The night after my first trip to a Mormon temple endowment I had a dream where I was walking through an open field and came upon a dark doorway suspended in the air. I was at once fearful and drawn to it my some compelling force. When I entered I had the powerful experience of being suddenly awakened from a deep sleep — in my room, but surrounded my a stifling and binding darkness. At the foot of my bed was a blindingly bright light … but one from which no light escaped to lighten the surrounding pitch. And I was certain that the light was a being of awesome and frightening power. I was so afraid that I dared not look, eyes closed tight, and locked in a fetal pose, unable to move. And then a voice … “You have not yet escaped my grasp” … and the I was alone in my room — wide awake but unable to move some time.

For those who have been through a Mormon endowment, you may have a sense of where this “you/they are under my control” idea comes from. The message had clearly taken hold of me.

My mother taught me that such was Lucifer’s power to invade dreams and that she had herself such experiences, which terrified me right up until the day I read Carl Sagan’s The Demon-haunted World. I had never heard of such compelling explanation for night terrors and such … at which point I suddenly realized that my mother and my religious tradition had taught me many superstitious things.

I’ve encountered a couple of religious thinkers who give their experience with dark visitors as evidence of a supernatural world. It’s interesting how abruptly that line of reasoning halts when I point to an article about the common night hag or sleep paralysis experience. In the two cases I’m thinking of, what they described was a textbook night hag. It must have been shocking to see their spiritual experience described and dissected. Come to think of it, Joseph Smith’s experience in the grove sounds familiar:

After I had retired to the place where I had previously designed to go, having looked around me, and finding myself alone, I kneeled down and began to offer up the desires of my heart to God. I had scarcely done so, when immediately I was seized upon by some power which entirely overcame me, and had such an astonishing influence over me as to bind my tongue so that I could not speak. Thick darkness gathered around me, and it seemed to me for a time as if I were doomed to sudden destruction.

Carl Sagan’s book is yet another in the insurmountable mountain of books I would love to read before I die. I store most of them on an Amazon wishlist which is now over 350 items! Aren’t we fortunate to live in a time and place where we can drown in a sea of plentiful ideas?

It’s interesting reading about your experiences. My brother swears he can manipulate his dreams. He will be in the middle of an intensely scary dream, and will do something consciously to change the dream, such as choose to fly away, or reach into his pocket and pull out some object that he conjures up consciously (he says) to help him. Strangely cool.

I myself hardly ever remember my dreams. About once a quarter I get one that is so vivid it seems real. The last one strangely included me engaging in mildly sexual activity with one of the sister missionaries who used to be in my ward here. Very unexpected. All she ever was to me was a good friend.

Isn’t it amazing what our sleeping mind can conjure up? I recently had a dream that I could not admit to anyone..hardly myself.

some of the others were drug induced, but mind opening none the less.