My out-of-body-experiences and their importance
In 1973-4, I was working night shift at Mayview State Mental Hospital and taking psych, drama, and writing at Pitt night school. First at the Medical Center, in which the patients were also physically sick, and later at Bengs Building I had, through exhaustion from caffeine and whatever other factors, what later through reading I came to understand were out of body or near death experiences. Since I didn't die, I call them out of body experiences. There was an hour long break on night shift at Medical Center, during which I went into the visitors room and laid down on the couch and immediately fell asleep and (you know how sometimes we can tell when it's time to wake up because we have some kind of internal clock) slept what seemed like an hour and I jumped up and went out to look at the clock - but much less than an hour had elapsed, so I laid back down...This occurred several times until the hour really was up. And this happened on more than one night. I looked at the clock, and a couple times spoke to the older fellow employee about how I thought the hour was up, but she kept reading her book as if I wasn't there...I later put together that my spirit only jumped out of my body to see what time it was each time.
The one out of body experience in the Bengs Building was much more deep and meaningful, with increasing meaning as I have remembered it in light of reading about obe's years later, and I have a scientific perspective about it which integrates the science w/spirituality. While working on a paper on autism for psych, and at that time taking caffeine pills like they were candy, I finally concluded that I may have been subclinically autistic myself, and I remembered the one line in a book given me by a priest I counseled with after having been rejected ("not mature enough" I think) for the seminary after grade school - The one sentence was "The Universe is a living manifestation of God." I was so exhausted that I gave up working on the paper, fell down sitting on a couch in the dayroom of the ward I was supposed to be taking care of (wishing I was in the back corner, a more strategic place should the one patient who was "on high" and potentially violent wake up, or should the nurse come on her rounds...I would be more likely to wake up and pretend I had been awake so the nurse wouldn't find I'd been sleeping on the job)...Well, a vortex of energy sucked me into a tunnel to a light...or a vortex of energy brought the light to me I don't know which (and there was a crackling sound as if a thousand leaves were rushing or electrical sparks or some sound like that) and I thought I was dying and with all my might got myself sitting back up and then wondering what that marvelous light was...and then falling back and coming to the light again (or it coming to me) and again becoming scared thinking I was dying and so pulling again with all my might to sit up again and then again wondering about that light...maybe five or six times...I felt that light was a being, loving...and I when I was down was watching from near the celing in the far corner of the dayroom (the most strategic place) what was then happening (or going to happen, you see we're in a different dimension here, somehow above time-space) when I had what was the first what might or might not be called the first auditory hallucination I had ever had (despite a long history of psychedelic drug use) - I heard as clear as a bell, each time I succumbed to tiredness and fell back to sleep on the couch and came to (or was come to by) the light, a heavy metal door opening which indicated that either the nurse was coming onto the ward or the "on high" patient was coming out of the side (isolation) room or one of the other patients were coming out of the group bedroom...Years later, I remember the Jimmy Stewart character in It's a Wonderful Life who is given a look by his angel at what the world would be without him...I would have watched as my body passed out on the couch was discovered by the nurse, or some other scenario which would ensue if I died then...Previous to the door opening, I felt the whole environment to be alive with vibration...The next morning I decided all the drugs I had taken over the years had finally "burnt my brain" (caused brain damage), but there was an awe in my memory of the experience, and I remember swearing during it (the light being helped me with a loving non-judgemental life review) that I would never smoke a cigarette again...a resolution I have broken since many times...And I read of a study that claimed to find that obe's actually more fully integrated the brain (such as between the left and right hemispheres) rather than do damage to the brain. For many years I said psychedelics can be mind expanding, but they are not soul expanding. And I do nothing illegal now, though I do advocate the legalization under prescription of psychedelics (including the mild psychedelic and tranquilizer marijuana), but use of these while they were illegal has been a huge mental complication in my life, since each experience has to be filtered through the question Does this represent a "flashback" or is what I'm experiencing perfectly natural?...I concluded that I had not damaged my brain - with all the psychedelics, anyway - when I aced the CLEP (College Level Examination Program) which gave me (minus 15 credits of distribution of studies necessary regardless of the test results) the first two years of college credit without having to take the classes..."I'm speechless", I said to the woman who told me the test results. "I am too", she said. So now I'm listed as mentally ill, on disability, and, with this low monthly income I am free to work on whatever I feel is my own unique gift/contribution to life, including having helped found a community organization, a community newspaper and community garden organization.
