We now enter what Strassman refers to as the "invisible" realm or "unexpected territory," some aspects of which left him "confused and concerned....baffled and nonplussed by the sheer volume and bizarre nature of [the] reports."
While he would dearly love to have written them off as dreams or hallucinations he was eventually convinced that they in fact represented "freestanding, independent levels of existence."
And his subjects would probably agree because they would preface their reports with statements such as, "This was not a dream," or "I couldn't have made it up if I wanted to." Others said things like, "...it was a total surprise!....All I could do was observe it;" or "This is real...It's totally unexpected, quite constant and objective....It's an independent constant reality."
After some initial, and mostly unsuccessful, attempts at dealing with his subjects' reports from a rational/scientific perspective, he finally decided to try a "thought experiment," responding to the subjects as if "...the worlds that [they]...visited and the inhabitants with whom they interacted were real...."
At the simplest level subjects reported entering strange places such as an apartment of the future, a white room stacked with cubes, or an unfamiliar, unearthly landscape. They also had contact with entities as varied as elves, dwarfs, orange people, animated clowns, spiders, cacti, and stick figures.
While contact with non-material beings has long been accepted in indigenous cultures, e.g. during vision quests, it is definitely not accepted in ours. As Strassman writes,
...I was neither intellectually nor emotionally prepared for the frequency with which contact with beings occurred...nor the often utterly bizarre nature of these experiences.
In fact, at least half of all subjects reported making contact with other beings. The fascinating thing to me is that many of these subjects saw them as alien or alien-like beings, and their experiences were very reminiscent of the reports of people who recount alien abduction experiences under hypnotic regression, a subject that we will explore in great detail in the future.
For now I will conclude with a number of verbatim quotes garnered from the reports of close to a dozen of his subjects:
It was clearly outer space, a black sky with millions of stars.
I was in a large waiting room....I felt observed by the insect-thing and others like it....I'm aware of them and they're aware of me. It's like they have an agenda.
I was coming on and coming on and then POW! There was a space station below me....There were at least two presences...guiding me to the platform.
...I felt I was suddenly in the presence of...aliens, vaguely humanoid.
There were lots of beings. They were talking to me but they weren't making a sound. It was more as if they were blessing me.....They were saying that life was good.
They were reptilian and humanoid, trying to make me understand, not with words, but with gestures....Once I established what they were communicating, they didn't just fade away. They stayed there for quite a while. Their presence was very solid.
There were clinical researchers probing into my mind. There were sort of long fiber-optic things that they were putting into my pupils.
I felt evolution occurring. These intelligences are looking over us. There is hope beyond the mess we are making for ourselves.
It's a different world. Amazing instruments. Machine-type things....The machine felt as if it was rewiring me, reprogramming me....It was a little frightening, almost unbearably intense.
There were four distinct beings looking down on me, like I was on an operating-room table. They had done something and were observing the results. They are vastly advanced scientifically and technologically.
I felt like I was in an alien laboratory, in a hospital bed....a sort of landing bay, or recovery area. There were beings....They had a space ready for me. They weren't as surprised as I was....There was one main creature, and he seemed to be behind it all, overseeing everything. The others were orderlies, or dis-orderlies.
I knew they were preparing me for something. Somehow we had a mission. They had things to show me....These beings were friendly. I had a bond with them.
They weren't benevolent but they weren't non-benevolent. They probed, they really probed....I felt like something was inserted into my left fore-arm....It was long. There were no reassurances with the probe. Simply business.
And then there they were. There was no time for me to say, "Who the hell are you guys? Let's see some ID!"
...there were these insect creatures all around me....They were interested in emotion....The thought came to me with certainty that they were manipulating my DNA, changing its structure.
It was non-verbal communication...It was an empathic communication, a telepathic communication.
The beings were there and they were experimenting on me....There were creatures and machinery....They were pouring communication into me but it was just so intense. I couldn't bear it.
She was showing me...how to use this thing. It resembled a computer terminal. I believe she wanted me to communicate with her through this device. But I couldn't figure it out.
There were insectlike intelligences everywhere. They were in a hyper-technological space.
There was another one helping me....It was very intelligent. It wasn't at all humanoid. It wasn't a bee but it seemed like one. It was showing me around the hive. It was extremely friendly....It said to me that this was where our future lay.
I would like to conclude with a longer excerpt from one subject's report. "Sara" was a 42 year old wife, mother, grad student and freelance writer. She had hoped for an "expansion of consciousness" and she got it............ albeit not in the way she expected:
I went directly into deep space. They knew I was coming back and they were ready for me. They told me there were many things they could share with us....they wanted something from me, not just physical information. They were interested in emotions and feelings....
I always knew we weren't alone in the universe. I thought that the only way to encounter them is with bright lights and flying saucers in outer space. It never occurred to me to actually encounter them in our own inner space....I expected spirit guides and angels, not alien life-forms.
To be continued....
