I haven’t read Dark Intrusions, but from a review by Nick Redfern, which can be read in its entirety here:
“… this is a truly excellent and wide study of a phenomenon undertaken by a man who has not only been touched and changed by SP [sleep paralysis] himself, but who has had the courage to seek out the answers to this mystery, and who ultimately triumphs, rather than merely playing the role of victim to the menacing entities that invade our slumber.
As Proud states: “… the SP state puts you in direct contact with your soul.”
The publisher has more about the book here, including a table of contents. This whole subject is just so disturbing and scary to me. I don’t know what to make of it (which doesn’t mean I’m not buying it, I try to have an open mind). The subject makes me think of Communion, Whitley Strieber’s book about alien abduction. (Strieber gets a chapter in Proud’s book.) I also didn’t know what to make of Strieber’s experiences either. But ever since reading his book, from time to time at night I look out the window and wonder how I would respond if aliens suddenly appeared. I feel lucky that I’ve never had to answer that question.
Another review by John Rimmer on The Magonia Blog:
http://pelicanist.blogspot.com/2009/12/sleep-paralysis.html
I haven’t read the book yet, but it seems to me that we are dealing with two different but related subjects.
1) the exteriorization of subtle vehicles.
2) the denizens are psychological phenomena observable by the exteriorized vehicle.
1) The esoteric contention would be that the sleeper has not completely and solidly reconnected with the physical vehicle.
The paralysis occurs because autonomy has not yet completely been handed over to the physiological processes.
This often occurs to many people without any attendant psychological featues beyond the paralysis itself. Some suggest trying to move a little finger of a toe. Some suggest simply trying to return to sleep and then wake up again.
When some of the etheric substance (that we conjectured about in an earlier post, likening to the etheric double) extrudes with the astral vehicle, the possibility of paralysis is increased should there not be a normal reconnection with physical levels of consciousness.
2) While in this disconnected state and therefore in a condition of paralysis, one has accidentally achieved a condition similar to mediumship trance.
Although in these cases the trance was unbidden, unsought, alarming, and therefore an entirely undesirable condition.
The spiritual/psychological phenomena discussed in the reviews would be one reason why so many mediums have a gate keeper. That is, a spirit operating in another dimension of time and wave length with the purpose of making sure that the medium, in an unconsious state, is not intruded upon by any unseemly or unwanted or unwarranted presences.
This is also the reason that spiritualist churches as well as circles frequently have prayers and hymns to elevate the conditions into which the medium will enter and also to influence the level of entities who are eligible to approach the gate keeper.
You know, Stacy, the different level of consciousness that is achieved from your choir when you are singing harmoniously together and raising the consciousness of the singers and the listeners.
In spiritual terms, this is one of the “elevators” that help the conditions and possibilities.
Now the denizens that are indigenous to the hypnogogic level can phenomenologically be diverse.
Esoteric theory would suggest that principle become personified in the inner world. For example, someone can get tangled up in a bedsheet and dream about being hanged. So not all of the hypnogogic phenomena can be evalutated as if they are what the images suggest.
Jungian psychologists at least are very familiar with images in the unconscious that are part of the psyche’s non-ego. They are not in the province of the ego to understand or know about, and yet at the same time they are part of the psychology of the individual.
Emmanuel Swedenborg and William Blake both had rich lives with these images in the psychic non-ego.
However, after we have accounted for all of the images that are part of psychological makeup, we encounter images that may offer a possibility of being independent inhabitants of the mythic, poetic realm.
In the esoteric tradition, usually various barriers such as pentagram rituals and other technology of the imagination are used to bar these prospective entities from access to the paralysis victim. This is simply because the rituals operating in the technological imagination are made up of some of the same substance as the suppositional entity.
I should also say that because we are dealing with a level of images, we are not dealing with such transpersonal realms that might be reflective of an ontological or metaphysical level of psychological possiblilty. This is because as an image, it belongs to what the esoteric world would call the astral plane or perhaps levels of the collective unconscious. Beyond a certain depth a psychology of formless apprehension of awareness operates as transpersonal state of beingness.
Dr. Stanislav Grof is one of many who can help give insight into these matters.
Coincidentally, TheoFantastique published yesterday an interview to the Author:
http://www.theofantastique.com/2010/03/01/louis-proud-dark-intrusions-an-investigation-into-the-paranormal-nature-of-sleep-paralysis-experiences/