Coping: A Oneironaut’s “Other World Report”

I am just back from a 5-day adventure experienced in 5-hours of dreaming.  That’s in my “second life” for I’m a oneironaut.

A “oneironaut” is a person who explores other worlds in dreams.

Sure, most of us go to sleep at night and will occasionally remember a snippet of a dream once back in the full waking-state, but oneironautic dreams are those which are not only lucid but which are complete worlds.

Most have their own special spins on  physical properties of this world that are unique to the Dream Realms.

In my book Psychocartography (see the books link at the menu top of this page) I report on a number of my personal adventures as a oneironaut and apply a fair bit of analysis in a “solve for X” manner.

You see, there is a key thing about “dreams” that most people – even those with good religious grounding – have a hard time fully grasping.  It’s the Conservation of Energy concept described in Wikipedia as:

“…Noether’s theorem, developed by Emmy Noether in 1915 and first published in 1918. The theorem states every continuous symmetry of a physical theory has an associated conserved quantity; if the theory’s symmetry is time invariance then the conserved quantity is called “energy”. The energy conservation law is a consequence of the shift symmetry of time; energy conservation is implied by the empirical fact that the laws of physics do not change with time itself. Philosophically this can be stated as “nothing depends on time per se”.

The simple corollary in our studies is that “nothing depends on which world you’re in, either.”

With this understood, many of the aspects and attributes of most religions may be seen in context of oneironautic adventures that have been reported back to of audience of idiots.

In Psychocartography, I I use the example of a bird “landing on a line.”  Thing is:  your soul-stuff (energetic essence) is very much like the bird on the line:  When you are fully awake, you are in this world.  When you sleep, the bird may jump off the line for a few moments.  In this case, you have dream fragments.

Now suppose, however, that the bird not only flies off, but goes to another reality for a while during your physical body’s rest & recharge time.  These are the other “realms” (dream realms) related in the book.

What occasions this morning’s report was an overnight visit to a very interesting realm where during not more than six-hours of Earth time, I lived out several days in the dream realms.

Before I run through the narrative and comments, a “block view” of the dream is useful.  I’ve laid out the blocks so you will be able to follow along through the (sorry it’s so long) narrative of events.  If you were making a movie, or writing a book, here’s are some of the “major scenes” in the adventure:

Scene 1: Shopping with late Parents

As the dream opened, I’m with by (late) parents and we’re out grocery shopping.

I don’t visit their dream realm very often, but it’s nice to visit with them once in a while.

As you may recall, Elaine and I have our own dream world.  It’s an entire world where we have a condo in a nice mountainous area (called Lienieuw, or some-such; solid names in dream spaces can drift in waking-spaces.).  And Elaine tells me have have a second condo further up into the mountains that is literally right in and among the giant peaks.  In our world,, this second condo has mind-blowing “reach out and touch” views from floor to ceiling (and even coming back up the roof a ways) windows.

In today’s dream, I wasn’t there.  I’d gone visiting a different world.

Here, the store was busy and there were a ton of new items in stock so dad was taking his time inspecting things.  Mom because impatient with him, so she said “Let’s go home.”  ]

At that, we did what in dream realms is a “jump” and in film would be a “jump cut.”  We were instantly in a revised version of the family home I’d grown up in.  This was followed with a few minutes of chit-chat.  Then, it occurred to me to ask “What about dad?”

“He has the car and will be hear in a few minutes when he’s done shopping.”

Just as she spoke, a large car – something on the order of an early 1960’s Chrysler Imperial pulled into the driveway.  The car had come down a road that was like (but different) from the one in front of our family home.  It had turned left into the driveway and me, my mom, and a few other entities (known to be present but not seen or named) went out to unload the car.\

OMG what a car.

It was the “show-stopper” in this dream because it was amazing.

Remember how Detroit was on a “fin kick” about then?  Perhaps heralding the coming interest in rockets or jet planes, this MOPAR beast not only had a couple of modest fins and the right and left but there was a HUGE fin in the middle of the trunk.  Just like someone had sawn  the tail off a Cessna 150 and welded it onto the trunk of a “finned-up) Imperial.

