I have two memories growing up that I’ve never been able to understand or put together until now. The first is, I was about 30 feet above the ground. I was watching my sister frantically run through our backyard toward the house. The second memory is of being in a tent in my backyard. I made the tent from a blanket that was blue and white checkered. The tent allowed light in. Next, I spotted a snake curled up on the ground in the tent. It was not a type of snake you see in the mid-west USA. It was a multicolored, exotic-looking snake. Weirdly, in shock my vision quickly zoomed in like a camera, almost like in a horror movie, shuttered and then quickly zoomed out. I also vividly remember it being very bright in the tent. I remember the details so well, especially for a 4 or 5 year old. I started reading about near death experiences and told my mom about watching my sister from above. She reminded me of an incident at a neighbor’s pool where I was taking swimming lessons when I was maybe 4 or 5 years old. I didn’t have a very good memory, but it started coming back to me what happened. My sister was older than I was, and she would take me over to the neighbors for swimming lessons. This particular time, she went over there before her lesson was supposed to start and no one else was there. Somehow, I ended up in the deep- end, not knowing how to swim and struggling for I don’t know how long. That is when I think the experience started. While I was struggling and drowning in the pool, my sister didn’t know what to do. So, she ran toward our house. My mom said she was really excited and said I had an accident. Mom said that when I eventually came home, I very excitedly told her a bunch of gibberish. She thinks I said something about being over my body. In retrospect, I believe I did have an out of body experience when I was close to drowning in that pool. Also, I think the snake memory I had was also part of the experience. The reason I think so, is that it was as vivid as the vision of being above my sister watching her run toward the house. I think the function of the snake in my experience was to scare me out of what was probably a fun time, and bring the mind/spirit back to the attention of surviving the experience. As far as a timeline of the experience, I believe that as I was struggling for air, my thoughts turned to my sister for help. The thought instantly transported me to the vision of her running toward the house. After she was gone, I turned my attention to playing in the blanket tent since my sister didn’t let me play in it. This, in turn, brought about the snake scare that brought me back to my body. I was lying on the concrete next to the pool. I don’t remember anyone saving me, but apparently they did. The last thing I will mention, is the fact that growing up I’ve had the following characteristics about myself:
1. very sensitive person,
2. thoughtful,
3. introspective,
4. very wise, and insightful on religious things way beyond my years/capabilities,
5. very concerned about how I even conduct the thoughts in my head because I know somehow they extend beyond just in my head, and
6. a keen intuition about people and events. I don’t know if that is because of the experience or I am just that way naturally. Lastly, there are images/sounds that resonate deeply with me. Even as a child, I would see/hear a picture, dream, or thought and think to myself that, ‘I know this place, it’s very important to me, but I don’t know why.’ The first image is that of a futuristic looking city bathed in this beautiful golden light, with a temple where a bunch of people are flocking to it. This image has some sound/music associated with it, which I think is why I grew up having a deep affinity for music, especially of the instrumental/Avant Gard sort (think Ravi Shankar, Boards of Canada). The other image is of a long room or hall with a long window on one side overlooking a body of water with the same golden light as I saw around the city. It’s like I had been there, but I don’t know of any place like that I might have been.