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March 24, 2007 - Art Bell

02:36:44

Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Lucid Dreaming - Dr. Stephen LaBerge - Dominick Attisani - Leslie Kean - Paranormal Journalism

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	From the high desert in the great American Southwest, I bid you all good evening, good morning, good afternoon, as the case may be across all these many, many time zones spanning the world, and we cover each and every one of them ever so well, one way or the other, with this program, Coast to Coast AM, the largest talk show of its type in the world.
	There's simply no question about that, nothing else is even close.
	Anyway, welcome, it's great to have you, and very quickly, At the beginning of the program, the webcam shot tonight.
	Go to CostaHim.com, Arts Webcam, and you'll see Abby and Dolly.
	Our current two... two, we actually have three cats total, but two of them, and I can't resist, I guess it's like somebody posting photographs of their youngins.
	Dolly is the one on top, the little Philippine immigrant.
	She actually sleeps on Abby.
	So, that was an awfully cute shot.
	Absolutely irresistible.
	So there it is.
	Listen, I mentioned this last week and I want to mention it again because all we did was crash the website several years ago, many years ago now.
	Ramona and myself went to France and we found this little restaurant in the outskirts of Paris.
	Really cool.
	And we finally, it's a long story, but we got something called Pizza Punch and it is now actually on the market.
	Now, last week I mentioned the website where you can go to get Pizza Punch.
	It's something you put on a pizza topping that's really delicious, made with all kinds of herbs and all natural stuff, by the way, just natural stuff.
	And it crashed.
	The website crashed in about nine seconds, actually.
	I think I timed it.
	So I'm going to give out the website again tonight.
	We'll see how long it lasts.
	It's ArtbellsPizzaPunch.com.
	That's A-R-T-B-E-L-L-S-P-I-Z-Z-A-P-U-N-C-H.com.
	ArtbellsPizzaPunch.com.
	Good luck over there at the website.
	It is.
	I've enjoyed it for years, and people have been bugging me for years, asking me about it ever since I mentioned it ever so long ago.
	And it took this many years to get it going.
	All right, we've got a first-hour guest coming up in a moment, and it all relates to the story from Arizona.
	Boy, is this a big story.
	Big, big story.
	Former Governor Fife Symington says now that those strange lights that appeared over Phoenix a decade ago were from another world, and that he had a close encounter with an alien craft on March 13, 1997.
	That's quite a statement.
	He said, quote, I'm a pilot and I know just about every machine that flies.
	It was bigger than anything I've ever seen.
	It remains a great mystery.
	Other people saw it.
	Responsible people, said Symington.
	I don't know why people would ridicule it, said Symington after his ridicule.
	Symington, who was in his second term as governor of Arizona during the Phoenix Lights incident, recently told a UFO investigator making a documentary that He'd kept quiet about his personal close encounter.
	Now listen very closely here, because he didn't want to panic the populace.
	He repeated his story Thursday on CNN.
	I'm sure many of you saw it, saying the craft he saw was, quote, enormous.
	It just felt otherworldly.
	In your gut, you could just tell it was otherworldly.
	The governor Didn't let on at the time, instead poking fun at the whole thing, otherwise known as ridicule.
	He hosted a press conference a few months after the mass sightings to announce that his Department of Public Safety had arrested the culprit responsible, a very tall, bug-eyed creature, brought before the media in handcuffs, and unmasked the creature to reveal his chief of staff, Jay Heiler, who had 6'4", made an imposing, somewhat comical space alien, Symington said the producer of the film Out of the Blue, James Fox, originally sought him out to talk about why he'd spoofed the sightings, but then asked if he'd seen the lights.
	He said, yeah, I got a good look.
	Heller said Thursday isn't a surprise.
	Symington believes in UFOs, said his boss was a Trekkie who enjoyed discussing space travel.
	Heller and Symington was convinced that Earthlings would be traveling to distant solar systems at speeds exceeding the speed of light.
	In our lifetimes.
	I would have said he remained the earthbound skeptic in those talks.
	Symington never mentioned his personal observation of the Phoenix Lights, but always interested in getting to the bottom of it, I would have said.
	The DPS was at a kind of loss as to how to investigate an alien visit.
	Now, this is one hell of a big story.
	Leslie Kane broke it.
	In a moment, Leslie Kane, Kane, is an investigative journalist whose articles have appeared in numerous newspapers and magazines around the world.
	She is also, by the way, a contributing producer for an investigative news program on KPFA Radio, a Pacifica station, and the co-author of Burma's Revolution of the Spirit, the Struggle for Democratic Freedom and Dignity.
	In a moment, Leslie Kane.
	Alright, just as I bring Leslie on, I would like to make note of one, I think, critically important line in this story.
	He says that he kept quiet about the whole thing because, quoting, he didn't want to panic the populace.
	Now, I've had on people And people and people and people and people and people commenting about UFOs, and to the person they all say, oh, oh no, if we found out something about a UFO, if we had a sighting, oh, believe me, the public would know about it just like that.
	What a load.
	Leslie, welcome to the program.
	Thanks Art, it's great to be here.
	Good to have you.
	So you broke the story.
	I did.
	I was very pleased.
	As a journalist, as you mentioned, it's a big story, and I was certainly able to recognize that.
	It's a monster story, Leslie, but of course it would have been a lot bigger ten years ago.
	Well, that's true, but I think what's important now is to focus on the fact that this man has come forward, that it takes a lot of courage to do that, and we can really benefit from him being part of all of this now, and he's really very committed to it.
	He cares, so I don't want to focus so much on the fact that he didn't do it before, although I know a lot of witnesses have strong feelings about it, but I'm just trying to get this out as a very positive development.
	Well, it is a positive development, but it's inescapable, Leslie.
	After all...
	You know, we've had so many UFO stories, some of them better than others.
	This was one of the best, Leslie, one of the best.
	I was on the air the night this occurred and took a gazillion phone calls.
	And, you know, it would have been so... If the governor had come out and said he saw it, it would have been such a monster of a story.
	Now, I understand what he said about because he didn't want to panic the populace, but Was the populace honestly going to get any more panicked, in your opinion, than it was already, if he had just said he'd seen it too?
	I don't know, Art.
	I mean, I'm not really in a position to, you know, know what the answer to that is.
	I mean, my concern with all this right now is simply, as a journalist, I'm very interested in telling your listeners what it's like to try and cover a story like this, and just some observations that I've made, not only about the case in terms of my own investigation, but And also just how the media works around all of this.
	I think it's really, really an interesting journey to be on, quite honestly.
	Boy, I agree with that.
	One thing I'd like to note, and see if you agree, Leslie, going back to, I'm going back to the night that I took all the millions of calls.
	Right, right.
	The next day, and the next week, and even the next month, Leslie, there was nothing in any other media.
	It's like it didn't happen.
	I know, that was amazing, until the USA Today story came out in June, which was what got the story onto the national level.
	But you're right, there was, except for your program, I'm sure, but there was about a two-month period where there was no national coverage, anyway, of this thing.
	It just disappeared.
	And then it's like somebody threw a switch.
	Well, it's one of the amazing components of it.
	I mean, I've talked at length with Frances Barwood, who I know you've had on the show before.
	Oh yes, oh yes.
	And, you know, she's fascinated by the fact that people literally seem to forget about it for a few months.
	And, you know, I've noticed this in other UFO cases.
	There is some kind of a mechanism sometimes that seems to be in operation where people have some kind of a blackout about what happens.
	And here it happened on a mass scale.
	So it's a very fascinating aspect of the whole thing.
	Do you have any answers for that?
	I don't know.
	I don't know what's going on with that.
	But, you know, there are a lot of people that have looked into many cases where that seems to have happened to people.
	Yeah, but that's part of the media story, Leslie.
	Excuse me?
	That's part of the media story.
	In other words, how can that happen?
	How can the media be silent about a giant event like that?
	Two months go by and then all of a sudden, boom, all of the media is on it.
	Is it just the herd thing?
	I really think it is, Art, because the media, you say, they're all on it.
	They get on it for a couple of days, and then it goes away.
	And what's important to me, you know, as an investigative reporter, I mean, when you look at the story like this, there are so many things that an investigative reporter could follow up on with this, to take it much further.
	And I'm sure it's going to happen here.
	There's going to be another round of media, because the film Out of the Blue is going to be coming out with the original interview with Governor Symington, with a lot more information in it than we have already.
	There's going to be another blast of all this stuff in about a month when this movie comes out.
	But, you know, otherwise it just disappears.
	It always happens.
	You know, just a quick example, Art, of something that I wrote in my story, which is the one that actually first came out, which was last Sunday.
	You know, I don't know, and people can go on my website and read it, and you'll probably, the address is freedomofinfo.org, but the point is I discussed the fact that in both In Belgium and in England, both of these cases in the 1990s, there was a very similar, if not identical, triangle observed over those two countries.
	It was thoroughly investigated by the government.
	There were many witnesses.
	They were all interviewed.
	Data collected.
	The Air Force in Belgium got all this stuff on radar.
	The Ministry of Defense investigated the case in England.
	They were three years apart.
	Both of those governments came out publicly and stated that this craft With the craft of unknown origin.
	They could not identify what it was.
	They released the information to the public.
	Now, when you compare that to what's happening in America, the contrast is vast, of course, because our government doesn't even acknowledge that anything happened in Arizona.
	But the point being, any investigative journalist who is interested in this could follow up on those cases in Europe and draw the comparison between what happened here and what happened there.
	And there's so many little things like that that come out and nobody follows up on them.
	And that's what's really astounding to me.
	How did you get onto this story?
	I got onto this particular story because I'm very closely associated with James Fox, who's one of the producers of the film Out of the Blue that I mentioned earlier.
	And I've been a colleague of his and of the other producers for years.
	And so I was kind of privy to the fact that James, who originally met with Symington and interviewed him, I was informed about this.
	He recognized it was a big story.
	I recognized it was a big story.
	We all kind of decided together that we would try to get it out by the anniversary of the Phoenix Light, the 10th anniversary, which we just had.
	I was very, very pleased to be able to.
	Then I, of course, did my own interview with him.
	As I said, there will be more that will come out in April when Out of the Blue gets released for the second time.
	But I was very pleased to be able to break the story in the print media, and that's sort of the way it happened.
	It was through my association with Out of the Blue.
	Alright, well Governor Symington goes quite a bit further than saying he saw the Phoenix Lights.
	He goes on to say, apparently, that what he thinks he saw was an alien craft.
	And that's a big jump.
	That is a big jump.
	And I think the first step, to make really clear, the first point he makes was that he did see a physical craft with dimensions, with shape.
	It was not just lights.
	And one of the things I've noticed, which is one of the points I wanted to make, Art, to your listeners, is the media is very fond of referring to this event as the lights.
	If you notice in the AP story that you were sort of quoting from in the beginning of the show, they keep referring it to the lights.
	The governor saw the lights.
	In fact, he didn't.
	He saw a physical craft, a vehicle, with edges, you know, with a physicality that had some lights on it.
	And the point that's really important also along those lines is to make a distinction between the 8.30, there was a group, a sighting that occurred between 8.15 and 9.45.
	The flares and the real thing, yeah.
	Exactly, and that's when the thousands of people saw this solid object over Phoenix and in other locations throughout Arizona.
	Then there was a separate event at 10 o'clock.
	Which is those famous videos, you know, that we've all seen many, many times of the row of lights that some people believe were flares.
	And anyway, it's very important for people to realize that those were two different events.
	And the media, every single media story you read, they mix them up.
	They just say, oh, there were these lights and some people say they were flares and blah, blah, blah, blah.
	But there was a very separate event at about 8.15, and that's the window of time in which Governor Simonkin saw the object.
	In which it was a physical object and it was not the same thing as the pictures that we all see of those, you know, the row of lights, which Bruce McAbee, among others, believe were flares according to their own analysis.
	But we know that the time period in which the governor saw this object, we're not dealing with the issue of flares at that time.
	We're dealing with the fact that there was a physical craft in the sky and thousands of people saw it.
	You bet.
	Leslie, did you interview, did you speak to the governor?
	I did, I did a lengthy interview with him myself, yes.
	Alright, alright, good.
	Can you characterize the governor's demeanor during that interview at all?
	Yes, absolutely.
	There are some things that just don't come out in a story, and one of those is the demeanor of the person doing the interview.
	That's absolutely right, and of course it will come out when people see the movie Out of the Blue, they will see him on camera.
	And he's a very straightforward, uncomplicated You know, a direct person.
	I mean, he's very, you know, he's just willing to sort of cooperate on us with this.
	I mean, he's just a very honorable, believable, credible person.
	And, you know, he doesn't give long, long, detailed answers.
	He's just right to the point and, you know, says, you know, I've decided now that I want to make amends to people.
	You know, this does not deserve to be ridiculed.
	He had his reasons for what he did at the time, and he's given an explanation for it.
	And I'm sure that we will learn more over time about all of that.
	But he seems extremely sincere to me.
	And he's also been very concerned that this story come out properly.
	That's why, you know, he wanted me to be the one to do it, because he knows I've written on UFOs before, that I know something about them.
	It's not going to be some fluff piece that's going to come out.
	And he really does care about how the information is presented.
	And he cares that the truth be told about this event.
	He wants the government to investigate this.
	And he's going to get behind that.
	He's not going to back off.
	Did he have regret now that he did not come out then?
	And if he had to do all over again, would he have come out?
	Well, you know, he certainly regrets having done that press conference.
	I mean, he does not seem to have been as aware as he would have liked to have been about how much that upset people.
	In terms of whether he wishes he would have come out, I didn't ask him that question directly, so that's something that we'll have, you know, somebody else, we'll have to, I don't want to speak for him on that.
	I mean, there were so many factors that affected his decision not to come out.
	Was the press conference his idea?
	Excuse me?
	Was the press conference his idea?
	He says it was entirely his idea, and that nobody pressured him, nobody influenced him, and that's what he says, that he just wanted people to lighten up.
	And so he decided to do this.
	Again, hopefully we'll learn more about all of that as, you know, as things unfold.
	But that's what he says, yes.
	It's his idea.
	Leslie, this is just asking for your opinion as a reporter.
	But, you know, the reason he gave is he didn't want to panic the populace.
	Okay, fair enough.
	And, you know, I think that something like that could panic the populace if the government had hardcore evidence
	that something from somewhere else was in our skies At any given time is it your opinion that for the very same
	reason they would probably make the very same decision
	Yes art it actually I and I don't know if that's your opinion, but yes, it is my opinion
	I knew that and that there may be even be some wisdom in that opinion
	I don't know.
