Last night I went to my parent's house to watch the Seattle Seahawks. I brought beer, because I expected it to be the last game of the year for this battered and beat up pale shadow of a team from what they were last year. They won one of the strangest, most dramatic games I've ever seen. And something else happened that was strange.
My mother was reading a book and she looked up and said "Oh, I had an out of body experience the other night". I knew she wasn't kidding, the way she said it. My mother knows nothing at all about OBE's. She only knows that I have had a big interest in OBE's and NDE's.
She had a classic OBE. Laying in bed, she heard the cat whining at the door. Most people who have cats know how they whine at your bedroom door in the morning. She wanted to get up and open the door and felt an intentional desire to do so. Suddenly her entire body started to tingle. Next moment she found herself "hovering" by the bed, fully aware of the cat whining and my dad snoring next to her (he snores like a banshee). She was sort of surprised that she was so aware of the cat and the snoring even in this state.
My mother currently has dyed short blonde hair.
The first thing she did "out of body" was panic and start screaming. She could mentally feel herself screaming out of sheer panic, but there was no sound of her screaming. Then she felt her long brown hair wisp over her face as she was screaming. She felt her body was younger as well. Interestingly, when she was younger she did have long brown hair. A believer in the reality of astral projection would point out that most OBErs have an astral body like they had in their youth. I would suggest that after a certain age, people still see themselves as how they were when they were younger. My mother was suddenly in her body again. Nothing else happened.
I find 3 things fascinating. She felt the classic tingling vibrations that immedately preceed most OBE's people describe. Second, she found herself hovering. Why not standing? Maybe because there is no sensation of pressure on the feet people immediately assume they are floating. Third, she was in a youthful body again, althought she admits that she did not think to observe her body.
Important fact- my mother does not give a shit about religion, OBE's or NDEs and she generally leaves the room and goes somewhere else when my dad and I start talking about something like this.
6 comments:
My grandmother, whose two feet were as grounded as the roots of an oak, told me once, and only once, and in a dismissive sort of way, that she once had an OBE (she saw herself and floated over her bed). She didn't have a flighty bone in her body and treated the experience very offhandedly.
But interestingly, she told me this in the context of whether she believed in God or life after death. She would only say that there must be something more to life -- some mystery.
By the way, I never told her about my NDE.
One important detail I forgot to mention. I asked her if she thought that the experience proved to her that she had a soul distinct from her body. Her reply was "I have no idea".
She's not talking... just like my grandmother...
No, you'd have to know my mother. I am seriously not sure if she's ever spent 5 minutes total in her life thinking about the topic.
All I can think about is poor Steve J. What a cruel joke. Poor Steve... what he would do for just one trembling split second, for *some* meager, achingly minute sign that he, Steve J., won't disappear when he is dead, dead, dead. And then there's you...
Creul, cruel world, when people like your mother, who don't spend 5 minutes in their entire lives giving a rat's ass about this stuff, are gently wafted into the astral realm with all the mystery of a lit cigarette.
Go figure...
I know... but I think if it were to happen to me, honestly, it wouldn't make a difference in my beliefs. If I had the presence of mind, IF, I would immediately go outside and stare at a bush to see the way it is configured or perhaps go across the street to the neighbors backyard where I have never been to verify it later.
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