Into the Ether

[TheUncanny]

As of now, this is just a place for me to record my lucid dreams, etheric projections, and other related experiences over the summer. I suppose ill do a few experiments as well. Goals for now: -simply "get out" more, and ill go from there. ~fin

[TheUncanny]

6/24/07 This morning I woke up without remembering the "lucid" dream I had last night. Just minutes ago I remembered otherwise. I say "lucid" with quotation marks because I once again had another dream which doesn't fit nicely into the category of a typical lucid dream. It seems that more and more I’m having dreams in which I am somehow instinctually lucid, or aware I am dreaming without the conscious epiphany I normally have when attaining lucidity. It’s difficult to articulate, but it’s like my subconscious self is becoming self-aware, but without my conscious/waking self having to intervene. I do things in these dreams I usually only do when lucid (in the common understanding of the word) but I lack the residual awareness of being a consciousness rooted in a reality that is different (and more real) than the dream reality I simultaneously take at face value. For the last 5 or 6 years, my lucid dreams have all been about the same in the sense that I was consciously aware of being in a place that my mind had created. It was tantamount of being in a virtual reality simulator. But in the last year or so I have been having these quasi-lucid dreams in which it seems to me that I’m more or less unaware of being in a dream, but I act as if I’m in a dream, I control the dream as if I’m aware it’s a dream, and I even try to wake myself up without consciously knowing I’m asleep. The best way I can describe it is being instinctually aware of being asleep, as I am now instinctually aware of being awake. It’s as if I act accordingly, automatically. Anyway, the only fragment of the dream I remember was when I took control of it to wake myself up. I was watching a car drive by and I tried to gain control over it. I remember looking at the car in a strange way, and it felt as if my eyes were wide open and bulging of my head. I also remember my vision changing in a subtle way. I gained control over this SUV to an extent that I haven’t had in a lucid dream in a long time. I had a feeling of complete control, and as a result I made the SUV run me down. I woke up as expected, though as explained above, the dream didn’t feel like an actual lucid dream. One reason this dream (and ones like it) are so interesting is that killing myself while dreaming only works to wake me up when I’m not lucid, because when I am lucid, I know nothing can affect me unless I allow it. But these dreams are of a different sort. In them I have the abilities and mannerisms of being lucid without the waking rational mind normally accompanying them. It may just be a matter of semantics. For just about as long as I have been practicing lucid dreaming, I have also been practicing related phenomena that are generally known as OBE’s. For the most part, I always assumed these experiences where more or less the same thing as lucid dreams. The other day I read that one way to differentiate the two is not whether or not your consciousness actually “leaves the body”…but just to what degree you are lucid. For example, if you are as lucid in the dream as you are in waking life, then it’s considered an OBE. But if you are anything less, it’s a lucid dream. The former seems to be what I have experienced the most, but all of this time I have been calling them (and considering them) lucid dreams because I have experienced etheric projections, which in themselves, seem to be distinct from lucid dreams/”OBE’s”. Because of just how uncanny etheric projections are to the physical reality, I always thought of them to be more “out of body” than its dream-like counter part. Anywho I’m rambling, so until next time…

[TheUncanny]

