Many have debated whether lucid dreams really differ from out-of-body
experiences. Some believe they are similar aspects of the same phenomena while
others feel they are two entirely different experiences. When we put the Lucid
Dream Exchange together we don't quibble over this debate. If the dreamers call
their experiences Out-of-Body then we place them in our "W.I.L.D.s, OBE's
and Sleep Paralysis" section. The reader, as always, can decide for himself
whether the OBE's and lucid dreams are the same phenomena or not.
This month's excerpt features a wonderful undersea adventure where Charmaine
made many observations about her environment while enjoying the pleasures that
her altered state of consciousness brought about.
Charmaine
25 Nov 2000, 0300 EST
Deep Sea Dive
I'd decided a while back that, since I don't SCUBA but would love to see
underneath the seas, I wanted to go on a "dive" undersea in my next
OOB adventure close to home. At the end of my five-hour sleep cycle, at 3:00
a.m., I awoke after a very enjoyable but only partially lucid diving adventure
that blended OOB and dream elements freely. I was with several others familiar
from grade school days when preparing for the dive but I was completely alone
while actually undersea, until meeting above the surface at the rendezvous
point. We used whimsical "props" like silky, deep-sea-blue diaphanous
"wetsuit" fabrics coupled with bits of more conventional wetsuit
material, masks and fins for fun moving about in the water, and
mouthpieces/tanks only intermittently when I wanted them in place.
The "target" was a trench one mile below the surface (! --
considered a relaxed dive by the coordinator, who said 3-mile-deep dives were
not uncommon -- I guess not, in the OOB state). The 'starting' landmark was a
shelf covered with layers of crusty phyllo-dough-like material through which we
had to wade to reach the point at which we were to descend into the trench,
marked by two deep parallel grooves in the trench floor made by the underbody of
an odd bottom-dwelling creature that was nowhere to be found while we were
there. The grooves gradually deepened along their several-meter length and ended
in a funny roundish shape where part of the underbody of the creature used to
rest. The trench was several meters wide and its bottom was surprisingly
pristine and sandy, littered only here and there with interesting objects -- an
occasional largish chunk of iridescent cobalt-blue rock (?), and sundry other
items.
Relatively few ocean creatures were in evidence in that place, though we were
warned to watch out for a large sea predator near the trench entry point. Of the
sea creatures I did observe, I did not recognize any -- all were unfamiliar,
including blunt dolphin-like shapes, and other long, mostly cylindrical fishlike
creatures with two small opposed fins. Everything looked and felt
somewhat...primeval. I am not sure that I didn't dive "back" into time
as I descended. Because of the OOB-like state I needed no supplementary light --
it was easy to see by energetic ambiance, which translated into light. I spent
what seemed to be a couple of hours down there, breathing water now and then as
I pleased, leisurely undulating along with my astral foot fins. I'd initially
just materialized near the target area, but I swam back up slowly to the
surface, mentally overhearing one observer of our party jokingly comparing us to
a bunch of shrimp as I did. I found it difficult to separate 'extraneous' dream
elements from more sense-vivid OOB experience because of my only intermittent
lucidity.
I knew, even without calculating the pressures and temperatures, that the
'one mile' and 'three mile' depths would probably be far beyond any normal
physical diving. (A diver friend tells me that "130 feet is considered the
max for recreational diving," though some go deeper, and that "the max
seafloor depth in the Caribbean is less than 4.5 miles; about 5.7 in the
Atlantic. The deepest we're aware of, in the Marianas Trench, is just under 7
miles.") But I didn't know just how shallow the ocean floors are; in my
semilucid state, I found myself fretting over whether those depths made sense at
all in physical terms. What an irony that I know much more about black holes and
other cosmic phenomena than I know about the oceans of my home/host planet!
The logistical nightmare of 'normal' deep sea operation is a reason I wanted
to dive OOB, to go where it would be physically difficult, not to mention
intimidating, even if I were a physical diver. One factoid I *had* absorbed was
that the Marianas Trench is the deepest bit we know of in the oceans (though I
didn't know the depth), so I'd made a mental note some months ago that that
Trench was a place I wanted to go and have a look-see sometime. To boldly go
where not many have gone before, et cetera.
The ocean felt like the Pacific. Definitely not the Atlantic. A sense of
temperature is completely absent from my OOB experiences so far (thank
goodness!), but I believe the latitude was tropical or nearly so. I don't know
if the Marianas is where I was (wouldn't jibe with the depth info, but I felt
funny about that even as I was told it, like I wasn't sure whether it was
accurate or distorted by my ideas about what was realistic).
