Nobody True (3 page)

The thing is, they no longer needed to be sparked off by any sort of trauma, they started to happen of their own volition when I was near to sleep, body and mind completely relaxed. They occurred only perhaps once or twice a year at first, but then I began to control them—at least, I tried to control them. I’d lie in bed alone and concentrate on leaving my body at will, but nothing transpired at those first clumsy attempts, either because I wasn’t relaxed enough, or was trying too hard. I learned that OBEs are not something that can be controlled entirely at will.

I also realized that between the hot potato incident when I was seven and the motorbike accident when I was seventeen, there had, in fact, been a few other OBEs, when I’d wandered through empty darkened school classrooms, visiting my own desk, or flights when I seemed to be high over the city, with thousands of lights below, many of them moving traffic headlights. I’d put these down to dreams, very, very clear dreams. What did I know? I was just a kid. But dreams always fade with time, if not on awakening, and these excursions or “flights” never did. I nearly always remembered them.

As I got older I began trying consciously to put myself into the OBE state, lying in bed at night and imagining I was looking down at myself from a corner of the ceiling. At first, I’d choose a point above me, think of a small bright light glowing there, then I’d will myself to join it. Nothing really happened though, at least not for a long while. I even used doped—marijuana only, nothing hard—to see if it would help, you know, put me into a relaxed state, free my mind, transcend the norm, but it never worked. I almost gave up until one day in my last year at art college I was bored and listless—a hand-lettering class, I seem to remember, always a drag for me—when suddenly and without warning I was gone.

This was weird phenomenon (I agree, it must always sound weird to anyone—which means most people—who has never been through it themselves) because it was daytime, the sun shining gloriously through a window—maybe its warmth enhanced my drowsiness—and nothing physical had jolted me; no trauma and certainly no accident. One moment I was trying to get the curve on a Century Old Style cap “S” right with my 3A sable paintbrush, next I felt a kind of shifting within me, as if I were being gently hovered out of my skin, and then I was floating above my own head.

Now on this occasion and after the initial surprise—oddly, there was no apprehensive shock involved—I decided I was going to examine the experience rather than just live it. It was as calculating as that. No alarm, no concern that I might not be able to re-enter my body again, no panicky thoughts about death. I could see myself with exquisite clarity, my figure and everything around it finely defined. I noticed the tip of my paintbrush was poised about a millimetre above the letter “S” and my arm—my whole body, in fact—was perfectly still, as if I’d been frozen there. Other people in the artroom were moving: the girl student next to me was wiping her T-square with a clean rag, while on another table, a friend of mine was carefully dipping his brush into an inkpot as our tutor, a thin dandified Swiss with a wispy blond moustache and slicked-back hair, was turning the page of a typeface book opened out before him on the desk top, unconsciously tucking an overspilling cream handkerchief back into his breast pocket with his free hand as he did so. A round clock with a dark-wood frame ticked on the wall. Someone sneezed. Someone else said, “Bless you.” A putty rubber fell off a table and a student bent to retrieve it. All was normal. No one was taking any notice of me.

I wasn’t scared. I guess I was too curious for that. I just felt cool about the whole situation. And because of that lack of anxiety I was able to examine my situation calmly.

I decided to see if I could move about and instantly I could. Just by willing myself I floated to the other side of the artroom, observing the heads and hunched shoulders of the students at work as I did so. I half-expected some of them to look up as I passed over, perhaps disturbed by the breeze I must be creating, skimming along like that. I thought my tutor might bark, “You there, True, come down from zat ceiling and get back to your pless!” in that prissy accent of his, but he continued to study his book, one finger of his hand dipped deeply into his breast pocket as he settled the silk hanky. I could see myself—I’d stretched both hands out in front of me like some ethereal Superman and they were plainly visible—so why couldn’t the teacher and students see me? (At that time, of course, I hadn’t yet come to understand that it was my mind filling in what it expected to see.)

