My experiences do not involve near death. Rather, they involve spontaneous out-of-body events that started one day as I was lying down for a nap. I was 51 years old. I was not quite asleep when I felt my body start to vibrate slightly as if I may have had too much caffeine. This mild vibration occurred throughout my entire body. Shortly after the vibration started I heard a sound in my right ear very similar to the sound of a mosquito and at that point it felt as though my body rose up about three feet parallel to the earth and was then sucked feet first into some sort of high energy circuit. It felt as though I was being propelled at a very high speed in some sort of flexible tube for a second or two, then I abruptly stopped; it felt much like my body was rotated 180 degrees, and my head tilted up approximately 45 degrees. At that point, it felt like I was being propelled at a much higher rate of speed head first straight out into outer space. Again, I felt as though I was inside some sort of energy current because the velocity was enormous. I remember feeling like deep space was all around me; I became very afraid. Then the experience ended and I found myself awake back in my bed.
As a registered nurse, my first thought was that I was having a stroke or that I might have a brain tumor but when I did not show signs of either condition, I went about trying to discover why this strange but exhilarating occurrence happened and how I might initiate the process again. Because I had been meditating on a regular basis when this initial event occurred, I thought that there may be some connection with the meditation state and the event itself.
A month or two after the first event, a second event occurred. This time I felt the vibration and was pulled into a high velocity current but I do not remember a sensation of traveling through space. This time I also made a concerted effort to relax and let the event proceed and soon I became conscious of lying face down in some shallow water being propelled across smooth rocks through some sort of cave-like structure on some sort of conveyor system. As I moved forward across the wet rocks I eventually found myself lying at the foot of a large door with two thick steps; one had an impression of a foot in it. I placed my foot in the impression and the door swung open. I walked out into what appeared to be the dell of a small college campus.
The landscape looked earth like with grass and trees and the buildings appeared to be brick or some similar substance. I entered a building and there was a woman at a desk with a baby sitting on a blanket beside her. I do not recall her speaking to me so I walked around a bit but the building appeared to be empty. I walked back outside and encountered two people who looked at first to be male but then to be rather androgynous wearing something like running suits and carrying small tablets. When I tried to speak to them they did not appear to see me at first. When I did get their attention, we communicated telepathically. I asked where I was supposed to go and one of them told me to go to a large tree and the times for transportation would be posted there. I walked to the tree and for some reason the experience abruptly ended and I found myself back in bed.
This entire event remains quite clear in my memory despite the many years that have passed since it happened. Over the next couple of years, I had probably four or five additional experiences some that lasted only briefly and that provided me with glimpses into what appeared to be either other realms of existence or perhaps other planets. I experimented with various methods of initiating these out-of-body experiences but the harder I tried to initiate the events the more they seemed to allude me. After about two and a half years the events stopped entirely (for about three years) until several weeks ago when they started again. This time I do not get the feeling that I am traveling into other realms or out into deep space, the velocity seems slower and the distance seems not so great.
The only constant between the events in 2004, 2005, and 2006 and the events now seems to be meditation, which I stopped due to heavy work commitments between 2006 and 2010. I have recollections from some of the earlier events of very unusual landscapes, architecture, and unusual looking people. I also have descriptions of my most recent out-of-body experiences documented in my journal. As I recall from back in 2004 and 2005, I was also having lucid dreams that involved flying and walking through solid objects. I have no explanation for why these events occurred initially, why they stopped for so long, or why they seem to have started again. I am unable to initiate these events, as much as I would like to and I would like to understand why they happen. While they are not near-death experiences, they are out-of-body experiences and the mechanisms may be similar.