"There is a theory which states that if ever for any reason anyone discovers what exactly the Universe is for and why it is here it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another that states that this has already happened." – Douglas Adams

And it has!

August 1973. Two years after a career-ending divorce, which cost me my wife and family, my home, automobiles, savings, investments, servants, social status, etc., I foolishly married, for the second time, for all the wrong reasons, to a schoolteacher, a member of a prominent, affluent political family.

Relocating to a South Jersey suburb of Philadelphia, I stumbled upon a commission-only School Enrollment sales job where I was able to earn several thousand dollars per week when several thousand dollars per week really meant something. After only one month on the job, I was appointed Director of Admissions of the Franklin School of Science and Arts of Philadelphia, a Medical-Technical School that was a Division of the publishing company of Holt, Rinehart and Winston, a then wholly-owned subsidiary of CBS.

Blinded by my new prosperity, I bought a new car, new wardrobe, ate at only the best restaurants, and feeling a sense of familial responsibility, took out a Million Dollar Insurance Policy on my life; the beneficiary of which was my new bride.

One evening, late in July, I returned home from work and was greeted by my schoolteacher wife.

“Jimmy dropped by and left us a present,” she said. She was referring to one of her High School students, her lover as it turns out, and the “present” was a bit of cocaine which was, then, rapidly becoming the recreational drug du jour.

“I already did it before you got home, but I saved you some in the tinfoil on the shelf.”

Never having done cocaine, I was hesitant to try it because I was not sure of the effects. After reassurances that “It’s nothing; everybody does it,” I snorted what I thought was cocaine up my nose.

I WAS POISONED!

At first, I thought, “What the heck is this? This is nothing!” But I soon began to feel very strange, as though I were dying. Though I wasn’t losing my consciousness, I was frightened and kept repeating over and over again, “What’s happening?”

Suddenly, all about me, all that I perceived as Reality, dissolved into a Tabula Rasa, a blank nothingness, Objectless Samadhi (nirvikalpa-samadhi).

It was as if I were first standing, encircled, in the midst of an illusory curtain of objected matter that blinded me, blocked my view, to whatever was behind it. When the Curtain, the “Veil of the Temple,” was rent, there was Nothing behind it!

I am not entirely sure that I did not die that day, nor if I have slid into another dimension, a Parallel Universe, other than the one I had occupied before this one.

The World changed quickly after this Death Experience. It was the same World, but Different.

One day, soon after, the Jews cut up their Gas Credit Cards because the oil companies were supporting the Arab Oil Producers against Israel. Almost immediately long gas lines were formed. Chaos was entering, disturbing the Equilibrium. People whose names I did not recognize were prominent in this Dimension, e.g., Gerald Ford, among other adoptees, who appeared to exist but could not be documented with certainty.

Books were beginning to contain information that was not there before the Experience. I was stumbling across, perhaps bringing into Existence, so many texts, in such a way as to defy coincidence; a posteriori documentation of my a priori experience. They were exactly describing my Experience. It was as if I had assumed the consciousness of All and upset the Universal Balance, a new element added to an already full complement; the straw that broke the camel's back.

Most of my Blog, particularly the September 2006 Archive, is dedicated to my efforts to finding others like myself. I believe I have found two others.