So recently I've been thinking about starting up an experiment. I've only done this once before, and im not to sure what to make of the results. This was done roughly 2 years ago. Bascially what I did was simple. -I took a deck of cards -shuffled and cut the deck several times -drew a card at random (face down) -without looking at the identity of the card, i taped the card to my window (facing outside) -I then would induce an "OBE" or whatever you want to call it. -while out of body, I would float through the wall and look at my window from the outside, thus seeing the identity of the "dream card" -I then would wake myself up, untape the actual card from my window, and look at the identity of it. -From there id write down the results The results were as follows: The first number represents the number seen in the OBE, the second represents the actual number of the card: T1. 2 clubs, 7 spades (0 pts) T2. Queen clubs, Queen spades (2 pts: 1/26) T3. Jack (red suit), Jack clubs (1 pt: 1/13) T4. 3 hearts, 2 clubs (1 pt) T5. Ace hearts, 3 hearts (2 pts: 1/4) T6. (1)Ace clubs, Queen spades (2 pts: 1/2) T7. 7 hearts, 3 spades (0 pts) T8. Queen hearts, Jack diamonds (8 pts: 1/2) T9. King (red suit), King diamonds (3 pts: 1/26) T10. 9 hearts, 6 Hearts (3 pts: 1/2) T11. Ace hearts, Ace clubs (1 pt: 1/13) T12. King clubs, Jack clubs (4 pts: 1/4) If you are wondering what the other numbers are, for example "(4 pts)", that was a rudimentary attempt to develope a point system based on how easily cards could be confused with one another, given the fluidity/ unstability of the projections. here it is: Point System 1.) Same Color Suit -Clubs and Spades (2pt) -Hearts and diamonds (2pt) 2.) Face Cards -Suited Queens and Jacks: Diamonds only (5 pts) -Queens and Jacks: Any other combo (2 pts) -Suited Kings and Queens: Hearts, Clubs, and Spades (5 pts) -Kings and Queens: Any other suit (2pts) Kings and Jacks: Spades, Hearts, Diamonds (3 pts) -Kings and Jacks: Clubs (2 pts) 3.)6's and 9's (1pt) Aces and 4's (1 pt) 4.)Cards Within One increment away - Facecards (2 pts) -8's and 9's (2 pts) -All other combos (1 pt) *the higher the point value, the higher the extent that Astral-fulidity could have effected the results. Apply all results to the point system and add all point that apply, together. Any other factors i have left out are because i already know the probabilties behind them (exact suit, exact increment, etc) 1 pt total = Low extent/chance that astral instability affectd the results 5 pts total = Decent extent/chance that astral instabilitly affected the results 10 pts total= Very high extent/chance that astral instability affected the results The other numbers, ex. "1/4", were an attempt at formulating probabilities for the results. For example, in trial 2 both were queens (probability of which was 4/52, or 1/13), and both were black suits (a probability of 26/52, or 1/2). But as you can see, my math was applied wrong, and was possibly "forcing" the results to be better than they actually were. After becomming aware of this, I had someone calculate the probabilities out for me correctly. His results were as follows: First of all I believe you experiement is not luck only but that there is something going on, secondly, I'm sorry to say it as well, but your calculation is crap. (dont get angry or dissapointed now!) but believe me, it is totally wrong. You can not calculate like you did, but it is kind of hard to explain why. I'll try by an analogy: Lets say you do 52 trails and try to guess the corect card (1 out of 52) lets assume you hit once and miss 51 times. This would obviously be nothing special, it would exactly be what one expects! But if I use your methode I can figure something like the following: No Hit: probability 51/52 did happen 51 times Hit 1/52 did happen one time this adds up to ((51/52)^51)*(1/52) = 0.007......equals about 1/142 Now you do the whole thing again, lets assume same result: Now, you could figure (1/142)^2 = 1/20164 probabilty basic math! but nonsense, cause the calculation is wrongly interpreted! or would you say hitting two times the right card out of 104 trails is something special? think about it! it does not work like that. Cause what you do, is calculating the probabilty of the exact experiment outcome you get, which is not in any way meaningfull cause any experiment outcome will be very unlikely to repete itself, therefore the probabilty will always be very small and look like something special even though it is not. I Hope you see were I'm getting at............. You need a thesis: lets say "I can hit the value (2,5,7,J,Q...) correct" then do 10 trails count the hits in ratio to the no-hits and if that ratio is above 1/13 then you have something. if you hit like 1/4 or something then you have some kind of statistic relevant succes. O.K. I did some analysis on your results) Values of the cards (2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,J,Q,K,A) You got 3 hits out of 10 trails = 30% hits Simply guessing should lead to 1 out 13 = 7.7% hits First thought, not bad! Symbols (hearts, spades…) You got 2 out of 6 (4 times you did only guess the color) =33% hits Simply guessing should lead to 1 out of 4 = 25% hits First thought, not significant, but at least above 25% Colors You got 7 out of 10 = 70 % hits Simply guessing should lead to 1 out of 2 = 50% hits First thought, not significant, but at least above 50% Comment All probabilities are above the guessing values but only the first (values) seems significantly above the expected number, therefore I’ll look at this a bit more closely. Value of the cards, how good is your result really? We can say something about this, if we look at the chance to guess your result by chance. On average, how many times will a computer score 3 or more hits if he tries to guess the values of 10 playing cards? This is calculated as follows: Probability to guess 0 out of 10 is (12/13)^10 = 45% Probability to guess 1 out of 10 is (12/13)^9*(1/13)*10 = 37% (one needs to multiple by 10 because there are 10 different ways to score 1 hit and 9 misses out of 10 trails!) Probability to guess 2 out of 10 is (12/13)^8*(1/13)^2 *45 = 14% (one needs to multiple by 45 because there are 45 different ways to score 2 hits and 8 misses out of 10 trails!) This adds up to about 96% which means 96% of the time a computer would score 2 or less hits if he performs 10 trails, which means if one is guessing one will only score 3 or more hits in 4 % of the attempts, which means it is pretty likely you did not just guess the cards but perceive some info about the real cards while out of body. The chance you did not leave you body is below 4%! That’s it! That’s the result! It’s a success, I would say! But, 10 trails are way too few to say much anyway! Cheers Tom o.k. I'm know I'm crazy.......... I calculated the colors as well. 7 hits out of 10, doing this by chance will happen on 17,2% of the trails. The symbols can not be considered since the colors and the symvols are not independent Variables. The colors and the values(from above) can be multiplied though, since they are independent. 0.172*0.04=0.00688=0.688% This means that there is a chance below 1% that you just guessed the cards! If you want more prove, you need to do another 10 trails....... And I began doing another ten trials (T11 and T12), but stopped for some reason. Anywho, I want to start it back up again. But to simplify things, I’m thinking about changing the experiment a bit. I may use a set of dice (or even 1) instead of cards since there would only be one variable to worry about. I suppose I would need to the following: -put a set of dice in a small opaque box w/ a lid -shake it up -OBE and open the box to see what number the dice are -wake up and check the actual dice -record results, calculate probabilities But before I do this, I would like to brush up on me EP skills…plus I need to buy some dice. Keep and eye out!

