satan, the cigarette, & the hot topic.
Okay, I've already posted two dreams here, but here's one of my more recent `out-of-body experiences' (emphasis on experience, as I do not claim to know the nature of these experiences, only that they have all the qualities of real sensory experiences to me, though, if so, in some other `space'). I'm very curious as to anyone's thoughts on this one. It's rather long, though, and I apologize.
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"It is extreme evil to depart from the company of the living before you die."
-- Seneca.
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05/03/03
I woke up in a bad mood that followed me throughout the day. After getting home from work, I went to the bathroom and read a bit of Hawking’s `A Brief History of Time’. I noticed that occasionally, and very, very briefly, my field of vision would sort of twitch and fold in on itself as these bright blue lines would flash in my line of vision.
Afterwards I went up to my room and went to sleep, only to wake up a short time later feeling on the edge and very anxious. I didn’t even question why I felt this way for while, which bothered me once I realized it - even then, though, I was too scared to spend too much time thinking about it. I was more involved with finding distraction. I made a pizza, watched some TV, and then I made some coffee and started writing my paper on telepathy and psychokinesis upstairs. At one point, I was really getting into it - very passionate about my writing.
Eventually, at about eight in the morning, I decided I’d better try and get some sleep, so I set my alarm and lay down. I closed my eyes and I was out in no time.
Then things got very bizarre. The next thing I know I’m laying in bed, smoking a cigarette.
There is a glass ashtray lying atop the crumpled blanket that surrounds me, and I’m looking at it as I smoke and ash, smoke and ash. As I’m smoking, I’m suddenly feeling extremely tired, as if might pass out at any minute - you know, that point where you’ve stayed up for so long you can hardly keep your eyes open, and when you blink you almost forget to open your eyes again. I try to hurry and finish my cigarette before I pass out, but I suddenly realize I’m not just tired - it’s happening again; I’m sliding out of body. It’s never happened while I was awake.
I feel the paralysis creeping up faster and faster, and my vision fading out, getting darker. Before I know it I’m feeling this rapidly growing distance between my body and I, and I try and slam my cigarette down in the ashtray to put it out before I slip away entirely. I am suddenly very afraid that I might come back into my body and sensory reality to find a house burning down due to the deadly combination of my bad habit and my frequent, pseudo-psychotic episodes. I’m able to smash the cigarette’s cherry down into the base of the ashtray just as my vision and textile sensations black out completely.
I’m in the Limbo (a usually empty, in-between space I go through), but the void is a light tan color this time, rather than the traditional black. I am moving through the space very rapidly, and though it took a moment to be certain of it, I feel hands on my back again. I haven’t had some entity on my back since my first set of these experiences in May of 1995. I feel pokes and spasms all over my body in a seemingly random fashion. There is this horrid, erratic AM radio screeching blasting in my ears.
I try to ignore whoever is on my back, making the choice to instead take this opportunity to focus on my ability to command the nature of the experience. I had so hoped since last Christmas, when I had my last experience, that the next time I fell out I’d return to outerspace and be able to stand before earth again.
So as the entity on my back and I decend into an alternate version of my bedrooom, I chant, “space, space, space!” in a demanding voice full of all the confidence I can muster. Then we begin to lift upwards again. I watch as the room grows smaller, looking down on it as I ascend as if the room has no ceiling. When I begin to go into the sky, we fade back into the tan Limbo. I think it was at this point that I again verbalize words. My choice this time was: “What the hell?”
Having spoken for the first time since I’d chanted, “space”, I notice that though I can hear my own voice, there is something strange about it. It is as if there are several voices talking over mine simultaniously, saying distinct things, I feel, even though I cannot understand them. It seems as though they are parts of conversation, like you might pick up chunks of other people’s conversations while on a bad cordless phone or on a CB radio -- and they were even accompanied by static. The `noise' or interference of the voices and static only came through as I was talking, however, and it was hard to make out what they were saying. Aside from that, it was very distracting and annoying when I talked.
All throughout this time there was still the weird, AM-radio like squealing, consistent and erratic in the space around me.
I decide to quit trying to direct the experience and just let it happen. The flying sensation is wonderful, and I get the sense that the entity on my back, whoever it is, is female. I take one of the entity’s hands and kiss it.
It's about then that we fade out of Limbo and descend from the sky again -- this time not by my will but the entity's, and not down into an alternate version of my room but into some dream-like setting. As we land, I look behind me to face the entity that had been on my back and was now `lifting’ me down, with it's hands beneath my armpits. I am surprised to find it was someone I knew back in the `real' world.
