An unprovoked fear of darkness rises in my heart and I run outside to see the street, empty and ominous. Darkness has fallen with such swiftness, that it feels like someone had brought it on with a flick.

Where am I?

With my unseeing eyes roving the street for darker shadows, I rake my mind to know the source of my rising heart beat and mindless panic. But, before I could figure it out, I'm inside; warning the others to switch off all lights and lock all doors and windows. I don't want someone or something to come inside.

Who are the 'others'?

We all congregate in the big kitchen of our ancestral home; their faces indiscernible in the semi-darkness.

A Velociraptor jumps out of the perfectly circular hole in our brick-tiled floor and lands lightly on both of it's muscular feet. I stand mesmerized by the reptilian glow of its eyes and watch it tense its body for a pounce.

Why is there a hole in our kitchen floor?

More raptors mill out of the hole and form a silent circle, facing us. The dinosaurs are exactly like the ones I've seen in the Jurassic Park movie series. It's like they've jumped right out of the movie and onto our kitchen.

Why am I in this kitchen?

All the raptors thump their tails in unison and advance with a keening sound. I take out the sub-machine gun which happens to be there beside me and fire. Two of the raptors are torn to bits. Everyone else is fighting with whatever they can lay their hands on. A heavy iron pestle. An ancient coffee bean grinder. A dumb-bell.

Why have I never seen this coffee bean grinder before?

I hear a piercing shriek as one of the people is overwhelmed by a raptor. I turn to shoot more raptors, but I somehow know that all the raptors are dead. The room is completely empty except me.

How can all this happen when I had just now fallen asleep in my bed?

The darkness lifts and light pours in from holes in the tiled roof like water spurts. The hole in the floor is gone. There is no visible sign of the fight except for a bloodied pestle lying near the door. I look at my hands and they start melting. It is what I see last.

A violent jolt, a loud buzz in my ears and...

beep-beep-beep....beep-beep-beep...beep-beep-beep

I woke up with no sense of direction as to which way I was lying and blindly groped for my cell phone. I switched off the annoying alarm and shook my head to clear the imprinted vision of the bloody pestle from my eyes.

Vivid dreams are not unusual for me. Every night, a 3D movie projector in my mind, is waiting to come to life as soon as I fall asleep. If I had had the skill and money, I could have made some spectacular Sci-Fi movies. They would have been unmistakable box office hits. But the more I try to recollect my dreams; the more they wisp out leaving me with only vague details.

These dreams don't just appear real but feel real in touch and smell. Even the timbre of voices is so realistic that I can hear them clearly if I tried to picture it in my head after a week.

The raptor dream had left me weak with fear and the adrenaline rush, still flowing, made me jumpy. The aftermath of my dreams was always filled with confusion as to whether I was still dreaming or had woken up for real. The dreams kept fusing with my real life and evoked strange emotions completely irrelevant to the present situation.

Result: I was moody, dis-oriented and scatter - brained.

Hoping that my ever faithful Google would have updated the answers to my dreaming problem; I typed "realistic dreams" and was flooded with results. I had already looked up on this many times and they all just told you to have a dream diary and try to alter dreams by using lucid dreaming techniques.

One particular result was sprinkled with impressive words like "OOBE - Out of Body Experience", "astral projection" etc. and I clicked on it excitedly.

What I saw, changed my life...or technically my Dream life.

"The astral is the closest dimension to the physical. It overlays and permeates the world like a huge mind net, catching and holding all thought. Its contents are created by the collective consciousness of the world mind. It contains all the thoughts, memories, fantasies and dreams of every living thing in the world.

When photographic film is exposed to light, focused by the camera's lens, a perfect image of reality is instantly burnt into the film by the chemical reaction of the film to light. When astral matter is exposed to thought, focused by the lens of the mind, a perfect image of reality is instantly formed out of astral mind stuff by the reaction of the astral matter to thought.

This is how the subconscious mind creates dreams. By tuning into the astral dimension during sleep, it can create any scenario it wishes. This is the subconscious mind's way of solving problems and of communicating with the conscious mind."

So that's what was happening in my head. Or so the "Astral Projection - a complete guide" says. [Source: The article ran to pages and it went mostly over my head, but it explained a few things. Like the buzz and the jolt and the feeling of my body lifting were all part of my astral projection. And that old and ancient things find a strong place in the astral world as its thought form has been touched by millions of people and animals.

That is why my dreams always centered around my ancestral home which has stood for over 100 years. And the now nonexistent coffee bean grinder had once found a place in that kitchen and had been used by my great grandmothers.

It also helped me know why, sometimes, I could see in my dream, my own room with the same lighting and intricate details as one would see if they were awake. Apparently I had inadvertently out-of-bodied plenty of times. And, Deja vu's were not events which had happened already but were events about to happen.

My eyes fell upon another article - "The Art and Practice of Astral Projection" and there was no turning back.

As usual, the streets were empty and the sky was dark. But halogen lamps burned brightly for every 100 yards and a cool breeze was about. It wasn't like the Raptor night. Today I felt a feeling of serenity and a stroll around my high school playground was all I had in mind. No dinosaurs or dangerous animals.

Despite the nippy weather, the sand was still warm from the afternoon sun having beat upon it with a vengeance and the trees gently swayed as the wind played with it making a whoosh sound; rising and falling alternately. The Banyan tree stood tall and impressive with its prop roots hanging down and its shade a bit darker than it's surroundings. It was a symbol of my happy childhood.

There was no bench under the Banyan tree in my school, but after all, it was my dream and I simply imagined one and proceeded to sit on it. The dark and lonely school wasn't the least bit frightening because it was I who had desired for it.

The dais right in front of the tree was partly illuminated by the fluorescent lights standing to its right and partly by the light of the full moon shining down strongly. It was the stage which had seen thousands of students sing, act, speak and even cry. We had assembled before it every morning of my school life, adding a bit more knowledge every day; captivated a bit more every day. It resembled authority and a sense of belonging. A purpose and the feeling of being in safe hands. A carefree life.The principal purpose may have been just to finish our schooling but I knew it was more than that.

I astral project to my school at least once a week nowadays when I hadn't seen it physically, for years. The collective happiness of my childhood stemmed from this school and I kept it alive in my mind; in my astral world.

Days in the astral world were just minutes in the physical world and I awoke with a start. I'm no longer confused with reality and dreams. Instead, dreams have now given me a chance to relive the happy memories buried in the deep recesses of my mind and wipe out the painful and negative emotions that had plagued it.

For now, I have seen, how positive thoughts bring upon positive things.

Mind is well and truly.. body's temple.