PJ's NDE

Experience description:  

I have fainted on numerous occasions, endured pain and loss of blood , have had several surgical procedures with nothing unusual to report. But there were two occasions when I did experience an OBE. They took place when the circumstances were in my opinion (as described to me later) life-threatening or a trauma and shock to my system. In neither case, was I prepared for what happened or even anticipated it - what happened was spontaneous.

I would also like to add, for whatever it is worth, that I have always been very psychic, (clairvoyant dreams for the most part) both before and after these experiences. I have always been spiritual-minded. However my OBEs were short-lived and during them, I did not meet any spiritual beings or had any major soul revelations ( at least that I recall) as has been reported by other people writing in.

The first OBE: I am 17 years old, and sitting in a classroom one warm fall afternoon listening to the teacher finish his lecture. I am also experiencing some hellish menstrual cramps. I have fainted on occasion due to these and I am waiting for the class to end so I can get up and go to the nurse's office. There are only few minutes left to class and if I can hold on...but I don't. I feel myself faint, but unlike other faints I've had before and since, this time, I strike the side of my head on the metal rim of a desk in the row next to me as I fall off my seat. The next thing I know, I am pulled out of my body from the back, like someone has yanked my soul out painlessly but very abruptly - or my consciousness - who I am, in other words - by the back of my neck. Without seeing where I am going or headed, I find myself outside the school building, across the street from it, looking at it from what appears to be a position some dozen feet up in the air and somewhat to the left of the front of the school. I can see the 2nd-story window of the classroom where I was. But I do not ask myself what has happened or why I am suddenly where I find myself. I am passive but comfortable and very aware of the colors and details of this ordinary landscape before me - unlike a dream, this landscape reflects the type of day it was before I fainted, sunny, blue skies, afternoon, locale.  (one of the reasons I will never be convinced this was a dream.) The colors are extra vivid, the sensation of being aware fully of this day and landscape all encompassing. I take in the scene all at once, not just what is before me but around me and behind me.

Then I am aware of the class change bell ringing and I observe students walking from one of the outlet school buildings towards the main building.  The thing that I find curious about this later is that as I focus on these students, I do not see them with the same sense of recognition that I did in regular awareness - instead a part of me - my vision, I think - telescopes right up up to them while the rest of me remains back at the same vantage point in the air. I am aware of what each particular student that I focus on is thinking and feeling - in fact I sense what it is to be that person - but I do not regard this information as I would in regular consciousness. I mean, at that age had someone come up to me and said you will have this ability to know what someone else is thinking or feeling, I would have been downright gleeful, even mischievous about it. But at this point, for whatever reason, I am passive and at peace with what is going on and there is certainly no desire to take advantage of or manipulate any situation.

Then I am suddenly sucked back towards the 2nd story window , pulled in through the screen in a swoosh at which point I lose my 'spirit' sense and black out - I regain regular consciousness from where I am lying on the floor. I feel chilly and strange and 'slow', as if I have been out of it for a long while even I fell just a minute or so before. My body feels sluggish and heavy to me. The class bell had rung, some of the students are filing out, some of them are looking at me as they leave, a few are snickering (later, I hear that some of them thought I fainted due to the heat in the room) my teacher and a friend or two of mine are helping me to my feet, asking me how I feel  - one of them walks me to the nurse's office.

What strikes me as so real about this experience, even after all these years, is the comfort and peace of it, as well as the vivid colors and sharp details of a landscape that I ordinarily would take for granted. No spiritual presences , though I have sensed them during other times. No bright lights or tunnels. But a clear calm awareness, effortlessly achieved without effort on my part.

The 2nd OBE was quite similar. I stopped breathing during a difficult childbirth; the anesthesiologist clamped a gas mask over my face and I lost consciousness. I don't know at which point it happened but suddenly again I was outside the hospital during the afternoon that my delivery is taking place, observing the traffic around the hospital, aware of intersections and the traffic, the partly cloudy sky, pedestrians walking into the hospital, every detail clear as a bell, same peaceful feeling. This OBE seems ever more brief than the first one, though. I m not sure to this day how I know this but I am sure of it. Then I am back in the labor room, having just delivered a fortunately healthy baby boy.

Any associated medications or substances with the potential to affect the experience:   Yes

Explanation:   The first experience, no substances - in the 2nd experience, the admixture of anesthesia and apparently not enough oxygen

Was the experience difficult to express in words?   No    At the time of the experience, was there an associated life threatening event?   Uncertain

Describe:   In the first episode, I struck my head when falling - though it took place in a classroom with others present, no one said later if I was breathing or not when this happened. I regained consciousness very quickly afterwards. 

In the second, a nurse who stayed past her shift to be there with me when I gave birth told me in a guarded tone of voice that I'd had 'difficulties' while under anesthesia - it took a little quizzing to get her to admit that I'd quit breathing. (In researching this experience, I've learned from several anesthesiologists that that it is not an exact science and putting people under requires skill and some close calls - an imbalance in what is administered and patient is not sufficiently under, or over-medication may momentarily occur -  where the patient may stop breathing - a temporary situation that is remedied by an alert anesthesiologist for the most part, though sometimes patients can and do die from such complications.)

What was your level of consciousness and alertness during the experience?   As described above. Very alert, no anxiety, unlike any dream I have ever had. Time is experienced differently, but how I know this, I can't explain.

Was the experience dream like in any way?   No. I have had very detailed clairvoyant dreams but in only one of those did I experience s similar sense of peace and that was during a dream when I saw a loved one who, unknown to me in conscious life at the time, had passed on. This person was standing in a beautiful landscape experiencing that same peace that I had in my OBEs and I felt this during the dream. Again how I knew what he was feeling, I can't explain.

