Not to take the romance or drama out of the out-of-body experience,
but it's very common among narcoleptics (like me)--part of the whole
bag of tricks that goes with out-of-sync REM sleep intrusions and
leads us sometimes to experience waking life as a dream and sleep
as the death of the dream. Narcoleptics are often neither asleep
nor awake in the usual sense because our boundary between the two
states is so much thinner than normal. For me, the experience of
hovering between sleep and wakefulness in this un/conscious
border zone is usually one of awakening to myself as a dreamer,
so David Bircumshaw's lovely "Psyche, waking into awareness last"
really resonated with me.
Here's a Jean Garrigue poem I love and one that seems to be woven
from some of the same strands being cast by these threads on
unfashionable thoughts and cheerful reflections.
Song
by Jean Garrigue (1912-1972. All rights reserved, all spirit now
on reserve)
O beautiful, my relic bone,
Whitening like the foreign moon,
Whose luster consummates my tomb.
O beautiful, my fresh rose-grown,
Rose-rose white from that small bone
Whose vapor is the breath I own
And tendrils of my blood curl in.
Rose-rose white, the flesh I am
But murderer eye and murdered!
For all the flesh becomes an eye:
I am no flesh while yet eye's eaten
The rose-rose flesh bare to the bone,
Bare to the bone! But that flesh still
By heat of dews renews again
O bless, occurrence of the moon
When actual flesh of the both is gone,
My flesh the air the eye takes in,
That flesh on bone the air the eye takes in,
Death-wedding the moon shines in.
No need to ask if _poems_ have souls, it seems to me, although
I've been wondering lately if that means, conversely, that some
poems are zombies.
Candice
At 07:02 PM 1/14/01 +0000, you wrote:
>Doesn't quite sound crazy BJ, in the cancer hospital I worked in lots of
>people had near death experiences like this. I tried Crowleyan Magick for
>about 3 years where this is a common practice. I never managed it myself.
>Quite a few cultures cite this experience some often drug induced. But
>interestingly very few cultures outside of the Christian see this as a soul.
>They do see it as a another form of self. A number of alien abduction
>stories share similar features. I wish I'd had the experience to see what
>I'd make of it. I did once have a really bad trip where I saw myself as a
>period (full stop). Which really says it all doesn't it.
>
>Best
>C
>
>
>> Though most have admitted this discussion of "soul" is
>> a bit out of place on this list, I just thought I
>> would share my experience of "soul" with you all.
>> Crazy as it may sound, I once experienced astral
>> projection and *saw* my body lying on the sofa beneath
>> "me." So....I'm convinced I have a soul. Not very
>> scientific, barely poetic, but there you have it.
>> Proof enough for me at least.
>>
>> BJ Horgeshimer
>
>
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