Yet I did not wonder

 "... but I was beginning to feel as though we were walking in a dream".

Another Garden, Another Time

One would expect a person to be very confused, perhaps even alarmed, when experiencing a "time slip", an incongruous displacement in time(space).

Yet often that seems not to be the case. There are cases where an odd state of acceptance seems to overcome the "slipper" at the time of the experience.

I find that particularly interesting and somewhat - if still mysteriously - revealing of the mechanisms underlying (mis)perception of timespace.

Among the stories posted here, two are very explicit about this oddly calm state of mind.

Here, what struck me first was the mild blue light that filled the room; yet I did not wonder about this at all. I did not try to account for its source, and so the wonder of this light without any visible source did not trouble me.

The Ultimate Tourist 

Remarkably, Dr Moon seems not at the time to have been either alarmed or even mildly surprised by the changed scenery, by the quite oddly dressed man approaching his or the fact that his car was missing. What preoccupied him was the thought of Lord Carson's prescription. He simply turned away, without any concern, to go back into the house.

Out of Mind?

 

Now think: aren't you yourself familiar with such an all-accepting state of mind?

Of course you are. You react like that quite often - in your dreams.

The most extraordinary things can happen, yet you accept them because you know - in your dream - why they make perfect sense, or are for some other reason acceptable to you.

Dreams are a mystery, to be sure. For one thing, there are various kinds of dreams - sub- and superconscious expressions of your Self, wish-fulfillment dreams, even prophetic dreams, etc. - seemingly unrelated to each other.

The one thing that unites them is the brain wave frequency: the Theta rhythm. In other words, the frequency range between 4 and 7 Hz of electromagnetic waves propelled by your neurons. (Think of your neurons - there are billions of them - as the keepers of your brain's electrical powerhouse.)
 The usual waking state wave frequency, the Alpha rhythm, falls in the range of 8 - 12 Hz. (You can read more about brain wave frequencies here.)

Am I implying that these people were somehow dreaming awake?

No, certainly not in the usual sense of this term, by which the dream images are "unreal", as distinctly separate from the waking "reality". But then, we must keep in mind that dreams themselves, even after centuries of exploration, remain a mystery. There is no one theory that explains them all.

Which also means that some of the dream images may very well be "real"; it's just the plane of that reality that escapes our daily wakeful reasoning.

Theta brain waves can be induced by various methods. This is not the time (and perhaps not the place) to discuss those methods. But certainly it is conceivable that some source of electromagnetic activity extraneous to the brain could provoke them. (Which is why the data listed at the bottom of this page are so important!)

It is also perfectly conceivable that the waking mind, by its own resources, can slip into the Theta rhythm. (After all, various meditation techniques can produce just that.)

Of one thing I am certain: these images are not hallucinations or dreams, again in the usual sense of the term. They appear to be simply glimpses of the surrounding, ever-present greater Reality that the waking mind usually keeps from us.

We will be writing more about this in one of the next posts, where we'll discuss the "markers of Time's undoing".