I once chanced across the ocean and tubed thru a glass darkly.

My exploration into the ontological alien Otherworld Reality across the Atlantic began with a flight from Tejas to O'Haire. While at the Chicago leg of my journey, I sat sipping my last Dos Equis lager while watching the UFO themed CNN Airport segue between endless reports of Littleton copycats and Kosovo bombings.

Once aboard the overseas flight I again had the opportunity to observe the four distinct visual phenomena of my own eyeballs at play against the blue and white backdrop of the clouds and sky. I sat in the cramped seat for eight and a half hours drinking booze at thirty thousand feet next to the very friendly director of one of Chicago's largest downtown Presbytarian churchs.

We talked of the paranormal speakers the church had hosted there regularly as well as his wife's interest in spiritualist mediumship. We also talked about his church's appearance on the show we were watching, Early Edition; a paranormal precognitive moral drama from the creators of Touched By An Angel - part of the religious CBS agenda. Then the main feature fills the monitors, Enema of the State, the NSA/Echelon mythos perpetuated to encompass recent net-minded wire-tapping legislation.

I didn't sleep.

Dawn came and I could finally see the craggy coast of some imaginal realm below. After a time I could see a distinctly alien countryside. A completely irregular patchwork of plots totally dissimilar to any in the States. Patches of bright yellow which I assumed to be raip. We circle and circle and circle and circle. I see more aircraft buzzing about than I have ever seen in one area before. There are small trash fires burning throughout the countryside.

The word is given and suddenly we descend through a veil of clouds obscuring the "real London." Bursting through the layer of fluffy tufts we are greeted by evidence of a not too alien civilization. Within seconds we are three thumps of the wheels to the tarmac.

The cabin musak opens with the symphonic presentation of the main theme from E.T. the ExtraTerrestrial. Through my cabin window I see the 60's sci-fi look of the Heathrow terminals. Interminably long terminal tunnels I would soon be walking through, forever.

Breezing through customs and the tubes I find myself back above ground and in the northeast quadrant of central London, sweating and hefting as I stumble feebly toward my goal: sleep in a comfortable hostel environment. Trying to focus on this goal I am distracted by a green skinned 'grey-alien' sitting meditatively cross-legged in the shop window to my left. A block and a half and three flights of stairs later my head found its target, the feather pillow.

Sleep came heartily.
 
 

Conference Day 1
Saturday 5/1/99

 It was an irony for me to be in such a mythic realm as that of Central London in order to attend a conference purporting to explore the ontological status of imaginal consciousness. Establishing any sort of ontology relating to imaginal experiences like NDEs, OBEs, Lucid Dreams, Mystic/Shamanic Visions, UFO Close Encounters, etc. is a very tall order indeed.

 Travelling outside of one's normal environs is sometimes enough to give one the feeling of OTHERWORLD REALITY often described in the above types of anomalous experience. My dislocation to this world across the sea with attendant sleep deprivation, jet-lag, descent into the underworld and back again helped keep my mind in a most surreal condition. With all the talk on my elist of choice (UFO UpDates) regarding the degree of reality assigned to UFO close encounters and abductions, the importance and relevance of this conference's attempt at quantifying their ontological status did not escape my attention. With this in mind I made my way across town to the Royal Society of Arts located just north of the Thames between the Charing Cross and Embankment tube stations - "Mind the Gap / Watch the Closing Doors."

PAUL DEVEREUX   [abstract, bio]

 Paul Devereux started off the conference with some general announcements. As I began to tape record the session he made a necessary request that people not record the proceedings as they were doing so and expected the tapes to be made available and HOPED that they might be able to publish the proceedings at some time in the future. He didn't sound that convincing and was lamenting the fact that it cost so damned much to put on the conference in the first place - a feat accomplished with the financial help of conference organizer Trish Pfeiffer. Among the other announcements was the disappointing absence of Jacques Vallee who "has been beset by personal problems" but whose paper would be presented by Panel Moderator Stanley Krippner.

