My out-of-body experience

My OOBE

Up until December 8, 1968, I had been a regular user of marijuana and LSD for two or three years. On that day, because of my devotion to Avatar Meher Baba, I stopped using any intoxicating substances.

About 1½ years later, I shared a house on Blake Street in Berkeley, California with several other Meher Baba devotees. Before this time, and I don't remember if it was before I stopped drugs or not, but I recall sitting in the Student Union while a young lady was telling me about her astral projection. At this time I had already read The Bhagavad Gita, some Meher Baba literature, the New Testament, the Tao Teh Ching, and probably other spiritual literature. Despite this, I had no idea what the young lady was talking about. Because of this, I recommend to everyone, particularly those who are interested in spiritual topics, interested in trying to understand the out-of-body phenomena, trying to understand their own experience, the book Flatland by Edwin Abbott Abbott, or E.A. Abbott. Flatland will help you to understand why you have difficulty understanding.

So, about this time, the summer of 1970, I was sleeping on my back at about 4:00 a.m. And I had this itch on my left arm. So I tried to scratch the itch on my left arm with my right hand. Except that my “spirit” right hand reached over to my left arm to do the scratching, but my physical right hand stayed put. The itch did not get satisfied, but I was impressed. And I thought on these things until the next night. The next night, at about the same time, I found myself “floating” in my physical body. That was very far-out.

So, the next night after that at about the same time, I again found myself floating in my physical body again, but this time I decide to sit up, which I did. I am “sitting” on the bed, but, of course, my etheric or astral rear-end is in the same location as my physical pelvis, but the rest of my spirit, my consciousness, is outside of my physical body. I was not too surprised about this. What did bother me was two things: I was freaked out of my skull (pun not intended), and I somehow knew that it would be difficult to remember. So I kept repeating over and over, “This is for real.” I was later to learn about affirmations, but I sensed at the time that it would help me to remember. Then I stood up and started “dropping bodies”, shedding layers, and with each layer I got higher and higher. But the anxiety, the total freak-out, was more than I could endure. So I came back to a “normal” etheric or astral level, the one I was at when I first left my body.

Then I decided that I was sort of in trouble, so I should go visit a Sufi couple (of Sufism Reoriented) who lived a couple of blocks away. This was a completely absurd idea. I must say that I was not at a very high level, either in the etheric world or the lower astral. So deep and abiding wisdom did not just flow into me and I did things that now don't seem to make a lot of sense. Like, although the Sufism Reoriented is a very spiritual group, they don't spend a lot of time studying astral projection. They study more important things, like character development and love for God. So the young couple probably knew less about these matters than I did, and they would be asleep and totally oblivious to me either in their dream states or in their physically awake states.

So, here I am, deciding to go visit the young Sufi couple, and I go right through the bedroom door. The door was shut, but I didn't bother with that. I just passed right through the door, and floated across the living room and floated right through the front door to the house. This did not surprise me; I somehow knew that I did this all of the time, but I also knew that this was the first time that I was going to remember it. Outside, I stopped to consider what life was all about. I realized that the plane that I was on was composed to “moral atoms”. Right now, as I write this, I barely understand what that means, but I know that this revelation had an important impact on me.

We lived behind a house, so for me to get to the Sufi couple, I had to float in the driveway along the side of the house in front of ours. As I passed one of the rooms, I could see into the room. There was a physical wall between me and the inside of the room, but seeing inside of an enclosed box like that didn't seem strange. It is as though I had done this sort of thing many times before, but I just didn't remember it. So the floating, the seeing inside of a box, the passing through a wall, these things seemed normal, or at least not surprising.

Anyway, I could see into the room, and I could see one or more objects floating around in the room. The objects were like basketball sized balls with drapes hanging down about 5 feet, mostly hanging down the “back” side. At the time, I could not tell if these were the spirits of those who were sleeping in that house, or if they were entities sucking the energy out of the legitimate physical residents living in the house. Those residents were using drugs at the time, so they would be subject to possession by evil entities.

In any case, I did not realize it at the time, but in the etheric or astral world, one travels in the direction that one has one's attention focused, especially if that attention is full of passion. And I was scared at the time. But even worse, as I started to move toward the wall, I became even more afraid, so that my velocity towards the wall just accelerated. By the time I hit the wall and started to pass through it, I was really freaked out. So I screamed “Meher Baba” and immediately woke up in my physical body.

That very morning, I telephoned the Sufi Center, which was in San Francisco at the time and got an appointment with the teacher, Murshida Duce. I was supposed to work (at the Post Office) that day, but I felt that seeing Murshida Duce about this problem was more important. The really funny part is trying to explain to the Postmaster of Piedmont Post Office why he should allow me to see someone for “health” reasons who had no socially recognized health care degree. If I told him the real reason, to say that he was without clue would be an understatement.

There are undoubtedly those who will say that I had a flash back from my use of LSD. It is true that LSD played a part; it loosened the connection between my body and my spirit. But, I can barely remember any of my LSD experiences, and none of them changed my life, and none of them impressed upon me the importance of morality.

Mrs. Duce recommended that I eat meat, particularly fish and lamb. She said that they were lighter than beef. This worked and I never had a recurrence of this experience. This is also why, for many people, vegetarianism is valuable; by lightening the spirit one gets more in tune with Higher Reality. But vegetarianism would not be such a great idea for someone who is in the habit of floating off every night on very freaky journeys. Once I had this experience, faith because totally unnecessary. I had absolute conviction in the eternity of the soul and the existence of God. Nothing and no one will ever change my absolute conviction that my experience was super-real and that the soul is eternal and what people call God is the Ultimate and Infinite Reality.