	There may be.
	He said he didn't want people to panic.
	He also said he didn't want to stir the pot up too much.
	He was going through a lot of issues in the state of Arizona at that point.
	He was an elected official.
	He just didn't want to muddy his own situation.
	He was being challenged by the courts in a court case.
	Yes.
	And so I don't think he felt that, you know, saying he'd seen a UFO would help his situation very much.
	That's part of it.
	I thought, you know, there were a lot of things, and as you know, people and elected officials have a lot of trouble dealing with this issue.
	So I don't know whether he would say, you know, if I look back on that, that he could have felt he could have done that part any differently.
	I don't know.
	And I agree with you, Art.
	I think that He represents what most people in government would probably feel about this, in terms of the question of whether they would speak out about it or not, if they knew something.
	Well, times certainly are changing, but not that much.
	And I really feel, and I've said this again and again, despite other people's protests on the subject, that they just wouldn't make it public, Leslie.
	The Brookings Institution did a big study on this, and they kind of said the same thing, that if we had hard evidence of aliens being here, it would probably better be kept secret.
	Right.
	Especially if they would have to say that they're here and we can't do anything about it and we have no power and they have better technology than we do.
	And that's it.
	Good night.
	End of story.
	I don't think any government wants to admit something like that.
	How did he imagine that his now admitting this would affect the whole story?
	Very interesting question, and I can't really say except that he seems very committed to pursuing the truth on this matter.
	I mean, he really believes that there's an issue here that needs to be investigated, and I think he's going to be really helpful.
	That's as far as I know right now.
	All right, Leslie, hold it right there.
	We're talking to Leslie Cain, who broke the Fife-Symington story about what he really saw, what he now admits he really saw, which he calls an alien spacecraft.
	He believes it was an alien spacecraft.
	We're going to take a break here and we're going to continue exploring this along with, by the way she did a story on the O'Hare sightings and something on the French government which just released all they've got.
	I'm Art Bell.
	Tis I.
	Hello, everybody.
	Leslie Kane is here.
	She broke the Simington, the governor, uh, uh, Mike Simington story.
	I'll get it right, maybe.
	It really is a big story, but it's not her only story.
	She's reported on UFOs previously.
	I think she just filed something on the O'Hare sighting.
	Previously, she's had other stories, the Kecksburg UFO case, and others.
	If she's not careful, she'll get to a certain point and she'll be known as the UFO reporter.
	In a moment, Leslie Cain.
	Well, let's see.
	The Kecksburg crash.
	That was a big story.
	And then she wrote about, well, I guess it was Kecksburg actually in the lawsuit, and the UFO thing in the Boston Globe.
	That was a French thing.
	And then O'Hare.
	And now, of course, Fife Symington.
	Leslie, how many UFO stories do you think you can write before you get to be the UFO reporter?
	Geez, I don't know.
	Maybe I already am the UFO reporter.
	Maybe I'm the only one.
	I don't know.
	Believe me, you can report on mainstream everything and then just about six or seven UFO stories in a few years and they will label you.
	Anybody who doesn't like you, Leslie, is going to label you the UFO gal.
	I know.
	Well, so far it's been okay, and I think it's because I'm so careful about what I publish, Art, that I just, I publish only very factual, straightforward information.
	So, uh, I haven't really given people a lot of fodder to make fun of me, and so far it's really been okay, I have to say, actually.
	Good.
	So, uh, you know, you just gotta know how to present this issue, and I've had a lot of good people advising me, and you have to present it in a certain way where you don't give anybody fodder to make fun of you.
	Right.
	Well, they will anyway.
	What have you written on the O'Hare thing?
	On O'Hare, basically, you know, the story was broken by John Hilkovich from the Chicago Tribune.
	You've probably talked about it on the show, right?
	Oh, yes.
	People know what it's about.
	So I did a follow-up piece to his piece.
	Basically, I wanted to put the whole thing in a kind of a bigger context of dealing with aviation safety issues.
	And also, I did an interview with the FAA about it, following up on Hilkovich's interview.
	But they told me that it was something First of all, they said it was weather, right?
	As you know.
	But then they got more specific with me and said it was something called a hole-punch cloud, which is a very specific phenomenon that occurs very rarely, but it does happen where you'll see this clear-cut hole in a cloud.
	You know, like people describe that this object caused this hole.
	Anyway, I was able to interview a bunch of cloud physicists and climatologists, and I find out that it absolutely could not have been a hole-punch cloud because it was too warm that day.
	The whole punch cloud can only occur in below freezing temperatures.
	I mean, that's a simple answer.
	So here the FAA is suggesting that it's something that can't even exist in those kinds of conditions.
	It pretty much wipes out their argument.
	They've been able to offer nothing else.
	To explain away this situation.
	I just wanted to keep the attention on this subject.
	Not to mention the eyewitnesses who saw Solid Craft last night.
	Absolutely.
	And that was well covered by Hilkovich.
	I was trying to sort of add to that.
	And I also did an interview with John Callahan who was very high level in the FAA in the 80s.
	You may be familiar with him.
	Oh yes.
	And he was head of accidents and investigations and was involved with the Alaska case in 1986 over, you know, the Japan Airlines case.
	Yes.
	So he's very experienced in dealing with this very situation where the SAA has all kinds of, you know, they had a lot of data on that case and then they basically wrote it off.
	So he came out as an advocate for this particular case in the story and He made this very nice little quote here, he says, that this was predictable, the response of the FAA here, and he says, the FAA will offer a host of other explanations as if they're wearing a blindfold.
	It's always something else, so it can't be what it is.
	Yeah, well, it used to be swamp gas, now it's a hole-punch cloud.
	Exactly, and what will it be next time?
	You know, I mean, they'll just come up with whatever is convenient and this happens, but it was important that we have somebody of his stature, I think, to make that kind of a statement.
	No question about it.
	You're doing really good work and I don't want to discourage you at all.
	Don't be discouraged.
	This is really important stuff.
	I get more inspired every time.
	You get into this battle mode here and you just want to keep pushing.
	Could I give out my website, Art?
	You certainly can.
	If people want to go read the original story on Fife Symington, which is much more complete than anything that's come out since, go to the website which is www.freedomofinfo.org.
	Short for Freedom of Information.
	And on that site there's a link to the Out of the Blue website and you can actually see a clip of Governor Symington on that site talking about what he saw.
	So, go to freedomofinfo.org, and then you can go to Out of the Blue, which is outofthebluethemovie.com.
	Well, I hope your website's ready for a lot of traffic.
	I hope it doesn't crash like the French government website did.
	Yeah, the French.
	Listen, what do you think of the French, by the way?
	I'm very pleased with what they've done, and my first story that I wrote for the Boston Globe in 2000, my first UFO story, I've covered lots of other subjects, but was about the French report, the Cometa Report, which you probably remember.
	So I was very, of course, very pleased with that, and I think it's terrific that they've released these files, and I look forward to getting somebody to translate all 100,000 documents.
	It'll take a while.
	I found it really intriguing.
	It's coming out that only, rather, 25% of the reports the French are disclosing were completely inexplicable.
	25%.
	Now that's a far, far higher number, Leslie, than any other government has ever admitted.
	That's true, although wasn't that comparable to the Project Blue Book?
	Didn't they have something like 30%?
	33%.
	I thought it was, when you actually looked at the data, I think they claimed it was lower, but isn't it when you actually looked at it that it was much higher?
	Maybe it's subjective, but the official version was very low, under 10%.
	No, the official version was, but I think if you actually read it, you know, people like Stan Freeman who have studied this thing inside out, I think they concluded that it was actually quite a large percentage of cases, but here the government is coming out and actually saying it.
	Do you think that the French government's releasing virtually everything, I assume we've got most of it, is going to lead other governments, perhaps even ours, doing the same thing?
	Let's hope so.
	I mean, I was hoping the Cometa Report would lead our military to, you know, take similar steps, because there are so many issues they addressed in that report had to do with the military and national security and so forth, and of course it didn't happen, but, you know, Maybe there's something now that's going to happen here.
	We've got Symington, we've got these French documents, we've got a lot of other sightings going on around the world.
	Maybe we've got some momentum here.
	Actually, we're having a... I would say we're having a flap right now.
	Seems that way, doesn't it?
	Yes, it does.
	Seems that way.
	We've got a lot happening all at once.
	Are you going to stay?
	You know, the O'Hare sighting was only a couple of months ago also.
	Yes.
	Yes.
	Are you going to stay very hard on this area, Leslie?
	Am I going to stay with Phoenix Lights?
	No, no, not necessarily.
	No, with the whole subject.
	Yes, absolutely.
	I'm very committed to it.
	Yeah.
	I mean, once you get hooked on something like this, it's hard to stop.
	And I think it's an extremely important subject, and I only wish more journalists would take it seriously.
	It deserves to be taken seriously.
	Have you ever seen anything yourself?
	I haven't, no.
	I've been told, and I believe it's probably a good thing that I haven't because it sort of gives me an aura, a greater aura of objectivity if I haven't seen one myself, if you know what I mean.
	Not only do I know what you mean, but unfortunately I had a sighting years into doing this program.
	I had a triangle come directly over me.
	And my wife.
	And I thought about it, Leslie, really, really, really hard before I went public with it.
	And the only reason I did it, finally, because I brought my wife at the time on, and she, of course, backed up everything I said.
	Had it been myself alone, I think I would have never said a word.
	Was it as big as the one in Phoenix?
	That's subjective, but it was monstrous, and when it went over, the moon went away, the stars went away, and then I watched it cross the entire valley.
	It was deadly, absolutely silent, about 150 feet above me, no sound whatsoever, no propulsion system of any kind, it wasn't flying, could have been doing more than about 30 miles an hour, so it was floating, or if you wish, defying gravity, whichever.
	Sounds just like what they described.
	In fact, when I talked to Simonton, he kept emphasizing the silent part of it.
	How absolutely phenomenal that the dead silence was and how that made him feel that it could not possibly be one of ours.
	We just don't have technology like that.
	Yes, and what I saw had all kinds of substance to it.
	It was black in color.
	You could make out the details of it very, very clearly.
	I felt like I could have thrown a rock at it.
	It was that close, Leslie.
	Maybe it's better if you don't see something because, as you point out, it lets you be more objective.
	Who knows?
	I'd sure like to.
	You know, we're hoping also, Art, that maybe a Symington Statement will help other witnesses feel encouraged to speak out about this, maybe other people in higher levels in government or in levels of profession where they felt they couldn't talk about it.
	And just to mention, very briefly, there's going to be a conference next weekend in Arizona, specifically for the purpose of providing a forum for witnesses, and witnesses are going to be there and talk about this incident.
	And so I just wanted, I promised the organizer I would give out the website.
	It's www.seriousseminars.com.
	S-I-R-I-U-S seminars.com if anybody's interested in attending.
	Or they can send me an email if they didn't get to write that down from my website and I'll give them the information.
	Seriousseminars.com.
	Leslie, how's the feedback to what the Governor has said been so far?
	Well, you know, I think it was... I'm glad you asked that, because it's been pretty positive.
	I mean, the media has been all over this, and he has decided, after doing CNN, which was on a couple of days ago, that he's not going to do any more media for a while.
	But it was really quite respectful and positive, and just, you know, just Friday, this story came out on the AP, which I feel is beginning the sort of tinge of ridicule that we always get with these stories.
	You know, they talk about the fact that he was a Trekkie, and then they bring on a pilot who says, oh, it was just airplanes, and only any rational person would realize that.
	It's just much more the typical kind of story.
	So far, there's a lot of interest.
	I just hope that it doesn't become sort of an attack on him after a while.
	That's what often happens.
	But it's been amazing how much interest there is in this.
	It says, further down in the article, Tucson astronomer and retired Air Force pilot James McGaha said he investigated two separate sightings over Phoenix that March night and traced both of them to A-10 aircraft flying in formation at high altitude.
	Yeah, I mean, you know, that's fine, but, you know, a thousand other people saw something between 815 and 845 that was not airplanes in formation.
	I mean, that's just a fact.
	And, you know, for AP to pick this one guy And the whole story with his comments as if it's sort of the definitive, you know, perspective on the whole thing.
	It just is very biased.
	Well, Leslie, here's one for you.
	Remember the setting I told you I had?
	Yes.
	Well, many, many people here in the Pahrump Valley, the valley where I live in southern Nevada, also saw the same craft that night.
	And, of course, they all contacted the local newspaper and media here in Pahrump.
	And the newspaper, in turn, called Nellis Air Force Base and said, what the hell's going on?
	Nellis said, oh yes, there was a secret mission that may have overflown the Pahrump Valley on that night, at about that time.
	It was a C-130 aircraft on a secret mission.
	Yeah, right.
	I flew in C-130s, Leslie.
	They're not triangular.
	They have extremely loud engines that would rattle your teeth at 150 feet, and they have no relationship whatsoever to what I saw.
	It was an insult.
	Exactly.
	That's just exactly right, Art, and that's exactly what this James Magaha statement is to Symington and every other person who saw this thing.
	I mean, it was so low.
	You just said it all right there from somebody who actually saw it themselves.
	And then there was the case in Illinois in 2000, do you remember that?
	Of the police officers that saw this thing in the middle of the night in different locations?
	I've run the audio, the actual radio audio from that here on the air, Leslie, and it's astounding to really hear it.
	I've heard some of that.
	There was a documentary on the Travel Channel, of all places, about it that was really excellent.
	And they played the tapes of when the officers were calling in to the headquarters to report it.
	That's what you're probably talking about.
	It is.
	Leslie, listen, I'm just asking for an opinion here, so everybody be clear on that, but Leslie, how much do you imagine that our government really knows about this topic that they're not saying?
	Again, I mean, it's all opinion and conjecture, but it's hard for me to imagine that since these sightings have been going on for, let's say, since the 1940s, maybe longer, How they could possibly not be interested in something like this.
	It's just inconceivable.
	Therefore, if you want to assume they've got to be interested in things flying around, therefore, to whatever capability they have of collecting information about these things, they're obviously going to do that.
	Maybe they've retrieved crafts that have crashed.
	I don't know, but any rational person would have to assume that the government is going to be interested in something like this.
	Well, here's an angle, Leslie.
	After Blue Book, after Project Blue Book, the government said, well, we don't know what these are, but whatever they are, they are not a threat to national security.
	Now, that's an amazing statement, because if aircraft, in violation of your airspace, can violate it at will, And that's not a threat to national security.
	I would be interested in what a threat to national security, how it is defined.
	Exactly, especially now after 9-11 when people are so concerned about it.