 Devereux opened the conference with an abbreviated introduction of his paper presenting the Persian relevance to the realms of the Imaginal (as outlined by Henri Corban who coined the term). He spoke of Henri Corban's contribution to the terminology and researching of anomalous experience via his books Alone With the Alone, Cyclical Time and others. Devereux presented the audience with a brief overview of the why of the conference: to explore the least investigated areas of consciousness research with some of the fields leading lights. To reduce the prevailing paradigms pigeon-holeing of such disparate phenomena as shamanic visions, abductions, out of body experiences, etc. into such reductionistic areas as brain trauma and psychopathology.

 He outlined the three main hinderances to an assimilation of these ideas by our modern world: the numerous conditions/variables which precipitate trance induction, societal ignorance of these realms, and the aforementioned reductionism of the "Physical World Compass." He alluded to the ideas of quantum reality which would be reiterated time and time again throughout the conference; the relevance of the "quantum sea / the Tao" as the ground state of being from which information is revealed to us in the form of psychodrama and the paranormal. He characterized our modern world's imaginal amnesia by describing our status in this waking reality as akin to being "locked into a Lucid Dream."

 Though I wished he had the time to go into more details of Henry Corbin's ideas, Devereux's brief introduction was an excellent setting of the stage for the speakers who followed.

MICHAEL GROSSO [abstract, bio]

 The first official speaker of the conference was Michael Grosso, philospher extraordinair. He discussed his thoughts on William Blake's take on the imaginal. Not being all that familiar with Blake I was thus not as up on his perspectives as I would have liked to have been.

 Nonetheless he did elaborate on Blake's ideas of the after-life as being the imaginal realm. He spoke of the imaginal's power through image and of the image's importance to all mention function. Talk of placebo effects, psychosomatic and endosomatic phenomena led to examples of weeping icons, telepathy, psychokinetics, voudoun and much more. He not only spoke of anomalous phenomena but also of the relevance of transpersonal psychology, psychedelics, and religion.

 Blake said "less than all can not satisfy men." In Blake's philosophy, we are told by Grosso, we see a deconstruction of Christianity and its Apocalypse myth. He sees a relationship "between consumerism and the poverty of imagination." Blake's paradise was a state of consciousness epitomized in the statement "Jesus (is) the imagination." Blake saw in Christ's words and deeds the knowledge that war and intolerance equals a lack of imagination and insight into the Other. "Forgiveness transcends memory" for "image is not memory . . . memory is sensory data and inference." Blake's apocalypse is the idea of Christ's resurrection on an individual, internal level of transformation. It must be imagined anew every time or it becomes dogma and violence.

 Grosso's speech was very well presented and as luck would have it mine was the opening question from the audience. I asked him about his ideas of the imaginal realm being the afterlife and its resonance with the film What Dreams May Come. Unfortunately, he hadn't seen the movie but did say it was an example of these ideas making their way into the mainstream cultures. The second question illicited more of a response and was from an individual whom I ended up having lunch with, along with Mr. Grosso and two others whom I will mention shortly.

 It was at this point that we had our first break of the day. Everyone descended back down stairs to the reception room wherein we were all able to schmooze away unfettered by the question and answer format of the conference proper. As the majority of the folk I wanted to speak to were occupied I made myself busy with a glass of water to calm my iced coffee induced jitters. Immediately I was approached by an older lady who gave me the "have I met you somewhere before" line. Actually, in this case we had "met" but only for a moment as I had rounded the corner towards the nearby coffee house. She and her man-in-tow had been looking for the conference to which I directed them forthwith.

 While speaking to her a younger woman with a slight Jamaican accent approached and proceeded to ask the same thing, "have we met before?" To this Mary (the first woman) and I lightly laughed and let this new person in on our joke. As it turned out, the young woman is a psychic and very interested in all of these subjects. Of course that goes without saying considering she was at such a pricey conference.

 So, unable to speak with the folks I wanted to, I went off to the rest room and returned for another try. This time I was at last able to meet Paul Devereux while he was with his wife Charla who introduced me as "the person I was telling you about whom we lost his confirmation information." To which he did a big head-back gesture of exasperation and apologized. I then spoke to him of my respect for his work and interest in earth lights whereby he recommended I speak to another chap who had worked on the original Hesdalen project - Mr. Jan Fjellander. Paul then got everyone's attention to draw them back into the lecture hall upstairs so that we could resume the speeches. As we moved out of the room I briefly spoke to Alan Worsley who asked if I wanted to speak with Dean Radin, as I had been hanging about them as they spoke amongst themselves. I told him the truth that I would love to speak with both of them at some point.

