Experiences of Consciousness Beyond Hypnagogia:
Using introspective experiences to develop skills like remote-viewing, lucid-dreaming, out-of-body experiences, or for the development of spiritual experiences
Presented by Sirley Marques Bonham, PhD
Tuesday, May 11th at 7pm
Austin Center for Spiritual Living
4804 Grover Ave, Austin, TX 78756
Hypnagogia is a generic label given to sensorial perceptions that happens “automatically” – without conscious control – while falling asleep, or while awakening from sleep. Hypnagogia may also happen while a person is meditating – or while in trance-like situations.
In this talk we will explore what can be learned from the perceptions we encounter during the sleep/awake thresholds, and from trance-like situations usually encountered in introspection practices like, for example, meditation and hypnosis. The most common and accessible skills that can be developed through situations of hypnagogia are lucid-dreaming and out-of-body experiences. However, remote-viewing frequently makes use of perceptions “on the threshold of consciousness,” which is obviously within the realm of hypnagogic perceptions. Remote-viewing may also make use of a conscious interaction with the subconscious mind, done while fully awake. Therefore, while working on developing these skills, we willingly or unwillingly tend to encounter experiences that are considered spiritual, and may be used for personal and spiritual development. We will discuss various examples of situations where the explorer discovered him or herself in contact with something that could be interpreted as our higher-self, or by a surprising meeting with a spiritual teacher or guide to help along the way.
This talk expands on Bonham’s earlier presentation in May 2007 entitled “Consciousness and Hypnagogia: Dream imageries, reveries, and the development of a relationship with the ‘unconscious’ mind.” The articles that accompanied the talk are available through the links below:
- Consciousness and Hypnagogia (.doc)
- Consciousness (.pdf)
About the Author
Sirley Marques Bonham is a Ph.D. physicist by education, but due to her long time involvement with the subject of consciousness, she also considers herself somewhat of a neuroscientist. She was born in Brazil and first came to the US in 1986 to follow post-doctoral research with the Astrophysics Group at the University of Chicago and the NASA-financed Theoretical Astrophysics Group at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), located in Batavia (IL), near Chicago. Her main scientific work was done in an extension of Einstein’s unified field theory, but she has also worked in neuroscience research at the University of Texas at Austin, and in biophysics for the US Air Force in San Antonio, Texas. She has also taught at universities in Brazil, South Africa, and the US.
Dr. Bonham’s involvement with the phenomenon of Consciousness, as viewed by neuroscience, started in 1992 through a group of scientists at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, followed by a brief work with a group for research in neuroscience, specifically in the processes of memory and learning, at the University of Texas at Austin. Though she has learned about the paranormal through her father’s interest in this area, it has been her practice to approach this science strongly rooted in a scientific perspective, which has influenced her personal self-experimentation with the phenomenon of awareness during sleep, represented by the modern approach to the so-called out-of-body experiences, and the recently developed techniques of lucid-dreaming.
Dr. Bonham came to live in Austin, Texas, in 1993. She presently is a visiting scholar at the Center for Relativity at the University of Texas at Austin, and is a member and scientist of the Institute for Neurosciences and Consciousness Studies (INACS). Her writings can be accessed at inacs.org/sirley-marques-bonham.