	That was a very, you know, that came up a lot around the O'Hare case.
	You have something hovering over an airport in restricted airspace.
	Isn't that a threat to some kind of security?
	Very busy airspace.
	And if it had been a plane, this is a point that's very important, if that had been a plane, From, you know, let's say an unidentified airplane that had come in from, let's say, even from another country or even, you know, some pilot that was off course, it would have been tracked and investigated and it would have been a big deal and considered a safety violation.
	Just because it's something that, you know, it looks like a disc, they're going to decide it's not a threat?
	That doesn't make any sense at all.
	Other countries, they're so much more open.
	For example, Mexico, where they've actually, in Mexico City at the airport there, they've actually had collisions and near collisions, including collisions with UFOs.
	Right.
	And they report on these things.
	Here, as the old movie goes, no, I don't want to report one of those things.
	Exactly.
	I think we're really on the extreme.
	And that was, again, the example I gave of both Belgium and the UK, which is acknowledged publicly.
	that these triangles exist and that they can't identify them, they're not American, they're
	not anything else that you can explain.
	I mean, can you imagine if the American government ever came out and said that?
	I mean, it would just be unthinkable because we're so used to having our government be
	in such denial about this.
	Normally, Leslie, if we have something, even in the test stage, it's leaked like crazy.
	I mean, there are pictures of it and that sort of thing.
	You don't see pictures of these giant triangles, even in speculation, with regard to some secret U.S.
	aircraft that's being developed.
	That's absolutely right.
	And if, let's say, these triangles have been seen since the 70s, wouldn't we, if we had that technology, wouldn't we have used it by now?
	That would be my opinion.
	I mean, but we, you know, it's inconceivable.
	I mean, anybody who saw this thing over Phoenix, and you yourself, I don't know.
	It's pretty hard to imagine that any, that we could have that technology, from what I've heard about it.
	But if we did, why would they be flying it around over populated areas?
	And why wouldn't they be making use of it?
	Well, the other side of the argument is, there are all kinds of UFO reports, even of UFO crashes, going on right now in Iran.
	And of course, we're very interested in what's going on in Iran right now.
	So, maybe we are flying something or another.
	However, if something like that had crashed, the Iranians would be parading it around in the streets, and there hasn't been any of that.
	Right.
	Now that Iranian crash thing, I remember reading about that.
	That sounded pretty interesting.
	But I don't know much about it.
	It's hard to get information out of Iran, I guess.
	I know.
	There's probably another story there.
	You know, I'm proud of you for following this path, because you know there's a possibility of being ridiculed when you do this kind of story, so stay careful, Leslie.
	Thank you.
	It is difficult.
	I mean, I wasn't trying to diminish that.
	It's more difficult when I'm one-on-one with people, when people ask what I do.
	You know, when you mention UFOs and there's always sort of this laugh or something like that.
	I know.
	But I'm very grateful that, you know, there hasn't been any kind of public attack or ridicule so far.
	I think I've just been very careful about how I present it, and that's the key thing.
	Stay careful.
	Yes, there's almost an obligatory chuckle at the end of any UFO story.
	That's absolutely right.
	When you mention the word, it's so loaded, you know?
	That's why a lot of scientists prefer to use some other terminology.
	So, it's not fun, but you know, hopefully it'll change over time.
	The more serious information we can get out there, the more and more people will acclimate to it.
	Well said.
	Leslie Kane, thank you for being here.
	Thanks very much for having me, Art.
	Good night.
	Good night.
	Indeed, here I am.
	Good evening, everybody.
	Please, oh please, oh please, I'm getting so many requests.
	Write this down, if you would.
	And I'm not going to mention it again.
	It is the Pizza Punch site.
	It's ArtbelsPizzaPunch.com.
	That's A-R-T-B-E-L-L-S, plural, ArtbelsPizzaPunch, P-I-Z-Z-A-P-U-N-C-H.
	All together, ArtbelsPizzaPunch.com.
	All right.
	I've got two guests coming up.
	We're going to talk about lucid dreaming and a lot more.
	Guest number one is Dominic Harasani.
	A lucid dreamer and avid meditator since his mid-teens, Dominic Harasani has been exploring the inner worlds for more than 30 years.
	His first spontaneous lucid dreams, he recalls, began at age 13 or 14.
	13 or 14. Since then, his practice, Yogic and Monroe Institute methods...
	You know about the Monroe Institute.
	In fact, I was honored to interview Mr. Monroe.
	Methods of Reproducing Border States of Consciousness, as well as Experimental Work and Shamanic Inductions.
	He has been associated with the Lucidity Institute as a member for over 20 years now and has been on TLI staff for seven years.
	At the Institute, he is a lucid dream training program facilitator, sometime experimental lab subject on the research side of the Institute's work.
	It's like a lab rat, I guess.
	His special interest lies in transitional states of consciousness.
	REM onset and the wake-initiated lucid dreams are wilds, W-I-L-D-S, often associated with out-of-body perceptions.
	Now, out-of-body perceptions, that's an interesting phrase by itself.
	And then, Stephen LaBerge, Ph.D.
	You should know him or heard of him.
	He's a world-renowned authority on lucid dreaming.
	His pioneer studies at Stanford University have brought scientific attention to this potentially illuminating state of consciousness.
	Dr. LeBerge's recent research shows how the phenomena of lucid dreaming sheds light on the nature of consciousness, viewing consciousness as the dream of what happens with perception and dreaming, essentially different only by the presence or absence of sensory constraints.
	Through the years, his research team has developed highly effective techniques, including technological aids for building lucid dreaming skills.
	In addition, Stephen has had extensive personal experience with lucid dreaming, having learned to have lucid dreams at will.
	And among his thousands of lucid dreams are many which have been delightful, inspiring, enlightening, and life-changing.
	Thus, he is an unashamed advocate of lucid dreaming, believing that the world would be a better place if more people developed the art.
	His interest in the subject embraces science as well as spirituality, and he feels a special kinship with the Tibetan Buddhist tradition of dream yoga.
	Both of them are up next!
	Well, all right.
	We're radio, not television, so when we have two guests on the radio, we've got to learn to discern between their voices.
	Dominic Adesani, let's hear your voice.
	Good evening, Art.
	How are you?
	Ah, that's very distinctive.
	I should have no problem recognizing that.
	Good evening to you, sir.
	And Stephen Laberge, I understand, Stephen, you have a migraine headache.
	No, that would be my voice.
	It's not that bad, thank you, Art.
	Migraines are bad.
	So far, well, they can be very bad and it's in remission at the moment, but you know how those are.
	So, this might be a dream or it might not.
	All right, gentlemen, I guess we should begin really at the beginning.
	A lot of people have heard of lucid dreaming, but not all by a long shot have the slightest idea of what it really is.
	So, definitions.
	What is lucid dreaming?
	I think I could put that simply enough.
	A lucid dream is simply a dream in which you know that you're dreaming while it's happening.
	So while you're in the midst of a dream, something has told you, maybe some oddity, or you've seen a UFO, oh my God, look, here they are, and this can't really be happening to me, or can it?
	You're not sure, but then you, let's say, float into the air, and you realize this has got to be a dream.
	And so, once you know it's a dream, then You realize it's all in your mind, therefore anything is possible, and it opens up the possibility of dream control.
	Yes, well, that's never happened to me, both of you.
	I've never, I have never, never, never in the middle of a dream said to myself, oh, this is a dream.
	Never.
	How, well, that you remember, right?
	How often do you remember your dreams, Art?
	Infrequently.
	Yeah, so most people remember a dream only, say, every two or three times a week at the most.
	And so, we all dream every night.
	So, in rapid eye movement sleep or REM sleep, we've got maybe a seven or eight hour night.
	You've got perhaps as much as two hours of dreaming time, and the average person only remembers maybe one percent of that.
	So, we have little idea what's going on every night, all the strange adventures.
	So, tonight or tomorrow, whenever you get to sleep, Why not simply notice that it's a dream?
	This is a dream.
	Anything could happen.
	See where you can take it.
	Well, because it's never happened, so I don't know how in the middle of a dream to suddenly say, wow, I'm having a dream.
	Well, you know, it is a learnable skill.
	Certainly the place to start is with dream recall.
	You've got to increase your dream recall, which is something that we believe that any normal person can do with training.
	It takes practice and the intention.
	So the first place to start is to say, I'm going to try to learn to remember my dreams and I simply have to care about them.
	It sounds like you may have a busy enough life that you just haven't, you know, when you get around to bedtime art, you say, forget anything else.
	I'm just sleeping.
	It takes some extra energy.
	You've got to have some focus and attention left over to go into sleep.
	With an idea.
	Something you want to care about.
	You want to recognize that you're dreaming.
	Actually, Stephen and Dominic, I must tell you, I prefer the little slice of death experience.
	In other words, when I go to sleep, I really prefer going to sleep On the occasions where I have had dreams, they've been very intense, and when I awaken, I find that I actually still feel tired because I was so gosh darn busy in my dream.
	Absolutely.
	Understood.
	And see, the trouble is when you're in a dream and you don't know it's a dream, it takes a lot more work because you're trying to do things that just don't work out.
	It's very common that for most people, if they're not lucid, if they don't know they're dreaming, the typical kind of emotion that goes with the dream is a kind of a general irritation or, you know, it just doesn't make sense.
	But if you realize you're dreaming, while you're dreaming, you say, anything's possible!
	I could have any imaginable dream!
	Now, that opens up, you know, Well, the limits of your imagination.
	Dominic, would you like to just give a sense of why you find it worth your while to have lucid dreams?
	What do you do with them?
	Sure.
	Before I go there, though, I would like to ask Art, you know, during the day, do you ever reflect on the fact that you're awake?
	I would guess.
	I'm going to put the answer out there that very few of us do.
	I really don't.
	I mean, I'm very much aware of the fact that I'm awake, but I don't spend time Thinking about it.
	Thinking about it, no.
	Yeah, so part of the beginning, I think, of the lucid dreaming exercise or practice is to become aware of what you're doing, whether it be awake or in a dream, and to reflect on it.
	So, you know, if we don't, during the day, occasionally step back and say, am I awake?
	Right?
	Do that reflective check.
	It's habitual not to actually say, you know, am I dreaming?
	And is this really a dream?
	So part of the long-term practice is to do a double-take once in a while and make sure that you are where you think you are.
	Because in the dream world, it's exactly the same.
	It's very hard to discriminate the difference between being awake and being asleep.
	Now to answer the question that Steven put out there, why do I like to lucid dream?
	Well, the first one is for the pure pleasure of it.
	To be able to do something that I've always wanted to do or do something that I've done again.
	Sort of like going into the Star Trek holodeck and dialing in just about an experience that I'd like to have.
	So you two are kind of claiming that you can, once you're able to lucid dream, recognize the fact that you actually are dreaming, you can become the director and the script writer of your own dream.
	Or, if a script is presented, you can act within the script and make the choices, the conscious choices that you want to make, in the scenes presented.
	And I'd say that's probably the more common version.
	of a lucid dream.
	One where you go with the dream, you go with the flow, but you make decisions as to what you want to do with what the director behind you, the subconscious, is bringing forward.
	So you're not claiming you're totally in control?
	No, I'm saying you have two choices.
	One is, and the easier one is, a dream is presented, you realize that you're in the dream, you're lucid, you're riding your bicycle down the street and all of a sudden it's sort of flying.
	Now what would you like to do?
	Fly somewhere?
	So the dream has been presented to you, and you've decided to course-correct, start writing the script, if you will, on your own.
	Well, that is being the director of your own dream.
	It is something like that, Art.
	Think about it.
	Are you completely in control of everything that happens in your waking life?
	Well, not really.
	It's more that you can respond flexibly to what comes your way, and you make the best of it.
	In the dream state, it's very similar, because your unconscious mind is always interacting with you, no matter how lucid you are.
	You can't decide everything, and you wouldn't really want to.
	It's more like you find yourself in a completely vivid fantasy world that mostly runs itself, but then you can say, here, I've got choices.
	For example, people often start out in nightmares.
	There's some anxiety, something's frightening them.
	escape from their anxieties, but they can then recognize that in the dream they can't hurt them.
	They can turn around, face their fears, work through it, befriend their inner monsters somehow,
	and it ends up that you wake up feeling much better than you would have otherwise. So it's,
	as Dominic said, that it's because the first reason for doing it is it feels good. It's fun.
	It's exciting. It's sort of the poor man's Tahiti where you can go on your vacation on a night,
	if you like, without any concerns of any dangers.
	It's really you're free to do what you decide you really want to do.
	And for me, the experience the day after, as opposed to a wrestling dream that was less lucid, I generally feel an afterglow of ecstasy or energy from just having the freedom and the enjoyment of involving myself in my own world.
	Oh, I can clearly see how pleasurable it could be if you could have some effect on the course of your own dreams.
	I guess the first step would be recognizing that you're dreaming and I just don't have, since I've never done it, I don't have a clue how I can achieve that state.
	How do I do it?
	Right.
	Well, first, in general, it is a learnable skill.
	It takes some time to develop, but the essence of it is very simple.
	It's remembering to do something later tonight.
	So, for example, you could decide, I'm going to ask about out-of-body experiences in, not this segment, but the next one, right?
	You could set your mind to it and say, I'm going to ask, what's the connection between out-of-body experiences and lucid dreams?
	I am going to ask about that.
	So, to do that, you set your intentional memory, your memory for the future, what you're going to do later.
	It's the same thing exactly with the dreaming.
	As you say, tonight, when I'm dreaming, I want to notice that it's a dream.
	And so, it's the same principle precisely.
	So, although you've never done it before, because it never occurred to you, or you simply haven't remembered the dreams in which you have been lucid.
	You know what, you're absolutely right.
	For example, this is even bothersome to me.
	If I know that tomorrow at 9.30am, which is a very early time for me, I have to get up and take my wife to the doctor for her checkup.
	My body Absolutely!
	At the exact time that I want to wake up, will wake up.
	After I've set alarm after alarm to make sure I get up.
	I don't hate it.
	I automatically wake up, so that part works.
	Yeah.
	Your brain is still functioning when you're asleep, of course.
	And actually, Alta, you're not remembering it.
	You are conscious, you know, for several hours during the night when you're having all kinds of extraordinary adventures, some of which Maybe, of course, as you wake up from and find it even disturbing, but you're conscious during that period of time.
	Most people, when they do remember a dream every couple of days, say, yeah, there I was having whatever the unusual experience was.
	The fact that dreams are somewhat different in terms of content, what goes on in them, they change more than the waking state, the way you can tell that it's a dream.
	When impossible things happen.
