While I have never had a true near death or out of body experience, one memory that I have preserved was of a time I fainted while visiting Copenhagen in college. One moment I was awake and watching a movie in a smoke filled hall, and the next thing I “knew” I was looking up at a friend administering smelling salts and asking me if I was ok.
The amazing thing that I remember was in the interim – I was somewhere and many places, some seemed to be ethereal and others were other worlds – and then somewhere inside me a voice remembered my parents and said it was time to go back.
But how to get there? This is where it got interesting – I distinctly remember that my mind realized that it needed to connect to a set of “facts” – like the memory of my parents, where I lived, where I was going to college, and several other known details, and when they were all back in my memory bank, like tumblers of a lock, it all clicked and I “remembered who I was” and woke up – my eyes opened. I was “Tom.”
And I was “back.” I decided that I would never forget that experience because while I was “there,” these other worlds weren’t just dreams, they were “real.”
Since then I have spent a lot of time reflecting upon “who” I am. In my 66 years I have played numerous roles, many of them job-related and others of course as a son, mate, friend, and so on.
