The post that got me banned from the whole Buddhist group [View all]

Last edited Mon Sep 10, 2012, 11:29 AM - Edit history (1)

I've never been convinced by any christian or other "superlative being" religion. Matter of fact I thought after death it would just be "nothing". But after an out of body experience I had 25 years ago now...
I do believe in an afterlife. There is a part of us all that continues on after this body cannot contain our spirit anymore.
I always thought I'd found the Buddhist religion most compatible with my set of beliefs. It didn't include a lot of supernatural crap I just find hard to have blind faith in.
I had an extraordinary experience in about 1987 that was super-disturbing. I'm sure many will write off the following story as a hallucination. But after I saw a woman I'd spiritually inhabited for a short time while my spirit was lost, I can never again be convinced of that. Anyone who cares to read this can take it however they want, believe it or not. I'm sure it's a stretch for anyone who hasn't had an out of body experience.
I shared the following story on a buddhist group blog in answer to a DU'ers question about my beliefs, I got banned the next day:

How to explain extra corporeal perceptions? Example from today, several nights of sleeping on your question.
Sometime after 3 p.m. today, thoughts of my mother emerged in short discussion about her in general, with a colleague. I was at work. At an approximation of the same time, my cell phone, plugged into a socket in my apartment 4 miles away from work received voice mail message from her, no specific question from her, just "hello haven't heard from you in a while, call me." I got that message about 6 p.m. when coming home from work. Simply coincidental? These things only can bring up wondering, more questions than answers. I seem to have uncanny numbers of coincidences like these.
Absence of corporeal thought processes are in nature, extremely disorienting. Allow me to explain what happened to me nearly 25 years ago that has caused me to seek answers to this ever since:
To the best of my ability to put this into sets of words:
I walked into the bathroom after dinner in my apartment in San Francisco. After that, it gets blurry, but: Then I felt tired, and went to bed, or so it seemed. But the door to my bedroom was closed. There was something about I couldn't turn the knob. Then I couldn't seem to get warm, I couldn't seem to pull the blankets. I had no arms and legs to do so. It was evening. Time seemed to stand still. I seemed... to be... the bed. In retrospect only, I think I was "lost" there for several hours. I was just kind of "there". I lacked any perception other than just kind of disoriented. I just kind of went into my bed, but not corporeally.

My freaked-out roommate at the time, after I returned from the hospital, said I was having seizures on the bathroom floor and he dialed 911. I remember none of this.

Somehow.... (more questions than answers), sort of, instinctively I moved toward where my body was transported... but this is only a "recollective" assumption. I seemed to... expand beyond the bed, beyond the bedroom, there were bricks, glass. Like I "became" them. What seemed like suddenly I was laying on wooden floor, somewhere and I was panting. I was covered in fur and had paws. I looked up to a woman sitting in a chair, reading a book. She was like an image from an old black and white television set. Just as suddenly, I was reading the book, and looked over at the dog laying on the floor. But somehow this was all "wrong"... (more questions than answers!) Something, "just felt wrong, but I did feel the chair below me, the warm air brown floor, red and yellow "heat" to my left, the brownish red dog facing me, looking at me, lying on the floor. I was, for a few short seconds, a largish woman sitting, putting the book in my lap and looking at the dog, who was looking back at me.
Then I (best word I can put to this) "expanded" again. There was a fire, or a yellow, glowing heater there, and I "experienced" it. Just energy, wild bouncing yellow energy all around.
No time seemed to pass except when I was the dog, then the woman. Not more than a few seconds. Then the heat, or fire. Then darkness, light, and a feeling of expansion at incredible speed. I think I was expanding even beyond the whole sphere of the earth, and sort of a "bounce" back.
I awoke in my own body again. I was tied to a gurney at San Francisco General Emergency room surrounded by staffers there. Soft padding all around, and people. Someone was disconnecting electrodes from my head and calling the doctor. I asked where I was, disoriented. I didn't even know for a few minutes, who I was. I looked down. I was catheterized and monitor leads were all over my chest. My chest hurt, badly. The other staffers there walked away. "Beep, Beep, Beep..." I was afraid of it. I called over someone, and asked what time it was. She said it was about 6 a.m. -- but somehow, this didn't seem unusual or difficult to understand. Only later I realized I had taken some kind of time jump. She gave me, apparently a sedative through my I.V. line. I awoke again later, but I don't know what time. My significant other (Stephen) was there asking me what the hell happened. I couldn't explain.
After discharge, I went to Stephen's place. I moved in with him after returning to my apartment. My roommate at the time looked at me wide-eyed and said I'd scared him to death. I answered him: "No, I died" I don't know how, but I at that point, I knew that.
He asked me to move out.
So, I moved in with Stephen. But the same day, I took my meds, and got a case of wry neck. I couldn't understand that something was wrong till Stephen came home from work and talked me into going back to the hospital. While there, after some kind of shot that alleviated my neck spasm, I inquired the doctor to please explain what happened to me a few days earlier. He came back with a puzzled look on his face. He said I had a cardiac arrest during some kind of seizure. But something was wrong. Some labs were totally normal that I think he expected should have been "off". There was some sugar detected in my urine which he said raised concern for diabetes, so he drew blood, took urine again. Now, totally normal. All previous tests, except sugar in urine and some cardiac enzyme were now normal. They also had done a tox screen on previous visit. No drug detected. He recommended I get an MRI of my brain to look for lesions. It was some time after, but I did have one. Normal.
I wrote it all off... I must have just had hallucinations.
UNTIL
A few months later: I went to Safeway after work. I found myself behind a woman in line who seemed very, very familiar in a way I could not explain. Then she turned and glanced at me. I suddenly felt totally flushed, sick. It was the very woman I'd seen through the eyes of her dog, then became. I uttered: "Oh my god, it was real."
I left the shopping cart right there. I walked home, feeling like I was in a dream. No one seemed real, at all. Even Stephen greeted me in the hallway of the apartment and looked at me: "You look like you've just seen a ghost".
"I did". and I went to bed.
That was, to the best of my recollection, 1987. Stephen died a few months later from complications of AIDS. I am healthy, except for chronic injuries I sustained from being mugged in December 2009. But that is a totally different story.
The Loma Prieta earthquake shook our apartment immensely nearly two years later. I was with a new and different lover, Eldon. He died in 2001.
I have relived this experience thousands of times, and it always just brings up more questions than answers. I'm still sorting it out.

But if anyone is interested, I'll share what I learned from this experience.

I'd like to hear from others who've had a mysterious confirmation of a clairvoyant experience that cannot be explained away otherwise, and I'll share more on this. This was confirmed for me beyond any doubt.