Observations placeholder
Smallpox
Identifier
000494
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
William Buhlman - The Secret of the Soul
Sally I Toronto
The very first memory I have of an OBE is when I was around five or six years old. I was extremely ill with smallpox and had a dangerously high fever. All I remember of the experience is calmly hovering up by the ceiling and looking down at myself being very sick in bed. My mother was very upset over my condition and was on the phone sitting near me on the bed talking to the doctor. He was telling her to give me an ice cold bath to bring down the fever. I distinctly recall being very curious and concerned about myself in the bed . . . but other than that, I was extremely calm, peaceful, and silent. I enjoyed the sensation of floating and was glad to be separated from the obvious suffering my body was going through at the time. I wanted to tell my mother that I would be okay. The whole experience was very brief, really. The funny thing is, at the time, I never even questioned how odd it all was, I simply accepted it as if it happened all the time and was normal. It wasn’t until I was much older, in my teens, that I realized how strange it was that my only memory of my illness was from the vantage point of the ceiling. I asked my mother about it then and was very surprised to learn that everything I remember seeing and hearing when out of body really did take place