	Now, I suspect for Art Bell, it's harder to distinguish what's going to be an impossible thing.
	The example I gave of, there comes a flying saucer, or maybe it's not a dream.
	Who knows?
	But you've got to learn to ask the question, how do I know whether I'm dreaming or not?
	Then there are methods.
	For example, looking at a digital watch, looking away, looking back again.
	This re-checking time or re-reading It changes in a dream.
	So if you were dreaming, it would change when you looked back at your watch the second time.
	It wouldn't be just a few seconds later.
	It wouldn't even say anything like it.
	It would tell you that you're dreaming now.
	Okay.
	Here's a question I would love to have answered.
	It sounds like you might have studied it.
	I think we all know, I certainly know, that when I have a really cool dream, one that I really enjoyed or impacted me for some reason in a large way, I have to write it down, and if I don't write down what the dream was about, within, oh, I don't know, an hour at the very most, and much less time, really, it's gone!
	It's just gone!
	And it was, at the time, a gigantic impact for me, and I said, you know, I'm going to remember this, and unless I write it down, it's gone.
	So why are dreams hard to remember?
	Why are they easy to forget?
	I think the answer to that is clear, if you think in terms of evolution, because dreams seem so real.
	Dreaming, first of all, has been going on ever since mammals invented it 140 million years ago.
	So, it's only humans that talk about dreams and can actually tell the difference between an experience that happens in the waking state, for real, and one that happens In the dream, they seem so much alike.
	So imagine a cat, for example, having a dream of, well, let's say the dog next door is dead, right?
	And it's the wish-fulfillment dream in that there's a family of mice that's moved in next door.
	So that cat wakes up and says, oh, yeah, and remembers his dream, but doesn't think it's the dream instead, jumps over the fence to eat the mice, and gets eaten by the dog instead.
	And so it doesn't pass on genes for remembering dreams.
	So you see, the idea is that because of the confusability of dreams and waking, evolution has made it difficult to remember them, because otherwise it would be very maladaptive if you couldn't tell what a dream was.
	Now, humans can take those fleeting memory images and then convert them into stories.
	And we say, well, what was going on there?
	And we then have a story.
	The story is one of them, we can remember later, but the dream itself, the experience that we wake up with, is very sweet and very easy to forget.
	Oh, that's so interesting though.
	You say that, I have cats, I have three cats, so I've watched my cats dream, and you can see their little paws running, you can see their little mouths going, as though they're eating something, or whatever, and you're telling me that they are unable to discern between a dream and reality.
	Well, we presume that the dreams of the cat are like the lives of the cat.
	They experience.
	The dogs and cats and bats and whales and all mammals have dreams.
	Or at least we know they have REM sleep.
	And we presume, if you do as I do, that something's going on in that creature.
	If you've got cats, you know that the cats have a life, right?
	They have an inner experience.
	So why not dream?
	But how would they know the difference?
	I mean, people talk about experience and say, like, you must have said when you were a child, Mommy, there's a bear in the closet, you know?
	No, dear, it's just a dream.
	I don't care what it is, it's going to get me, right?
	That's right.
	No, it's just in your head.
	It didn't really happen.
	And after a while, you learn that there's a difference, that these strange things that happen in the middle of the night Aren't the same as the other things that happen the rest of your life, and we learn to make a distinction because people talk about experiences.
	That's how we know that dreams are different from waking life.
	But in the case of a cat, for example, it would depend on what a cat's state of consciousness really is, and I'm not sure we We know that for sure, do we?
	No, we really don't know at all what the state of consciousness of the cat is, but we do know that cats don't talk in words about experience.
	So they don't have a word for a dream.
	So they know what, you know, food is, and you know, what a dog is, and what people are, and all these things, but they don't have words for them.
	And so they don't have the concept dream, which is very abstract, actually.
	Well, I've never seen a cat continue to chase what it had in its dream, so maybe they do discern.
	I don't know.
	Gentlemen, hold on.
	We'll be right back.
	We're talking about lucid dreaming and more in a moment.
	Two powerful names in lucid dreaming, Dominic Arzani and Steven LaBerge.
	I'm sure that the majority of you out there are very much like myself.
	I've never, ever been in control of one of my own dreams, but I certainly would love to be, and these gentlemen seem to be saying it's nothing more than intent.
	If you develop the intent to be in control of your own dreams, so it shall be.
	They're back in a moment.
	Well alright, Karen in Murphy, North Carolina says, my cat G dreams, and she'll often cry like she's lost.
	Wake up, look around, see me sigh, as if to say, thank God, it's just a dream, then go back to sleep.
	So, I very much believe cats know that dreams are only dreams, and she doesn't keep chasing a dream beast.
	Be that as it may, I would love to be in control, to some degree, of my own dreams, and if that really is possible, and apparently it certainly is, so many people say so, including my two guests, I want to know how to do it, and I guess the way is just intention.
	In other words, before I go to sleep, I tell myself, when I'm dreaming, I'm going to become aware that it's just a dream.
	In other words, develop the intention to do it.
	Is that correct?
	That's right, Art.
	I'd just like to say, though, that in addition to the testimony, I should say, of the guests, We have scientific evidence that lucid dreaming really happens, because you're right to be skeptical, because it's really so remarkable, say, it's hard to believe that it's actually possible.
	But, you know, years ago in the laboratory at Stanford, we proved that lucid dreaming absolutely happens by having people in the midst of their lucid dreams make a signal to communicate to the laboratory while it's happening, just by looking Left, right, left, right.
	This comes through on the polygraph record saying it's like a message from the other world.
	And so it's been proven scientifically that dream control, lucid dreaming is certainly possible.
	It happens in genuine REM sleep.
	So the whole challenge is really learning how to do it.
	All right.
	Let me give perhaps yourself and your guests a little technique maybe just to Get a taste for what lucid dreaming might be like.
	We said earlier that you really have to recall your dreams to recognize whether you had a lucid or even a non-lucid dream.
	So one of the first techniques we teach during some of our programs is the morning technique.
	This requires that you kind of set the alarm clock aside, maybe on a weekend, and decide the next morning you're going to try to sleep in and enjoy yourself.
	But as you wake up in the morning, you try to catch your last dream.
	As you're waking up, instead of rolling over and hitting the alarm clock, as soon as you think you're awakening, don't move a muscle and try to recall the last thought or the last image.
	Oftentimes, people can throw out those little grappling hooks and grab the last dream.
	Physiologically, this is the densest part of REM sleep and your longest REM period, so you have the best chance of catching a vivid dream.
	Oftentimes, you can transition back into the dream, pull back fragments, back into waking reality, and sort of build up the dream.
	As you transition back and forth, oftentimes you can remember where you were in your bed.
	Uh-oh, no, you were in that red car in Hawaii.
	Uh-oh, back in bed.
	Uh-oh, back in the car.
	And there was a gorgeous girl sitting next to a gorgeous guy.
	Back to the bed.
	And you transition back and forth, and you can watch your consciousness shift back and forth between, quote-unquote, being almost awake or back in the dream.
	That's amazing.
	It's an excellent technique to start recalling your dreams, and as you said later, earlier, to write them down when you wake up.
	Right?
	So, I agree with you 100%.
	Pen and pencil by the bedside.
	But the most important thing to remember is not to move a muscle, because As you start to wake up and break that paralysis that occurs during REM sleep, that's when those fleeting images start to move away.
	You break the state.
	And we believe that memories from dreamland are state-dependent.
	Alright, gentlemen, are there any practical applications for developing this ability?
	Well, that... Other than entertainment.
	Right.
	You know, entertaining yourself.
	Of course.
	That's sort of the lowest common denominator.
	That's the place you'd start.
	There's maybe another four general areas that people have reported, you know, described.
	They've gotten maybe 20,000 letters from lucid dreamers over the years describing different activities they do in the lucid dream.
	So just to enumerate general areas, there's Rehearsal for living.
	Really trying out as a kind of flight simulator for life.
	Dominic mentioned the Star Trek holodeck idea that you've got a virtual reality asset where you can practice things.
	So people have overcome performance anxiety, phobias of some kind.
	They say they have, and in the case, creative problem solving is another area.
	The idea that dreaming has long been the source of Creativity in art, science, business, many different areas.
	Lucid dreaming allows people to deliberately use that creativity of the dream state.
	Say, another area would be overcoming nightmares, personal development.
	Generally speaking, the healing dream.
	Our scientific research that we might have a little time to get into.
	I found very strong mind-body relationships during the dream state.
	So you're saying you can actually heal yourself in a dream or with dreaming?
	Well, what we know is that if you do something in your dream to your brain, it's as if you're actually doing it.
	And some people have described healing behaviors of some kind, and that's something that we only have anecdotal support, we don't have Experimental evidence for that, but we do know the strong mind-body connection during the dream state.
	And there's emotional healing as well, right?
	Absolutely.
	Well, healing means wholeness in one of its root meanings.
	So the idea of the mental health application of visit dreaming, of being able to overcome nightmares and to work through fears, and the personal development, what we call integration or becoming one, It's one of the most important applications.
	The idea that actually the Tibetan Buddhists have been practicing a yoga of the dream state for the past thousand years as a spiritual practice, as a means of waking up to the nature of reality, I think it's one of the deepest, most important applications of lucid dreaming.
	Strangely enough, they believe that the after-death state That is an analogy to the lucid dreaming state, that if we learn to wake up in our dreams in this life, we can wake up at death.
	Now, of course, that's something that we'll all perhaps find out one day, but we don't really have evidence for it right now.
	But there are many potential applications of lucid dreaming.
	It's sort of the idea of, what would you like to do with life?
	And what you're going to want to do with it depends on what you want to do with life, and there are many different ideas.
	Lucid dreaming is essentially another world where you've got more time to live, in a world where the rules are different, where you can do the impossible.
	It's more life in a freer form.
	Okay.
	Well, here's one that, again, it's not a dream, but it certainly has happened to me many times.
	All my life I've been in electronics.
	Now, as an example, I would be working on some piece of electronics and I would work on it all day.
	And well into the night until I was so tired and so aggravated and not solving the problem that I just, you know, I threw up.
	Well, I got very angry many times.
	And then I would go off to bed in complete depression thinking about the problem.
	Now, I'm not claiming that I have a dream that solves this problem for me.
	But what I am going to tell you is that on so many occasions I have awakened the next morning And as soon as the cobwebs cleared, or even perhaps prior to all the cobwebs clearing, I knew the answer to my problem, went in the other room, replaced a resistor or a capacitor, and boom!
	It was fixed.
	Yep, yep.
	My brain came up with the solution during sleep.
	Exactly.
	And that's quite common for creative individuals, that's why I want you to hear the same story again and again.
	And people who remember their dreams better will then sometimes have recollection of a very specific dream that was related to the problem solving.
	But the brain continues to work to do its whatever matters to you, whatever your current concerns are, will continue to be worked on while you're sleeping.
	So lucid dreaming is one application of, say, optimizing what you're doing in the sleeping state.
	But you've just given another example of another creative way of using your sleeping brain.
	One of the things also to remember is that during REM sleep, during dream sleep, your brain is very activated.
	It's just as much awake as you are right now, except the body's paralyzed and you're in a different reality, if you will, of the mind.
	But your neurons are firing very quickly and you are thinking throughout the dream experience.
	So it's quite common that people will solve problems Right there in the dream set.
	So, if I'd been able to remember it, you're saying that I actually, I did have a dream about whatever problem I was trying to solve, and in that dream, I figured it out.
	Well, that's one possibility, Art.
	We don't know for sure that that, because there are other ways of unconsciously solving problems, of course.
	Your brain was still working on it, that's clear.
	That's why next morning, ah, all became clear.
	But Dominic's point about the brain being activated very much like it is when it's awake is a very important and subtle point.
	It's that when we're dreaming, our brain is involved in the same world simulation or world construction that we do while we're awake.
	And it's hard to believe because you say, you know, I look out right now and I see the room around me.
	I think that the reality is out there.
	But if I were dreaming now and I would have a similar experience, I'd look around and I'd see a dream world that would look just as vividly real as the one that I experienced while awake.
	So what does that say?
	That says that somehow the brain's world simulation or consciousness is inside us.
	That's what the brain is doing.
	It's not The reality is not outside, it's inside.
	So that creativity, that ability to change your reality is so obviously within us.
	We can experience that very directly in the lucid dream state.
	And that's sometimes why it's so tricky to distinguish that you're frankly in a dream.
	When dreaming, you often think you're awake in the dream, but you're not lucid.
	You sort of stumble through and say, oh, here's my dream car.
	Oh yeah, I have to go to dream work.
	That's my dream boss.
	All right.
	How did you gentlemen begin to be able to recognize that you were actually in a dream?
	Because it seems to me what you're doing is you're mixing your conscious with your unconscious, right?
	Yeah.
	So for me, my very earliest experiences back in my teens were usually strikingly different experiences of reality.
	In those days, I would wake up in my dream flying.
	Flying over the bay in Long Island, New York, where I grew up, you know, it was an ecstatic feeling, almost sexual, of flying in ecstasy, the sun, the water, too real to be real.
	And since I didn't have wings, it sort of dawned on me something was up with this, that I didn't have a plane underneath me and I was flying.
	At that point, the big difference, you know, I all of a sudden knew that I wasn't in a real place and that I tried to do something different.
	fly left, fly right, try going close to the water, go visit a friend.
	So for oftentimes people, their first lucid dreams are these unusual body sensation dreams.
	Floating and flying are extremely common.
	I love flying dreams.
	I don't have enough of them.
	Is there a way to actually, you know, set up a dry... I'd love to have a flying dream.
	This is my favorite one, and I'll tell you the way I used to incubate my early lucid dreams.
	I didn't know how to do this until I later met Steven, but I recall what I used to do, which was to go skiing, which is a sport I enjoy a lot.
	I would take a 10-hour bus ride to Lake Placid, New York.
	I'd be deprived of sleep.
	And I would ski all day.
	At the end of the day, I would go home, and I hadn't worn sunglasses, so I would lie down on my bed, physically exhausted, and I could just close my eyes and see the slopes and remember the sensation of flying down the slopes in a rhythm, parallel skiing, and sort of that ecstasy of flying down on skis.
	And as I drifted off into sleep, oftentimes I would have a flying dream just after that.
	I've heard people talk about soaring, ballet, swimming, scuba diving, things that have this somatic sensation of floating.
	Maybe even a hammock, you know, in the evening, laying down in a hammock outside, throwing yourself back, and try to capture that somatic sensation and enjoy the pleasure and say, I want to feel this later, I want to do it, I'd love to dream like this, and try to incubate that physical sensation.
