, you have to strive to look beyond these
     ideas, to not be afraid to see their limitations, and not be
     afraid to criticize them and experiment them out of existence if
     need be. Any and all ideas are expendable in the search for the
     truth. Ideas can blind us from truth or they can be our road to
     the truth.

     If you review the evidence that exists, it is clear that the idea
     of lucid dreaming is the most accurate and worthwhile viewpoint
     to adopt currently as you experiment with this phenomena and
     learn how to do it. But again, the occult ideas deserve
     consideration, particularly because science itself is
     transforming at a dizzying pace and, before long, science as we
     know it may well resemble the occultism of yesteryear. The bottom
     line is the message I preach in DO_OBE: stay open minded and stay
     informed.

     I'll talk to you in the next column.

     Don

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