Conclusion:
After a highly dysfunctional childhood which left its scars Father X discovered a mental trick to avoid confrontation with the emotional baggage of his past, knowing he was dreaming and escaping or being out-of-body. This seems to have been an effective technique for many years and so dominated his dream life with its otherworldly feel that he kept a detailed record and sent it to interested psychologists. By 1990 this avoidance seemed not as effective. These major findings illustrate the conclusion that his major defenses no longer worked and his long surprised inner turmoil was emerging. First from the perspective of content:
Changes in experience type over time also address this conclusion.
Confirmation of these trends in the diary came in the form of a recent letter where Father X explained that a couple of years after the end of his diary Father X entered a treatment program for his alcoholism. It may be that after many years hidden away from society in a monastery and hidden away from his pain in lucidity/OBE's it finally broke through. At the very least his behaviours became disturbing enough to the community that they paid for his long treatment from monastery funds as they had no insurance for such an event. After 20 years of these experiences and alcohol addiction treatment, Father X points out that lucidity and OBE's have virtually left him. Unfortunately, he feels that the therapy was all a failure.
In a recent letter to the first author Father X said that this quote from Karl Menninger says a lot of how this monk sees himself:
When a trout rising to fly gets hooked on a line and finds himself unable to swim about freely, he begins with a fight which results in struggles and splashes and sometimes an escape. Often, of course, the situation is too tough for him. In the same way the human being struggles with his environment and with the hooks that catch him. Sometimes he masters his difficulties; sometimes they are too much for him. His struggles are all that the world sees and it naturally misunderstands them. It is hard for a free fish to understand what is happening to a hooked one.
After I wrote up this summary of the classes findings and my own observations I sent it to Father X. In a letter dated January 13, 1995 he answered, "I have always thought that my damaged psyche was only responsible for kicking open the door to this other world, and was not a major factor in contributing to the content of my experiences." This truly lovely man went on to say:
But I am only a layman and I'm sure that most psychologists will hold a completely different view on this subject. I certainly found that out at the treatment center; the psychologists there wouldn't even entertain the possibility that this other world or "Parallel Reality", if you will, might exist on its own apart from my mind; according to them, my psyche and my psyche alone was responsible for these weird experiences I was having; consequently, I have resigned myself to the fact that I will continue to be a population of one who believes in the reality of this other world. The idea is not as farfetched as it may seem. Some reputable scientists are now talking about something called "Hyperspace" which may conceal Parallel Realities, Time Warps and a 10th dimension. But I have to say that with the ending of my experiences, my belief, which was constantly being reinforced with each new experience, is not as strong as it once was, but it is still there.
He closed his letter with a lucid dream which occurred just before he wrote me on Jan. 13, 1995, "Because my experiences are so rare now, I don't record them anymore, but this particular experience happened recently and it had some interesting features to it so I thought I would include it."
In the pre-lucid phase of the dream I was walking through an unfamiliar city when I came upon this bridge which I walked under without any difficulty but when I got to the steps leading up to the main street they turned into a brick wall, and this is when lucidity hit me. Knowing that I was in a dream I just leaped into the air and started flying over the city. Off in the distance I could see this huge tower with a concrete platform on top of it; there were a group of men on the platform playing some musical instruments; as I got closer to them they started waving at me, and I landed right in the middle of them. There were about six of them of various ages and appearances, some had beards. They all had big smiles on their faces and when I told them that I was from the planet Earth they started laughing uproariously as if I had said some big joke; then one by one they dived off the platform into the water below; when they hit the water they all dissolved into black spots; I followed them off the platform but I landed on solid ground. I continued wandering around the city and noticed how dirty and ill-kept it was; there was all this strangely shaped feces lying around; then from out of a side street marched an army of ants waving swords and riding on the backs of these huge dragon flies; after they passed me I saw some young children going into a house that might be a school so I followed them in.