IAN MARSHALL [abstract, bio]

  Next up was parapsychological enthusiast Ian Marshall who brought his knowledge of mathematics, philosophy and psychology to bare upon the possibility of human consciousness sharing these Otherworld Realities. He is Danah Zohar's husband and has cowritten several books with her. I had really hoped for Danah to be there but considering Ian's original interest and research into ESP he was a more appropriate speaker. Though I know Danah would have done a good job, Ian gave a fine paper.

 He began with a cursory overview of the types of personal otherworlds described variously as the imagination, (lucid) dreaming, trance, ESP, artistic creativity, and the chaotic realms of the schizophrenic. He then described some of the psychological and physiological approaches trying to quantify mind. He spoke of the Myers-Briggs approach of identifying "artistic types" as well as research into the temporal lobe.

 MagnetoEncephelogram's seem to be the most recent promising tool for exploring internal brainwave activity. Already this tool seems to have helped identify neuro-cohesive oscillations of 40 cycles per second within the brain originating in the thalamus. These oscillations bounce up and down, back and forth through the brain but are diminished during dreamless sleep states and cases of alzheimers. These coherant oscillations are what many believe to be possible evidence for the idea that "coherance leads to consciousness;" a concept finding more and more support in the cross over sciences of mind physiology and quantum processes.

 From these newer fringe perspectives to older paradigms of cultural transmission, Ian Marshall sought to outline three possible explanatory frameworks for how these inner personal otherworlds might become the shared otherworlds that were the focus of the conference. These hypotheses start with the most reductionistic theory whereby cultural otherworlds are transmitted in a way perhaps similar to on-going conceptions of Memes, memetics, and memology (see Susan Blackmore's latest The Meme Machine). Ian terms this "weak force" idea as the Beehive Theory. It pursues the possibility of transmission as solely being part of the mingling of ideas; when we view a painting or meet a person we DO take from it some minimal essence of the other person and thus their reality. Ian used the example of Jung's discovery of the German 1930's image of the Aryan myth in the collective unconscious of his patients. (I personally feel the title Beehive Theory would be more appropriate for the next hypothesis which he terms the Telepathy Theory.)

 In the second strongest departure from the mainstream paradigm we have the Telepathy Theory akin to concepts of the WorldSoul; a pan psychic / pan theistic model. In this hypothesis Ian and others utilize the works of he and his wife (from the Quantum Society) and especially Rupert Sheldrake's hypothesis of morhpic resonance. He cites the spectrum of telepathy cases as well as he and his wife's personal experiences of dream switching as possible evidence of such a hypothesis. He maintains that over fifty percent of people feel they have had an experience of telepathic communication.

 Finally, Ian discussed the theoretical framework which finds itself most distant and at odds with the prevailing paradigm, that of Other Plane reality. In this paradigm the angels and aliens represent actual entities with some intrinsic connection to the material realm. All cultures have names for the denizens of these Planes and we can not write-off the distinct possibility that they represent the ecologies of worlds which somehow coexist with our own.

 Ian ended his synopsis of these frameworks with yet another allusion to the research into aspects of the quantum vacuum and its probable importance to the understanding of all these possibilities. I only wish it had started where it ended.

LUNCH

 After his speech it was time for lunch, which was to be two hours. As people milled about before leaving for food, I was able to meet Mr. Marshall and give my thanks to he and his wife for the gifts their book Quantum Society had given me in my time of need (during my GrandFather's passing when I was working on my SAC paper).

 Shortly thereafter I noticed Mr Grosso and others nearby. I used this opportunity to full effect and introduced myself as I had planned, with reference to Robert Larson's suggestion that I meet with him. He was speaking to a fellow by the name of Brian Johnson. Immediately Peter Rojcewicz showed up with the chap who had asked Grosso the question after me. His name is Anthony (Tony) Arcari. Well, they asked me to accompany them to lunch and this proved to be the best part of the conference so far.