Impressive as hell.  And I wanted to drive it.  Which flowed smoothly into the next scene…

Scene 2: Time with Dad

I don’t spend much time with dad when I go “dream venturing.”  He has his worlds and I have mine (just as you have yours).

This time, though, there was some communication needed an d that’s why I’d come to visit.

As we got into that “finned-out” Chrysler, I took the wheel and because to drive down into what would be the industrial area of Seattle from our home on the north end of Beacon Hill.

The car handled like a dream – it seems to float more than drive solidly attached to pavement – and we compared notes on how we’d been finding these “afterlife world” operating. He offered some very good pointers.

I’ll paraphrase, but one of the main ones was that there’s a reason for people to “couple” in the waking world.  That’s done so that a spiritual bond can form so you’ll have a supportive companion in the afterlife.  As he explained it, if you’re a singular person and don’t mate at a spiritual level, you’ll miss many of the sharing joys.

Hard to translate into the language of “back here in waking” but the idea is that you can only get just so much joy out of things.  But, when you have another person to share doing and discovery with, it’s a much richer afterlife.

The father-son talk continued as we moved through almost non-existent traffic through a city that looked like a cross between 1950’s Seattle, Arrival City off in the realm that Elaine and I share, with a heavy dash of Victorian brick work and Sin City *(the movie) visual effects.

“Where do you want to go?” he was asking.

“Let’s go see Larry..”

Scene 3:  Going to See Larry

In the waking-state world, Larry is very similar to me.  Keen on leveraging ideas and doing the most with the smallest footprint.

Just as UrbanSurvival and Peoplenomics can be reduced to a single small computer drive, Larry’s office in the waking world was the bar at the Sixth Avenue Motor Hotel in Seattle.

Not that he drank much – in fact he would only occasionally sip his ever-present champagne.  It’s just that like me, he like the attitude of bar people.  Oh, not when drunk.  But we both understood that there is a continuum of awareness and one reason people drink (or do drugs) is because the paths to other realms are not often as clear as we’ve seen them.

Back in the dream, though, things were different.

There was a knowing that if we were going to see Larry, I’d have to drive north through the downtown area and up to the Denny Regrade district because Larry in this particular world, has an office.

As I approached Denny Way, an east-west street in this world, an odd thing happened.  Instead of  side streets coming into our northbound street at a regular right-angle, they were drifting and the scene took on a “vibe” that can only be described as similar to the train station scenes in any of the Harry Potter movies.  The buildings were of red brick, turn of the century, and in many ways it was like a portion of real world Seattle’s Pioneer Square district had been stitched-in to the Denny Regrade.

As the streets settled in, solidifying if that makes sense, I turned left onto one a couple of blocks south of Denny Way.  A few blocks ahead, I turned left and parked in front of a two story high antique brick building which had an amazing assortment of artwork for sale.  Not pictures, though there were many of those.  It was mostly costumes.

“Guru!”  The voice was Larry’s, no doubt about it.

“What do you think? ”

“I though your were still publishing the marking paper?  What’s all this?”  I gestured to the shop; a high roof overhead and a large loft on the back half.

“Oh, this is for people who come in who don’t know what we do about how the Whole Thing Works.  They can garb-up and be whatever they want and it seems like putting on a costume helps them transition to new places.  Same thing costumes do in the waking-state, it’s just the effects here are more profound.”

“Tell me what’s been going on…”

“Well, wait.  Where did you park?”

“Out in front of the building…why?”

“This is not a very good section of town Guru.  The sands of time are drifting here.  Come here – look at your car…”

Sure enough, looking from the top of the steps of Larry’s shop, I could see the old Chrysler was slowly filling with sand; the source of which wasn’t clear.  But there was a knowing that we had a few minutes more.

“What happened to publishing? You were the father of small-footprint publications?”

“Got a paper here, too.  It’s called City Life and it’s about what goes on in this world.  Keeps me occupied, but it’s the shop that’s the most fun.  Seeing people change.”

A few more minutes of talk and it was time to leave.

Starting the remarkable Chrysler, I had to wait for dad.  He’d been up a fire escape ladder.  Having been a firefighter most of his life, it seems like a natural way to look around a neighborhood. Good views and such.

