I had an out of body experience

“Strange things man, strange things”

This was originally said by a boy who crashed a car into a pole after robbing a gas station.

This boy was known by my friend, and college roommate, Matt.

So last Wednesday morning I woke up in the middle of the night (as seems to be happing a bit too often lately, I’m going to take some melatonin and even it out) with this intense feeling of pressure in front of my face. You know like someone put a fist riiiiiiight at the tip of your nose but didn’t touch it.

And, uhm, well, I’m face to face with the ceiling. I can feel its proximity down the entire length of my body.

Now, being one who did his requisite Tibetan Book of the Dead and Carlos Castaneda reading back in my university days, I’m pretty comfortable with the realization that my awareness has been projected outside of my traditional vessel for such realizations and don’t freak out.

I remembered reading that certain practitioners describe basically a pole extending from the pineal gland (third-eye area) upwards upon which the “subtle body” can rise and fall. Basically a pole that runs perpendicular to the subtle body.

Well, as I thought of it I was able to shift my awareness/body vertically along such an axis.

I then rotated on my axis 180 degrees and saw my sleep-paralyzed non-subtle body below.

At this point I started feeling a pull back to the form, I tried to break clear of the pull with a force of will but could not.

I awoke, manning the meatspace vehicle.

So I’ve been grappling with this experience for the last week or so.

Did this really happen? Was it all in my head?

The Matrix has brought all these questions to popular consciousness and ultimately we are left with the phenomenological conclusion:

I Experienced what I Experienced.

(life would be so inexplicable without Hegel)

So I’ve been reading all sorts of related literature this week reading about ancient vedic traditions of the types of body (i.e. the subtle, non subtle) in the body, chakras, lucid dreaming, OBE, Near-death.

It seems to me that when we are born we learn to focus awareness into our sense organs - can we focus our awareness elsewhere - and by what mechanism?

I talked to my fairly grounded friend Patrick about it - I was expecting him to dismiss the whole thing as he is both an agnostic guy with a strong atheist streak and a computer science guy and a NOVA on PBS watcher - but oddly he said that he too had experienced something similar and could not deny its occurrence.

I wonder if it’s an effect of all the yoga - basically increasing my ability to focus my awareness on what I’m doing instead of the ship of my awareness being guided by random thoughts?

Anyway, I don’t think many spiritualists read my site ( I haven’t checked my logs in ages, I’m not sure if anyone besides friends and family read it ) but if you do and you have some wisdom to share I’d be glad to hear it.