So how crazy am I? You decide. I know that the experiences of such a "mystical" type as out of body experiences don't make sense in ordinary physics. But the most advanced, wise science is now coming around to an acceptance of the miraculous.
All life is miraculous.
Jim McCue
St. Jim the Composter
412-421-6496
composter and biotech researcher
http://bioeverything.blogspot.com/2009/02/celebrate-earth.html
http://hazelwoodurbangardens.blogspot.com
http://facebook.com/alllifelover
http://hazelwoodhomepage.org
The one out of body experience in the Bengs Building was much more deep and meaningful, with increasing meaning as I have remembered it in light of reading about obe's years later, and I have a scientific perspective about it which integrates the science w/spirituality. While working on a paper on autism for psych, and at that time taking caffeine pills like they were candy, I finally concluded that I may have been subclinically autistic myself, and I remembered the one line in a book given me by a priest I counseled with after having been rejected ("not mature enough" I think) for the seminary after grade school - The one sentence was "The Universe is a living manifestation of God." I was so exhausted that I gave up working on the paper, fell down sitting on a couch in the dayroom of the ward I was supposed to be taking care of (wishing I was in the back corner, a more strategic place should the one patient who was "on high" and potentially violent wake up, or should the nurse come on her rounds...I would be more likely to wake up and pretend I had been awake so the nurse wouldn't find I'd been sleeping on the job)...Well, a vortex of energy sucked me into a tunnel to a light...or a vortex of energy brought the light to me I don't know which (and there was a crackling sound as if a thousand leaves were rushing or electrical sparks or some sound like that) and I thought I was dying and with all my might got myself sitting back up and then wondering what that marvelous light was...and then falling back and coming to the light again (or it coming to me) and again becoming scared thinking I was dying and so pulling again with all my might to sit up again and then again wondering about that light...maybe five or six times...I felt that light was a being, loving...and I when I was down was watching from near the celing in the far corner of the dayroom (the most strategic place) what was then happening (or going to happen, you see we're in a different dimension here, somehow above time-space) when I had what was the first what might or might not be called the first auditory hallucination I had ever had (despite a long history of psychedelic drug use) - I heard as clear as a bell, each time I succumbed to tiredness and fell back to sleep on the couch and came to (or was come to by) the light, a heavy metal door opening which indicated that either the nurse was coming onto the ward or the "on high" patient was coming out of the side (isolation) room or one of the other patients were coming out of the group bedroom...Years later, I remember the Jimmy Stewart character in It's a Wonderful Life who is given a look by his angel at what the world would be without him...I would have watched as my body passed out on the couch was discovered by the nurse, or some other scenario which would ensue if I died then...Previous to the door opening, I felt the whole environment to be alive with vibration...The next morning I decided all the drugs I had taken over the years had finally "burnt my brain" (caused brain damage), but there was an awe in my memory of the experience, and I remember swearing during it (the light being helped me with a loving non-judgemental life review) that I would never smoke a cigarette again...a resolution I have broken since many times...And I read of a study that claimed to find that obe's actually more fully integrated the brain (such as between the left and right hemispheres) rather than do damage to the brain. For many years I said psychedelics can be mind expanding, but they are not soul expanding. And I do nothing illegal now, though I do advocate the legalization under prescription of psychedelics (including the mild psychedelic and tranquilizer marijuana), but use of these while they were illegal has been a huge mental complication in my life, since each experience has to be filtered through the question Does this represent a "flashback" or is what I'm experiencing perfectly natural?...I concluded that I had not damaged my brain - with all the psychedelics, anyway - when I aced the CLEP (College Level Examination Program) which gave me (minus 15 credits of distribution of studies necessary regardless of the test results) the first two years of college credit without having to take the classes..."I'm speechless", I said to the woman who told me the test results. "I am too", she said. So now I'm listed as mentally ill, on disability, and, with this low monthly income I am free to work on whatever I feel is my own unique gift/contribution to life, including having helped found a community organization, a community newspaper and community garden organization.
So how crazy am I? You decide. I know that the experiences of such a "mystical" type as out of body experiences don't make sense in ordinary physics. But the most advanced, wise science is now coming around to an acceptance of the miraculous.
All life is miraculous.
Jim McCue
St. Jim the Composter
412-421-6496
composter and biotech researcher
http://bioeverything.blogspot.com/2009/02/celebrate-earth.html
http://hazelwoodurbangardens.blogspot.com
http://facebook.com/alllifelover
http://hazelwoodhomepage.org
posted by St. Jim the Composter at 8:43 AM
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