 We went to a sandwich shop around the corner and proceeded to have, if not a great conversation at least a damn good one. Brian works with companies incorporating some of these new paradigms into their Hman Resource (ooh eck) work and knows someone who recently finished a TV piece on Area 51 which supposedly sheds new light on the locale (and its seeming abandonement). Tony is a psychiatrist/psychologist at Saybrook where Stan Krippner works. We spoke about films like Dark City, the Truman Show, the Matrix as well as the need for these new paradigms to be REALLY incorporated into institutions, from governments to corporations.

 After eating we sauntered over to the Thames which I saw for the first time. We walked and talked. It was a grand time indeed. We made it back to the conference where we were both delighted and occassionally frustrated by the next line of speakers. On the way up to the conference room I finally had the chance to introduce myself to Dean Radin. I was pleased to hear that he had heard my radio interview with Robert and Greg AND had looked at my web site! I told him I hoped we could talk more later.

CHARLES LAUGHLIN [abstract, bio]

 Beginning the afternoon lineup was a man I had noticed in the audience as looking remarkably like Steven Spielberg but who turned out to be the 'co-founder of biogenetic structuralism' Charles Laughlin. His was perhaps the best given speech so far. He presented himself and his work exceptionally well. But his subject matter was like that of Ian's, good but it should have started where it ended.

 Mr Laughlin went to great lengths to explicate his understanding of myth as a generally much more accurate appraisal of the many hidden forces in the world around us. Through his study of "aboriginal" cultures around the world he has come to the conclusion that their myths and cosmology often intimate truths which science then goes on to prove through its own ways of knowing.

 Charles defines cosmology in two simple statements: it is a totality that IS, with most of its parts being HIDDEN. Giving two additional functions of myth beyond the traditional understanding of the word he states that it "transmits socially important vicarious experience" and involves the "coordination of individual conceptual systems relative to socially valued experience." With a simple overhead projection of the cycle of making and sustaining of myth/cosmology Charles explained how this process galvanized the individual experiencing of these paradigms within the overall reality of the individual's culture.

 He further elaborated upon this tuning in of the cosmology by outlining three points which show how the myth-ritual complex is bound to reality . . .

-through the direct intuitive grasp of the order in reality
-by regulating development of the individual consciousness along socially collective paths and
-through enactments in the world that have real effects and consequences.

 Again Jung was cited. This time in reference to his secretive use of his Archetypal Amplification technique akin to a sort of associational meditation. Jung was reserved with this approach to "active imagination" due to its powerful evocative potential. If not properly utilized in a therapeutic setting the visualizer could be easily overwhelmed by the emotional upwellings of imagery.

 Here again is a more modern approach to Laughlin's central idea, that some aspect of the imaginal intuitive mind can apprehend universal truths and force them up through the unconscious to appear to us in the archetypal garb most suited to the nature of the thing in question. Ritualized re-enactments of myth, and all the seperate but often reinforcing individual experiencings of it, help tune in the true nature of the forces depicted within the myth.

 Native peoples anthropomorphic description of forces akin to the Winds are quite appropriate. This "trueing (of knowledge) references the inherant, epistemic faculty of the brain which produces a cognized world in dynamic and veridical ways in conformation to reality." Here again we have the delving into quantum approaches to mind and consciousness. Laughlin explains that the Universal Cosmology of most native peoples is "wired into reality as HUMANS." As Ian Marshall and Danah Zohar explore in their Quantum Society, humanity may be better served by modeling its institutions which govern our lives after the very nature of reality and its emergant systems, specificaly as it relates to the quantum models of mind.

 What Mr. Laughlin is saying is that quantum physics and traditional cosmology (from a global perspective) outlines the very ideas being researched regarding the physics of the vacuum. He cites the work of Austin's own Hal Puthoff and his sojourns into the realms of this Quantum Sea of potentiality. Laughlin again invokes the Navajo's idea of these forces as the Wind and recapitulates his insistance that such NeuroGnosis operates at the quantum level and is relevant to such things as the study of remote viewing.

