UFOs AND ASTRAL TRAVEL (CONTINUED)

UFOs and Astral Travel

By Brad Steiger
UFO Report Magazine

Continued from yesterday

Here, briefly, is another account sent to me by one of my correspondents:

"I know that I was not asleep, but I was sitting comfortably in my favorite easy chair, facing the open window and the night sky. An erratically moving light caught my attention. Then a very strange thing happened.

"I thought at first that I was fainting. My entire being seemed to be rolling up from my feet, as if my body were a toothpaste tube and my consciousness was the paste. Finally my consciousness seemed to burst free and soar out through space.

"The next thing I knew I was standing inside some kind of craft. I was aware of a lot of people standing around me, but I could not seem to focus on either their faces or their forms. I was being touched, stroked, prodded. A voice was speaking to me in very earnest tones, but I cannot seem to recall exactly what he was saying.

"The next thing I knew, my wife was shaking my shoulder and telling me that I should come to bed instead of just sitting there dozing. I looked at my wristwatch and I had been in that state of consciousness -- or whatever it was -- for nearly three hours."

(Excerpted)

Now, it would appear, I must add yet another category: projection during which the subject feels that he has been taken aboard a spaceship and has interacted with an alien intelligence.

Consider this account of the kind of UFO-OBE which results in a recognition between strangers.

"When I answered the door, I saw a friend and a stranger standing there. The newcomer had a look of shock on his face. For most of the evening he kept staring at me. I finally insisted that I know why. He said he had had a weird dream about someone he'd never met before, and he had recognized me as the man in the dream.

"He said that in his dream he had been in a clearing someplace with a lot of other people. They seemed to be waiting for someone or something. He did not know anyone there except me. He said that I smiled at him and made him feel calm and peaceful. He trusted me. Then everyone began to look up.

"The sky was clear and star-studded except for a large circular patch directly overhead. Then he noticed that there was a large, oval object blotting out the sky. As he realized this, an opening appeared in the center of the object, and a blue-white light spilled out.

"He felt strange and he looked around to see how the others were reacting. Then he noticed that everyone was floating up toward the opening, one by one. He blacked out and came to in a dome-shaped room. The other people appeared to be awakening at the same time. Everyone had been placed in one of the chairs that lined the walls in three tiers. Across from them were electronic panels with flashing lights, dials, switches. In the center of the cabinets were two seats in front of what appeared to be control panels. Behind this area was a brilliant light. In the exact center of the room was a column, or pole, running thorugh the floor and ceilivng. A low railling about three feet high encircled the column.

"He looked at the other men and women and they appeared to be as confused as he was. He felt as though someone were missing. Then everyone turned and looked toward the center of the room. There stood a man in a close fitting,, one piece, silvery space suit that covered his hands and feet. He wore a globe over his head that obscured his features. "Welcome aboard, friends," he said, as he reached up and removed the globe. And the stranger said that it was me!

"Brad," my correspondent went on. "I have now experienced this sort of thing again and again over a period of a year and a half. The shocked stranger, the stare, the same dream, down to the most minute details. After the fifth or sixth time, I began thinking 'Oh, no, not again!' I can't say how many time this has happened, I have lost track!"

In discussing this dream-recognition phenomenon futher with my correspondent, the following additional comments and details were produced:

For one person to have a dream about a future meeting with a stranger is to produce an occurrence not at all unfamiliar in the literature of psychic phenomena. But we are speaking of a situation in which approximately a dozen men and women have experienced the same dream, identical to the smallest detail, all climaxing with the meeting of the same man. This bends the laws of chance out of all proportion.

"I had them draw a floor plan of the dome-shaped room," my correspondent said. "Allowing for differences in artistic ability, they all drew the same identical floor plan. I then had them mark the position they had occupied on the three tiers of seats, hoping that some of them would mark the same position. But none did. Each one had a different location in which he or she said they had been sitting.

"I then asked them to describe the suit that I had been wearing. Again, the descriptions wre identical.

"Just about every detail that I could possibly think of, I asked; and they all agreed.

"Here is another interesting facet: I asked each one of them when they had the dream, and none could remember. This puzzled some of them. Surely they could recall vaguely if it had been a week ago, two weeks, a month. But they had no idea whether it had been the night before or a month before. Apparently the dreams were not normal dreams.

Upon further reflection, my correspondent decided to relate an extraordinary "dream" he had experienced during the summer of 1959:

"I was sitting in my lounge chair reading, dozing. Yet I was tense, nervous, restless: Something seemed to be in the back of my mind that I seemed to have forgotten and shouldn't have.

"Suddenly I looked toward the door. I knew someone was on the other side. I put down my book, got up, went to the door, opened it a crack, and looked out.

"There were two men there dressed in black. They could have been identical twins, they looked so much alike. They were dark complexioned with Oriental eyes, but they were definitely not Orientals. Remember this was in 1959, long before you people started talking about 'men in black.'

"They never said a word, but I heard inside my mind: 'Are you ready?'

"I don't know why, but for some reason or other, I was ready to go. Since it was so terribly hot that night, I had stripped down to my birthday suit, so I reached for a pair of shorts. Again, I heard inside my head: 'That will not be necessary. No one will see you.' Strangely enough, that seemed to satisfy me.

"We stepped out into the hall, then instantly we were on top of a flat hill in back of the apartments. I was rather surprised that the scene had changed so quickly. I noticed the headlights of a car coming down the street, and I ducked behind the two men. I didn't want to be seen running around in my 'birthday suit.'

"I heard some laughter in my mind, 'We told you no one would see you. Try it!"

"I boldy stepped around in front of them, spread my feet apart, put my hands on my hips, daring anyone to see me. The car with a man and a woman in it passed a few feet from us. They didn't even look in my direction. It was as if we weren't there. That surprised me

"I turned to say something to my companions, and they were looking up. (This is the part of my experience that is similar to the 'dreams' the strangers told me.) I followed their gaze and realized that something was hanging there, suspended above us. As I did so, an opening appeared in its center, and blue-white light came tumbling out o f it.

"I felt a queasy sensation in the pit of my stomach, like when you are in an elevator or an airplane that is dropping too fast. I could see the apartment houses and the ground receding below us. We were floating up toward whatever that thing was. I blacked out as we were approaching the opening.

Continued tomorrow