[TheUncanny]

So today I bought some dice, haven't tried to EP yet, but have a solid game-plan. You can refer here for more information on the experiment, though i will be posting the results of each trial in my journal as well as in the research forum.

[TheUncanny]

Last night was the first night I tried to do a round of preliminaries, using the rhythmic napping technique with the aid of the saltcube timer. I didn't have any OBE's, or lucid dreams for that matter, because I feel that I was too excited about starting the experiment. First of all, I didn't offically go to bed until late, a few hours later than normal. And even then, after turning on the timer and turning off the lights, it took a long time for me to go to bed. I did fall asleep during the first interval, which I had set to 180 minutes, and I did awake when the alarm went off. But after changing into the supine position (laying on my back) I wasn't able to reach sleep paralysis within the first interval...or the next 2 for that matter. Eventually I ended up falling into a subconscious sleep, and ended up sleeping through the series of alarms that night. Sometime in the morning, after realizing this, I closed my laptop and went back to sleep. Im not too worried by this however. It has been two years since my last round of experiments, and it has been a while since i've given the rhythmic napping technique a serious go. For a while now my lucid dreams have been regular, but unplanned. I'm going to have to get out of that habit. Tonight I expect to try again, this time altering the saltcube timer settings to better compensate the way I slept last night, just in case it happens again tonight.

[TheUncanny]

So after it being suggested to me, i went and bought a box with one transparent side on it, just to eliminate as many potential complications as possible. I also changed a few things about the experiment to better suit this new way of seeing the dice. First, I moved the location of the box from my windowsill to a shelf next to a lamp (its one of those tall one's with three individual lamps on it). I replaced one of the bulbs with a 7.5 watt night-light bulb, which then lights up the box at night without keeping me awake. Early this morning I once again attempted to do a few preliminary runs, which I’m glad I did because I ran into a few problems. I ended up having two lucid dreams instead of Obi’s, but both involved doing this experiment. After setting up the box and everything, I set the saltcube timer and went to bed. In the first lucid dream I had, I went to the box to see what number was on the die. It looked like a 2, but it was rather unstable and the more I tried to focus on it, the more unstable it became, and as a result, the more it looked like a 3. Any who, the actual number was a 4, which didn’t surprise me because it wasn’t until I had awoken that I noticed that in the dream, the box was out in the hall way instead of in my room and on the shelf. Clearly I didn’t attain a sufficient level of lucidity to do the experiment properly. I wrote down the results, put in another die (making it two dice in the box), shook the box up, and went back to bed. Like the first, the second lucid dream I had wasn't as clear or "whole" as I wanted it to be. In the dream I looked in the box and saw a 6. I woke up and the number was a 6, but then I got into a fight with my fiancé about some nonsense when I realized that I had just experienced a false awakening, and was still dreaming. I then woke up for real, went over to the box to find a 3 and a 6. Again, though I got one number right, I wasn’t lucid enough to remember that I put two dice in instead of one. Conclusion, I need more practice before moving on to the actual experiment.

[NeAvO]

Nice dream journal How long have you been trying to lucid dream? You seem to have them naturally.

