Observations placeholder
Whiteman, J H M goes out of body as a child
Identifier
007734
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
The Mystical Life - J H M Whiteman
(Probably 1919, at the age of 12).
In the course of an experiment with yellow phosphorus in a small laboratory at the top of the house, a piece caught alight and stuck to one of my fingers for a moment. I felt no pain, but walked downstairs in order to have the burn dressed. In the kitchen
my mother hastened to get a piece of cloth, while I stood watching her at the other end of the room.
Presently I noticed the light in the room taking on a glowing, dream-like quality, and almost immediately the ears appeared to go deaf. The objects in the room then appeared to become more distant, without, however, shifting their positions. Next, the sense of sight was removed, so that I stood with only the senses of touch, bodily feeling and spatial position. After another few seconds the feeling in the feet disappeared. It was not that the feet went numb, but simply that I appeared to have no feet. Space was
either empty or annihilated there. The emptiness rose gradually higher in the legs, until I appeared likewise to have no lower part of the body.
Then came a sudden change.
All feeling in the body disappeared, but at almost the same instant I realized that I was still standing, aware, in a curiously interested but detached way, of the sound of some heavy object falling down about eight feet away, behind and slightly to the right.
Before having time to reflect, I became conscious in the usual way, to find myself lying on the floor, having fallen down in a faint. I arose at once, feeling perfectly normal, and very ashamed at having apparently fainted when nothing whatever was wrong.
The strangeness of hearing the sound of the fall from outside, without feeling anything, was very puzzling, but having no knowledge of the possibility of separation from the body I did not consciously think of the experience in those terms.