	That's one approach, the incubation or trying to reproduce the dream sensation.
	The easier way, from the lucid dreaming point of view, is to, number one, by whatever technique, the kind that we teach in our program in Hawaii, whatever technique you do, you become lucid.
	And they say, all right, this is a dream.
	I want to fly.
	So what do you do?
	You just leap into the air and fly.
	And why not?
	Because there isn't really any gravity in the dream world.
	And now you know you're dreaming.
	So nothing holds you down.
	And so you just float into the air.
	And that's one of the most amazing experiences of lucid dreaming.
	Just to see that the rules that ordinarily hold you down in the waking world, yeah,
	maybe there's a fact there's strong evidence there's a thing called gravity,
	but why do you have to stay earthbound in your dreams?
	Well, it's simply because you don't know that you're dreaming, and therefore you think gravity is holding you down, but it's simply your mind holding you down.
	Right?
	So you just step into the air and float.
	Um, that really sounds good.
	That's kind of like the three or four steps and then the leap of Superman into the air, just like that.
	Now, I have interviewed over the years a lot of people on out-of-body experiences, and many of these people, gentlemen, maintain that the experience they have while out-of-body is real, it's verifiable, It can be proven.
	They can quote what people said and what, for example, what people were doing.
	They were able to be in somebody else's bedroom or in the company of somebody else in another house somewhere else and they could relate what that person was doing and then later verify that indeed that's what they were doing.
	Do you both believe that that is actually possible or not?
	Well, if you put it that way, is it possible?
	I suppose it's possible, but In most experiences, where most people, for example, in my book, in the Lucid Dreaming book, I've got a chapter called Dreaming, Illusion, and Reality.
	It's available free on the internet if you want to look at it.
	It describes Carlos Osis' experiments, where he had, say, approximately 100 people who claimed to be able to do exactly as he described, to leave their bodies and go.
	They say, all right, come look at what's in the office here.
	And what happened was that, say, of the 100 people, yes, we all saw it and reported what they saw, but only maybe two or three of them had a correspondence that, for most of the rest, they thought they were there, but they weren't, really.
	So my interpretation of that is to say, well, Sometimes a paranormal information transfer occurs in dreams.
	Sometimes people get information about what's going on in a remote location, like remote viewing.
	Perhaps Dominic can talk about that later.
	What's happening is, in all cases, it's a dream.
	So, it's a dream that may be informed by some extra information or what you believe is going on.
	This is a complicated issue.
	We have laboratory studies showing that you're more likely to have the experience of leaving your body, perceptually, if you have a wake-initiated dream, which is to say, if your REM sleep is interrupted.
	So, you are briefly awake.
	You may not know you're awake.
	Often, I've had the experience myself, the out-of-body experience, and so has Dominic.
	It feels completely real, and if you don't check the reality fully, you may be confused and say, this can't be a dream.
	Dreams aren't real.
	This was real.
	Yet, when people have lucid dreams, they experience this feels as real as real can be, as anything.
	What do you say, Dominic?
	Yeah, in fact, some lucid dreams, Hard walls are hard.
	Or in other lucid dreams, you can put your hand through them.
	It really depends upon how much belief you invest in the dreamscape.
	Alright, but beyond just belief, have you two gentlemen run into hard evidence of people who say, look, I was in Chicago, in somebody's house, and I heard them say such and such, and then have that person actually verify That indeed, they did say that.
	And so, that means the person really was there.
	Gentlemen, hold on.
	We're at a break point.
	We'll answer that when we get back.
	I'm Art Bell.
	Here I am.
	We're talking about lucid dreaming and more.
	Dominic Arzani and Stephen LaBerge are my guests.
	Both big names in this field.
	And one little area of some of the material provided says, and I quote, being out of body is all in your mind.
	Well, that flies directly in the face of what any number of guests have said on this program about being out of body.
	In a moment, we'll ask the experts.
	Well, alright, so the big question, gentlemen, I've had people come on the program, claim they had out-of-body experiences, and then offer me proof, proof, by third-party statements, affirming, you know, that they had said something or done something that this person, hundreds or thousands of miles away, had observed and heard correctly.
	Now, would you say that person Was telling me the truth or not?
	Well, they're probably telling the truth in that their claim, but listen, first of all, an out-of-body experience means that someone experiences being out of the body.
	Does that mean they really are?
	Well, what do you mean by out of the body?
	What is in the body?
	The way I look at it is that it's all As if you're watching something on television.
	There you see some event occurs.
	You don't know by watching the television whether it's something that's an actual newsreel or was, you know, made at some studio.
	It may look the same to you and that's what our consciousness is like.
	We see something, we experience.
	I personally have certainly left my body in the traditional way.
	That's what it feels like.
	It feels like you're lying in bed or For me, it's always been lying in bed, and then I separate out the fluid out of my body.
	But then, I thought about, so if this is really my physical body down there I've just left, this is the physical world I'm in.
	But then, the moment I check it out, well, it doesn't really look that way.
	So, it's a question of standards.
	We can say, this is a scientific question, we can have very strong proof.
	This is a very strong claim to make to say that, yes, we can find information from what's going on on the other side of the world.
	Well, it's just this stuff has not panned out.
	Many claims have been made, but I just haven't seen the laboratory evidence for the model that the out-of-body experience is correct.
	I'm not saying people don't have it.
	We're not saying that it's not possible that people can bring back information That wasn't obtainable in, quote-unquote, a standard dream.
	We were quoting earlier Ursus' work, and we've done work with Joe McMonigle and yourself in remote viewing states in Lucid Dream, where it's been proven that we can perceive things remotely and bring information back.
	I think the fundamental question though is, is there something that separates from the body and moves in some ethereal way Yes.
	some other means, some other physics. And you're saying you don't think so? It's an
	open question and since there's no experimental evidence to say there's
	something that physically leaves, it's a proposition that would need to be
	looked at. We do know that remote perception is possible and that the
	availability information while you're in a dream state can get muddled with the
	way you're looking at things, right?
	So if you know that you can feel like you're out of the body and it can be just as real as real can be, it brings up what I like to call the Memorex question, right?
	Is it real or is it Memorex in terms of the physics of what happens?
	Not the subjective appraisal of what happens.
	We know that feels real and the information can be valid.
	But did something physically separate and move to a remote location?
	I think if you had Joe on the phone, he would say, in my remote viewing, nothing leaves my body in the remote viewing state, but I'm able to contact the metaphorical signal line and immediately perceive something remotely.
	We know that same capability is active during dream states.
	So why is that not one of the possible means by which the stories could be true, and yet the proposed physics be not necessarily accurate?
	Okay, okay.
	Alright, on to one other question about leaving your body.
	Those who I've interviewed over the years inevitably and always say it is completely safe.
	And the moment I want to be back in my body, boom, I'm back in my body.
	And that brings up something else, which is out of body and death.
	Now, how do we know How do we know that occasionally people who are having an OBE and they're out of their body don't die?
	Because, of course, the dead don't come back to tell us that they died during an OBE and that always seems to stump the OBE people.
	They say, well, yeah, you could be right.
	Well, but the answer must be that people will occasionally die while having an out-of-body experience, just like they occasionally die Under every other circumstance, it's just so.
	You're having an out-of-body experience, so it's one-world simulation.
	You're, as it were, imagining, correctly or not, that reality is a certain way.
	Meanwhile, your brain and the physical body happens to die.
	Well, then that's the end of the experience.
	We don't know what happens after that.
	That's why we're saying that the Tibetan Buddhists believed that the yoga, the dream state, is a means of exploring
	those after-death states.
	We don't really know, though, from the scientific point of view, that we just don't have evidence at this stage.
	It's like that old wives' tale of if you die in your dream, you'll actually die.
	As you just pointed out yourself, how would you know that?
	Because people don't come back and say, oh, I just died, right?
	So it probably is, they're right.
	I certainly agree with that, that there's nothing safer than being in an out-of-body experience, as long as you're asleep safely in bed at the time.
	It's interesting, though, that when we talk about lucid dreams and then quickly move on to out-of-body experiences, The next thing we come to is death.
	And I think it's also interesting that the dream world millennia ago was often associated with the spirit reality, right?
	So there's this connection between the fear of death and the promise of something beyond, right?
	So I think whenever we talk about out-of-the-body experiences, what we're really getting to a primordial fear in all of us that in fact we do die,
	right? We may die and then no longer exist.
	And so when we have these experiences, most people who've had them will say, well, now I fear death
	not. I've gone to the other side and been there and I don't have to fear this anymore. So there's
	this very, very deep-rooted desire to find an experience that validates something that we've
	been taught.
	Maybe it's genetically encoded in terms of having a spiritual orientation.
	You know, we hear about it in the Christian tradition, going to go to heaven and live forever.
	And so this idea of a soul leaving the body and getting up to heaven has been rooted for thousands of years within us.
	And so once you have that experience, you say, well, here's the proof.
	I know what happens now.
	Do you gentlemen embrace that?
	I mean, do you feel that a dream state is a little bit of a slice of an example of the spirit without the body, as in death?
	Yes and no.
	You see, I think what Dominic was saying about the idea of really the origin of the soul is that, imagine, just go back some thousands of years to relatively Primitive humanity.
	Your friend suddenly dies.
	He stops breathing.
	He's now inert.
	But later that night, you see him in your dream.
	So, what do you conclude?
	Well, he was alive and well.
	I just saw him last night.
	Well, where was he?
	He must be in the other world, the spirit world.
	Because the idea of a dream, or something in your mind, or a world simulation, or a construction, just was not comprehensible to primitive man. It didn't
	make sense.
	So one had to take it literally, and that problem with taking it literally
	is also that one takes the demons literally, the things that, when one has a frightening image,
	It must be real, because I saw it!
	It's there!
	Instead of saying, well, perhaps I'm constructing it, perhaps I'm creating it, with my own fear.
	And that's what the Buddhists believe, is that all the demons are projections of the mind.
	They're all things that come out of your own mind, and it's nothing to fear, really.
	Okay.
	Since I've had the experience of solving a very complex problem while I'm asleep, I do make the assumption that whether it's through lucid dreaming or through some process that you can create with intent, that there are practical aspects to your sleep time and that you can make use of them.
	I don't know, curing bad habits or coming up with solutions to serious problems in your life.
	If you simply, what, form the intent to try and solve them while you're dreaming, lucid dreaming or sleeping?
	Well, just to give an example, I said people have overcome phobias of some kind.
	For example, we have in the Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming book, I've got a chapter On overcoming anxiety of the various kinds, where people... One guy said, for example, he had performance anxiety.
	He was a musician, and in a lucid dream, he realizes, this is a dream.
	Here's my opportunity to play in front of an audience, although I know they're not really there.
	It's sort of as if it's real.
	So he had an opportunity to practice while he was in the dream state and overcome that Shines that fear while he was in the dream.
	So it's a direct practice, kind of, facing your fears and working through it.
	Right.
	And it worked for him?
	He was able to overcome?
	And in fact, that's what psychotherapy tells us, that the way people overcome various phobias is actually to deal with them, not to understand why they've got them, but to actually deal with them, straightforwardly work through them somehow.
	Okay, now we all know, I guess most of us know, that the brain has a very big part in the rest of the body and I guess you can make yourself sick or conversely make yourself perhaps well through, well I'll turn it into a question, can you make yourself well through some sort of intent in a dream state?
	Let's put it this way.
	When you say, make yourself well, let's say weller, more well in the direction of wholeness or being healed.
	And so that's a matter, for example, of accepting your fears, of working through them, instead of having demons.
	For example, it's a common nightmare to be running away from something.
	And you know, and we'll say, we'll call that a part of yourself.
	And so in the lucid dream, we have the opportunity of accepting that, of dealing with it and
	really becoming more whole.
	That I believe is the direction of increased wellness.
	People wake up feeling more together, better somehow.
	Plus, it fits with the idea of the mental model we have of ourselves.
	Is it of the whole self or is it just a piece that we happen to like or that was reinforced positively in our childhood?
	So, the idea is that we have an opportunity to work towards a true spiritual wholeness.
	Okay, well if it's possible for a doctor to give you a sugar pill or a pill that absolutely has no medical meaning at all, and 50% of the time, and I think that's very close to reality, you will cure a physical ill because a doctor told you this pill was going to cure it.
	That's your brain.
	Somehow or another a believing and then going on to actually achieve some improvement in a physical ailment with no real substance.
	Yes, well the real substance is you.
	It's your inner power to create your reality and that's what I was saying that the lucid Shows you that in a very real way where you see, yes, this whole world that I see around me is somehow being, I'm creating it whether I know it or not.
	And so there's much more power that we have just as we overcome the gravity in the dream.
	Say, there isn't a gravity, I can fly in the same way we can experience an increased healing.
	So, Dominic, you probably have something to say about that.
	Well, you know, one of the areas of healing that's always interested me, as I move into midlife, is the emotional healing that goes with lucid dreaming, or can be applied through lucid dreaming, when you miss a parental figure, one who's passed on, let's say.
	My wife, for example, had a phenomenal dream a couple years back when her dad passed along, and a few weeks later, he appeared in a dream.
	In fact, it became a lucid dream, and she sat down and had a very long conversation with him, and a lot of the issues that had, I think, bothered her about their relationship, things that hadn't been resolved, were resolved during that lucid dream.
	In fact, he said, whenever you want to see me, I'm here for you.
	So, whether it was really him coming back spiritually, or the memories of him, she found solace and healing.
	Through the lucid dream state.
	Or was it her brain needing to resolve those issues and so creating a situation where she thought she was having this conversation and resolving all the unresolved issues with that?
	You know, in the end, it's not important which answer for her, whether it was he himself or a dream of he himself.
	The point I think really is that through the dream state, through lucid dreaming, she got full closure And solace to the point where she still dreams of him occasionally and remembers him the same way he was when he was here with us.
	It may not be important to her, but it's important to me.
	Yeah, well, of course it is.
	But I think Dominic's point is it's a little harder to grasp, but that a lucid dream.
	So you say, oh, I know this is all a dream, but if you have just I've experienced a person, or for example, in some people, they have befriended a dragon.
	You say, oh, it's just a dream dragon, but it feels real, even though you know it's happening on a different level, because our dreams feel as real as anything else does to us.
	And so the fact is that when you're encountering a person, say, well, What did you really ever know about that person?
	It was always your experience of them was through your own mind, in a way.
	You're really touching on the question, what is the nature of personal identity?
	Who are we?
	Do we continue after death in the form of something that looks like this, that we are now?
	That would seem very strange to me.
