Core-Experiences

Copyright © G Osborn 1997. All Rights Reserved.

OBE 4

During June of 1995, Claire and I went on holiday to the South of France with her parents, her brother, his wife, their infant son, and Claire’s cousin. We rented a renovated chateau for two weeks and I can’t remember ever feeling so relaxed as I did there. Claire and I had a large room to ourselves which was tastefully decorated and had two massive windows at right angles to each other. This chateau was obviously built before the revolution so it had quite a lot of history and was well known by the locals.

  This particular night we went to bed quite early. Claire decided to read for a while and asked me if she could keep the bedside lamp on. I didn’t mind because I was much too tired to care and it wasn’t long before I fell into a deep sleep. The sound of Claire switching off the bedside lamp suddenly stirred my consciousness, but I still remained half-asleep (the hypnopompic state).

  Suddenly I became conscious of the whole of my body vibrating at a fast rate. The vibration seemed to be gaining in frequency and so I just lay still. At the same time I heard what sounded like small bells or chimes in my ears – not unlike a bell-tree being played. I immediately knew what was happening and so I just lay there trying not to analyse it with my thoughts and decided to just go with the flow. After a while I felt myself lift out of my body. This felt strange and my stomach felt the same sensation as when driving fast over a steep hill in a car, or when an elevator suddenly descends.

  I was aware that I had become detached from my physical body and I began to slide sideways, ending up at a forty-five degree angle from my body, which lay on the bed. The position of my “astral body” was to the left of my physical body. I had no control over this movement and I just observed it, as if my “other body” had a mind of its own. It seemed as if my feet were still attached.

  I then began to feel my head softly bounce a couple of times off the ground like a balloon. As I said, the room had two large windows. From where my physical body lay, there was one of these windows facing the bottom of our bed.

  The other window was to the right of our bed but had a bookcase below it. I then became aware that I was facing the window to the right of my physical body as I saw in front of me the window and the book-case in fine detail although the vision of them both was almost like a negative picture, or more precisely like the blotchy photograph you get from a pregnancy scan. This is the only way I can describe it. The outline detail of the window and the bookcase were also luminous.

  As soon as I became conscious of what I was seeing and began to realise that I shouldn’t be seeing the room from this angle as it would be impossible from where my physical body lay, I suddenly snapped back into my physical body and immediately opened my eyes. I then felt the vibration slowly fade away. I then noted that the room was a lot darker than when I was out of my body.

  I told Claire straight away, but she more-or-less ignored me as she was almost asleep and didn’t want to be disturbed, especially over an incident like this. She just did not take easily to this kind of thing.

  In the morning, I told Claire again. And she just shrugged her shoulders . . . nothing more was said about it.

There was another strange incident while in the south of France.

To pass the time of day, and while sitting comfortably in the lounge of the old chateau we were renting, I decided to read one of the books I had brought along with me – a book by Colin Wilson. While reading, I came to a passage about the anecdote concerning Swiss psychiatrist, Carl Gustav Jung, (1875-1961) and his synchronicity with the golden scarab beetle.

  It would indeed seem possible, that like a lot of things, this information and knowledge is ‘materialising’ from the domain of the ‘Collective Unconscious’ – a theory first put forward and favoured by Jung.

  Jung also studied alchemy and discovered that the symbols of alchemy contain many similar motifs – i.e., related images and patterns he called ‘archetypes’ – all of which seem to allude to a greater truth. He would ask his patients to describe the contents of their dreams and was amazed when they would describe metaphorical events and situations featuring visual images similar to the symbols and illustrations found in many alchemical works, as well as the icons and symbols of the world’s religious, mystical and esoteric literature.

  A good example of this, and one that is highly significant in regard to the themes of this work and the Grail in particular, is the ‘golden scarab beetle,’ which again featured in a synchronicity experienced by Jung himself. (The term ‘synchronicity’ was coined by Jung to specify a profound or ‘meaningful’ coincidence.)

