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B J Laubscher – Where Mystery dwells

Mrs. Greyling described her stay in a sanatorium while suffering from tuberculosis. She was there for eighteen months during which time she had an operation which was performed in two stages.

It was during the second stage that something went wrong according to what she learned from the doctors and her husband after her recovery. They would not give her details but said she was almost dying. She was unconscious from the Tuesday when they operated until the Thursday when she regained physical consciousness.

My translation of her extraordinary experience is as follows :

"The first awareness that I remember was of standing in front of my bed and seeing thereon my physical body. I looked at it but felt really very little, if any, interest in it. I saw it covered with blankets and hot-water bottles. I then became conscious of my own new self. I felt wonderful. It is difficult to describe how sublimely wonderful I felt. My body had no weight, it was light and I did not stand on the earth, or the floor of the ward, but was suspended as if floating in my movements-an exhilarating buoyancy filled my being.

What however was strange was that when I was near my body I felt the heaviness and the pain in that physical body on the bed.

Somehow my proximity to the physical body on the bed made me in some mysterious way feel its sensations in my new body, but as I moved away from it these sensations of heaviness and pain decreased until I reached a point in distance when I no longer felt them, although I was fully conscious that it was my body lying there on the bed, all covered up with blankets.

I wish I could precisely describe in language the difference as I felt it between being in my new body and the awful distress and pain that was going on in my physical body, but really I have no adequate language for this experience. And yet I must tell you doctor that I was tremendously interested and keenly aware of this sort of dual consciousness of being elated and happy in my new body and miserable and in great pain in my physical body, but this only was felt when I came very near to my old body on the bed."

…. I stood for a while in front of my bed looking at my body and feeling all the sensations of the physical body when I approached too near, and then decided to move away from my old body with all its unpleasant feelings. I turned towards the door and was conscious of moving with such floating grace, that it was the most pleasant feeling I had ever lived; I could really say that I could ever have imagined.

In this delightful mood of freedom and effortless movement, as if the power that moved me was just a mere desire or a thought, I found myself going down the long passage of the sanatorium and into the large ward which I shared with several other female patients before I went to the operating theatre. I stood next to their beds and passed from one to the other, after all we were friends and had been in that ward together for months. I smiled and spoke but no one saw or heard me. I realized that the form and life which I possessed was invisible to their eyes, neither could they hear my words.

When I found that I made no impression on them, I turned and made for the door. But now something strange happened, I became aware of a male person whose body was of the same translucent substance as mine walking along with me on my right side.  I looked at him but could not distinguish his face. The features were not clearly defined, they seemed to have been covered with some haziness.

What was strange to me was the absence of nervousness, or fear or discomfort in the presence of this man who kept pace with me, and moved in the same gliding effortless manner by my side.

I remember having the thought that he somehow belonged to me, as if he were there silently to protect me. I felt marvellously contented, and seemed to understand deep inside me that this person was really some sort of a guardian or guide who came to meet me and introduce me to my new life.

Without any curiosity or any emotion such as I would have had experience if this had happened in my physical life, I just took it all for granted, and so walked on in his company. At first we went uphill. I remember distinctly this incline and tendency to steepness as we walked on air, side by side along what I thought was a footpath. I am sure that the little footpath had green grass on either side.

Now while we were ascending this incline, I became conscious of a voice calling my name. It was a man's voice, and I heard it distinctly. It kept on calling earnestly and almost, so to speak, in a pleading voice. I say this because I could register all the feelings in the voice as if in a flash. My new mind was ever so much keener, so that I could feel a thousand different thoughts and emotions in that voice which called 'Lola, Lola, come back Lola. Come back, don't don't go away yet. Please come back.' As I heard the voice I knew what it contained. I knew all its feelings and yet I was in such a serene and delightful frame of mind that only a part of me heard the call.

Then it seemed to invade my consciousness and became more and more pressing, pleading and almost begging me to return.

At this I for the first time became aware of concern. It began to worry me. It was just the same as if one were called away from some pleasant task to the most mundane and uninteresting duty.

'Lola come back' came like an echo through the heavens.

The power of the voice began to move all my feelings. I turned to my silent companion and said I was sorry, very sorry, that I could not accompany him. I said :'Do you hear how he is calling me. I must go back. You will understand that that voice needs me.' It seemed as if at that moment everything faded into nothing.

The flow of memory just snapped and ceased, because I who remembered every detail from the time that I was out of my body had no memory from the moment I decided to return until I regained earthly consciousness on the Thursday.

"When I became aware of where I was on the third day after my operation I was packed around with hot-water bottles, and the nurse said that the doctors had expected me to die. I have never forgotten this vital memory, it is now eleven years ago.

My husband and my two small children prayed and prayed for my return during those days when, according to the nurse, 'your life was hanging on the thinnest of threads.' "