Between the ages of 14 and 25 I had several partial and full blown near death experiences.

The first time I tried a suicidal gesture with a meager overdose of various pills I did not have an NDE. I did have a fascinating and powerful dream.

In the dream I found myself on the edge of a steep cliff. The place commanded a majestic panoramic view in all directions. I became conscious that I was holding my father’s wallet in my hand. I lifted my hand up, the wallet opened on it’s own like a book and hundreds of credit cards poured out like a flocks of flat reflective birds. I understood the nature of the vision. I did not want to spend my life collecting shiny plastic. Once the last of the credit cards winged off I heard a shout from below. At the base of the cliff there was an huge turquoise colored pool.

The pool was occupied with Franciscan monks. White rope tied around a brown robe, tonsured head, the works. They took turns calling out to me and beckoning me down to the water. “The water is fine! join us!” they called to me. I jumped into the water with a sense of leaving the turmoil of life and entering the carefree circle of monks wading around waist deep in the water. The water was warm like a bath.

I don’t remember much else about the dream but I did wake up from OD attempt feeling rested and refreshed. Some 14 hours had passed. I was asleep the entire time and my grandparents had not tried to disturb me.

After the first attempt the second attempt came while I was inpatient at a residential treatment facility. I aborted the attempt before I was in real danger and nothing came of it. I was lucky I did not get caught. I had no special experiences to report about that.

While I fifteen years old I was living in a foster home. I used my allowance to buy two books. The first book was Opening the Energy Gates of Your Body by Bruce Frantzis. This was a book about chi gung and nei gung complete with exercises. The material was very involved and beyond my attention span at the time. I did not revisit that book until the following year.

The second book I bought was The Astral Projection Workbook by James Brennan. This book promised to teach me two kinds of spirit travel. Astral traveling, which is projecting one’s spirit into the astral plane or into other dimensions/realities. The second was Ethereal Projection. This essentially is projecting yourself out of your body and moving around the material world in spirit form.

I had ample opportunity to practice the material since my foster parents were fond of room groundings. Being alone in my room for long periods of time was quite familiar to me and not really a punishment at all. I enjoyed being alone. Being *family* was much harder, more stressful and less satisfying.

Alone in my room I first attempted astral travel but with no success. Believing I might have better results just popping out of my body and roving the earth I turned to the exercises for ethereal projection. For hours I concentrated and attempted to pop myself out of my body again and again with failure always the result.

There were three basic techniques with variations that I used. The first technique you lie down on your back and attempt to sit up without actually sitting up. You continuously expend effort and mental intention to trying to sit up, without sitting up in the flesh. The second technique is similar. Lying on your back, you attempt to fall backwards out of your body as though falling backwards off a dock into a lake. The third technique involved sitting up straight and falling up or out of the back or top of your head.

I practiced these variations over and over, hour after hour until I was literally shaking and exhausted from the effort. I checked the time. It was past midnight. I had been at it since morning that day. It was summer time, I was unemployed and grounded to my room. I had all the time in the world. I decided to begin again the next day but for now, I needed to sleep.

I popped out of my bed ( I had a couch bed to sleep on). I was so drained and so fatigued that I did not undress nor pull back the sheets. I was in bed, on my knees, I fell forward with complete surrender to sleep. As my face hit the pillow I found myself staring down at my back and my bed from the ceiling. I had not projected out of my body, I had slipped effortlessly out of my body and was staring at my prostrate shell lying on the bed. With a mental scream of exaltation I knew I had succeeded. “I DID IT!” So intense was my realization. my consciousness state was disturbed.

Without warning I slammed back into my body and my brain exploded in light. My heart exploded. That was what it felt like. The experience was as though a lightning bolt had slammed into my spine. My kidneys clenched with the adrenaline dump. My heart started pumping as though I had been running nonstop forever and I had my first spontaneous near death experience. Within the space of a second the great light that had come out of darkness dimmed and before my waking eyes my entire life flashed. My body felt like it weighed a ton, as though I was made of lead.

It was the reverse order of most documented anecdotal accounts of near death experience. Most folks when they perceive they are near to death have their life flash before their eye, then they see the dark tunnel with the light at the end. Then they leave their body.

In my case it was though a presence of light, tangible, exploded in my mind and then dimmed swiftly into dark. On the heels of the white light, the heart explosion and the electrical jolt that caused me to spasm, my life calmly and without any fanfare, passed before my inner eye in the space of an infinite split second suspended in time.