Did you experience a separation of consciousness from your body?   Yes

What emotions did you feel during the experience?   As described above. No emotions. Just awareness.

Did you hear any unusual sounds or noises?   It was a slightly windy day during the first OBE and I heard the wind as it passed through treetops around me, rustling leaves. I do not recall any sounds during the second OBE.  

Did you pass into or through a tunnel or enclosure?   No

Did you see a light?   No

Describe:   There seemed to be an unearthly light to these otherwise ordinary landscapes I viewed but only because my sense of color was heightened during the OBEs, I think.

Did you meet or see any other beings?   No

Describe:   Not during OBEs. During clairvoyant dreams, yes.  

Did you experience a review of past events in your life?   No

Describe:   I think these OBEs and my dreams have contributed to my sense that there is more to life and death than what meets our eyes. However, I have spent a lifetime reading New Age books, medical texts and physics books in order to try and understand how such things could take place. I am still wondering how many of these experiences is due to the brain's 'mechanism' or due to energies, cosmos-related.  

Did you observe or hear anything regarding people or events during your experience that could be verified later?   No

Describe:   They could not be verified per say. However, time passed during my OBEs as they would had I not had them. For instance, during my first OBE, the class-change occurred while I was out of my body and I observed it taking place, though my body was unconscious back in the classroom. 

Did you see or visit any beautiful or otherwise distinctive locations, levels or dimensions?   Yes

Describe:   Being up in the air. Nor did I find anything unusual about this at the time. I did not have a sensation of floating, I just knew where I was by how things appeared to me from that vantage point.

Did you have any sense of altered space or time?   Uncertain

Did you have a sense of knowing special knowledge, universal order and/or purpose?   No

Describe:   No revelations other than what took place for me.

Did you reach a boundary or limiting physical structure?   No

Did you become aware of future events?   No

Describe:   No. Have always been clairvoyant but not on a global track.

Were you involved in or aware of a decision to return to the body?   No

Describe:   Returns to the body were completely spontaneous, as were the exits.

Did you have any psychic, paranormal or other special gifts following the experience you did not have prior to the experience?   Yes

    Describe:   Yes, but also before these OBEs, as I have stated.

Did you have any changes of attitudes or beliefs following the experience?   No response

Describe:   As described above.

I think we are all teachers to one another and come from the same source though we may be on different 'levels'. Life is a school.

I believe in and have sensed guardian angels.

Have you shared this experience with others?   Yes

Describe:   interested. I would not say they were influenced though they may share my belief that there is something after bodily death.

What emotions did you experience following your experience?   Curiosity. A sense that I experienced something quite nice and that it is a state that I have been in before and will experience again.

Is there anything else you would like to add concerning the experience?   That about sums it up. I will say that when you are in that state, you realize there is no difference really between yourself and other forms of creation.  In that state, we are all on the same level.

Has your life changed specifically as a result of your experience?   No response

Describe:   As explained above.

Following the experience, have you had any other events in your life, medications or substances which reproduced any part of the experience?   No response

Describe:   No. I have tried one or two drugs when I was younger, I have fainted during giving blood or during medical procedures where nothing was threatening (but I still fainted anyway! - a family trait, I think, my brother faints, too but he has had no OBEs or clairvoyant dreams), and two other surgeries that required complete anesthesia - but no OBEs took place during them. I have also had lucid dreams but again, no OBEs during them. I have had dreams of flying - but again different from what was experienced during OBE.  

Did the questions asked and information you provided accurately and comprehensively describe your experience?   Yes

Explain:   I would like to be hypnotized so that I could re-experience those OBEs and see if anything occurred that I may not consciously recall today - that is, if there was anything more. I also think language may be a barrier - sometimes one can not explain with typical descriptions. Words are not always adequate. Or maybe I am just experiencing the usual frustration that one feels when you know how hard it is for a person reading this to fully experience what a person undergoing an OBE really feels - unless they have had an OBE themselves.

Please offer any suggestions you have to improve the www.nderf.org questionnaire?   No, the questions were in-depth enough. I suggest that you might ask if a person really believes their experience to be truly spiritual or if they doubt the validity of it. I say that because I am skeptical sometimes of my own experiences - I know that we do not have a very keen comprehension of how our own minds work  - our physically asymmetrical brains are able to experience our identities differently than do animals with singular lobes, for example.

And some times looking into ourselves, we tend to misidentify - what we call intuition is sometimes instinct, what we call logic is sometimes intuition and so on.

I just don't want to over-glorify or read too much yet into an OBE. There may indeed be life after life; that we do shed the body after we die or when there is imminent danger of bodily death. That certainly has been mankind's hope. But not all the 'facts' are in yet.

Still, physics teaches us that universal energies alter or change, that there is annihilation and creation, over and over again. New Age books emphasize different dimensions to human spiritual experiences. Medical texts can sometimes explain how something works and why it may have evolved but still no one can say what it all means in the first place!

My OBEs have taught me that life and realms of consciousness can be fantastic. But I also note that in the past, people of different cultures have held their own variety of beliefs and hopes that were later proved to be myths or rediscovered to be something else - i.e., the earth was considered to be the center of the universe, the world was flat, physical health was a matter of 'humors. Then later generations were exposed to 'new' knowledge - germs and viruses, evolved forms of transportation, shifts in religious belief, etc. My OBEs have been partly responsible for my belief in a purpose behind these evolutions.