Hovering over a bright window, I turned back to the class. The notion of passing through the window glass had occurred to me, but while remaining perfectly level-headed, I was a little anxious about wandering too far from my natural body. I really did not want to lose sight of it, and I think that was quite reasonable. What if I got lost outside? What if there was a point where the spirit (or whatever I was up there, hovering inches away from the ceiling) became too separated from the physical body and something, some invisible connection, snapped, making re-entry impossible?

Anyway, during that time in the artroom I was, as mentioned, pretty cool about the situation, even if I was reluctant to let my material self out of sight. I looked around, took notice of things, considered how I felt about my condition, then, and only after several minutes, I became eager to get back into my body. (It was like resisting one last chocolate from the box because you’ve already had too many.) And the moment I felt that way I was back.

I don’t recall any journey across the room, nor dipping myself into my natural form; I was just there, looking at the world through my physical eyes once more. Only then did I begin to feel some panic, but it was mild. I think I was too stunned to experience overwhelming anxiety. Soon I was plain curious as well as elated. I’d gone through something rare—at least I thought it was rare, because I’d never heard of this sort of thing happening to anyone on a regular basis, although I’d read of one-off dream-flying and of survivors who claimed they had left their bodies while close to death.

I sat there bemused, worrying that my cracked skull had its aftermath, that the impact had messed with my brain and was creating hallucinations, fantasy trips. But I’d been too passive during the experience and observed too much too clearly for this to have been and illusion. Besides, everything else in the room had been quite ordinary and the other students’ behaviour perfectly normal.

Laying my paintbrush down, I sank back into my chair. What the hell was going on? I remembered the hot potato incident, then the immediate consequences of the motorcycle accident. I’d told the doctors of my out-of-body experience and they’d just smiled benevolently and explained that when the head—the brain, more specifically—took such a hard knock, it often went into some kind of seizure, perhaps losing control for a short time, so that visions in the unconscious state might seem like reality. Nothing to worry about, but a few tests would be in order.

Scans showed nothing amiss as far as my head was concerned; fortunately, the fracture had been minimal, the bone barely penetrated, and the brain itself revealed no evidence of swelling or injury. Rest up, give yourself time for the leg to heal and the skull’s light fracture to knit together. Any trauma to the head could be dangerous and cause concern, no matter how light the blow, but in this case, there appeared to be no such problem. A little surgery on the leg was all that was required.

It was some months after the artroom OBE that I began to think back and re-examine some of the “dreams” I’d had from the age of even onwards, dreams that had not gradually faded from memory as they were supposed to, those that had lingered in my thoughts because of their extreme clarity and almost rational content. In them, I’d visited places I’d only heard or read about, art galleries (paintings and sculptures had fascinated me from an early age), playgrounds, and homes of schoolfriends. I’d spied on my mother as she sewed the lapels of handmade suits while pausing every so often to watch her precious soaps and game shows on the small television we owned and which lit up an otherwise dreary corner of the room. There was no sense of adventure with these dream excursions, nothing exciting about them at all really, and this was what eventually made me realize they were something other than natural dreams.

That’s when I started reading up on the phenomenon and discovered it was more common that I had first thought. I learned that certain curious and dedicated people had achieved by research and perseverance what came naturally to me. Even so, nothing I read compared exactly to my own experiences. Others, apparently, had not attained such clearness of vision or logical continuity; their OBEs were more dreamlike and lacked control, and generally were broken up by blank periods of unconsciousness so that their flow was interrupted, to be remembered later only in vague episodes. However, I did pick up some useful techniques for putting myself into a receptive state, not quite a trance-like mode, but a kind of open responsiveness that encouraged the phenomenon to occur. Things like alert relaxation, where the body is in repose, but the mind is acutely aware if itself rather than the physical body; or the method of loosening the body completely, resting it limb by limb, piece by piece from head to toe; or the perception of outside from within, as if my eyes were merely portals through which I could observe the outer world; or shrinking inside myself, so that my skin and flesh were like an ill-fitting suit, loose enough to escape from. Then there was the mirror image method, whereby a person thinks of themselves floating about their own body, just a foot or two away; the image is clear, and exact replica of himself or herself wearing the same clothes, sporting the same five-o’clock shadow or make-up; the person then imagines he or she is now looking down at their own body from above, that now it’s the physical self that is being viewed. It’s supposed to make the transition easier, but it never worked for me.