Again, my diver friend says: "In 3-D 'reality,' we've got layers of
sedimentary and volcanic rock on the oceans' basins - the crust itself is in a
migration due to seafloor spreading, initiated by volcanic activity at the
oceanic ridges. When the Crust material reaches the Trench areas, it may be
'enfolded' into the Earth's mantle.... Oceanic sediments can be dated up to
about 200 million years.... Many species just within the normal 300 ft. limit
seem very strange and prehistoric to anyone not familiar with them - unless they
happen to be avid researchers of obscure marine biology films and photo
archives. The greater the depth, the more sparse, specialized and 'prehistoric'
the critters tend to be perceived." Now that makes great sense to me. So
even if I stayed within "this" approximate time, as I dove down, I was
literally in touch with the past, on the floor. I felt led to say
"shelf" for some reason, though I was aware of no other ocean-floor
areas nearby *other* than the trench floor that were lower than the
"shelf." I did have some confusion over whether I was seeing
'prehistoric' creatures or whether they just looked that way to me. Since I only
registered perhaps one or two species of sea creature on the whole dive (!), my
sample was not very large. And I do think I've probably seen pictures of the
long, narrow, cylindrical, pointy-nosed guys with two tiny opposed
fly's-wing-like fins (opposed at the center of the body length) before. The
other species I only registered mentally, as it only put in a 'probable'
appearance -- I didn't actually observe it in my environment -- and that's the
'large sea predator' I mentioned. Perhaps 'predator' is a misnomer, since it
didn't have the feel of, say, a shark -- but just a large creature that could
possibly be dangerous in some circumstances, but was not necessarily looking to
eat a human. My only impression of that creature is of a large, white body
dappled with orangish-brown splotches. Its shape was vaguely like some of the
whales -- massive and bulky but hydrodynamically rounded; but I wasn't
specifically aware of fins or flippers, though it must have had something. I'm
not describing it very well.... I was told to be watchful for it at the entry
point of the trench, but that once I was down in the trench I could forget about
it because it wouldn't go there.
In fact, I observed not one single solitary creature other than myself the
whole time I was in the trench, or on the shelf either, for that matter. I was
surprised by the apparent scarcity of large sea life at depth, and it made me
somewhat skeptical until hearing from my friend. I had the vague sense that far,
far above me, there were the usual types of sea creatures, but that they simply
did not go to the depths I was exploring. The floor of the trench seemed
pristine, and somewhat sparkly, psychically...as if littered with grains of
richness. Hard to describe...but the odd chunk of iridescent blue rock, or other
lumpy fragment littered here and there in the trench, felt like unrecognized
treasures of some sort. The place almost had the feel of a treasure trove, where
the riches were in a more subtle, unrecognized form than the usual doubloons and
sapphires and such. It felt slightly enchanted/enchanting, so I can attest to
the interesting energy profile of the place.
My friend said, further: "There are various accounts, channeled and not,
with theories about the dimensional beings who inhabit the Earth's core and
Oceans basins. I am intimately familiar with the other-worldly nature of the
seas just as they are now in their basic 3-D glory.... But, I'm also wondering
if the actualized cellular 'blueprints' of many drawing-board or obsolete
creatures don't continue to surf the interdimensional boundaries? Perhaps
sometimes showing themselves as leviathans, giant squids or rays, Loch Nessies
or whatever...Perhaps the 'large sea predator' guardian/test of your Trench
Entry Point, too? The Yetis of the Abyss?"
Interesting idea! That would make sense with my fleeting psychic glimpse of
the 'large sea predator' -- it swam past my mental eye in probability-form but
not the actual senses of my OOB/dreambody, with the cool, sifted light of that
place suddenly dappled on its barrel-like shape, then a flick of its body and it
was gone again. As if it were swimming in and out of a shaft of 'hereness'.....
Well, this one adventure has made me hungry for more! I certainly will return
and now that I've lost my fear of those 'deep dives' I may explore the trench
more at length. Maybe I won't worry about watching my virtual gauges or
timepiece next 'time.' Interesting also that our pick-up and drop-off was
coordinated but that we were then each sort of in our own universe once down
below. Initially, I seemed to simply materialize on the shelf and began hiking
(wading, traipsing, plodding) through the crusty sedimentary layers toward the
trench. It was something of a long hike in flippers, perhaps a quarter mile. And
at first I got a little spooked at my sudden realization of how deep I was as my
lucidity fluctuated, and I shot myself quickly upward for a bit before I
remembered I wasn't 'supposed' to do that, and calmed down and returned to the
depth at which I'd appeared. Coming back up, I took my time as I was 'supposed'
to do (still acting like a diver), kicking lazily and floating in place now and
then, communing with psychic notions of fish and such, until I saw the floating
crafts (like jetski-boxes that held three or four people) that were to pick us
up and take us back to the (also floating in the middle of the ocean) staging
center. Yes, the center even had a gift shop, and a music store across the
'street'....
The Lucid Dream Exchange is a quarterly issue featuring lucid dreams and
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