I was so energized by the experience I could not sleep for hours. Although it may have been a visual trick of the eye in low light, I perceived that the space around my hands and fingers was faintly luminous, as though my aura was nakedly visible. That was my first near death experience, which happened in reverse, of the usual order of events.

The third, fourth and fifth suicide attempts were partial, incomplete or botched. I had no spiritual or near death phenomena to speak of.

The sixth suicide attempt was the big one. Elsewhere on this blog I have talked in detail about that night. Soon after my overdose was complete my entire life flashed before my eyes. I instantly recognized the phenomena as this was now the second time it had happened. I was not in critical danger yet, nor was I in shock. I had come to peace with my desire to die and was content. The life memory recollection came out of nowhere with no fanfare or other experience.

At some point I became conscious when the paramedics found my body, they hooked me up to oxygen, placed me on a stretcher and jarred me while they were loading me into the ambulance.

I materialized across the road. That is, I became conscious that I was standing outside the ambulance across two lanes of traffic about 30 feet or so from the vehicle. I stared with no feeling whatsoever but full knowledge that is was me they were putting in an ambulance. I watched with no feeling of panic at first. Then suddenly I did panic, I remember thinking they might possibly save me and I tried to flee this world. I was desperate to get away from this scene thinking to abandon my body for good. Instead I was drawn back into the scene, into the ambulance and into my body where I briefly gained consciousness for a moment.

Then darkness came again and when I woke next it was days later in intensive care.

After I recovered from my botched suicide attempt I became magnetized by the Tibetan Book of the Dead. A book I turned to understand what had happened to me during my brief encounter with the Other Side.

The third near death experience may amuse you. It happened on a motorcycle less than six months later.

I had moved to California and was living with some old friends, transplants from back East that had moved here earlier. My friend’s uncle rode to work on his motorcycle. I got a part time job working at the same place he did for a short period and I rode in with him on the back of his bike.

As it happened, the first time I was on his bike with him riding us to work I had another, partial near death experience. He was accelerating powerfully onto the on-ramp. As the ramp merged with the main highway the sun was rising perfectly straight in front of us, dead on. Momentarily, with the sun so low to the ground, I stared into it. As I stared into it my friend’s uncle continued to accelerate quickly.

The back seat of a motorcycle is not much. An arch of tube steel welded to the frame with a leather padded seat back. This small padded metal seat back and the G-force pressing me into it was all that kept me on the back of the bike. The wind was all over my helmet and clothes. I became very aware of how vulnerable I was sitting on the back of motorcycle going 70 miles an hour into the sun. I realized that should the front wheel of the bike strike the smallest irregular object that we would probably wipe out. It felt very naked. I was assailed by the thought of how easy it was to die if there was a slight error in piloting and I gave in to the deliciously fearful awareness.

As I stared into the sun, I gave up caring about the danger and the what-ifs and instead, surrendered myself to the ride and to fate. As I relaxed into the gravity pushing me back into the seat my life once again, flashed before my eyes. there was no derealization or out of body experience to go with it.

The last near death experience I had occurred at the end of the meditation intensive retreat that I was involved with during the fall and winter of 2000. I want to talk about more in a post that covers that spiritual experience another time.

For a teaser I will say that, rather than a near death experience, it was more like a near life experience. The most real and alive I had ever felt. An experience of deeply possessing all of the space inside myself. At the culmination of a particularly intense session, my life flashed before my inner eye in the space of a second. Detachedly I noticed the sameness of it as to all the others save this. The memory record was updated for the recent years.

Four times my life has flashed before my eyes. The first, as part of an occult experiment involving spirit walking or ethereal projection. The second, during my last suicide attempt. The third on the back of a motorcycle while staring into the sun and the fourth during the enlightenment experience which brought me lasting joy, self love and inner peace.

In my next series of posts I may begin to share with you all, the different meditation techniques I learned, the order that I learned them in and how they did or did not help me spiritually, mentally etc.

There is method to this madness as I prepare myself and any of you that are reading this to talk about that fateful day I found myself and recognized the nature of spirit.

For you to better understand how I got to that point. I have been chronicling  my journey through spiritual practices by talking about my religious and occult training. In the posts to come, I will talk about the psychic and mind body techniques I learned or was taught, that prepared my mind for the experiences I underwent back towards the end of 2000.

Near death experience, part 2