We Are Not Our Bodies: A Mystical Experience Reveals the Truth

It’s not smart to believe there is nothing after death. It’s sad.

Broken. Autopilot. Sleepwalker. Language falls short when it describes experiences that belong on the news happening to someone else. Or maybe in a horror movie. But not to you.

The doctor was sending us home. None of the antibiotics they had been pumping through an IV into his veins for the last three days were shrinking the terrible lumps protruding from my 7-year-old son’s neck.

He is happy to go home, excited they are letting him go. His sisters help him pack, all three giggling with relief that this thing is over.

I try unsuccessfully to murder the association his enthusiasm is making with the innumerable times I’ve had to bring a dog to the vet to be put to sleep. They are so happy to go for a ride. They have no idea. But you do.

The nurse already set up our appointment with the pediatric oncologist. He has three days at home before testing starts. We haven’t told him yet. I don’t want to. I don’t want any of it. Every organ in my body is pulling against this reality, so tight I have to force the air into my lungs so I won’t faint.

We drive home, passing people on the street, in other cars. They have no idea. They are honking at the old lady taking too long to turn. They are yelling into the air at whatever voice is irritating them from their ear buds. Some are laughing. Others are singing to their music. I can’t imagine myself ever honking at anyone ever again. Or laughing.

An Unexpected Gift

The morning after we brought my son home from the hospital I woke early before the sun. My face was swollen from crying and the nausea gnawing at my empty stomach picked up where it had left off the night before. I went to my computer and stared at the screen.

I battled the temptation to turn to Google for answers. Whatever my health concern, search results would reveal it was likely cancer. My sense of humor was buried along with everything else, so Google’s diagnosis would be a dangerous addition to my dark mood.

I’d gone to my computer to write, but my mind was a solid rock. A wave of exhaustion swept over me. It was all I could do to make it back to my bed and collapse face down at the foot of the bed. I’d opened the drapes when I first got up, so the waking tendrils of the morning sun were able to reach my skin with its sacred warmth where I lied on the bed.

The house was quiet save for the soft purr of the handful of cats slowly surrounding my body, and the music of the little birds outside singing their morning prayers.

One moment I was distantly aware of the warmth, purrs and prayers, and the next I was hovering above my body. Total shock. I didn’t look down at my physical body on the bed, but I knew it was there. It seems strange now that I felt no fear and immediately decided to test my abilities.

I willed myself up, observing the inside of the wood and shingles as I passed through my roof. I can’t explain how I directed my flight. It wasn’t any different than moving an arm or a leg. Try explaining to someone how to move their arm. We really don’t know, right?

Once I was hovering above my house, I knew where I wanted to go. I set off west, watching the scenery of houses and shops and streets move under me like they were on a conveyer belt. Upon reaching my destination, awe and wonder consumed me to the point that all thought became obsolete.

The sunlight danced upon the ocean, still silver with residual moonlight, as the sun peeked its gaze over the cliffs of Palos Verdes. It was my soul’s home, the beach I grew up on, and the one I now share with my own kids. The cliffs were to my left, and the curve of the South Bay stretched out beyond Redondo, Hermosa and Manhattan Beach until coming to a point at Malibu far to my right.

I was intensely aware of every detail around me. I glided over the water, rising up and down like a gull to finger the ocean, each drop of water from the spray my hand kicked up gleaming like a prism from the sun that seemed to be rising along with me.

There was no resentment or even disappointment, only gratitude, when I felt the pull to return to my house and the body still lying at the foot of the bed. I didn’t try to resist as I was piloted away from the beach, back over the roofs of the houses and down through my ceiling.

Once back in my physical body, the glow of my out of body experience (which I found out later that’s what it was) remained so strong that there was no room for the despair that had overcome me when I collapsed onto my bed. I found myself giggling like a child all throughout that day. And when my kids woke up and stumbled out of their rooms looking for breakfast, it was all I could do not to break down in tears of joy.

Spiritual Awareness Finds Me

I hadn’t been a spiritual person. I was raised very Catholic, spent 13 years in Catholic school, and had my kids complete the age-appropriate sacraments. I was still Catholic culture-wise, but I didn’t attend church or think much about any sort of belief system.

People might have labeled me agnostic. But that label was too fancy. I was just plain uninterested. Philosophy was my thing. I needed a clear plan to help me survive each day. I’d come across Stoicism and used it successfully to thrive in the challenging environment of my life at the time.

Stoicism had provided a potent formula to live a fulfilling life, but it didn’t do much for me past that, beyond this physical life. I didn’t even know if I believed there was anything after the death of the body. So when faced with the possibility that my son might have a terminal illness, I had been defenseless against the anguish and uncertainty that consumed me.

Everything changed after that experience. I knew there was more than just this physical existence, and it was beyond beautiful. The bliss of my out of body adventure spilled into regular life. I wasn’t afraid anymore. Instead of spending the weekend tormented with uncertainty, unable to truly enjoy the time spent with my children, each moment felt like a gift. I wouldn’t let a future that had not yet happened steal any joy from the present.

The Good News

The Sunday before my son was to go in for testing, his pediatrician called me. She wanted to try one more antibiotic. They’d already spent four days pumping three of the strongest antibiotics available into his tiny body at the hospital, but I couldn’t say no to a last-ditch effort.

The next morning his grapefruit-sized lump more closely resembled a baseball. I screamed when I saw him and ran to call my mom, who was already at church praying her rosary for him. The antibiotic was working. That meant there was no cancer.