“Duncan?” I say. “No… Duncan?”
It takes a moment, but I soon realize that this is not actually Duncan -- it only took the form of Duncan. Once we are completely on the ground and he let go of me, he begins walking away. As he does so, he begins speaking in an arrogant way, with an elitist kind of attitude, and goes about laughing at my initial belief that he was Duncan. It's evident that he's very high on himself.
Between his insensitive laughing, he explains that he either represents `things to Duncan' or that he actually was related to Duncan in some actual, literal way. The impression I get is that he is some force that had manipulated or tricked Duncan into believing certain things, seeing things in a particular way or taking a certain path in life. As he is explaining this and laughing, he walks slowly away from me. Specifically, he's walking through this rough path cut between trees, shrubs and bushes that leads straight into the backyard.
I go to follow him, but then this feeling of tremendous exhaustion takes over me and my awareness and my presence within the context of that reality begins to fade. I fall into a dumb, low-intensity dream, though I can recall no details - only that there was a sort of `gap'.
The next thing I know, I’m in Limbo, traveling around with this entity on my back again, feeling the same kind of pokes and spasms all over my body.
I am still dreadfully worried about that cigarette. Constaly present in my mind, constantly in the foreground of my mind, is the fact that I have to find some way to work my way through this otherworldy labyrinth, wake up, and make sure that cigarette hasn't let my room on fire. My only hope was that I didn’t awake back in my physical body surrounded by flames.
I again fade out of Limbo, descending into this dream-like setting. It seems to be the same basic lay-out as before, only now with some minor differences. The quality, however, is much different: the colors and sense of reality here is much more acute, and I am much more awake.
I am again being led down at the side of the house by an entity on my back who holds me beneath my arms. Again, just as we’re approaching the ground, I turn to face the entity. I find myself confused, but this time it’s because I don't know the face looking back at me.
I’m certain that I don’t know him in life. He seems to be wearing some one-piece polyester jumpsuit colored in red and blue, and the rim of his red and blue hat comes down over his eyes. He has an elongated oval-like face and a very light 6-o’clock shadow, with a look on his face and a voice that gives off the impression that he is very apathetic, pessimistic and cynical.
“Who the hell are you?” I ask him.
He tries to answer me, but it is distorted by the same `interrupting voices’ I'd dealt with in Limbo, the only difference being that now it wasn't my voice (output) but his voice (his output, or my input).
I get the gist of what he is communicating, however: he is trying to tell me that he was Satan. I told him squarely that he was full of shit, because I know damned well that Satan does not exist.
Frustrated with him, I begin to look around at the setting. In the front yard I see our red tractor-mower, and though I don’t particularly notice anyone driving it, it does seem to be in the process of mowing.
From what sounds like a loudspeaker, which I assume is connected to the front of the house, I hear what I soon realize to be an old recording of a speech made by Martin Luther King. This is entirely unexpected. I can clearly make out the words, “I have a dream.” (I’m confused at this point, unable to grasp the `dream’ connection that seems more than obvious now.)
I turn to the stranger on my back.
“Martin Luther King?” I ask him in a perplexed voice.
“No,” the stranger named Satan said, “it’s an advertisement for Hot Topic.”
With his persona, it is difficult to determine if he is being cynical, honest or merely cryptic. I just say: “oh,” and leave it at that.
Things get fuzzy and confused and suddenly I am lifted up and pulled back by some invisible force. I find myself back in the tan Limbo, falling backwards at a rapid speed. I realize I’m going back home now, and as I regain the initial, slight attachment to my body, I’m sure I hear my clock radio blaring. Perhaps this is where that Martin Luther King stuff came from, thought I.
Once I attach completely, I hear no clock radio -- it turns out that it had never gone off; I hadn't set it because I had no need to. I remind myself that I have to awaken quickly and completely because of that cigarette and not merely roll over, go to sleep and forget all that just happened.
As soon as I regained full control of my body, I force myself upwards in bed, looking around my bed frantically for the glass ashtray.
It takes me a few seconds to realize that I don’t even have a glass ashtray. As a matter of fact, I can’t even smoke in my parent’s house, where I live. In other words, I couldn’t have been smoking in my bed before falling into Limbo.
I quickly write it all down in rough form in a nearby notebook. When I am done I look at my digital clock, which reads 8:22 AM on May 4, 2003. I wonder about that cigarette and smile: what a way to ensure I remembered all this.
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![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
