Out-of-body experiences

Some childhood memories have faded. This one has stayed. I was still a little boy; I no longer remember my exact age. Perhaps five or six, perhaps a little older. As I lay in bed at night, I could feel my body growing lighter. I had the sensation of leaving it and floating above it. I could see my room, my bed and myself lying there.

It happened many times. I knew the feeling that came before it and sometimes tried to bring it back. To the child I was, it was a game. I was not afraid. I felt freedom and a deep peace.

[…]

As an adult, I have often wondered what was happening. Was I dreaming? Was I between sleep and waking? Was it a child’s imagination? I have no definitive answer. What remains certain to me is how natural and peaceful it felt.

My interest in the invisible began long before Marco’s death. As a child, I knew the experiences I described earlier: the sensation of being outside my body, without fear. With the years came questions. What is consciousness? What do our dreams mean? How do we understand something we experience intensely but cannot explain?

[…]

Gradually, spirituality took on a very practical meaning for me. It needed to bring me closer to life and to other people. What is the point of speaking about the invisible if I do not truly see the person in front of me? My search gained value when it helped me listen, judge less quickly and love more attentively.

After the crisis of 1981, I was going through one of the heaviest periods of my life. During the day, I tried to find solutions. I had to begin again. I wanted to remain strong for my family. But at night, I carried the tension with me. During that period, I had an experience that has never left me. It began with an explosion. I saw my body thrown several yards away by its force.

But I felt no pain. Quite the opposite. At the same moment, I experienced an incredible peace. A feeling of bliss I had never known before. I was outside my body. Weightless. Light as a feather. From above, I saw people running toward my body. Doctors too were trying to resuscitate me. I saw everything they were doing. I shouted that I was all right. That I was not down there. That I was above them.

[…]

It was happiness without conditions. A profound peace in which there was no fear, pain, or worry. Never before had I felt anything like it. And never since have I been able to fully recover that feeling. Finally, I sensed that I was returning very gently to my body. As though a light feather were slowly descending and returning to its place. Then I awoke. I was crying. Not from sadness. I cried because the experience had felt so intense and so real.

Part of me did not want to lose that feeling of peace. Another part understood that I had returned to ordinary life, with all the worries waiting for me there. Was it a dream? An experience between sleep and wakefulness? Was it my consciousness creating another reality under the pressure of that difficult period? Or had I briefly touched something we cannot yet fully understand?