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Originally Posted by Jim deKorne
By the winter of 1971 (...) we were living in my house in the mountains of New Mexico. (...) One bitterly cold January dusk we drove over to Taos to have supper with some friends of my wife. I didn't know these people very well, and when the husband arrived home late from his job as a ski instructor it was obvious that he was dead tired and had completely forgotten that we'd been invited to be dinner guests that evening. In short, he was barely civil to us, evoking in everyone, his wife in particular, an understandably awkward embarassment.
In an attempt to smooth out the social ambiance, she torched up a joint which was duly passed around among the adults at the supper table. It was a mistake for me to have smoked any, because I was not at all prepared for the unconscious wave of hostility which continued to emerge from our host.
This was totally non-verbal, unrelated to his overt behavior (which by then was quite civil), and was experienced by me as a palpable force which attacked my solar plexus -- sort of like psychically having the wind kicked out of me. (...)
Later I was to learn that this man had been studying Native American (especially Navajo) witchcraft for several years, but I must emphasize that at this point I don't think he was aware that he was doing anything to me -- the whole experience had a dark, unconscious quality to it. Also, I did know him well enough to be able to assume a general goodwill on his part -- when he wasn't tired and unconscious anyway.
That didn't help me much, however. I'd already allowed the cannabis to open up my normal ego defenses and I began to feel like I was going to faint. I quickly realized that I was actually in a state of shock and that I was about to pass out! I stumbled from the table, blathering something about needing to "get some fresh air." The night-time temperatures in Taos had been hovering around twenty below zero for nearly a week, and this sudden concussion of coldness hit me like another blow as I stepped from the house. I lurched against the fender of our truck and had a brief vision of the milky way galaxy as specks of light frozen in a black void of lung-searing oxygen, then I was out cold, as they say.
This is hard to describe. I lived an entire human lifetime. Perhaps it was a memory of another life, because it seemed to take place in the Eighteenth Century -- lots of horse-drawn vehicles and people wearing period clothing. But that's not what seems important. What impressed me was that it was an entire life, from birth through old age and eventual death. And it progressed in "real time," -- it was not in any way speeded up. Yet, at the moment of my death at a relatively advanced age I awoke to find myself lying in a frozen Taos driveway next to the mud-caked tire of a 1970 Toyota pickup truck.
I had just fallen -- that memory came surging back like a tidal wave which washed away most (but not all) of the memory of my other existence. The "lifetime" had occurred between the moment I passed out and the moment I hit the ground, a mere second or two of "our" time. I managed to stand up, take a few gulps of frigid air, and make my way back inside. To get a "reality check" on my time-sense, I asked how long I'd been gone. Everyone cracked up in stoned laughter -- you just left for Christ's sake!
Then they saw my face and it was suddenly all solicitous concern -- here, you'd better lie down, do you want some water? Etc. They said that I had no color in my face at all. Although they were all still very stoned, I was stone sober.
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17-04-2009, 08:11
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