“Let;s go for a walk…”

So I turned left onto the dream world’s spin on Denny Way and headed…I wasn’t sure where.

Suddenly, there was a “jump cut.”

Scene 4: Another “Afterlife Condo?”

Dad an I had been walking for what seemed like an hour, or longer.  The sun was warm and we were walking a trail that seemed to head south.  A few homes were below us on a pebbled beach and the sea was calm with just a few ripples and the deepest blue imaginable.

Up above us – up the hill a ways – there were trains going by every 10-minutes, or so.

I made a note of this.because I’ve often wondered if the dream realms people made were related to the technology of their times in their most-recent waking states.  Dad had lived most of his formative years in the Depression and through mid-life the 1950’s.  So, it made sense that a “world” he and mom would choose to spend time on would feature the “familiar technology.”

That would explain the car’s age…

Ahead, the trail curved down and to the right a bit and as we followed it, the trail opened onto the back parking lot of a large condo on the water.  It was built with perhaps 10 units on either side of the center.  There was an opening – like an archway – that led from the parking lot through the middle of the building and onto the beach.

“Nice units here, son.  You and Elaine ought to get one for later when you come visiting.”

I nodded.  They were stoutly built out of heavy beams and the woodwork was magnificent golden brown.  Might have been finished in spar varnish, but it might have been Cetol, too.  I just couldn’t be sure.

Dad kept up the pace and we walked to the far end of the parking lot and picked up the beach trail again.

Another few blocks of hiking and another condo appeared.  This one had a few oddities.  One of which was it was set back a ways from the beach so that the trail ran in front of it.  The other was that it looked like part of the wood shake roof of the building had been partially repaired.

“You don’t want this one.”

“Because?”

“While the sales pitch will be they can use the nicer beach of the other condo we passed, the problem with this one is its falling apart.  Roof still leaks I hear and there’s not enough money in the condo fund to do proper repairs….”

Up ahead, I could sense there was an industrial plant of some kind just ahead.

“Oh, that’s the Mobil oil facility.  They bring in barges and there are storage tanks up the hill a bit.  Up by the tracks.”

At this, the trail turned 45-degrees to the left and began up the hill.  Another two blocks of hiking and we were out of the woods.  After crossing a narrow asphalt road, we emerged onto railroad tracks.

“Keep a sharp eye now…lots of trains…”

We were still walking south.  The oil depot was below us and there was a the narrow asphalt road to the right.

Scene 5:  Viewing and “Afterlife Accident”

Dad looked up suddenly and asked “Did you hear it?  Train coming.  We better step up the hill off the tracks.” We angled up to the left again into some ankle-high brush.

As we did so, I looked back toward the tracks.

There, sitting on the tracks was a school bus!  And something was coming down the tracks toward it.

In a moment what looked like a cross between a train and a semi with a full hopper of heavy rock was barreling toward the school bus on the tracks.

In no time at all, the train-truck hybrid had smacked into the rear of the school bus and had come to a complete stop.  The driver of the train/truck backed up and took his rig out onto the asphalt and he had a terrible, panicked look on his face.

Dad was just taking it all in.  “One of the things about this place, son, is regret.  Many of the people here have great regrets like that driver.  He fled the scene of this accident thinking he’d killed people and that will haunt him for a long time…”

“I see what you mean.  I don’t think he saw us,  and since we’re out in the middle of nowhere, he probably thinks he can get away with it.  And he shouldn’t feel that way.

Seeing a rail-riders (a kind of gyro-balanced one rail bike) I pulled it up onto the rails and sped after the fleeing train/truck hybrid.

With my phone, I took pictures speeding along abeam the fleeing drive and his face turned white with panic as he realized there had been witnesses and now there was video.  He was screwed.

He pressed the train/truck even harder and I stopped the rail-rider.  No point to pursuit.  Behind me, I heard a train coming.  Turning the rail-rider around was off the table so I pulled it clear of the rails just as a huge (non-hybrid this time) steam train rolled by.  It was huge – hundreds of cars.

I jogged back up the asphalt to where dad was.

