This is my first post here.
For 42 years (beginning when I was 15) I've had a boatload of experience with time travel in dreams, lucid dreams, and astral projection. Most would prefer a physical device to ensure the physical body is what moves through time. As a general rule, I'm no different. But I have the experiences I have, which are better than nothing. While it would take a novel or more to detail every experience, the key point - made often but not always in these episodes - remains the same: I don't need a physical device to time travel. I can use my mind alone. This idea never appealed to me very much, a) because it's likely far too difficult to master, and b) because it's too unreliable. But it's what keeps on being conveyed.
I would never presume to put these experiences out as "real." I cannot validate any of them as there is no frame of reference for doing so. I certainly experienced all of the incidents, but they were never physical. The only physical "anomaly" occurred two or three nights ago. One - and only one - occasion had me "flying" to another planet. This could be called a very deep passion of mine; something I would want to do just about every night. But across all these years, it's occurred once. The planet looked pretty Earth-like. The people there knew I was there; they were quite well aware of my presence. For all intents and purposes it could have been any square in Europe (I have always lived in the United States except for a 2+ year tour in Germany from my Army days, '78 to '81). The signs on the store fronts - most electrically lit - were some odd combination of the Cyrillic (think "Russian") alphabet and the Hebrew alphabet used just about everywhere else except the Middle East. I sat down at a table outside to talk with two or three other people sitting there. They were very polite and treated me like a major celebrity. They were mildly in awe that I had come to visit them. They had more questions about me than I did about them.
Back to the home front, I haven't slept through the night since 1992. On a good night I'll get five hours; it isn't infrequent that I get less than three before I'm up. I do what I can to fill in the gaps with naps during the day (I work at home) and overall I'm able to live a relatively normal life.
Two or three nights ago, I had my first-ever physical WTF experience regarding a time loop (only one loopback was involved). Because of my schedule, I'm rather focused on being sure I know how much sleep I've actually gotten any time I lay down for it. On the night in question, I remember quite clearly waking up, turning on my monitor as I always do, and checking the time. I went into the kitchen, where the stove clock is also set correctly. I made some toast, grabbed a Diet Coke (always caffeine free), checked a few web sites quickly and went back to sleep. I woke up again, after what felt like about 90 more minutes of sleep, and it was ten minutes before I woke up the first time. Nothing else was off in any way.
As relates to the original topic of this thread, I'm quite sure that if I were able to physically time travel at will, I would not be very likely to be posting on forums such as this one as an actual "time traveler." I might drop a bread crumb here or there, being vague enough to avoid putting out a schematic diagram, but as a rule I would never actually tell people I was from another time. Nor would I give details about a particular timeline. In my mind, it's simply reality that there are infinite timelines and we are jumping between them constantly, albeit subconsciously. Which would mean that all the input I've received on not needing a physical device is accurate: we're already jumping constantly; the rest is simply a matter of getting conscious control over the process.
