Observations placeholder
Ludlow, Fitz Hugh - OBE what it feels like
Identifier
005972
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
The Hasheesh Eater – Fitz Hugh Ludlow
In the course of my delirium, the soul, I plainly discovered, had indeed departed from the body.
I was that soul utterly divorced from the corporeal nature, disjoined, clarified, purified.
From the air in which I hovered I looked down upon my former receptacle. Animal life, with all its processes, still continued to go on; the chest heaved with the regular rise and fall of breathing, the temples throbbed, and the cheek flushed.
I scrutinised the body with wonderment; it seemed no more to concern me than that of another being.
I do not remember, in the course of the whole experience I have had of hasheesh, a more singular emotion than felt at that moment. The spirit discerned itself as possessed of all the human capacities, intellect, susceptibility, and will saw itself complete in every respect; yet like a grand motor, it had abandoned the machine which it once energised, and in perfect independence stood apart.
In the prerogative of my spiritual nature I was restrained by no objects of a denser class. To myself I was visible and tangible, yet I knew that no material eyes would see me. Through the walls of the room I was able to pass and repass, and through the ceiling to behold the stars unobserved.
This was neither hallucination nor dream. The sight of my reason was preternaturally intense, and I remembered that this was one of the states which frequently occur to men immediately before their death has become apparent to lookers on, and also in the more remarkable conditions of trance. That such a state is possible is incontestably proved by many cases on record in which it has fallen under the observation of students most eminent in physico-psychical science.
A voice of command called on me to return into the body, saying in the midst of my exultation over what I thought was my final disenfranchisement from the corporeal
‘The time is not yet’
I returned and again felt the animal nature joined to me by its mysterious threads of conduction. Once more soul and body were one.