9

c h aP t e r 6

I

t was around this same time that I had my second spontaneous
out-of-body experience. My first interest in the phenomenon had
come about a year or so earlier, when I came across Robert A.
Monroe’s book Journeys Out of the Body. I’d read it enthusiastically
and followed his instructions for achieving the out-of-body state,
though without success—until it happened unexpectedly six months
later, as previously mentioned.
Shortly after I moved to Eugene, I was lying in bed one evening,
listening to some soothing music after a long day doing yard work.
I relaxed and started dozing off. I’m not sure if I ever actually fell
into real sleep, though I definitely went through some kind of semi-
conscious state. Sometime after I thought that I had fallen asleep,
I abruptly woke up—or at least, I became suddenly, acutely con-
scious.
I found myself disoriented, trying to figure out which way I was
facing, puzzled that I had apparently ended up facing the wall at the
head of the bed. Then I realized that, in fact, I was facing not the wall
but the ceiling, which was about two feet from my face.
I went through a quick state of shock and confusion as it hit me
that I was actually out of my body. I then went through another
rush—of excitement—as I felt a sense of defiant success for having
accomplished what I had been attempting six months earlier. And
then the reality struck me that if I were to somehow turn over, I
would see my own body lying on the bed below me.
This thought made me so uncomfortable that I immediately willed
myself back into my body and woke up—this time for real—with a
sense of relief at being back in my body and in the “real” world.