	Humans have the form of, you know, beach monkeys and this strange evolutionary creature.
	Why would we have that same body in an afterlife condition?
	Well, really, because we know why we have it in this life, because of the evolutionary reasons.
	But why would we have it in some other sphere?
	I would say that instead that the form our being would take would be something that we can't yet dream of, we can't yet imagine.
	That to me is a better rebirth than would be to continue in the same form that I'm in now.
	You understand what I'm saying?
	Very clearly, yes.
	So in other words, you are saying you believe there is some sort of survival of something After death, it just doesn't resemble what we know.
	Yes, well, what I was, the way, you know, the experience I've gotten from my own lucid dream of something like asking what is the ultimate nature of reality was that what happens at death is we become what we were before we were, before we were born, which is to say that the universal I, the self, the one, and so it's not, I don't think that's Stephen, in the form that he has now, is going to continue forever.
	I don't think that that would be a good thing.
	What I'd like to see is, you know, I, as, you know, Art, Stephen, Dominic, and every listener there, is going to continue to develop an understanding and being and compassion and love, and that's what going to develop. It's not going to be the particular
	individual in the form we're in now, but in the forms, you know, the angelic forms,
	if you might like, in comparison to what we are now. All right, listen, speaking
	of Stephen's current condition, Stephen, I know you've got a kind of
	headache, and so let me ask you at this point whether you want to bail and get some
	sleep and try and, I don't know, have a dream where the headache goes away, or
	you can stick around for a little while longer.
	Well, you know, that's of course one of these conditions where sleep is the very best thing to do.
	Now, when I'm not in the condition of having a migraine, then I would say I prefer to have energy that I leave into my sleep.
	Can you stick around?
	We've got a break here.
	Yeah, I'll stay around for the next... Alright, good.
	One more segment.
	Alright, we'll be right back.
	I certainly am a creature of the night.
	Good morning, everybody.
	My guests are a couple of fascinating guys with quite a reputation in this field.
	We're talking about lucid dreaming, Stephen LaBerge and Dominic I'm going to try and get it right.
	Asante.
	I believe that's correct.
	We'll ask in a moment.
	On lucid dreaming, there are a lot of people out there, and this would be proof I suppose one way or the other, who are void of one sense or the other.
	People without sight, or people without hearing.
	Now I wonder if in testing of dreams of any sort, people dream of Things of seeing things and or hearing things when in the real world they never have.
	We'll be right back.
	Stephen LaBerge and Dominic Adesani.
	Is that correct, Dominic, by the way?
	That's correct, Art, yes.
	All right.
	Gentlemen, how about that?
	In other words, I guess what I'm asking is whether our dreams can only relate to those things that we have either seen or heard in reality, or whether somebody who has been sightless since birth, or without hearing since birth, would experience those sensations in dream.
	Yeah.
	Well, the scientific research indicates that people who have had sight and then lost it, We'll still frequently continue to have vision in their dreams, but if they have never had vision, then they don't know what vision is.
	So, that seems to be a basic problem of the sensory experience.
	Each sense, vision or hearing, they're both very, very different.
	You can't describe one in terms of the other.
	And if you've never had the experience, it's like trying to say, hey, you know the taste of cinnamon?
	Well, no!
	If you haven't tasted it, you really have no way of knowing what it would be like.
	On the other hand, once you've had, you can certainly have experiences that are different from your past experiences.
	It's just not new senses, perhaps.
	So, for example, you may have never, for example, seen a A purple flying cow.
	But it's easy enough to imagine what one would be, right?
	Say, take a cow... If you've seen a cow in the real world.
	Exactly.
	Then you can see all kinds of variations.
	And that seems to be what creativity of dreaming involves, is new combinations of the elements that have come from past experience.
	But those new constructions can be very different from what we had experienced in the past.
	Okay, but they have to be based in some reality, and then you can get perturbations of that, but they have to be based in some reality.
	Well, they have to be based, say, on the body and its interactions that it's already undergone, if that's what you're saying, yes.
	Yes.
	At least as I understand it, it makes sense.
	Well, then that would seem to sort of rule out A world that is not, at least in some way, originally connected to a real experience, taste, vision, something you've heard, something.
	Well, the experiences that we have of the world are samples of it.
	It's as if, let's suppose that the real reality is a multi-dimensional, infinite number of, you know, a multiverse.
	What we experience is one tiny segment of it, in terms of higher dimensions.
	We're talking about a lower dimensional reduction of it, a great simplification of the world, and that's what our physical reality is.
	And it's limited, of course, to the historical expenses, for example, of vision and and sense of touch and hearing, they all have an evolutionary history.
	That it meant something to the organisms that we were millennia of millennia ago.
	And so that's how it has come to have the particular meaning it has.
	But it doesn't mean that there aren't other realities that we can conceive of in some way that's different from sensory.
	It's more like we can come to understand, right?
	Understanding is not the same thing as seeing.
	We can say, I see what you mean, but we don't mean literally seeing.
	Yes, Dominic, in the experiments that you've participated in, was there any external influence that helped you in lucid dreaming?
	I'm trying to understand the question, Art.
	Okay, let me try it this way.
	Any flashing lights or anything?
	Well, if we're going to get flashing lights, yeah.
	One of the most interesting experiences I had was working with an early version of what we call the Nova Dreamer, which is a product Lucidity Institute sold for many years that helps induce lucid dreams.
	Oh, what is that?
	Well, we were saying earlier that really one of the requisites to becoming lucid in a dream is to be in dream sleep or REM sleep.
	So the Nova Dreamer was a basic biofeedback instrument that would sense when your eyes were moving rapidly back and forth and wait a bit.
	Once it felt that you were deeply into REM, it would flash lights gently into your eyes with the intent of bleeding through into the dreamscape.
	So, for example, in an early dream, I'd be driving down the street in my dream car, and in front of me, a car would be stopping at a dream stoplight and flashing red lights at me.
	It's brake lights.
	But interestingly, the rhythm of those brake lights were just like my Nova Dreamer back at home on top of my Bureau.
	And I thought, gee, that's strange.
	Oh, maybe I should do a reality test to see if my dream car is in fact a dream car and not my real car that I think it is.
	And as I started to do my reality test, I started to feel weightless, and then my car grew wings and I flew away.
	Gee, I wasn't really awake as I thought I had been, but in fact, in a dream, and became lucid.
	So the Nova Dreamer was a way of gently nudging one to say, hey, wake up in your dream.
	Don't wake up and get out of your dream, but wake up and stay in it.
	So that's the fundamental technology we've used for many years to encourage people to, one, practice, and two, to begin developing dream signs and become aware of this different state.
	Yes.
	Well, we have a new version of the Nova Dreamer that we're bringing out in probably a couple of months now.
	And so, if people are interested, they ought to just go to the website and sign up the mailing list.
	Well, I'm interested.
	How does it work?
	How does it sense?
	The basic idea, Art, is that, remember we were saying, the key of lucid dreaming is that you're going to remember to do something later on when you're dreaming.
	Well, we want to get a reminder into your dream state to say, hey, Art, you're dreaming!
	The way that works is that you're wearing a mask, a sleep mask, that has sensors that picks up your rapid eye movement.
	Ah!
	His eyes are moving, so lights flash, and the flashing lights appear in your dreams.
	And you have to have the mental set to say, I'm going to notice when the flashing lights occur, that means I'm dreaming.
	So it's like when you're at the theater and the intermission is over, The lights flash and it tells you the show is starting to begin.
	You have to know what it means in order to apply it.
	There are other methods that we use as well, but that's the basic idea.
	It's a kind of biofeedback device that helps you then recognize that you're dreaming while you're dreaming.
	Well, that's very interesting.
	Is this device available now?
	As Dominic was suggesting, we were using it for years.
	We still use it at the Hawaii program in April 16-25.
	You can see it on the website.
	But basically, it's one of many different techniques that we combine together to teach people lucid dreaming.
	There are purely mental techniques, but we also have other devices.
	The thing we call the sponder or transponder that gives people practice during the waking state for improving their ability for remembering intentions later.
	And we find that in the course of nine days of training that most people, you know, something like 90% of the participants have this dream.
	If you get everything right, people have the right timing, and they get the right education, then lucid dreaming seems really very learnable.
	So, not everybody is going to be able to come to Hawaii, but you've got a website where there's lots of free information, and there are books available that teach people the details of lucid dreaming.
	So, I'd like to emphasize that there's much more than we've had time or would have time to really talk about in a limited amount of time tonight.
	But there's plenty of information available, and if listeners want to learn more about it, then go to the website, find out more, get books on it, come to our seminar in Hawaii, whatever, you can really do it.
	It's simply a matter of applying your mind.
	If you've got the intention, the way is there, and find out about it.
	Okay, well that's certainly one way, but anything that would detect when you're in REM sleep, and I can see that could be done, and then flash a light at you would be a very, very helpful aid in beginning all this.
	Now, is that device actually available?
	Do you know?
	I'm sorry, I didn't make that completely clear.
	Right now, it's no longer that we manufacture it for years, and now we have a new version That is going to be coming out in a couple of months.
	What I was just saying, we stopped manufacturing the old one because we have a new one.
	Okay, so in a couple of months.
	That's right.
	So basically, you know, we'll let you know.
	You're on our list and anyone else wants to be on the list, you'll hear about it.
	We're expecting in July.
	You can sign up for the newsletter that Lucidity Inc.
	sends out basically quarterly.
	I'm sure it'll be one of the first places that the product will be mentioned.
	Okay.
	Sexual dreams.
	Yes, of course I do.
	I guess... Do you have two children?
	Yes, of course I do.
	Do they have significance beyond...
	I don't know, a sexual dream is perhaps as pleasurable as a flying dream,
	or maybe a flying dream is a little better, but they're both high states of pleasure.
	pleasure.
	Do they have any significance beyond the fact that we all seem to have them?
	Well, of course.
	Sometimes, especially in lucid dreams, people experience a degree of ecstatic pleasure that goes beyond the normal.
	Patricia Garfield, for example, really a very well-known researcher, and this started the whole creative dreaming movement years ago, has a book called Pathway to Ecstasy, which describes her lucid dreams, where many of them are sexual dreams, and she describes them as being an astonishingly overwhelming experience that She, in fact, thought that lucid dreaming was essentially ecstatic, that it was sexual by its very nature.
	Now, I think that was a sort of overgeneralization of her own experiences, but there's no doubt that the experience of lucid dreaming by itself is ecstatic.
	It feels good just to realize you're dreaming and to feel the freedom that you feel in that state.
	And then that can take many different forms.
	Sometimes, for example, people describe floating up into the sky and merging with the sun, for example, and that that was an ecstatic experience.
	You know, I think that's an important, I don't want to say spin on the sexual dream, but in many of the dreams that I've had beyond just the hedonistic ones, some of the sexual dreams seem to have more of a trapping of coming together with oneself.
	That the experience of the other isn't purely a sexual, raw, animalistic sort of merging, but more of a coming together with oneself.
	Dominic, if I may, what you're getting at is saying that we experience one of our senses of unity with the other person Through sexual means.
	And so it can be a symbol then for our merging and our unity with all people.
	You see?
	Yeah.
	Much better said.
	Thank you, Stephen.
	Do you have any idea, I guess you all have done studies on dreams.
	What percentage of dreams are sexual?
	Any idea?
	Well, you know, it's less In the laboratory, when you study this, it doesn't happen that often.
	We're talking about maybe 5% of dreams.
	On the other hand, when you ask people in lucid dreams, what do you like to do with your lucid dream?
	At least a third of the people say dream sex.
	And for many people, it's a very strong Attraction.
	Sometimes, in fact, it's such a strong attraction that it gets in the way of doing anything else.
	But the way I see it is it's the starting point, certainly.
	We're saying that it's the place to start, which is the adventure, the fact that the freedom, the thrill of anything is possible, that the rules of ordinary life don't apply anymore.
	To say that it doesn't matter what you do in the dream, it does!
	It matters to you, so you personally, so you have a place to find out what really matters to you, to have a life that is totally following your rules and your freedom.
	Stephen, do you want to talk about the lucid sexual dreams that we've had in blood at all?
	Well, you know, actually I was thinking of, instead of For me, an experience I had, if I've got a moment to describe one of my own lucid dreams, where I started out at the very beginning, from the waking state, sometimes you enter straight into the lucid dream state, and I was driving in a little sports car that
	It was, in fact, that red Miata that was described in the ad, in between there.
	There I was driving down the road, and I see an attractive hitchhiker down in front of me, and I have the thought, oh, right!
	But wait a minute, I've had this dream before.
	This time, I want to have an experience at the highest potential.
	So that bit of renunciation there.
	The car started to fly into the air.
	And it flew higher, and the car disappeared, and now my body is flying through the clouds where I pass symbols of traditional religion, the steeple and the cross and Star of David and so on, and I fly beyond the clouds into a vast, empty space where I feel this sense of homecoming and overwhelming ecstatic joy as what I thought I was fell away into this Remembering that this is the source of being, that here I am at the source of the world.
	It's right in front of me, and I didn't know it because all that other stuff was around, so I woke up with an answer to the question.
	This is really where I got the idea about what happens to us at death, that we go back to being what we were before we were born, and that is the only being there is, the one unity somehow.
	But it was a very real way of seeing it in the dream, although I say, of course, it was a dream, but it was a dream that I believe showed me a way of truth.
	Well, that must have been very satisfying.
	It was.
	It answered the question of truth.
	That's the ultimate for me.
	But that's not the answer for art, and for the rest of the listeners.
	It's the opportunity of having a lucid dream where you can say, let me be guided to whatever I need to know, to the vision of God, of the meaning of life, however you would put it in your own terms.
	It's your personal symbolism, it's your dream, but the idea is you can make more of your dreams than you ordinarily do.
	Most people just, their dreams are like an extension of their waking life because they implicitly think they're awake and they don't really make use of the opportunity.
	Living very, only partial life somehow, and we could live much more deeply, and the lucid dream gives us a kind of inspiration for what that would be like.
	Gentlemen, what about precognitive dreams?
	Dreams you will hear from callers who will say that they dream about things that will then occur, will then happen.
	Sure, sure.
	Well, I think they're an indication that That reality is not what Newton thought.
	It's not that space and time are simply more complicated than that.
	And, you know, I've heard plenty of stories like this, and it's very hard to scientifically study it, right?
	But that doesn't mean that, therefore, there's nothing to it.
	It just means that, well, the evidence is Let's say compelling, but not... I haven't seen it proven yet.
	But I'm keeping an open mind, certainly.
	What do you think, Dominic?
