Date: 08/07/2021
Bedtime: 3am
Awakening: 7.15am
Return to bed: 9am
Method of entry: dream consciousness
Attempt: successful
Phase experience: non-Rubik's cubes
Duration: 1 minute

DREAM STATE

I'm driving a car with my wife as a passenger. I lose control of the vehicle and bump into a parked red convertible, making it move forwards a considerable distance. I worry about dents and witnesses, including the potential appearance of an angry owner. I think about moving the convertible to its original position but I find myself driving and losing control of the vehicle again. Another accident almost ensues but I brake just in time and notice that I may have to reverse in order to avoid damaging a van that I'm nearly making contact with.

I'm looking out the window of my bedroom which overlooks a back garden like the one at my old address. The sky is overcast, it's raining and an intruder climbs over the fence to land on our muddy ground. He has a moustache, long dark hair and his body is wrapped in black bin bags. I'm getting ready to call the police but he jumps over the next fence on to the next garden. Suddenly, I'm outside, in the garden, and looking back at my house, which is all blue and looking nothing like what exists in reality. 'What am I doing out here? Am I dreaming?'

PHASE STATE

I jump up in the air to see if I can levitate. To my surprise, I remain suspended in mid-air. 'I am dreaming!' (Realism: 100%) I continue to rise away from the ground, watching the blue house diminish in size as I gain distance. 'Woah!' I exclaim with excitement as I rise like a helium balloon to an altitude of hundreds of feet before remembering Project Elijah's experiment. 'The Rubik's cube!' I immediately descend towards the blue house and pass through a side wall (avoiding the roof) and subsequently find myself lying in bed with no sight. I get up immediately and open my eyes in a dark version of my bedroom. The phase is shallow (Realism: 10%) as I can barely see anything. Tactility is stronger than vision for sure and I rely on the old hand-rubbing technique to deepen my surroundings. I make out shimmering outlines defining hands that look washed out. I notice a curtain to my side pull it in order to allow sunlight to flood the room. Everything becomes much clearer with bright colours. (Realism: 105%)

I see the wooden bedside cabinet in front of me and immediately open its drawer to find a concoction of strange objects inside, including a cube with only one face resembling an unsolved Rubik's cube. This particular side of the object displays green, yellow and orange squares; the other faces display cartoons similar to Tweety from Looney Tunes. When I try to pick up the cube, it almost comes undone as it appears to be a manifold of interconnected plastic squares malleable to the touch. With my palms, I manage to reassemble the object into a coherent cube and put it back in the drawer before closing it. I reopen the drawer expecting to find a solved Rubik's cube but encounter something else: this time there are two sturdy cubes (slightly bigger than the first one) made of hard plastic with white straw-like edges. Their transparent faces enable me to see the 3D objects that reside inside them. One of them contains little toy dragons and the other holds a mixture of shelled creatures resembling the 'spinies' from the Super Mario game and cute caterpillars that at first I took to be toy worms. I took a few seconds to examine the objects before remaining still to deliberately wake up and remember the encountered objects in as much detail as possible.

WAKING STATE

I record the experience and realise that no solved Rubik's cubes were found. In fact, the objects I encountered couldn't even be described as Rubik's cubes—just cubes of a flamboyant kind. Some of the 'spinies' reminded me of turtles and I wonder if some forms were influenced by what I read before bedtime. I read about Zeno of Citium and Stoicism which might have triggered thoughts about Zeno of Elea and his paradox involving Achilles and the tortoise. This is only speculation, of course.