[TheUncanny]

Technically I have been lucid dreaming since I was a small child, back before I even knew what it was called, or that other people could do it also (since nobody I knew at the time knew what I was talking about). But it wasn't up until about 7 years ago that I began trying to induce them, as well as OBEs. Before that it was just the occasional, random lucid dream every now and then. Towards the beginning of high school, I had a discussion with a friend about lucid dreaming and he introduced me to astral projection, as well as let me borrow his "how-to" AP book. I believe it was called Astral Voyages. Not long after that, I discovered the movie Waking Life, which added to my motivation. I bought my own AP book, one that was a bit too esoteric for me, and then began researching online. Years later, here I am. I never really had much trouble when it came to lucid dreaming, so I suppose I’m at least somewhat of a natural. But lately I haven’t been having my Ethereal Projections, and I miss them so. They were so vivid, stable, and complete, from sleep paralysis (in the beginning) to sleep paralysis (at the end). By comparison, my lucid dreams nowadays are otherwise unintentional and fragmented...and yet im trying to do experiments lol. I hope I get back in the swing of things. My first experiment didn't take much longer than two weeks, and that had 12 trials.

[TheUncanny]

Last night I didnt have any lucid dreams or EPs, so there were no further trials completed. What I did do was some background research on probabilities. In short, I rolled a die 276 times (6 trials of 46 rolls) and analyzed the data. Ill spare you the pain of looking at the infinite boredom that is the raw data, but the summary is as follows: Predicted # of overall matches: 46/276, or 16.67% Actual # of overall matches: 42/276, or 15.22% Predicted # of times each number came up: 1: 46, or 16.67% 2: 46, or 16.67% 3: 46, or 16.67% 4: 46, or 16.67% 5: 46, or 16.67% 6: 46, or 16.67% Actual # of times each number came up: 1: 40, or 14.49% 2: 39, or 14.13% 3: 44, or 15.94% 4: 45, or 16.30% 5: 65, or 23.55% 6: 43, or 15.57% Predicted overall Matches Per Trial: 1. 7.67 2. 7.67 3. 7.67 4. 7.67 5. 7.67 6. 7.67 Actual overall Matches Per Trial: 1. 7 2. 4 3. 11 4. 9 5. 3 6. 8 Predicted Number of Matches Per Value: 1. 7.67 2. 7.67 3. 7.67 4. 7.67 5. 7.67 6. 7.67 Actual Number of Matches per Value 1. 4 2. 7 3. 11 4. 4 5. 9 6. 7 bascially, though the overall results were about normal, some of the more specific results were clearly abnormal, unfortunately. What this tells me is that, for my results in this experiment to be reliable, im going to have to do as many trials as I can manage to minimize the extent of such flukes. And even If I use more than one die at a time, were still potentially looking at hundreds of trials. It maybe months or even years before I have enough data. Im hoping that I can use at least 4 dice at a time. If I were to aim for 1000 individual sets of data, it would take 250 trials. Yeah, I cringed too. But, having more than one EP a night is not at all uncommon, not when you are using the Rhythmic Napping tecnique (in tandem with DEILD). Well just have to see how determined I am.

[TheUncanny]

So I’m a bit disappointed with myself this morning. I had a DILD last night. In the dream, I was in my bathroom looking at myself in the mirror when I noticed that one of my front teeth was pushed back, as if loose and hinging only on my gum. I told my fiancé about it and she was very concerned. I tried to move it back into place but the tooth fell out, and began to bleed. She began freaking out. While holding the tooth in my hand, I spit out the blood to find a second tooth...somehow. Suddenly I deiced to give myself a reality check and sure enough I was dreaming. I began comforting her by trying to explain to her that this was a dream, and that she was probably still asleep. She was relieved lol. Anyway, what disappointed me was that this dream took place in the bathroom, which is literally about 3 feet from my room. But, even when becoming lucid, I didn’t remember to check the stupid box. One good thing however, I emailed Math.com and asked for help figuring out my math troubles in the experiment, and he gave me a link to this page, where someone else had asked a similar question. This is exactly what I was looking for, so all I have to do is learn it and ill be back in business

[TheUncanny]

Well i have learned the math, but havent had any lucid dreams or EPs since. This may be because I stopped using the saltcube timer which I wasnt sure was working all that well anyway. Or maybe it is because the inital hype of the experiment has finally worn off (which is good). Ill try the timer again tonight, but after that Ill be in california for 5 days and away from my laptop. I may bring the dice and box anyway, but I havent made up my mind yet. Oh, and on a side note I have had some dreams, but none lucid. Initially i didnt want to mix my lucid dreams and obes with regular dreams, but I may have to in order to improve my dream recall. over and out.

