I actually saw the eleven faces of my wife in a flash. It would change into all these others".

p. 78

"the partner’s features become those of a complete stranger. The familiar face changes into someone else’s altogether."

{Is the "complete stranger" a possessing-spirit?}

[m] "just an experience of a different face [being] suddenly there. ... It may look old, it may look young, it may look like the same sex, or like a different sex.

{In the case of "a different sex", is the sexual partner being possessed by a spirit of opposite gendre from that of said sexual partner?}

Sometimes the person’s personality will shift along with the visage that I’m seeing, and sometimes not. At times the images will be there for five, six, even ten minutes.

Other times, it’s just like that [snapping his fingers several times rapidly], one to the next to the next to the next."

{Rapid passage through being possessed by several possessing spirits is characteristic of some varieties of spirit-mediumship, such as in Vietnam.}

p. 79

"The appearance of ghostly features can happen to one or both lovers ... . [A man]’s face changes without his being aware of it, except on those occasions when he was positioned so that he could see a mirror and witness his own features disappear behind a stranger’s. The human faces that appear ... are somewhat fixed and masklike. At other times, though, the partner’s face manifests the alien features of no known creature. These inhuman countenances are usually contorted with strong feelings. Smiling, laughing, or beaming expressions are taken to be benevolent spirits while fierce or angry ones are described as demonic. ... It may look like an angle, demonic, whatever."

p. 80

"Books ranging from Stephen LaBerge’s Lucid Dreaming to Carl Jung’s Man and His Symbols to ... The Tibetan Book of the Dead adjure readers to gaze unflinchingly at the entity ... . While meeting the creature’s eyes, the person should invite it to reveal its significance".

[m] When she transforms before my eyes, I’ve been displaced to a different environment where everything has become radiant".

p. 84

States of fusion ... When they occur during sex, their simultaneous self-expansion and self-dissolution produce a sense of the numinous."

p. 85

[m] "We were one moving, touching mass of energy and awareness, not two separate poles of consciousness. I felt sort of like a woman and a man, and beyond that, all sorts of things at the same time. No sense of two separate beings, as though we were both absorbed into a higher unity.

p. 86

It was this enormously ecstatic state. ... An unbounded place where all we were was one being, one love, kind of a melting together ... into something greater than us."

[f] "It’s more that we’re just in a bubble ... . I’m still in my body, aware of my body, but I’m moving and responding from a place that’s not purely within my body, which seems like a paradox. my space is beyond my skin, but I’m still very much in the physical realm."

"Her partner began to experience kundalini energy moving up her body "like shock waves" that produced spontaneous, involuntary movements recognized in yogic traditions as kriyas. ... In fact, [she] "caught the wave," too.

[m] "She’ll have a kriya, and my body will react. I’ll feel almost like my spine is a radar dish or something. Her spine is sending out this wave, and my spine catches it and responds based on what’s going on with my physiology. And sometimes vice versa. I’ll be having movement, and she’ll respond."

p. 89

[f] "While we were making love, I felt the most incredible spiritual awakening. I felt like I had actually attained a higher plane, feeling one with – and satisfied with – the whole universe. My partner was an extension of my physical being. ...

p. 90

I felt bathed in a golden light ..., and I remember thinking that I was part of a greater good that was all around me. That feeling has stayed with me since."

[m] "Nearly every time [she]and I make love, I naturally find myself becoming very quickly and entirely one with her as the rest of reality disappears. ... So close it’s impossible to tell whose body is whose, or to separate sensory input into "[hers]" or "mine." ...

p. 91

During lovemaking with [her] I seem to be receiving incredible amounts of psychic energy from her, yet hers does not seem to be depleted ... . ... This high state of awareness puts me ... to understanding the meaning of life."

[m] "My partner and I became other animals. Like shapeshifting. We were tigers ... . ... There was fur ... . There was growling and snarling."

p. 96

"she calls her shapeshifting episodes "power shifts." [She] usually becomes either a wolf or a bear, but very occasionally she becomes a bird of prey ... . ... [She] has no control over when these "power shifts" occur, nor over which animal she will become.

p. 97

Transformation starts with a sensation like electricity centered in her torso that spreads to her extremities. She can actually look down and see her arms becoming hairier and elongating, changing their proportions after the electrical charge begins to spread. ... When I’m a wolf, it seems easier to move and jump about, and when I’m a bear, it doesn’t. As a bear, I feel the weight of the head, really, really big, and very, very heavy."

p. 100

"The wolf-bear-raptor combination, her oddly altered vision, and the weight of the bear’s head suggest [she] may not have been possessed by the spirits of these animals".

{According to her description, these 3 animals are, for her, alternatives, with no "combination" involved; animals’ vision is different, and a bear’s head is heavier.}

p. 104

"The old gods ... may also enter humans during sex."

p. 106

"a surprise visit his lover paid him ... . ... something he could only describe as "possession" by ancient gods began."

[m] "I could see us on the bed. I was floating above us and looking down. I could see the room, I could see the bed, I could see the floor."

[f] "I was taken up beyond my body ... until I went into that ... cerulean blue. Then I shot out beyond it into the vastness of space where all was silence and blackness lit by stars. ... . ... there I was in the middle of this universe stretching forever. I wanted to stay there forever."

p. 111

[m] "There was this sudden shift of the ocean and sky and me. .... But in this experience, there were multiple, simultaneous

p. 112

POVs [points of view] like the eyes in a peacock’s tail {cf. Argos Panoptes}, and I was seeing from all of them at once : from the eyes of me making love, from the eyes of me the ocean, the eyes of me the sky, me the air, me the land, me the multiples of all these. ... I was everywhere, and seeing everywhere all at once."

p. 114

[f] "We had this simultaneous orgasm ... . ... It was as though my physical body was still lying there, but I was also up here [gestures toward ceiling] floating, watching the room ... . I was definitely ... very much ... in two places at once. ... it was as though there were a channel, a really high bandwidth connecting the physical body with me in it and this other sort of energetic being where I was so I could be in both places at once."

p. 115

[f] "And then the next thing I was aware of, I was really about two or three feet up off the bed and looking down at me. ... what I was seeing was my body and my partner on the bed."

[f] "I ... just floated out of my body. It was so weird".

p. 116

[m] "It did establish ... that we are not really our bodies, that we have abilities beyond our bodies, that reality might be different from ... the physical world."

p. 117

[f] "I realized that our spirits do live on, and that we can leave our bodies, ... that ... there’s a big spiritual realm out there we’re not even aware of that I believe in because of what happened."

[f] "When I got up there, I could read his mind and what he was thinking."

"some lovers ... may break away from their present location entirely to find themselves wandering in visionary landscapes. As in my own experience, a few respondents found themselves in beautiful palazzos, ancient villas, or courtyards belonging to other cultures ... . But most people ... soared joyfully above the earth, gliding over immense canyons and deep green forests, suffused with tranquillity ... . ... they found themselves far beneath the sea in beautiful coral beds."

[m] "I’m suddenly flying, out in the stars ... going through the galaxies, traveling at amazing speeds. ... I’ve actually seen ... galaxies rushing past".

p. 126

"She once saw herself and her lover in a Renaissance-period Italian

p. 127

city. The vision of this urban setting was incredibly detailed, but oddly enough no one else was present except for the two lovers. ... Some of the impressions were songs, like the sounds of bells, or I’d hear a word."