ALAN WORSLEY [abstract, bio]

 Next up was Alan Worsley, the man who had been talking with Dean and noticed my interest in him. Alan is the historic Oneironaut who first communicated from the dreamstate to people in waking reality. He did this in a sleep lab some 24 years ago. He has a very quiet, slow and shy sounding demeanor which made it somewhat difficult to hear him at times. Nonetheless, his material was some of the most interesting to me of any of the presenters. He gave much data in his presentation and left me with the urge to communicate with him more.

 I will focus upon his speech in particular within the next installment as a feature of the ELFIS "DreamTime Now" department. He had much of interest to abduction researchers as well as dream devotees.

DARK TEA TIME OF THE SOUL

 I tried to talk with Mr. Worsley afterward but he was besieged by questioners for there hadn't been time for a Q&A as his speech was quite long, perhaps due mostly to his slow style of presenting. I followed him down to the reception area still hoping to talk with him but gave up for the chance to speak to others. I did so quite specificly when I noticed the name printed on one man's conference tag: it was Guy Lyon Playfair! This is the man who wrote a book in the seventies titled The Cycles of Heaven which is one of the most information packed tomes out there, then or now. It was this book which convinced me of the many strange 'energies' that can influence human physiology. He is a watery-blue-eyed man and seemed a little at a loss to speak with me, but he did, and we spoke enough for perhaps both our tastes. I gave him my web address despite his not having web access - "I don't even have a TV," he said.

JACQUES VALLEE [abstract, bio]

 Once upstairs it was finally time for Jacques' paper as presented by none other than THE Stanley Krippner whom I had spoken with on a panel back in 1995 at the SAC conference. Before his speech I had the opportunity to briefly reintroduce myself. I was flattered he remembered me.

 I will hold off now on talking about his presentation of Jacques 'paper. Suffice to say he did a great job of presenting Jacques' outline, filling in the framework with his own experiences which were very worthwhile. I will be reviewing his topic in depth as another seperate article for the ELFIS Mind Kontrol Corner department next installment.

CONCLUSION OF FIRST DAY

 From Henry Corbin's defining a term whose meaning is being reintegrated into modern anomalous experience research to the long overdue assimilation of quantum physics into every aspect of scientific inquiry from anthropology to parapsychology, the first day of the OTHERWORLD REALITY conference was off to a good start. But how much closer were we in this one day of talks to any new understandings of these phenomena and their relevance to our overyday lives? Were we any closer to anwering the question of "how real are these realms?"

 We heard over and over the reports of these strange imaginal experiences being the mainstay of indiginous peoples from around the world. We heard philosophers, mathematicians, psychologists, anthropologists, parapsychologists, and dream researchers telling us of examples of the physicality (or at least the convincing FEELING of physicality) of the imaginal. We heard theory upon theory to accomodate these bizarre encounters and experiences into the semblance of a new paradigm whose outlines we have actually begun to see.

 With these ideas swarming inside the cavern of my skull and that thing I call mind, me, self, I made the journey back into the underground and headed towards the sanctuary of my hostel bedroom. In the nights to come I would incorporate some of the things I learned this day into the occassionally conscious realms of my own lucid dreams. I am still, even as I write these words, pondering from moment to moment, the ultimate meaning of all I saw and heard.

 Little did I realize that the next day's speakers and panel discussion would open my mind further and set it ablaze to smolder, well after my own return home, to these United States of Unconsciousness.

 So, "tune in next week" for the second half of this review of when. . . .

 Next week's episode will reveal:

ELFIS DreamTime NOW!
-Alan Worsley's research into Lucid Dreams & their relation to abduction experiences!

ELFIS MKC Mind Kontrol Corner
-Jacques Vallee's WARNING for the New Millenium; Remote Viewing & the Internet!

-Peter Rojcewicz's Call to Gnosis in our Collegiate Institutions!
-Richard Rudgley's Ethnography of the Imaginal a Wild Global Drug Use Extravaganza!
-Karl Jansen's explorations of Ketamine, the Mental Modem!
-Dean Radin's presentation of the best evidence for the ontological status of imaginal consciousness!

-AND the knock down drag out conflagration that was THE BEST panel member / audience participation discussion of The Millenium.

Hint: It's ALL about S E X   ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !