of scream left my mouth. The scream sounded as if it were coming from miles away, a type of echo chamber of some sort. I heard my own voice shout back to me, and as I pulled myself upright the spiritual version of myself flew towards my body at amazing speed and plopped back into place as it had before. I lay on the bed with my heart beating rapidly. Was I excited or terrified? Probably a little of both, but this was just the beginning. Wow!
I gained a little confidence. It was time to try the ‘rolling out’ of my body technique. I combined it with the more bizarre ‘holding my arm up in the air’ method and several times I fell asleep, only to be woken up by my hand slapping down across my face. What did I expect?
Each time I found myself getting nearer and nearer to the ‘out-of-body experience’ and remembered that if I just ‘imagined’ myself rolling out of bed it would happen. I started to drift off to sleep and within moments was wide awake except my body was paralysed. I couldn’t move my physical body but before I could analyse this further I found myself rolling off the edge of the bed and onto the floor where I bounced up and down. I realized I had achieved some sort of success as I properly awoke to find myself still in bed. For a moment at least, my ‘spiritual body’ had actually left my physical body – or so it seemed. Yet I hadn’t travelled to any distant lands, only as far as the bedside cabinet. It was hardly the exciting astral travels I’d been planning.
I was getting desperate. When was I going to start ‘flying’ to the heavenly realms like others had told me about? It was all so much more difficult than I had thought. I decided to try a different technique and instead of lying down I would sit in an upright chair and meditate. I devotedly sat in this chair and meditated every day for months on end. I was rewarded with more strange experiences.
One day I felt my very ‘personality’ split into three parts. Each part was ‘me’ and yet separate. Each ‘me’ was able to communicate with the other parts and I saw a vision of three overlapping circles. I was in a deep trance when my little dog barked beside me. Someone had posted a leaflet through the door and I came back to reality with a start! Another spiritual journey had ended before it had begun.
Another time I got as far as the ‘vibrational’ stage again but this time I felt myself lift out of my body. I was aware of floating out of the room, and into the sitting room next door where my husband was watching television. But I had no ability to ‘see’ where I was going, only ‘feel’. I decided to float back to my body and try again but at that moment my husband called out to me to ‘put the kettle on’. Instantly I was back in my body and another adventure had ended prematurely. The body is capable of so much more than we realize. We can do so many things but it’s as if we have forgotten. Shopping, going to work, watching television…all these things and more occupy every waking thought. We don’t spend enough time exploring other realms, particularly our own inner realm.
I wasn’t a mystic or a guru. I hadn’t trained for years to create magical states, at least not in this lifetime. I guess what I was doing was weird – and I was unable to share my development with anyone I knew. But still I plodded on with my experiments.
Practice makes perfect as they say and one night John and I had been to a nightclub. We’d had a fun night but as I got into bed my whole body was aching and buzzing with pain. Maybe this was the night to try out the ‘exhausted body, mind awake’ technique I had read about? People can be so inventive!
As I lay on my side, the last thing that went through my mind was, ‘this is a great position to lie in and have an out-of-body experience.’ I closed my eyes and lay on my side but within seconds my body began to ‘vibrate’ violently and I could ‘see’ the wall to the side of me very clearly, even though the room was pitch black. I realized I was seeing clairvoyantly – with my inner eye or ‘third eye’. At last, I was on my way.
I remember thinking, ‘This is it, I’m going to have a proper out-of-body experience,’ and knew that I’d better not get too excited because it might shove me right back into my body. My heart felt as if it was beating so fast that I might have a heart attack. But everything I’d read about the out-of-body phenomenon suggested that this was the spiritual vibration as the spirit body left the physical body so I worked hard to remain calm.
I found my spiritual self moving rapidly towards the wall before I calmed down enough to think through what was happening. I had made it. Here I was, actually flying free of my body and I had done it on purpose. At last I was having a proper out-of-body experience! Although I couldn’t see anyone else, I always felt as if I were not alone. It created a not unpleasant feeling of security, quietly in the background. I was out of my physical body, floating free and totally separate and I had total control of my thoughts and motion. Yes! I could do whatever I wanted.
I began to float towards the end of the bed and, remembering what I had learnt, I directed my movements by using my mind. What should I do? After all this time, I had finally made a conscious exit from my body with full vision and I didn’t know where to go and what to do! Perhaps I would float down the stairs? I can honestly say it was all I could think of to do. I could go anywhere and yet I chose to float downstairs!
I whizzed down the stairs in my spirit body at lightening speed. Once I reached the bottom of the stairs I worried that I might forget that this had actually happened. Would I remember that I had done this amazing thing when I woke up again? I began having doubts, and the doubts created a magnetic feeling. Thinking of my body made me automatically draw back to it. I found myself being slowly pulled back up the stairs again, towards where my body lay on the bed. All I could see was a grey blob where my body lay. This was my last chance; could I do anything else before I entered my body? Was this it? After all this time, all I’d managed to do was float down the stairs and then come back again. I decided to do a little twirl before I plopped back into my sleeping body, which instantly woke up again.
I sat up in bed and felt a kind of awe. That had definitely happened – it was real and I spent the next half an hour or so writing up the details in the notebook I kept by the bed. Many years later I started to receive hundreds of accounts from all over the world. Others had done this too and many people, especially children, had memories of floating down the stairs whilst their bodies were asleep in bed. We are so much more than our bodies and after this, I knew for sure.
I did have other travels after that one, but that experience was my favourite and the one where I was the most lucid and aware. Another time I left my body, I floated down the stairs again. It seemed so dark and I automatically leant over to switch on the light before I ‘fell’ rather ungainly right through the non-physical wall and instantly plopped back into my body once again.
One adventure took me ‘flying’ through the window and over to a neighbour’s house opposite but I felt guilty about entering their house in case they were awake. Would they see me as a ghost? I didn’t want to frighten them. This time I flew through the closed window and began making my way down the main street and I lifted higher and higher. I was aware of a sort of breeze blowing past me as I flew. I felt it as if I was actually there…so I was.
Later that night I woke up suddenly and sat up in bed. I could hear a commotion outside and as I looked out of the bedroom window I noticed a man on my neighbour’s lawn. I yelled to my husband to telephone the police and as I watched, another man appeared to be climbing through their front window to gain access to the house. Seconds later, my neighbours came running out of the front door as the two men ran away. The police arrived and disappeared inside the house and I wondered if something about my ‘astral flight’ might have awoken or disturbed them. I hadn’t seen the would be thieves try to break into their house in my out-of-body state after all, and of course I couldn’t go and ask them about it! It was just one more mystery and was probably just a ‘coincidence’.
On another occasion, I became aware of ‘flying’ wildly through our local town centre. This time I didn’t
