For some reason my brother Aaron decided that it was worth figuring out how to leave his body.
Everyone knows stories about people who have had “out of body” experiences, usually when that person is dying, or almost dying. The spirit—or whatever—slips out of the body and floats away, usually in an upward direction. The affected person often can look down on himself while something else is going on. Sometimes he is being operated on. Sometimes he is being resuscitated from a heart attack. He is able, so the story goes, to describe things he could not have known about unless he was floating around over his body. Sometimes he floats into the next room. Sometimes he floats towards a bright light. Sometimes, he has the sense of dead family members gesturing to him, or even speaking to him. They are saying calming things. In fact, the whole experience is usually reported to be a comforting, calm experience that has left some people forever after no longer afraid of dying. So they say. These are also called “near death” experiences. I had a patient once who had such an experience while she was taking a light anesthetic for a dental procedure. She didn’t think she was dying, but she floated up near the ceiling.
I think her experience gives a clue to what was really going on. I think she did not really leave her body. I think her brain, and mind, had been affected by the anesthetic. I think the people who are on the verge of death also have a compromised blood supply to areas of the brain. Their mood and perception are strongly affected. They are not dreaming, and I don’t think they are making up these stories. They are experiencing some sort of metabolic or vascular disruption to normal thought. They may very well have been near death, but they have not floated away from their bodies. I think the stories of seeing things they could not have seen unless they were floating around over their bodies are all made up. Anyway, that’s what I believe.
I told my brother my theory, but he wasn’t interested. He had made up his mind to go to Virginia where there was an institute that undertook to train people how to leave their bodies. It was run by a man who had become skilled not only in leaving his body, but in traveling long distances tied to his body only with a long silken cord, sort of an umbilical cord. If he turned in his body at just the right angle before leaving it, he could travel to another planet in another solar system. When he exited his body at a different angle, he went someplace else, I forget where. This ability came to him after he sniffed some glue. (See?)
He also said that he had terrific sex when he was out of body. I found this particularly hard to believe. If someone had asked me what activity really depended very strongly on being inside your body, I would have said sex.
My brother’s course of training only lasted a week. He was disappointed. Apparently, he could get no further than the door, before the silvery umbilicus snapped him back into his body. I tried to comfort him with admiring remarks about his body. He was in pretty good shape, considering he had diabetes, and I thought he should make the most of his body before he became permanently detached from it.
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