“That man will have a fatal case of regret now,” he explained.  “There was no one on that old school bus; it was empty and headed for scrap.  But the accident had a purpose and that was to sow regret.”

Our walk continued for another hour, or two.  We had walked out a long peninsula water on the right now, but on the compass, we were walking north.  We’d been discussing how the driver of the truck/train hybrid may have come to his senses by now and might come looking for me because I had video of him fleeing an accident scene.

Scene 5: Regret That Kills

After getting out to the end of the peninsula, we turned and started walking back, though to what I wasn’t sure.

Suddenly, the driver was seen coming toward us, with two henchmen, one on either side.

As they quickly closed in on us, dad explained “This is your problem because you chose to become involved.”

I turned to face the oncoming attackers.

“The video!” demanded the driver.

“No, you can’t have it because I am a visitor and not from this realm.  You have no power over me.”

At this, the driver broke down and began to cry. “I killed all those children, so will you please simply kill me and get it over with?”

I glanced at the henchmen and then back and the sobbing driver who had just thrust a long kitchen knife into his chest.

“Twist it, turn it, please kill me!”

“No thanks, I don’t kill for no reason.”

There was some interplay where I kept trying to talk sense into the hapless fellow, but I remembered about non-involvement when visiting other realms, so it wasn’t my place to tell him there was no one on the bus and no one would be coming after him.

Funny thing about regret:  People (seems in all worlds) seize upon it oftentimes without a real basis in fact.  Like what this guy was going through.  He had a terrible death wish (based on regret) and no matter what I did, or said, he would simply not leave me alone.  He was desperate for me to “put him out of his misery.”

Knowing he would never give up, after an hour or so of him throwing himself in front of me with various failed suicide attempts on his part, I finally relented and dispatched the perp with a severed carotid, realizing he would be up from the “pseudo death” in a few weeks.

The henchmen were, by now, sick of the driver’s behavior; they knew he was a personal who had a habit of running from personal responsibility, not realizing that we can never run from ourselves.

Back in the waking world, I experienced a twinge of regret for the severed carotid, but on remembering that none of us ever really die (in the Realms) I felt OK for having taken the right path.

6.  Train Derailment & the Perp’s Kin

The whole couple of hours of trying not to fulfill the driver’s death-wish had given the “henchmen” an opportunity to get to know me.  They were impressed and liked how I handled things; wanting to “do right” and resorting to force only when it was the only option remaining.

“Want to go fishing up in the mountains with us?”

“Sure!”

There was a sudden jump-cut.

Dad and I were back walking on the trail to civilization again.  As we were walking, we noticed down at the water’s edge the water was now much deeper.  Got the impression it was hundreds of feet deep.

Looking back up in the direction of the end of the peninsula where we’d been, I noticed a nuclear submarine had come into view and had moored at a small float at the end of a low pier about 100-yards ahead.

Nothing was said, but we knew it would be a dandy time to get a tour of a modern sub.  So, we went aboard after gaining permission to do so and got the “cook’s tour.”

Literally.  One of the oddities of being a oneironaut is that you will often see actual things (think of it as real-life remote viewing) because there are people who, in their waking-state, realized or otherwise, act as transmitters in these esoteric realms.

On the sub, the person who was my “contact” (real eyes through which I could see in the dream) was someone on the sub who worked in the galley.  Where in the dream, the galley and mess area has large “windows to the outside” in fact what the “windows” likely were in reality were the “sneeze glass” used in buffets and the like.  Apparently, on this submarine anyway, there’s a kind a large glass area just before the food-serving station, so galley workers know people are lining up.

I have no idea if this is factual (in this waking realm we share) but I got the impression that was how things worked.

After the tour was done, we went back topsides and the submarine was being prepared to dive.  As it pulled away from the dock, we were still up top when the sub began to submerge a few hundred feet after departing the float.

Dad wouldn’t jump in the water with me and swim ashore, just yet.  He was still marveling at the controls.  As the water came up, though, he agreed to jump with me off the starboard side of the sub and begin working our way to shore.

We both had large inflated life vests on an it wasn’t a long swim before we came to the beach where a trestle-type bridge crossed from the peninsula to the mainland.  We’d be able to make it back to home, eventually.

