As a 13 year-old schoolgirl, a group of us went out to the playfield to try a breathing technique which supposedly made you feel high (this was in New Zealand where kids were slightly more innocent). 

I bent down, took the deep breaths and quickly stood up - I then blacked out and was told that I fell backwards like a plank of wood and must have hit my head. 

It was then that I recall floating above my friends who had surrounded my body and were calling my name to wake me up.  

I then recall being in an other-worldly place where I was moving upwards and there I saw - Carol Brady from the TV Show The Brady Bunch.  Please bear with me - it sounds ridiculous and I'm very aware that it sounds odd - however, this woman radiated such incredible love, the exact kind of love that I did not get from my own mother.  It's ironic that the real actress, Florence Henderson, likewise experienced difficulties with her own mother, as I've just read now. 

With her, but to the side and slightly blurred was her husband and my father, and a boy and a girl who were my siblings.  They all loved me, but it was the woman who looked like Carol Brady who just emanated this incredibly powerful love for me.  I hugged her, as I missed her and was crying with absolute relief.  

My rational mind tells me that, clearly the woman in my vision was not the real woman, but perhaps she was symbolic of the archetypal mother-figure.  

During this experience, just before I met the family, I recall pronouncing to myself 'I'm back!'  It was as though I had returned. I certainly recognised this place that felt like 'The Real Place,' where time is infinite and the earthly place was just an extremely short blip within the ultimate scheme of things.  It was as if I already knew this, but that we are supposed to forget.  This knowledge gave me the confidence to know that the 'normal state' is just a made-up place where we adhere to some short-sighted rules and that we take it all too seriously. 

I knew that we were supposed to forget This Place and so I vowed to rebel and promised myself that I would remember this place.  

Words cannot describe how I knew (indeed still know!) that 'This Place' was the actual reality.  The closest example I can give is how in a dream, we are generally ignorant of the waking state. Well, in 'This Place,' it's as though we know that while we are in our earthly realm, we are dreaming and not aware of this other, definitely more real, place.  

My final memory is of balding men who had a mafia presence about them.  Rather than being too threatening, they were like security guards who where the authority figures telling me that I must forget.  Clearly, I did not agree with this sentiment, and here I am today, 33 years later, writing about it.  

At the point when I'd almost forgotten the earthy world, I was back with the family who said that I had to go back.  I really did not want to and I remember crying and repeatedly saying 'no' as I fell slowly backwards away from the mother who was also crying at being wrenched away.  I then awoke in my body crying.  Apparently I was only out for about a minute which surprised me as it certainly felt that I was away much longer than that. 

One other thing - that place is infinite.  It's almost as if the 'normal/earthly state' is an elaborate, kind-humoured but necessary ruse.  However, I have no doubt that this higher state is home and that we must have all been there before many, many times.