My Out of Body Experience.

Hi All,

Here is another tiresome example of me opening up about a personal experience I had. Might be good for a laugh.

I was seven-ish, so it would have happened in 1973. It was a beautiful Midwestern fall day. You will hear a lot of people talk about beautiful days, so much so that it is a bonified cliché. That notwithstanding, it was simply beautiful. It was the kind of day that energizes you just by stepping out of the door. The air felt crisp & cool, but not cold. The sun was shining warmly down on the already brown grass. A nice fall wind blew through the trees like it was challenging you to try to keep up. I don't know what the first day ever was like, but it should have been like that one in the fall of 1973. A perfect day.

Why am I going on like this about three decade old weather conditions? Did I just take a creative writing course? Have I been journaling too much? Do I have the mistaken notion that you will find it interesting? No, no and no. The answer is this: I believe that this perfect day so long ago may have been the cause of my out of body experience.

Let me elaborate. I was not an outdoorsy or athletic child. In fact, I excelled at not excelling at sports. I preferred to stay inside with my books & toys, avoiding other humans whenever possible. This gave me the opportunity to develop a lot of meaningful skills, but also meant that I missed out on a lot of life's offerings. Things like the beauty of nature and the fun of physical play.

Back to the perfect day; as I stepped onto the front lawn of my elementary school, I was exceptionally struck by how beautiful it was. The cool breeze blew through my hair and around my legs. The dry brown grass felt soft and springy under my sneakers. The sun shone down on me, warming me against the cool air. School had just let out, and it made me very happy to be free for the rest of the day. So it is not really surprising that for no particular reason, I began to run. I ran as fast as I could, and perhaps for the first time experienced the simple joy that is to be found in exerting one's self to the utmost of one's physical limits. It seemed to me like I could leap for miles, outrace that impudent wind, and maybe even run all the way to that shining warm sun and back again. It was, I think, one of the purest moments of joy that I have ever experienced, and I suppose that is why I can remember it so well.

It was then that I had the most peculiar impression come over me. It was akin to one of those trick pictures that when you look at it one way, you see an attractive young lady, and the other way you see nothing but a twisted old crone. Something shifted in the way I perceived what was happening and it suddenly seemed as though I was stationary, but my running feet were causing the earth to spin rapidly beneath me.

Things only became stranger from there. I began to gently pull back from myself. Back and upward I smoothly withdrew, until with great surprise, I was looking down at my own back as I flew across the schools' front lawn, running in the sunshine on that perfect fall day. The sun shining on my hair & shoulders, my legs pumping like never before, my jacket trailing like a cape behind me. It is still so vivid & clear that I feel almost as stunned just writing this.

Such an amazing and special experience almost by definition mustn't last, however. It was little more than a few seconds, and I virtually rocketed forward & down, back into the shell of the little running boy. As gentle as the leaving seemed, so that rough was the return. It seemed as though I was slammed back into my body, so much so that I fell forward as I ran and regained my normal perspective just in time to see the ground rushing towards my face. I tumbled and landed in a heap, wondering and amazed.

This experience was my beacon for many, many years afterward. I absolutely knew that I had undergone a genuine out of body experience. Thus, I knew that each of us is possessed of a consciousness that could live independent from our physical body. It was the cornerstone of my spiritual beliefs.

Perhaps somewhat sadly, I no longer believe as I once did. After much reading and self examination, after years of contemplating the objective versus the subjective, I can no longer accept that my consciousness was literally outside of my body. I have come to believe that the extremely powerful emotions I experienced on the day brought on a kind of dissociative experience. Many people see their memories in the third person, accurately recalling details of objects & events that were in their field of vision, while their brain fills in the rest. It is now my considered belief that my mind, in a state of extreme euphoria, simply set to work on things prematurely.

Not altogether sad, though. Where once I marveled at the mind's ability to travel unencumbered by the flesh, now I wonder at it's amazing power to create a near perfect illusion.

Regards, Canis