Observations placeholder
Cohen, Dr Sidney - A man patient's experience in a dark room
Identifier
015511
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
The following out of body experience is from a man who was also placed in a sound proofed totally dark room for 6 hours. The experience was described as more intense than under ordinary conditions
This is temporary annihilation, if one can have such a thing.
A description of the experience
The Beyond within, the LSD story – Dr Sidney Cohen
I took long swoops up and away from everything that makes me B. Away from his body with its appetites and its clamourings, away from his mind with its conceptualising, its speculations and its constant pursuit of security, away from the world in which his body and mind operate and on which they make their demands. Yet I never felt the least bit of alarm – only a great exuberance and wonder. For between swoops I could return to B and be completely reoriented in a second. I seemed to be always touching him lightly so that he was there for a point of reference, but I was not held by him.
Although I lost all sense of 'me-ness' the sense of 'I-ness' was intensified unbelievably. When I came back to B – me-ness – I could say 'I am B'. But when I swooped I could only say 'I' or 'I am'. It was simply a sense of 'is-ness' or 'am-ness'. I wasn't anything – I simply was. And at these moments of really ecstatic clarity there was such peace and rest and at the same time such exuberance and wildest joy. It was something like the short respites – only magnified a million times – which one gets when everything in everyday life seems for a moment or two to make sense, when suddenly there are no problems to struggle with or find answers to