[TheUncanny]

So I'm back from my vacation, didnt decide to bring the dice box. Nevertheless, I had somewhat of a breakthrough. During the third day I managed to have a good sleep paralysis separation. It was the kind I used to have back when I was frequently EPing, but I wasnt able to see at all. In the past when this has happened, I used to simply feel my surroundings until they visually manifested themselves. I tried that this time but I woke up before I began to see anything. But, I was lucid enough to realize that my fiance was sleeping on my right side, that I was in a motel room and not my bedroom, and that the bed was up against the back wall. I was basically as lucid then as I am when awake, I just didnt have enough time to make a decent projection out of it. But even still, that broke the "decent seperation" dry spell Ive been having. other than that, yesterday morning I had two lucid sex dreams, neither of which lasted long enough to make it to the actual intercourse. However, during one of the dreams something odd happened. I had taken her pants off, bent her over, but I couldnt seem to get a decent look at her ass. It was weird, I mean, I could see the top of it as I was looking down her as she was bent over, but I made it a point to step back and check out her goods before getting to business. I coulnt do it. As quickly as I tried to make some space between her and me to get a peak, somehow her body was pushed back up against my body, like it was magnitized to it. Then I woke up! I was very dissapointed. Anyway, ill be staring the experiment again, w/ saltcube timer, and we'll see what happens.

[TheUncanny]

so I had another lucid dream, this time the dice box was involved. I do believe it was a deild lucid dream because it happened early in the morning, and I remember going into sleep paralysis. Anywho, I seperated and began walking over to the dice box. I couldn't see, as usual, and it felt like there was a blanket over my head. I also had trouble breathing, which i think was because I was sleeping somewhat face down (in real life). Anyway, I removed the "blanket" in my dream and walked over to the dice box. I looked at it and the dice were in a state of constant flux. They looked as if they were flipping around, the dots on the dice would appear, vanish, and split faster than I could note how many there were. And even the box changed colors, into a red (which was the color of the original box). Anywho, I then expereinced a false awakening, again. When I looked at the dice, they had far too many dots on them, and they were in odds places, just like in the lucid dream. I was like "OH! thats why the dream dice seemed all fucked up, the actual dice are all fucked up!!" But then I awoke to find that the whole thing, like before, was just my mind playing tricks on me. youve won this time brain.

[TheUncanny]

this one happened yesterday night. I fell asleep in a depressed mood, thinking about all of the troubles of my life and things of that sort. I fell into a dream that I (and several other people) were renting a hotel room. It was checkout time and the room was trashed...clothes everywhere, broken tables and lamps, and no one had there stuff packed up. Well the manager comes in and starts talking a whole bunch a shit about suing us and whathaveyou when I noticed that my tooth became loose. I went to a mirror to check it out, and it fell out...but there was no blood. I did a reality check and realize that I was dreaming (second time this has happened since making the journal). So i decided to have a little fun. I walked up to the manager's assistant and asked if I could speak with her in private, as I was planning on fucking her. I had to pinch myself several times on the way to the room to make sure I was dreaming, just in case you know lol. Anyway, we get to the room and I tell her "You may not know this, but I am very interested in you..." She said "Interested?" and began laughing. I then said a bit defensively "what did you expect me to say?" to which she replied "well, at first I wasn't interested in you, but then you started teasing me..." I said "how so?" She replied "well, you're all acting like you are king and everything..." to which I replied half jokingly "oh, is that what you like...king?" She then laughed and said "you make it sound all like.." from which she began making a hand gesture of a king walking down a red carpet, all the mean while humming a kingy sort of tune. (this sounds so weird now that I have to explain it lmao) I looked in her eyes and then out of the blue she says "you are a heavy prospect (or "prospector"), and then I suddenly wake up. I didnt know what that meant, thought it was jibberish, so I told me fiance about it. She tells me that a "prospect" is something with potential. It may sound a bit nonsensical, but it makes a lot of sense to me. Ill just leave it at that.

[TheUncanny]

Indeed, it happened last night after a long night of drinking (oddly enough). Most of the dream I do not remember, but I do remember being lucid for a short while. I was in a big park that was very long and skinny. I do not remember the instant that I became lucid, but I remember gaining a great deal of control over my flight (I have had problems with controlling my flight in the past). Anyway, I landed down by this girl and asked her if she knew what a lucid dream was. She said no, so I explained to her that it was when a person is dreaming and, while still in the dream, they become aware that they are dreaming. I then informed her that this was a dream, and that she was a dream person. She seemed very devistated, speechless in fact. I then told her to "carefully observe her surroundings" just before flying away. I just left her standing there, her whole existance thrashed with just a few words from my mouth. Its odd, I feel bad for her.