OOBE (thing)

I had an OoBE. Back when I was in grade school, I had a passing interest in the occult and particularly parapsychology. I used to go to the public library, which had a substantial shelf space devoted to the topic. Not something that my parents approved too much of, but I still snuck a book or two home at a time.

One time, I came across this book written by an individual who claimed he could leave his body at will and travel on the spiritual plane. His method was one of meditation. By closing his eyes and lying flat on a bed or some surface, he would relax himself completely. Then he would imagine his body starting to sway back and forth, precessing along the long axis that connects his head to his feet. If he kept this up, he would actually feel like he was losing his equilibrium ... like he was starting to tumble ... and in that moment, he would separate from his body.

This description really hit home with me. Besides being a budding young parapsychologist who wanted to explore this technique, it really reminded me of something that would happen to me in class. If I finished a test early, I would hand in the exam and then put my head down on my folded arms, sitting at the desk (as we were instructed to do back then). Then, I would imagine myself careening around on a rollercoaster. Sometimes, this thought would get so vivid I would start to feel my body tumble just as if I was going down and up and around in circles. Anyways, I decided to try it more along the protocol in the book, to see if I could indeed temporarily shed my mortal coil.

The first time I tried it, I lay on my bed after finishing my homework (of course!) and closed my eyes and started to imagine myself rotating. I was good at it, because of my classroom episodes and I was soon wobbling back and forth. It was just when I started to really lose control that I opened my eyes and stopped. Just before you break, you feel like you're falling ... which is very frightening and hard to ignore. This kept tripping me up for the longest time. Finally, I did manage to get beyond that and you will not believe what happened.

The falling sensation lasted for a second, if that, and then I slowly opened my eyes and saw that I was sitting on the edge of the bed. Then ... then I turned my head and looked down to see that I was sitting next to myself! Yes! Just that image jarred me enough to wake me up and break the trance ... but now I had hope. The next time I went through the process, I opened my eyes and stood up. My body was still lying on the bed, breathing slowly. I started looking around the room, trying to notice details that I could check later when I was awake. Walking over to the bookshelf, I tried to memorize the order of books, whether the spine was pointing up or down, etc... The room was dark, but I was able to make out a lot of details. To wake up, I would just breathe sharply and that seemed to jar me back. Much of what I recalled from my dream/oobe state corroborated what my room was like. I tried many more times successfully and started to get the hang of the process, but the strangest part was yet to come.

You may have been wondering why I stayed inside my room. Well, I wondered the same thing. I decided to try and leave. Going into the trance, I fell out of my body and stood up in the room. I walked over to the wall and decided to step through it. Putting my hand up against the wall, I leaned in and without any resistance, I suddenly found myself on the other side, standing in my brother's brightly lit room. He was sitting at his desk, drawing something on a sheet of paper. The funny thing is that whenever he would move, a shadow trace would smoothly follow whatever motion he made ... kind of like a smokey afterimage. The closest analogy I can think of is the afterimage you see when Bruce Lee is swinging his arms about in slow motion. I stood there watching him, when the cassette he was listening to stopped. Now, I'm going to tell you in advance that I have never tried to leave my body since that day. What I saw next scared me more than you can imagine.

My brother gets up and walks over to the cassette deck on the other side of the room. Now, instead of seeing a shadow of his arms, a whole shadow trail of his body moved across the room a half a second behind him. The whispy form was connected to him at all times and would catch up to him and disappear whenever he stopped moving. Then, on his way back to the desk, the whispy form followed him, mirroring his motions exactly ... except the head, which turned and looked straight at me!

Yup ... that freaked me out so thoroughly that I still get the jitters thinking about it today. I've told many people this story and gotten back all sorts of ideas. I dont really know if I left my body for real, or whether I was just having a lucid dream. Sometimes, I would try to fall into a trance and end up falling asleep and waking up the next morning. And for pete's sake ... I was only ten or eleven years old at the time, so who knows for sure.