In fact, all I had to do was make myself as relaxed as possible, relieve my mind of extraneous thoughts, and will myself to leave my body, sometimes looking at some particular spot on the ceiling or far corner of the room so that my “spirit” had a destination. Then I’d wait for it to happen.

Which it didn’t, more often than not. But sometimes I was successful and the more I was, the more I started to control my “flight”. Initially, I never left the room I occupied, but gradually I began to venture further to other rooms in the flat, cautiously graduating to outside locations, so that ultimately I was able to fly above rooftops, explore places I’d never physically visited—Buckingham Palace was dull, while the homes of some complete strangers could be interesting, even scary. It seemed I was limited only by my own boldness (I have to admit that in those early days I was somewhat timid; the fear of being unable to find my way back to my body was too strong. I was also afraid that the further afield I travelled, the easier it would be to break the psychic link to my physical self).

I slowly learned though that I only had to think of myself back inside my flesh and blood from for it to be so. It would happen in a rush, a dizzying race through space that took no longer than a second or so, and always I’d arrived back safely, with no hitches whatsoever.

I can’t say that I explored this thrilling new state to the full. For one, it didn’t work every time, and for two, after the original excitement, I began to lose interest. I don’t know why, it was just the way it was. Maybe deep down I was really afraid of the capability, some part of my subconscious feeling it was an unnatural state to be in, and that sooner or later something would go wrong, and I’d be punished.

In a way, I was right.

6

Did I ever tell anyone of these OBEs? And if I didn’t, then why not?

Simple answer is, no, I didn’t tell a soul. The reason why is not quite that simple, but you’ve a right to know.

I’ve always been a private person, never one for sharing all my deep-seated angst or emotions. Something I learned from Mother, I guess.

She brought me up to hide my feelings, to put on a face in front of others, particularly strangers. It was all to do with her pride and her shame at being deserted by her husband. Our reduced circumstances embarrassed her and when we moved into our little flat on the rougher side of London, she cut off all contact with friends and acquaintances. You know, I never knew if I had any other living relatives when I was growing up and eventually it didn’t matter to me anyway; Mother and me, we kept to ourselves. I was content enough. I spent most of my time drawing, sometimes painting (when I had the paints, which were usually Christmas or birthday gifts), writing little stories, and reading—God, I’d read anything that came my way, from comics to books to the back of cornflake packets. I loved movies too, and Mother and I went at least twice a week, sometimes twice in one day. For me it was all escapism, I suppose, all these things taking me out of both my environment and my circumstances; it must have been the same for Mother as far as the movies and TV soaps were concerned.

I think that in her mind she lived in some kind of dream world, a place the ugly realities of life could not touch. She was fooling herself, of course, life itself isn’t that easy to shut out.

Now you might imagine that all this would have turned me into a mother’s boy, but nothing could have been further from the truth. I was always independent as a kid, self-contained you might say; I loved my mother, but I could never understand her, couldn’t be the doting son she so much wanted. Just as she disappeared into her film world where everything had a tendency to turn out okay in the end (there were romantic magazines and novels also to keep her dreams occupied), so I retreated into my own small planet, which was a whole deal more exciting that the real one. Although I could never bring them home because of Mother’s strict rule that outsiders were never welcome, never allowed to be “insiders”, I had many good friends at school and later at art college, and as soon as I realized I was capable of taking care of myself I was rarely at home, despite Mother’s accusatory pleas to stay with her. I was no rebel, but I was aware that there was something more, and something better, going on out there and I wanted some of it for myself. Guilt always dogged me though—I did truly love my mother—but I soon learned to accommodate it. Besides, I’d discovered football, which I became pretty good at, and not too long after that, I discovered girls.