Standing on shore, looking at the sub departing and just the sail showing now, dad explained something very odd.

“There’s a young lady on that sub who is related to the driver of that truck/train.  Like him, she carries the same tendency to run from personal responsibility.  Because of it, when this sub is out on patrol, something she will do will result in an accident on the sub and she will avoid responsibility.  Because that’s the real core value information that parents program into their children.

“Will it be bad?”

“It;s some kind of “bump” but it’s not for a while yet.  You’ll know it when it happens.  What’s important though isn’t the accident coming.  It’s how people pass down traits that they haven’t worked out themselves.”

Except, I wasn’t going here because suddenly, there was a “jump cut.”

Scene 7:  Fishing with the Perp’s Kin

There we were, three of us, clamoring over huge rocks in a wide river coming down off a mountain.  The rocks were the size of people – bigger.  We’d stop every so often and put a line in the water but more than anything, it was like a rock-climbing adventure.

Except,. I knew there was about to be an accident and it would involve a train.

I didn’t tell the henchmen, who by now I’d sorted out as shirt0tail relatives of the now-dead truck/train driver, but I knew another “accident scene was coming.

“Did you hear that?” I asked.  There was a knowing that several blocks above where we were in the river on this steep 30-degree slope with lots of trees, that a train would detail on the mountain above and coming rolling down on top of us.

“I don’t hear nothin'” said the larger of the two.

“I’m pretty sure I did, so I’m going to climb out of the river and get up that ridge on the left,” I told them, gesturing uphill and toward the left.

Not a minute later, there was the terrible sound of a train and many freight cars careening down the river wash toward the hapless henchmen.

As I looked, the seen changed slightly and it became apparent that the whole sequence of events was being played out on a massive theatrical stage.  People were seated around were mountain overlooks up slope from where the fishing was taking place.

As the wreckage clattered in, the two henchmen were seen existing stage right (downhill) and cursing they hadn’t taken heed of my warning.

They’d be OK, but I still felt bad about the truck/train driver so I somehow knew I need to go… (jump cut)

Scene 8: Looking Up the Kin

I wasn’t sure how I’d found the house, but I found myself staring at the outside of a ramshackle blue-grey split-level home in the mountains back east somewhere.  Might have been Virginia, but not further west than Kentucky.  The home is located northeast of a mid-sized city of 50,000 or more.

With the truck/train driver (experiencing undeserved fatal regret) and knowing that the daughter, in the Navy now, who had the “not taking ownership gene” with her, it seemed important to offer some additional details of the family home for possible later confirmation.

As you face the split-level home, the living room is on the left and the windows are either broken or a “patch work” of windows.  It’s almost like instead of filling in a large “picture window” area, the owners of the home had decided to “red-neck it” by picking up used, oddly sized windows off Craigslist, or something.

The two henchmen/kin were in the home as I walked up the half stairs to knock.

They told me they had been “expecting me” and that they’d been putting together a lot of supplies because they knew I would be leaving on a Big Journey shortly.

“Where yah going?” the larger asked.

“Well, probably back to Awake.  This dream, you know is getting pretty long.  Just wanted to come by for a visit with my folks, so shopping and the visit with my old pal Larry was Day 1.  Day 2 was a walk with my dad, that terrible accident, then running into you guys.  Day 3 or 4 we went fishing and now we’re in what, Day 5? You’re right,  been a hell of a long trip, but I don’t need any supplies, honestly.”

“Well, better tell you-know who…he’s gone looking for you.”

At this, there was a small ripple of fear.  People who I’ve dispatched in The Realms may not take kindly to me when they are back animated again.  I wasn’t sure how he’d react to me and what his intentions might be.

Makes for an interesting thought problem, though.  If you were killed by someone, and later on, after discovering you never really die, what would your feelings be toward one who dispatched you.  Especially in  the truck/train driver’s role because he was trying to escape a total emotional overload of undeserved regret.

As a visitor, it hadn’t been my roll to relieve his suffering, so I was trying to stay out of his way.

(jump cut)

Scene 9: The Perp – Re-encountered

I’m not a big fan of uncertainty.  I realized I was asleep, visiting one of The Realms and I’d been living something of an “Epic Adventure” along the way.  What began as a nice visit with the folks had grown into a many-days long book.

