In 1973, Stanford Research Institute (SRI) conducted a research project called “The Jupiter Probe.” The idea was to have earthbound humans attempt to view Jupiter before NASA’s Pioneer 10 spacecraft flew by with its cameras. The participants put their 3D bodies in a state of rest and, with their 4D minds, viewed Jupiter with their inner eyes. Among them was the now celebrated remote viewer, Ingo Swann. He was able to describe Jupiter as the spacecraft cameras were to see it a few weeks later. The dimension that Ingo Swann’s mind entered is a reality that we today might call a “virtual reality.” The virtual Jupiter has a reality to it that is as “real” as the physical Jupiter. But there is more than image in these 4D perceptions.

As any remote viewer and sleeping dreamer can tell you, the energetics of images are as dynamic as their physical forms. Often what happens in sleep and virtual reality is real to the viewer. The body's response to the mind’s experiences can change the heart rate and blood pressure, force adrenaline to flow in either fight or flight reactions, or can stimulate even an orgasm because the dreamer really thinks he or she is having physical sex. Is the dimension just beyond this third the mind's fourth-dimensional, virtual reality? Or, is it more like Einstein’s matter to energy and energy to matter? We can either experience a thing as matter or as energy; both are real. Whatever the ultimate physics, we are very alive and active whether in matter and the 3D realm or in energy and the 4D realm.

Most of us move in and out of sleep with relative ease. So subtle is the passage that we rarely notice the transition. Yet, we rarely gain consciousness when in sleep, and when we do, we have great difficulty bringing the perceptions back. How often have you awoken from a vivid dream only to completely lose it once you were fully up and active? How is it possible that so impressive a mental image can be so completely lost in the transition? Is the transition from asleep to awake a dimensional shift from the 4th to the 3rd dimension? And once we’re fully here, is it that we cannot easily perceive the 4th dimension from the 3rd? Yet, some humans, Ingo Swann for example, show an unusual ability to see 4th-dimensional reality while awake. Even many “normal” humans have their occasional altered states of consciousness in which they perceive beyond the 3D world.

The ancient Greeks referred to the sleep state as being “in the arms of Morpheus,” their god of dreams and the son of Hypnos (as in hypnosis). Movies and computer graphics have familiarized us with “morphing,” shape-shifting from one form to another, as the poet Ovid referred to Morpheus’ shifting forms in sleep.

Sleep is actually more than one condition. It is a series of conditions that begins by stilling the 3D physical body, absorbing the normal 3D mind into the deeper subconscious, and allowing the mind to gradually go through various transitions, which we verify as changes in the brainwaves, from beta to alpha to theta, and so on. If the deepest type of sleep is achieved, then the inner being morphs from its normal ice cube-like 3D reality to a watery, flowing realm in which 3D objects have the qualities of liquids and vapors—the realm of Morpheus. The inner mind and being enter an expansive state in which the mind, not the body, is the mover and doer. In this dimension a 3D cube would be an image. We could see it. We could even touch it—but not like we would a 3D cube on Earth. This cube is the fourth-dimensional version of our 3D solid. It is the thought form of the cube. Now we are perceiving beyond the three planes of the “real” cube. This is the 4D thought form of the cube, the idea of the cube. It has all the characteristics of the 3D cube but is in an alternate reality to it. It is not matter. In this dimension we do not use the body’s physical senses, yet we are sensing. The mind’s sight, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling are as real to the sleeper as the physical is to the 3D self. But we are beyond the physical, we are in the next dimension.

To really enhance your consciousness in this other dimension, try meditating every night before falling asleep; do this for one month. Your sleep state will come alive as your deeper 4D self takes conscious flight through the many realms beyond this little world of ours. For protection and a right-guiding rudder, call for God’s Presence and Purpose throughout the sleep experience. See it, feel it, know it is with you as you let go and fall into sleep.

Excerpt from John Van Auken's Ancient Mysteries column in Venture Inward magazine, available at EdgarCayce.org/members.