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Ed Kellogg*

Title of Work:      Mind Meld Medium:              Digital Art Date Created:     2007 EWK 5/13/07 Semi-Lucid. " ... A young man and a woman - teachers? - want me to undergo some sort of treatment to enhance my abilities. I now have on a sort of dark forest green costume symbolizing the powers I have - the costume has webbing (meridians?) markings. (It reminds me of Spiderman’s costume, but in dark green rather than red) I look large and strong. They take me to an entity that will explore my every thought and memory, purifying my psyche and activating my potentials. I sit in a chair and see the entity on the table in front of me. It looks like a glowing ball of white energy - about 6 inches in diameter. I communicate with it telepathically. When it activates and begins the process, a hundred or so white spikes extend from its surface, each about 3 inches long, turning it into a glowing multi-point three-dimensional white star shape, now about 1 foot across. At the completion of this project, after the examination/purification, the entity will attach a trifold propeller like symbol onto the chest of my costume: I comment to the entity that it certainly picked a positive appearance/image - a glowing white ball of energy - very much like an image I use in my meditations. After the analysis, on a data sheet on the table I see information about me. I notice it has the wrong phone number - 535-3067. Actually, I tell it, 535-7067 (Incorrect dream memory. My phone number in WPR actually differs for two digits). I tell the entity that it has some of the numbers reversed. At first it denies this, but it finally concedes the point. I wonder though, if it could make an error about my telephone number, what other errors or misperceptions might it have made in reading my psyche? The young man and woman return. RWPR. Comment: The unexpected form that energy entity took when activated really surprised me - and impressed me as a kind of validation of its "otherness." The consciousness I interacted with did not feel like a projection of myself, or like an aspect of myself, but as something different, highly intelligent, but with a mechanical flavor to it, like a sentient computer. Also, as an interesting side note, in this dream I identified the man and woman as the same two teachers/guides who had helped me through an initiation in a lucid to super-lucid dream ("The Sword of Damocles") I'd had about a month earlier, on 4/9/07. (http://www.dreaminglucid.com/articles/Initiations%20and%20Trainings%20in%20Lucid%20Dreams.pdf) The "trifold propeller like symbol" that showed up in this dream has a geometric congruence with a more complex symbol that played an essential role in Suzanne Wiltink’s transformative “Dreaming the Flower of Life" experience, which she reports on in the March, 2009 issue of LDE. (http://www.dreaminglucid.com/articles/Dreaming%20the%20Flower%20of%20Life.pdf ) In Suzanne’s dream, she experienced an intense interaction/purification with an energy field in the form of a “Seed of Life”, the center section of a larger sacred geometric figure called the “Flower of Life” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flower_of_Life.) This symbol has appeared on temples in a number of cultures for millennia. One can accurately create this symbol – or any of its derivatives, using only a compass, as it consists of an interlocking pattern of intersecting circles. The symbol that I saw in my interaction/purification dream derives from the “Flower of Life” as well, but of an even smaller part. Perhaps one might call it “The Seed of the Seed of Life.” Made up from four intersecting circles – to me it represents the balanced integration of three different aspects of Self, three circles for three aspects, with the fourth outer circle symbolizing unification as well as integration. BIOGRAPHICAL DESCRIPTION OF ARTIST: Ed Kellogg earned his Ph.D. in biochemistry from Duke University. A proficient lucid dreamer himself, he has a long-standing interest in the phenomenology of dreaming. He has presented numerous papers and workshops on such topics as the lucidity continuum, lucid dream healing, lucid dream incubation, out-of-body experiences, and the use of magic in lucid dream reality. He has developed his skills in the creation of computer art for the purpose of learning how to make accurate representations of the visual element of dreamscapes. ARTIST’S STATEMENT: Continuing improvements and innovations in computer graphic art software makes it easier and easier to effectively and accurately reproduce the inner landscapes of dreams. The ‘dreamscape’ presented here captures a dream scene with high fidelity. For this dreamscape I used Poser3D, and Painter 5. As I see it, computer art (at least as I do it) requires skills and techniques from at least four artistic disciplines: 1. Sculpture - when the artist creates or customizes 3d images; 2. Photography - where the artist arranges 3d images, camera angles, and lighting to get the effect desired; 3. Collage - where the artist integrates different elements, such as digital photos, with everything else in a two dimensional framework; and 4. Painting - where the artist works in all of the special effects, make final modifications to colors, background textures and special effects. All of these serve as modalities through which I can create a graphic that matches what I have in mind. In the case of recreating one of my own dreamscapes, I pick a scene from memory that appeals to me - one particular snapshot, so to speak, of the dreamed experience that captures its essence for me - and reproduce it with as much fidelity as possible. No matter how detailed, a dream report consists only of a pattern of words, that at best still fails adequately convey the living reality of the dream as experienced. In my experience, computer software graphics programs can serve as a connecting bridge, through the use of which one can recreate dreamscapes that can convey the living reality of a dream to someone other than the dreamer.

Copyright 2009: All images contained herein are protected by copyright.  Images may not be used, copied, transmitted or reproduced in whole or in part in any form nor may they or any part of them be stored in a retrieval system of any nature without written permission from the individual artist.