In my previous post, I wrote about an intense experience I had. I do not encourage anyone to take my experience as “real”… that is, something that I believe is utterly factual. Like in the way “the Earth revolves on its axis” is “real.”

Nothing of the experience feels like a lie, but there are concerns. This is why:

My mother was insane.

I loved her very much, but there are (as you can imagine) very conflicting emotions about her. She passed away long ago. Every day, she is still alive in my head.

Memories of my mother goes back to when I was two and a half, when she was my Mom. She was a very giving, very bright person. Physically affectionate (appropriately so) to both her son and her husband. She loved together time with the both of us. They would both read to me often, usually books like Bulfinch’s Mythology, The Hobbit, things like that.

My sister was born six days after my fourth birthday and I remember the pregnancy clearly. It was not as much a happy time for Mom. I didn’t know what it was at the time…I just felt that there was something causing her to draw away.

She gave birth to a perfect little girl. I was kept at home, being taken care of by neighbors during the delivery. Mom came home with this beautiful baby. I had immediate love for my sister, but also concern. I knew my life was going to change and I didn’t understand how. It was confusing, and my parents didn’t really talk to me about what the new baby would change. I had to figure that out on my own.

But my sister was (is) amazing and I was happy to meet her.

On her first day back, Mom set my sister into her bassinet then went into her bedroom. For six days.

She locked the door and refused to leave. My parents’ bedroom was en suite, so there was a small bathroom there. She only took meals set out by her door. Any sound outside of her door would cause her to yell at us to get away from the door. Our breathing by the door was too loud for her. She would only grab the meals if we couldn’t see her.

I used to wait outside of the door at first. As the days passed, I slowly moved away down the hall. I always tried to catch a glimpse of her. This happened when I set out meals in front of the door. If she opened the door a crack and saw me, she would instantly slam the door and lock it. After a few days I gave up.

A few times Dad would beg her to leave the room. He asked her to help take care of her daughter. Each time, she rebuffed him noisily with very harsh words.

My Dad and I took care of my sister during this time. I learned how to change her diapers, how to hold her and bottle feed her. I felt a kinship with her beyond her being my sister. We had both lost a mother.

I couldn’t understand what was happening. I mean, I was only barely four years old. I saw my Dad had no clue either. He tried in his way, but this was a man who was afraid of his emotions all his life. He was a Boomer and was raised with the twisted Italian masculinity that his father beat into him.

After six days, someone in the shape of my Mom emerged. But it was not my Mom. I would never see my Mom again.

In 1974, post-partum depression was poorly understood and rarely diagnosed. In my mother’s case, she had a post-partum psychological break. When she emerged, she was manic. She believed she had been touched by the will of God. She thought she was meant to be a prophet during the “end times.”

SIGNS OF THE TIMES

In the United States, 1974 was it’s own mood. The hippie counterculture was dead by then, and one idea that tried to take its place was the “Jesus Movement.” It was a rejection of traditional church hierarchies in favor of a more mystical and individualized experience of Jesus. It was the Charismatic movement going mainstream.

My mother was in the vanguard for this. She emerged extremely volatile, both emotionally and physically. She would sometimes weep over the sins of the world. Other times, she would jump up and down from the excitement of being “saved.” But behind both, there was always this core of seething, boiling rage. She became violent in ways I had never seen.

Above all, she kept having visions of the “end times.” She constantly listened to and read books that confirmed her belief that the end of the world was eminent.

It turns out that the same year I was born a book was born as well. The book “The Late Great Planet Earth” by Hal Lindsey and Carole Carlson confirmed her every suspicion. It was about the imminent end of the world. It would happen at any second. “No one knows the day or hour when these things will happen, not even the angels in heaven or the Son himself. Only the Father knows.” (Matthew 24:36)

She didn’t know the day or the hour, but she was absolutely certain that it was IMMINENT.

This was part of my mother’s trifecta of modern Christianity. They were all written by Hal Lindesy: “The Late, Great Planet Earth”, “Satan Is Alive And Well on Planet Earth”, and “There’s A New World Coming.”

She also leaned heavily into tapes of the comedian Mike Warnke. She particularly focused on his lectures about his time as an all-mighty Satanist. He claimed to have a coven of a thousand people. He boasted of a harem of sexy Satanic slaves. He also said he controlled the weather with his mind. She played these tapes over and over again.

It turns out that Mike Warnke was a compulsive liar. What. A. Shocker!

The point is this: she was utterly convinced. She believed every single vision she had was objective reality. She didn’t think it was a subjective experience limited to her own mind. She had external confirmation now. She was certain every day that the end times were three seconds in the future, starting… NOW.

I once read that “only the insane are certain.” I watched that truth play out before my eyes. Religion has a the curious property of causing good people to do terrible things, mostly for the “greater good.” I suffered through traumatizing religious abuse, not only by her but also the friends she had gathered around her. Each one of them hurt me terribly, and each one of them believed they were doing the LORD’s work.

At the same time I lost my Mom, I lost my Dad. He couldn’t cope with this, so he disappeared into a bottle and work.

SKIPPING TO THE NEAR PRESENT

I had a visceral and all-too-real experience that I can’t tell if it’s “true” or not. I worked decades to prevent myself from the same Religious mania. I developed a skepticism over my own experiences, particularly ones that told me I was “special” in some way. Why did my experience happen in THIS place at THIS time? What in my past informed this experience?

I didn’t place too much energy into the belief that this was an experience of truth. This is because I try not to believe in anything, although I have a LOT of suspicions.

So that drags us reluctantly to my vivid Astral Experience.

If this had happened to my mother, she would have had a massive shift in her behavior. She would have taken this experience as being as real and true as everything else in the Universe. She would lose herself in her own experience and never leave it.

I refuse to accept my experience as base reality. It was a confusing and in some ways terrifying experience for me. I felt powerful, but I hated the power I felt. I hated my reaction in this vision. I hated my cruelty and how easy it was to give into barbarity, and how righteous it felt.

Ash is a real person. “Az” is a real person. These are objective truths. Ash came over to stay the night and I worked Reiki on her. This too is an objective truth. She acted healed and relieved afterwards and her demeanor changed. This also is an objective truth.

The rest is open for deep and lasting consideration.

MY ASTRAL EXPERIENCE?

I don’t know why it happened when it happened. I don’t know if it was “real.” I might have slipped in and out of a fugue state for about 15 minutes. Maybe it was a kind of mirage I have never heard of before. It could have been a slight psychotic break. It might be any, all, or none of the above.

I refuse to make sense of it and refuse to take it as objective truth. I don’t know why this happened in the time or place it happened. All I can do is take whatever lesson the experience gives me and try to move on.

In other words, my Astral experience was true in some sense, false in some sense, and meaningless in some sense.