What the henchmen were thinking wasn’t clear, either.  While I could understand the truck/train driver, accident-scene fleeing perp not liking me for fulfilling his death-wish, the henchmen weren’t hurt when the train wreck came crashing down the mountainside on them.  It was, after all, merely staged, as so much is in dream realms, for our never-ending amusement and entertainment.  Toss in education, too.

Departing seemed like a good idea, though.  No point hanging around for a problem to show up.

I excused myself and went down the stairs and the road curved around to the left and headed almost north.  A block or so later, a small street went down a hill to the right and following that, I can to a very nice boulevard.  One direction headed north, the other south, and curving east and downhill a bit, into the outskirts of the city.

Following this road, about four blocks later, there was a shopping mall.  Entering it, I found it was a long central hallway.  Signs hung on either side and since it was like a “spine” of back to back strip malls, each of the doors off it were like back-entrances to shops that faced the surrounding parking lots.

Then I saw him.  The truck/train driver perp was coming toward me.

He looked fit as ever, he’d clearly recovered and was wearing a plaid, long-sleeved buttoned down shirt.

“Been expecting you.  Came down to get you more supplies for your next journey…”

Staring as hard as I could, it was impossible to make out whether I was seeing malice in his eyes or not.  He was seeming amicable enough, but there was still something that told me he wasn’t completely read-in on what was going on in the larger scheme of things.

Noticing my look, he offered “Why don’t you come back to the house with me and we can get you all set?”

I don’t know if it was my native mistrust, or what, but I wasn’t going to take any chances.

“No, I have to go right now, sorry.”

And with that, I landed back in bed in the waking world.

Scene 9: Waking and Onward

I laid in bed a good while pondering what to do with the previous five-days of In the Realms experienced in what was less than six-hours of Waking World clock time.

After such an adventure, you ask yourself a lot of questions.

How sound was dad’s advice on “coupling?”  Intuitively, it sounded solid enough – logical, too.

Has my buddy in Seattle started a new publication, CityLife?

Is there a condo somewhere, set back from a beach that has roof issues and not enough money to fix them?

And what about the truck/train driver perp’s daughter who’s in the Navy?  Is there a submarine accident ahead?

Train derailment in the mountains?

The answer to all these is yes, or course, because in enough time all possible events may happen.

It’s just a matter of when.

So I decided to get up at 3:16 AM and sit down with a hot cup of coffee, or three, and write all this down.  Can’t do this every day, though, because it’s now almost 5-hours later.

It highlights one of the key points in my book, though:  The fluidity of time,

It has been reported in many DNE’s (near death experiences) that there’s an experience of “life flashing before your eyes.”

While the typical NDE duration (Waking-state clock) may be only a matter of a couple of minutes, it’s hard to believe until you’ve had a several-days long dream like the one reported here, that your “soul essence” stuff doesn’t keep time worth a damn.

Once you break the temporal lock of “logical time” it’s one of the key steps into becoming a more accomplished oneironaut.

I am ever-more impressed with the depth of human experience as the venturing continues.  First, you may experience a few lucid moments,  Then a complete scene in a dream.  From there maybe two scenes, then three….and before you know it, there are nice stretches of Other Realm experience.

As explained at the opening of this piece, Emmy Noether’s notions of conservation of energy are likely true and correct.  And given that there is a “non-local portion of self” in all of us, that leaves only the details of the where – not the if – of the question about whether there’s an afterlife.

One of these days, I will write a kind of “training manual” on point.  Because while most religions have snips and bits of it right, there’s a lot left out and a lot that has been monetized for personal and institutional gains in the waking realm.

Or, do we all have a DMT-induced psychedelic moment at the exit door?  But are dreams of the same “stuff?”

(Jump cut) On that note, a bit of breakfast and maybe a snooze.  Perchance to dream as Shakespeare put it.  Maybe one of the blessings of aging is sorting through the noise and getting clear within ourselves.  In my reckoning, that’s the most important part of life and the 70-years of living is just foreplay for what comes after.

Write when you get rich,

george@ure.net