	I think, as Will said, the only information we had were those early studies in dream telepathy back in the 60s and 70s, if I recall.
	So, there is not a lot of data, but there's sure a lot of reports.
	Okay, that music means we've got to go.
	Stephen LaBerge, listen, my friend, thank you so much for being here, and I hope you feel better.
	I'm going to bring Dominic back after the break, and we're going to take some calls, but Stephen, thank you for being here.
	All right.
	Well, thank you, art and dreamers of the world.
	Pleasant dreams, lucid dreams to you, and good night.
	And we will be back.
	Well, if I've been listening carefully, and I think I have, Stephen LaBerge and Dominic Shante, I'll get that right, are telling us that all of our dreams are actually rooted in reality and that we cannot dream or have a perturbation of something that is real without it having been rooted in reality.
	And then it can take off from there and virtually go anywhere.
	Now that seems to collide a little bit.
	With a lot of people who claim that whether it's out-of-body experiences or dreams that give them other insights, that they believe they're taken to some other magical land or some other dimension, but they seem to be saying, we don't necessarily believe that or certainly we don't have evidence of that.
	When we get back with Dominic, I'm going to let all of you ask questions, and maybe some of you will take us further down that road and to a point that I haven't taken us yet.
	I'm Art Bell, Dominic Adesani, coming up with your questions next.
	That's why I mentioned precognitive dreams.
	Once again, here is Dominic Parasani.
	Dominic, I didn't do a very good job of saying what I wanted to say there at the top of this hour, but what I'm getting from what the both of you said in the first, you know, couple of hours of this interview is that we can derive great pleasure from lucid dreaming, learning to control our own dreams, sort of being a director of our own dreams to some And that's certainly a positive thing to be able to do, and I'd love to be able to do it.
	But dreams are not taking us into some magical, truly different place.
	And what we dream of is a variation of the reality that we've experienced.
	Not some magical floating to the other side of the world and actually hearing what's going on.
	Some precognitive experience or something of that sort, but all based in reality, and that's why I asked about the blind or the deaf.
	Is that a fair assessment?
	I'd be careful about making it too reductionist to say it's a small reality we're talking about.
	I think there's a very, very magical aspect of the bigger reality that we do reach into, but I think sometimes our interpretations are too simplistic.
	We do think that you can perceive things beyond the physical senses that we count on our five digits today.
	The fact that remote viewing has been experimentally proven Both in the laboratory with waking subjects and in lucid dreams shows there's more than just the small reality that we walk around with day-to-day.
	Has it been proven to your satisfaction?
	Are you really satisfied that remote viewers are really doing what they say they're doing?
	Yep, in fact I think Stephen might have been a skeptic in the late 80s before he himself was one of the quote-unquote lab rats working himself in the lab with Joe and others.
	And had his own remote viewing, lucid dreams, bringing back anomalous information that was no way accessible except through remote viewing.
	Well, that just blows it right back in the other direction.
	Well, that's why I said be careful about taking us too literally when we critique the way that people articulate what they think is going on.
	When I take issue with the classical description of the out-of-body experience, It's generally not that you're feeling like you're... I don't think it's an issue with the feeling you're out of your body, nor that you can get anomalous information, but people want to leap to the next assertion or assumption that there's some material that physically leaves the body, based primarily on either a Greek Christian background and religion that suggests that, you know, there's
	I think Plato liked to talk about the forms, and the way you get higher and higher away from the base and closer to the forms, the more implied spirituality you have.
	Or, in the Christian tradition, having a soul, something that leaves the body that's seated somewhere in the pineal gland or the mind, seems a bit simplistic.
	And so, we think there's a lot more out there, but we grasp models that have been sort of ingrained through education and through our culture.
	And we're not sure those are the right operative models to really understand how wide reality and the being can be.
	Okay.
	All right.
	I could come up with a million more questions, but I'm going to turn it to the audience.
	Joe in Salt Lake City, you're on the air with Dominic.
	Hi.
	Hey, R. I just want to thank you for everything.
	You've really enriched my life.
	I have two questions real quick.
	Just wondering, in Dominic's research, if they ever experienced two people entering the dream state, sharing a dream, coming out of it, writing down their They're, you know, observations and had them coincide.
	And then my second question... Wait, wait, wait, wait.
	That's such a good one.
	Let's tackle that.
	That's a mutual dream.
	They're very, very common.
	When we're, in fact, when we're at dream camp, I like to call it boot camp, we usually have 15 or 20 people in the same room working very hard for 10 days on dreaming and lucid dreaming in particular.
	And very frequently, we'll have people talking about having a dream of somebody else in the room.
	And lots of correlations.
	I can't say that the correlations in the reports are provable that there is a telepathy going on, because most descriptions are, you know, we were in the same room talking about this and that, which is in fact a conversation topic we were having that afternoon in the lecture.
	So, there's a lot of commonalities that come up, but whether to say that it's telepathy or not, I can't say that we have proven it in the laboratory.
	Although we do know that there is something called telepathy, as there's something called remote viewing, so there's no reason why it can't occur.
	But I think once I say that now, people will run off and say, well, you know, I had a dream of you last night, you were in my dream, and therefore it must have been a telepathic experience.
	I think that's the jump that we make on every one of our experiences that can be dangerous, or at least can be deluding.
	Dangerous, perhaps, is an overreach.
	Next question?
	Yeah, have you ever used DMT, ayahuasca, psilocybin, peyote, shamanism, anything like that?
	All right, let's say chemicals.
	Yeah, I have.
	More in my later years than my younger years, which is, I think, different than many of my age group.
	Specifically in research.
	Ayahuasca I've used, let's say, upwards of 40 times, mostly in experimental contexts in Brazil.
	As part of the work we did with the Lucidity Institute, right now it's unpublished, we were trying to determine whether there was a real close correlation between lucid dreaming and the ayahuasca experience in specific.
	Because when you read the descriptions of the ayahuasca experience, it's usually said to be dreaming while awake, which is the superficial description we use of what lucid dreaming is, right?
	In fact, the experiences are Similar, but not the same.
	And when using ayahuasca or the other chemicals, you tend to have less control.
	Actually, I like to make the metaphorical comparison to something like I would do in deep meditation or using the Miro technology, where it's sort of like gently floating down a stream on a metaphorical leaf, right?
	Down a current, very, very gently.
	Where the ayahuasca experience is more like being in a white water raft trying to hold on for dear life with your paddles.
	Yes.
	Very, very vivid.
	Much more visionary than some of the other chemicals that you rattled off.
	I have a lot of respect for plant teachers, but I'm not sure we want to say that it's a Paranormal experience, at least in the sense that most people talk about it.
	Although I can tell you that the out-of-the-body sensations are quite striking using ayahuasca, where you don't find that as much with LSD or psilocybin.
	Dominic, have you done any work with sensory deprivation?
	I myself haven't.
	I think Stephen did some early work back in the late 80s.
	I think he's also worked with Gonsfield, with Marilyn Schlitz at IONS.
	But I don't have a real good grasp of that material.
	Darn it.
	I wish I'd asked earlier.
	All right.
	Sharon in Washington.
	You're on the air with Dominick.
	Hi.
	Thank you for your show.
	I really, really enjoy your show.
	I'm an insomniac and it's wonderful.
	Thank you.
	Could this be abused by people?
	Is there any instances where a person would want something that they don't have or maybe they had had before and they learn this process and they are not any longer satisfied or even made worse, their life made worse by not having what they have in the dreams that they can produce?
	That's a good question, actually.
	Yeah, that is a good question.
	First off, I think we should recognize that dreaming is natural.
	You do it two hours every night, and that generally, you just don't remember it.
	So, lucid dreaming and dreaming are healthy, and there's nothing dangerous or untoward about them.
	But I would say that if you had a borderline personality disorder, or if you were an obsessive personality, That, like anything else, you could become overly focused on one aspect of your life and existence than another.
	An extreme introvert might spend a lot of time playing his video games and not have a very good social life, and I think that's personally unhealthy.
	And I suppose that if you take anything to an extreme, trying to dream an extra three hours a night or lucid dream to the point where you avoid regular relationships during the day, I wouldn't call that psychologically helpful living, but I think those would be very extreme cases, and most of the time it takes some effort to focus on practicing lucid dreaming, so it's not something that you would do like... Like, try drinking.
	It's easy to pick up a bottle every afternoon and get drunk.
	In fact, you can become an alcoholic very quickly.
	Lucid dreaming, as I said, it's natural, and It takes a little bit of intention setting.
	So you really do have to sit down and say, tonight I'm going to focus on it.
	This is my practice and do it.
	Other nights when you want to relax and not focus on trying to remember and write down your dreams, you don't lose a dream.
	So I think there's a natural balance that occurs in most individuals.
	Dominic, I've noticed, and I bet a lot of the audience has too, that I tend to do more dreaming or at least have more recollection of dreaming.
	When I'm in a more disturbed sleep state?
	Yeah, I think it goes both ways.
	When you're disturbed, you'll have more what we call micro-awakenings.
	It turns out that every night, you really awaken at least 7 or 8 times as you cycle through the 8-hour, 9-hour sleep process.
	You go down into stage 1, 2, 3, 4 sleep, and you start rising up in 90-minute cycles.
	As you rise up, there's a slight awakening that's generally right at the end of a REM period.
	So, you start off in Alpha and you transition down to Delta and you come back up to Alpha, Beta.
	That's when you have your REM phases or REM sleep.
	So, your awakening occurs just after REM or when you're dreaming.
	If you're being disturbed or you're unsettled, That micro-awakening may be extended.
	He may have a brief few minutes of insomnia.
	And during that period, it's quite likely you'll remember that dream.
	And in fact, at Dream Camp, what we often do is tell people, look, you're here this week to do dream push-ups.
	We want you waking yourself up several times during the night, preferably at the end of your 90-minute sleep cycle, to pick up a dream.
	Does that help answer the question?
	Yes, I think it does.
	Now, one more, and this is sort of off the beaten path here a little bit, but a lot of people I'm sure would like to know, is there a preferable amount of sleep that an individual should get every night?
	In other words, I hear a lot of people say, you know, as I get older, I don't sleep so many hours or need so much sleep.
	I, on the other hand, need a lot of sleep and get a lot of sleep.
	Well, so first I should recommend that you get all the sleep you need.
	I think one of the biggest problems in today's workday life, a lot of us are moving through the world with a large sleep debt.
	Debt meaning, you know, I need to pay it back.
	And so we fall asleep at the wheel.
	We don't pay attention to our teachers, friends, family, or co-workers.
	And we can get into trouble in various ways.
	So I think it's important to get what you need.
	Now, if you ask me normatively, What's the journal-acquired amount of sleep?
	Studies have shown it's basically 8 1⁄2 hours under a bell curve.
	Or, no pun intended.
	So this tells people who need a little more, 9, 9 1⁄2 hours.
	Some people need less, 6, 6 1⁄2.
	The way to tell, really, is on a weekend, just sleep in.
	And maybe the next day, clock yourself and see what your natural rise time is.
	If you are sleep-deprived, you'll tend to accumulate a debt, and so it'll take several days to work that debt off before you can find the amount that your body needs.
	But you can do that.
	You can work it off.
	There's a great book by William DeMint called The Promise of Sleep.
	He was one of Stephen's mentors, in fact, the father of sleep research.
	The book's extremely readable.
	It's rather lengthy, but there are several chapters in there about The normative aspects of sleep and the studies that show how they got to about eight and a half hours.
	With regard to people who say, you know, I need less sleep or it's more disrupted as it moved into the middle age and later years, yep, that's a part of normal aging.
	Hormone shift, melatonin shifts, your need for sleep does tend to decline a bit as you get into your 50s, 60s and thereafter.
	People who needed eight and a half will tend to need seven, seven and a half.
	Also, their sleep tends to be more fragmented, particularly in the early mornings as you get into your 60s and 70s.
	But again, that's a natural aspect of life.
	Okay.
	Jeff in Rochester, New York.
	You're on with Dominic.
	Hi.
	How you doing?
	Good.
	How are you?
	Too bad.
	I have a question for Dominic.
	It's kind of crazy, but kind of embarrassing, but I'm dying to know.
	If you can answer this, um, I have a recurring dream.
	It happens to me.
	I must have had at least, I kid you not, Dominic, probably at least a hundred or so of these dreams.
	I know this sounds crazy and sick.
	I, it's not what I want, but it just happens.
	I have occurring sexual dreams about my cousin.
	About your, your cousin?
	Yes.
	I mean like all the time.
	And I even wake up sometimes, Dominic.
	I'm thinking that it's real, that it really happened, and it's crazy.
	I'm glad this discussion came up because it's been bothering me for quite some time.
	Okay, well, let's give it a try.
	A hundred times or more, that's a lot.
	I suppose at some point, Dominic, as you have a dream that many times, it's got to have some deeper meaning, wouldn't you think?
	Well, you know, my profession isn't to interpret dreams, and frankly, we generally work on the process of dreaming versus trying to get into somebody's head, necessarily.
	But, you know, we all have sexual dreams.
	They're quite common, and there's nothing to be embarrassed about in the fact that the same individual shows up.
	You know, I hear some guilt and concern about it, but, you know, it's not that person.
	It may be aspects of that person you find attractive, maybe erotic, I don't know, but I don't think necessarily it's unhelpful.
	In the dream, it's in the privacy of your own dream space, and therefore, you know, you're not acting out on it.
	So, at a very high level, I wouldn't say there's a problem with it.
	On the other hand, as Art said, there are things below that you may want to work with.
	Now, if you were practicing lucid dreaming, we basically say, don't avoid it.
	Get into the dream, not into the physical aspect necessarily, but there's something, a message that the dream character is trying to bring to you, and apparently she's bringing it back again and again and again.
	It may be the symbol of unobtainable... No, no, wait a minute.
	She's bringing it back again and again, or he's bringing it back again?
	Not she, the cousin.
	She, the dream figure, which is a representation of a part of you, or something Down below that your subconscious is bringing up as symbolized by this cousin.
	It may be the symbol of unrequited love or it might be unobtainable femininity.
	We don't know really what it is.
	I can't interpret it without knowing Jeff really well.
	In fact, Jeff is probably the very best one to eventually understand what this means.
	But the way that I suggest that, you know, if you were working through a lucid dreaming process, we'd sit down and say, all right, let's see if we can reproduce this dream while we come aware of the fact we're dreaming while this cousin is there, instead of jumping in the sack like we've done a hundred times.
	All right, Dominic, hold it right there.
	This is Coast to Coast, and we'll be right back.