  A female patient, while lying on a couch in one of Jung’s therapy rooms, was describing a recent dream she had, in which she had been given a ‘golden scarab beetle’ to hold. While Jung was listening, he heard a faint tapping at the window behind him. Interrupting his patient, he excused himself and went over to the window. Jung drew back the curtains and on opening the shutter, in flew an insect which he caught in his hands while in mid-flight . . . it was a golden scarab beetle! The common rose-chafer (Cetonia Aurata.)

  Amazed by this example of the precognitive nature of synchronicity, Jung began to formulate his own insights into the strange nature of human consciousness which is believed to have benefited generations of researchers ever since.

As I came to the end of Wilson’s portrayal of Jung’s synchronicity, I heard a clamour of excitement coming from one of the bedrooms. My partner then called me. It was obvious that she, her brother, and their cousin, were excited by something. I put the book down and headed for the bedroom, only to find the three of them looking closely at something on the windowsill. I looked over my partner’s shoulder, and was surprised to see a golden scarab beetle – having just flown in through the open window! Its colour was like burnished brass, with tinges of green; looking more like the shiny, two-tone effect from a ‘cat's-eye’ gemstone. I was totally shocked and bewildered. This experience could only be described as a ‘double synchronicity.’

  At the time, I had become interested in the mysteries of consciousness and had experiences of my own which had led me on this path. Jung’s interest in alchemy and the ‘collective unconscious’ was also highly conducive. For this particular archetype to have turned up in Carl Jung’s life and surprisingly my own, must mean something . . . and it does.

  As we will see, the image of the ‘golden scarab beetle’ is a powerful image, conveying a very important piece of information. In my view, it is indeed a symbol of the ‘collective unconscious’ itself, which Jung had conceptualised and which explains a great deal about the life-force and the source of intelligence and existence itself to which all of us are very much connected.

OBE 5 and “Being of Light”

Another time I was at home. (Claire’s place.) It was a Saturday morning and Claire had already gone down to the stables to take her usual ‘weekend mornings ride’ on Misty, (Mystique) her family’s horse. I was just waking up, but not fully conscious. (Hypnopompic State.) I was lying on my back, and I felt like I was floating on a cushion of air. Suddenly I felt myself glide up and down the length of the bed as if someone was at the bottom of the bed pulling me by my feet, and someone else was at the top of the bed pulling me by my head. First, I would glide one way and then the other. I must stress that my physical body was not moving at all; it was “another me” that was gliding up and down the bed. The frequency of this gliding motion increased and became so fast that I momentarily blacked-out. When I came to – which must have been a fraction of a second later – I found myself floating in the middle of the room . . . but I had no body! I had the distinct impression that I had no form other than myself being a ball of light or energy. I could also see quite clearly another sphere of very bright intense light, and this sphere was just floating in front of me. Maybe I was seeing a “Being of Light” that many Near-Death Experiencers’ report to have seen. To think that I may have seen one of these “angelic” or “divine” entities that one usually only reads about makes me feel quite honoured and humble.

  The whole of the room was so bright that I could only discern the shadowed edges of certain lineal features – much like what an over-exposed photograph looks like. It was as if a very powerful ‘halogen lamp’ had been turned on in the room. The sphere in front of me then led me over to the corner of the ceiling and just disappeared. I then became aware that I was really separated from my body, or that I wasn’t my body anymore. As I became more and more conscious to the fact that what I was experiencing was very real, it then suddenly struck me that I could probably do anything I wanted to do, and so I then turned my attention to the bedroom window. I flew at the window as if to prove that I could go through it. However, I soon became disappointed when I suddenly slammed against the window. I seemed to slide down the window and then I felt myself enter my physical body that lay just below it.

It was only natural that as the months progressed, Paul and I would exchange views on what was happening and we looked much deeply into these experiences and noted the interesting correlations between our core-experiences.

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