Cat Scratch Fever. That was his diagnosis. No one suspected it because it’s such a rare thing. I didn’t even know it was a real thing. All I knew was the song. It is transmitted through the scratch of an infected cat. We knew which cat scratched him but surprised everyone by not getting rid of her. She was family. You don’t get rid of family.

The Search

Once the burden of my son’s illness was lifted, I was free to explore the meaning behind my out of body experience. At first, I had no idea what had happened.

I knew it had not been a dream as much as I knew any memory was not a dream. It was too real, too vivid. It glowed in my consciousness even brighter than any ordinary memory. It was fluid, not jumping around from one place to the next. And I was aware the entire time of my physical body back on my bed.

It was the greatest and most mysterious experience of my life. But why had it happened to me? I researched on the Internet and read books like the classic “Journeys Out of the Body,” by Robert Monroe who created the Monroe Institute in the 1970s to help others learn how to have these experiences.

The book was fascinating, but there were few answers out there. No one seemed very interested in explaining why this would happen. I guess there wasn’t much energy left after trying just to grapple with what happened.

With or without answers, I wanted it to happen again. I’d escaped a prison I didn’t even know I was in, like Plato’s Allegory of the Cave where people are chained in a cave and believe the shadows they see cast on the wall are the real world until one escapes and realizes that they had been prisoners of a false reality.

So I started trying to get out again. I psyched myself up before bed. Wrote in my journal as if it had already happened. Then came the hard part. Staying aware in that space between waking and sleep. It’s tricky. I’d often find myself coming back in the morning from one of my crazy dreams not able to remember when I’d forgotten to focus on staying conscious the night before.

But it finally happened again one night while I was watching a show about the universe. It was just as sudden as the first time. “I’m out!” I laughed as I hovered over my bed. I could go anywhere, so I took my cue from the television and went up. Again, I was aware of the brittle wood of my roof and my spidery attic on my way up through the clouds and into space.

The stars shone from all directions like there was some massive disco ball reflecting the light of whatever was responsible for this great mystery. Time was meaningless as I drank in the magnificence of it all. The warm blue radiance of our planet tugged on my soul.

I sped back to Earth as if diving from space, watching familiar landforms take shape as I approached. Just before hitting the surface of the ocean, I wondered if I would break apart and become water. I didn’t. I had whatever body you have when travelling in that realm, what many call the astral body.

I’ve always enjoyed underwater dreams because I’ve discovered that you can breathe, presumably because your body is breathing on your bed. So I wasn’t surprised that I had no trouble exploring below the sea. The problem was that it was night, so my surroundings were dark.

“Make it light,” I called out, and the sea around me lit up. Swaying forests of kelp and artful displays of color and design among the fish and reefs I played in welcomed me. I ventured deeper and realized where the light was coming from. It was my television, still broadcasting the documentary about space.

I swam closer to the ocean floor to get a better look and found myself back on my bed staring at the same program on my TV. Any disappointment I felt at being back was overshadowed by the thrill of the experience. I was hooked. I tried many times after that, but was only totally successful on one more occasion.

And this one was different. Bliss and wonder were absent, and in their place was a dark and ominous residue. This was the only time I encountered another person.

Instead of going through my roof, I travelled sideways out my wall and sped so fast over the houses they were only a blur. A desolate wasteland eventually replaced the homes below me.

As I was travelling through the air, I passed a crow soaring in the opposite direction. He slowed and glared into my eyes, slowing the passage of time with him. It had to be a sign. But of what?

Soon after a figure appeared below me in the semi-darkness, standing alone upon the bleak landscape. I first passed over it, allowing fear to direct me. But I forced myself to the ground and to approach the figure. I walked close in the darkness and asked “Are you Pythagoras?”

I sensed the figure was a man, although he was draped in a heavy cloak and his face was concealed within a massive hood. As he turned his head to look at me, my voice spoke only to me.

“All you have to do is open your eyes and you will be safe.”

So that’s what I did. I opened my eyes. And I’ve regretted it ever since.

I tried many more times to “get out,” but only succeeded in getting to my ceiling. I couldn’t get beyond it. Other times I felt so impossibly heavy I exhausted myself trying to stay out of my body. And the very last time I tried it, I pulled my limbs out, but my head stuck. It wouldn’t budge.

The Signpost

I’d been locked out. Or more accurately, locked in. Why? Had I done something wrong? I wondered if my fear had ruined everything. Four years later, I think I have some answers. Not all by any means, but a few.

These supernatural experiences destroyed any possibility of doubt in the existence of more. More than what we can see and touch or even think. More than just this physical life. I am not this body. There is something more to me and to every living being than the food that makes up our physical bodies.

I was taught this every day as a kid at school and at home, but belief is very different from experience. I learned the difference not from my out of body travels, but through seeking answers as a consequence of them. Diving into spiritual study was like swimming underwater in a dream. I didn’t need to come up for air.

Looking back, it was as if an invisible hand were guiding me on my discovery. I didn’t know where to start or even what questions to ask. I wasn’t even sure where I was trying to go. I knew my desired destination was Truth, but I had no idea what that would be.

Like any goal, I had to start where I was, no matter how far away. If my friend and I both want to get to London, and I’m in LA and he’s in New York, there’s nothing I can do about my path being longer. To get there, I’ve got to start where I am. So that’s what I did.

My out of body experiences were not an end in themselves, they were merely a signpost directing me toward a destination I didn’t even know existed. All mythologies and great scripture and sacraments work in the same way, serving as guides leading us to the Truth beyond the words, beyond the experiences, that has been within us all along.

I would love to hear if you’ve had an experience that propelled you to seek more answers!