	Well, I'm going to ask Dominic a question that I've always wanted to ask somebody like Dominic, and that is his opinion, his honest Unvarnished opinion of dream interpreters.
	Now, sometimes we have them on the radio, and what I've noticed is that inevitably, maybe this is a dream interpreter's job, I don't know, but if you describe dream A, it absolutely never has anything to do with what was actually in the dream.
	For example, you dream about climbing Mount Everest.
	Well, it turns out you're actually dreaming about your car, according to the dream interpreter.
	It's always driven me crazy.
	So we'll ask what he thinks of dream interpreters in a moment!
	Alright, Dominic, welcome back.
	I really have always wanted to ask about this.
	You know, from time to time we have these dream interpreters that come on the radio and, I don't know, it's like psychic readings or something.
	What do you think of them?
	Well, let me first say that, you know, psychiatrists have used dream work for a long time to get into the mind and try to understand underlying pressures that may be giving people problems.
	And I think there's some value in that, especially for professionals who've been doing it, you know, their whole lives and understanding the science and its limitations.
	And I do think, you know, when you talk about archetypes and general motifs across the population, there are things that we can understand.
	The idea of Unity, as Steve was saying earlier, and ecstasy.
	I think those things are valid.
	But I think when it comes to personal readings and interpretations of a specific dream, I think the best interpreter is the dreamer himself.
	And that's why with Jeff's earlier dream or any other dream that's either worrisome or just an enigma to the dreamer, the thing to do is to Try to, I think, if it's not lucid, do some free association on paper.
	How did you feel?
	What were the impressions that came through?
	Much the way a psychiatrist would do with an individual who's being treated for something.
	But if you go through the practice of lucid dreaming in the dream, you could oftentimes work with the dream characters, which we believe to be mostly aspects of our mind or the representations of the dream director, and simply ask the dream character, What is he trying to tell me?
	So perhaps the answer to what your dream means might be in developing the ability to lucidly dream.
	Let's say technique you can use to understand and interpret your dreams in real time while you're in the dream.
	And you can work strategies to try to address issues.
	Recurring dreams like Jeff's or nightmares oftentimes show there is some underlying issue, trauma, worry, concern, guilt.
	And you can spend years in psychoanalysis trying to uncover what that is.
	On the other hand, if you have a recurring dream, it's an opportunity to try something new in the dream and see if you can hit upon a strategy that resolves the issue.
	In Stephen's books, there are various accounts of cyclical recurring dreams where, yeah, in fact, strategies are developed in real time in lucid dreams in order to resolve them.
	So, not just for interpretation, but for resolution, I highly recommend Personal dream work, where you will take command and control of interpreting your own dreams, since they are yours, not somebody else's.
	All right.
	Peggy in Colorado, you're on the air with Dominic.
	Hi.
	Good morning.
	Good morning.
	My question is, I frequently remember my dreams, and they're mostly all positive.
	And in particular, I would dream about, or I will think, or have my dad on my mind during the day.
	And the next night or the next morning, I wake up and remember a dream that I've had with him.
	And oftentimes, I think of a question that I would like to ask him.
	He's no longer with us.
	And I wonder if I practice your technique, can I ask him that question and work it out that way?
	Sure you can.
	In fact, I highly recommend it.
	You know, especially when there is...
	Pining, longing for a person who's passed on or just no longer around.
	Somebody who oversees parts of a relationship.
	But Dominic, you take no position on whether it's actually her father answering or her mind providing the answer, right?
	And I was evasive with you before when we touched upon this topic because I really don't think it makes a difference if we're trying to find a wholesome emotional balance.
	And I personally don't think it's important to make the judgment, is it really the spirit of that person, or the spirit within you that remembers that person?
	Because I think to the individual, they're one and the same.
	In terms of the greater question.
	That is so exciting to me, because it is a longing for a relationship that is gone.
	And I think of questions that I would have asked him had I thought of the questions before he passed away.
	And that's very exciting to me, and I'm excited about learning your technique.
	Thank you so much!
	It's very much like the story I told you earlier with my wife.
	One of my partners at the Lucidity Institute, Key Lynn, who jointly teaches the program with myself and Stephen, has many, many cases of family members and friends of hers who have passed on, and she continually goes back to have another life with them at times to expand the relationships, whether they be Inside her or in the greater ether.
	Like I said, it's not really important to me if you make that judgment if it's wholesome for you and brings you better balance and enjoyment in life.
	Hey, Charles in Maryland.
	You're on the air with Dominic.
	Yeah.
	How are you?
	Good.
	How are you?
	Just fine.
	All right.
	I'm going to make this kind of quick.
	I'm at work and I may get interrupted here, but a while back, When I quit smoking, my doctor put me on a medication called Chantix.
	Oh!
	Caller, I also tried that medication.
	And the main side effect, as I'm sure you're well aware, is a change in dreaming.
	A very big change.
	Oh yeah.
	And very vivid dreaming.
	I mean, extremely vivid.
	Where I could have dreams that seemed like they lasted hours and hours, And when I would wake up some nights I could remember 10 and 12 dreams.
	I mean almost every single detail of the dream.
	Is this a prescription?
	I'm not really familiar with this.
	Yes, okay.
	I can help you out.
	Yes, it is a prescription medication to assist in quitting smoking.
	And in all the literature on this medication, they say the number one side effect is a change, they say, in dreaming.
	Now, I agree with this caller.
	I tried it.
	And to be honest with you, Dominic, I had such intense dreaming that I discontinued the medication.
	Let me make a general comment.
	It sounds to me like a replacement for nicotine, smoking cessation.
	No, no, no.
	It's not a replacement.
	Patches and nicotine gum and things like that are a replacement.
	This goes to work on some part of the brain that I'm not particularly familiar with, but it's not a replacement for nicotine.
	I promise you that.
	It has some other effect on the brain.
	What I was going to get at was not that it's a nicotonic supplement.
	I was going to say some research we've done with herbal supplements suggests that there are some receptors in the mind, one of them called a nicotinic receptor, that if excited correctly, right, allows not only better focus and memory, but it's also associated with lucidity.
	Now, we weren't working with the substance you're talking about, but a different class of neurotransmitter enhancers.
	Acetylcholine asterase inhibitors, in fact.
	One of them has a dual mode that it increases acetylcholine, but more importantly in this case, also excites the nicotinic receptors.
	We found this to be very helpful in not just extending REM sleep, but enhancing lucidity for those who need a booster.
	Okay, let me just interrupt you, Dominic, and ask the caller.
	Caller, how did you do with it as time went on?
	Because I kind of bailed out fairly quickly as this intense dreaming began.
	It actually bothered me.
	I didn't like it.
	Yeah, okay.
	After I actually quit smoking, the dreams went away.
	But until I quit, they continued.
	So while I was smoking, while taking the medication, I kept having them, but after I quit, the dreams went away.
	Fascinating.
	Have you now discontinued the medication?
	No, I'm still taking it.
	No dreams at all.
	Very good.
	All right.
	You might want to look into this Shantex, Dominic.
	He's absolutely right.
	I experienced the same thing.
	My God, the dreaming was heavy.
	It sounds interesting.
	I'll also mention this to Steven.
	Like I said, we've been working on the fringe of other substances, so this might be a good one for us to take an extra look at.
	Okay, take a look on the web.
	It'll tell you all about it.
	Pat in Arkansas.
	You're on with Dominique.
	Hi.
	Yeah, hi.
	I used to lucid dream all the time, and when I was real young, I would even plan what I wanted to dream.
	But anymore, I sleep very heavily, and do you have any techniques for raising your wave pattern?
	Because mine goes so deep that when it comes back up, it doesn't get back up to rim.
	Well, what do you do for work?
	Do you lead a busy life?
	No, actually, I'm retired, so I don't have a busy life.
	So, I'm just trying to get a feel for your sleep patterns.
	Do you get up at your own pace?
	Does your partner get you up in the morning?
	Do you use an alarm clock?
	Well, I'm a widow, so I sleep when I feel like it, and I wake up when I feel like it.
	Well, I'd say that one of the most important things is to get a lot of sleep if you want to work on lucid dreaming.
	Now, it so happens that adolescents seem to be the ones who have the easiest time at dream sleep, and we think it has a lot to do with peaking of melatonin and other neurotransmitters.
	There are supplements that can be taken, but I wouldn't advise taking them until you've tried actually working at Trying to remember your dreams.
	I'm pretty sure you're in REM sleep.
	Everybody is every night unless they have a real sleep malady.
	If in fact you have a abnormal sleep pattern and therefore be diagnosed as having a sleep sickness, you see a doctor and work on that problem first.
	But generally speaking, in the morning, for most people who go to bed around 11 o'clock, if you get up at 6.30 or 7, With the intention of going back to sleep a little later on, you can generally catch the last REM cycle.
	That's the most productive one if you want to practice lucid dreaming.
	Well, I mean, I have lucid dreamed before.
	I mean, that's, you know, but... She's just saying her sleep patterns have changed, so she's now heavily sleeping, so... Right, and so I don't...
	Well, maybe I'll just try that, because I, you know, try going back to sleep afterwards.
	I used to do it all the time, though.
	That's why I was... It was easier for me when I was 15, 16, 17.
	It was pretty easy in my 20s.
	It's a little more effortful now, but I've practiced it a lot, so I know basically where the triggers are at.
	One of the techniques we teach at Dream Camp, it's probably the most powerful one, is to get up after three or four sleep cycles.
	Now, a sleep cycle is about 90 minutes long.
	Okay?
	So, we're saying if you go to bed at midnight, well, get up around 4.30 a.m.
	Not with the intention of staying up.
	Get up for a half hour to 45 minutes.
	Set your intention.
	Maybe read a book about lucid dreaming or something that you really enjoy watching A really mind-expanding cartoon like Gumby.
	Something that inspires you.
	And then go back to bed with the intention of dreaming and trying to remember that you're dreaming.
	It's fundamentally a technique Stephen calls M.I.L.D., which is an acronym for Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams.
	It's available on the website.
	That in combination with this interrupted sleep method is probably the most powerful one I can give you over the radio to try.
	But it takes a little bit of practice and it does require that you kind of disrupt your sleep with the intention of then going back
	for a nap.
	Basically what you're doing is setting up a paradox state where your body wants to jump back into sleep and into REM,
	but you've already woken yourself up. So your neurotransmitters and brain waves
	are up and awake and yet your body craves that last hour and a half or two hours of sleep.
	So as you transition back in, it's a perfect time to practice.
	I've had some wonderful dreams, Dominic, but what do you say to somebody like me
	who is happiest when he has a little slice-o-death?
	In other words, when he goes to sleep, sleeps deeply, wakes up feeling as though he's had a wonderful night of sleep, in fact has had a wonderful night of sleep, and didn't have any dreams he remembers.
	There's nothing wrong with that, Art.
	I mean, that's a perfectly valid way to live your life, as long as you don't want to explore and use the other Two hours a day of consciousness that's really available to you.
	And I would encourage anybody to try it.
	It can be, if you have the orientation of it's going to be work, I think you recall the dream that was very busy, well then it's not restful.
	That's not necessarily how lucid dreams are, although they can be if that's the focus and attitude you take to them.
	So I find them to be very restful, but I go into the lucid spa as opposed to the lucid work setting.
	Okay.
	John in Long Island.
	You're on with Dominic.
	Hi.
	Hello, Art.
	How you doing, Dominic?
	Pretty good.
	I'm in Long Island, too, you know.
	That's it.
	The best place to live.
	My question is, how come dreams Steven started to explain some of the theory behind that from an evolutionary standpoint.
	have to erupt unless it's a real vivid dream. Yeah, how about 15 or 20 minutes or
	by the time you're out of the shower? Yeah, so Stephen started to explain some
	of the theory behind that from an evolutionary standpoint.
	I touched upon the concept of state-dependent memory. Think of it this way.
	When you're wide awake now, your brain is working at a certain beat rate.
	Let's say it's beta level brainwaves.
	Your neurotransmitters are moving quite well.
	Your left and your right brain are on firing on both sides.
	In sleep, parts of the brain tend to be more shut down.
	The neurotransmitters have shifted.
	You have hormones changing.
	And there's a certain state of consciousness that shifts throughout the night.
	So let's say an hour before you get up in the morning, you're in state A. As you change gears and get up and you're in state A for awake, your state has changed.
	We found that people who, for example, let's say do marijuana, right?
	A lot of times when they do marijuana, they change their state of consciousness.
	They have some great thoughts.
	The next morning, They may not remember them.
	Once they get high a second time, the thoughts can come back.
	State-dependent memory.
	Same thing, occasionally, with people who drink, right?
	They change the neurobiology of their body, and they may not be able to recall subtleties that they can then recall once they're back in that state.
	So, one of the problems we think is, as you get up in the morning, you shift states.
	And the memories become very, very ephemeral after you've shifted.
	That's why I recommend that if you want to capture your dreams, when you're beginning to wake up in the morning, don't move.
	That physical movement breaks the state as you activate the body.
	Okay.
	All right.
	So short on time.
	I wish we had more of it.
	Gregory in California, you're on the air with Dominic.
	Hi, Dominic.
	How are you doing?
	Hey, you know, I really appreciate all your work, especially Steven LaBerge.
	When I was 16, I found his book on lucid dreaming, and I just loved it.
	And I've been doing it for about 20 years now and got pretty good at it.
	Excellent!
	The one thing I really am stumped on, and I've tried it a number of times, but it's a very difficult process.
	I know that lucid dreaming happens during your REM period, and that's not your first stage of sleep.
	However, I've been almost successful in going from completely waking stage directly into the lucid dream situation.
	Do you have any suggestions or do you have any experience in that?
	Sure.
	It's going to have to be a very quick answer.
	Go ahead.
	That's generally called a wild waking initiated lucid dream.
	You generally transition through hypnagogia and sometimes you can get a short period of REM.
	So, I would suggest the time to do that is late in the afternoon, napping around 3 or 4 in the afternoon is good for your biorhythms.
	Okay, it has been such a pleasure to have the two of you on.
	Dominic, you've really been something and we're going to have you back again.
	Is there a website people can look at?
	Yeah, www.lucidity.com.
	There's a lot of material up there, both scientific research and excerpts from Steven's books.
	And of course, our Lucid Dreaming Boot Camp is coming up in April, and the details are posted on the site as well.
	All at the website.
	All right, Dominic, thank you for being here, my friend, and good night.
	Thank you very much, Art.
	Good night.
	Take care.
	And for all the rest of you, have a great night's sleep, and do all the lucid dreaming you can muster up.
	From the high desert, I'll see you tomorrow night.

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