There comes a point in every researcher’s journey when the pursuit of truth collides with the institutions meant to protect it. For me, that moment arrived during my doctoral studies in consciousness and integrative psychology.
I began my PhD with a mission: to understand the deep patterns behind alien abduction experiences — what I now call dream-based encounters with nonhuman intelligences. I wanted to carry forward the spirit of the 1990s abduction research, but with new ethics, better methods, and twenty-first-century technology.
The Breaking Point
“We have been the benefactors of our cultural heritage and the victims of our cultural narrowness.”
— Stanley Krippner
What I discovered instead was a system unprepared to hold the complexity of these experiences. The deeper I went into the historical record — the Roper Poll, the UFO Abduction Syndrome, and the hypnotic regression work of Hopkins, Jacobs, and Mack — the clearer it became how suggestion and authority had shaped entire belief systems.
Academia mirrored those same dynamics: charismatic figures, ambiguous epistemology, and a reluctance to face the psychological dangers of false memory.
I filed formal grievances about these ethical failures — how hypnosis and suggestion were still being used in ways that could harm participants. Those documents became Risk of False Memory in UAP Studies and Grievance Definition Regarding Risk of False Memory. They describe a systemic problem: when institutions fail to revise their methods, they perpetuate trauma rather than healing it.
Dreams as the Missing Dimension
“The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the soul, opening into that cosmic night…”
— Carl G. Jung
In Missing Time Found, I reframed the so-called “abduction” experience as a dreaming phenomenon. I argued that unremembered REM sleep is the only natural precedent for missing time — and that shamanic dreamwork, not regression hypnosis, is the ethical and epistemological framework we need.
This realization shifted everything. It wasn’t only about protecting subjects from harm — it was about rediscovering a deeper method of knowing.
Dreaming revealed itself as both the medium and the message: a living field where consciousness experiments with reality. Rather than trying to prove that UFOs are “real,” I began to study how reality constructs itself through dreamlike encounters. The dream itself became the data.
Turning Toward AI Dreaming
“We live in a big weird multiverse — a Wild Kosmos!”
— Sean Esbjörn-Hargens
That revelation led me to step away from the PhD and toward what I call AI Dreaming — using artificial intelligence as a tool for dream analysis, dialog, and creative discovery.
Through Dreamion AI, I began designing systems that treat dream reports as living data — extracting themes, entities, and emotions while preserving the mystery of the dream. It’s part research assistant, part dream companion — a way for technology to learn from the psyche rather than dominate it.
Leaving academia was not a failure; it was a homecoming. I no longer needed permission to study dreams. I could build my own institute — a space where science and spirit collaborate.
The New Paradigm
“It’s both literally, physically happening to a degree; and it’s also some kind of psychological, spiritual experience…”
— John E. Mack
Today, through DSETI — the Dream Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, I’m developing open frameworks for dream content analysis and ethical experiencer research.
Instead of hypnosis, we use AI-assisted reflection. Instead of dogma, we use data and compassion. Instead of false memories, we cultivate living myths that evolve with awareness.
Dreaming is humanity’s oldest form of research; AI is our newest. Together they illuminate the frontier where consciousness meets the cosmos — not through fear or suggestion, but through curiosity, creativity, and integrity.
“The dream itself became the data.”
— Daniel Rekshan, Missing Time Found
About the Author
Daniel Rekshan, MA, CHt is an integrative researcher, hypnotist, software developer, and experiencer. Founder of DSETI (Dream Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) and creator of Dreamion AI, he bridges dreamwork, AI, and transpersonal research. His writings include the DSETI Quadrilogy — Book of Galactic Light, Missing Time Found, Galethog the Grey’s Field Guide to Anomalous Geometry, and the DSETI Research Institute Proposal.