Cerebral Flatliners' Journey to Jerusalem

But how to achieve it? Hint: Massive Cerebral Hypoxia. As a child (age 11) I employed with my friends that ancient ecstasy technique (squatting, hyper-ventilating, stretching UP! and compression of the chest) which is nowadays used by scientists to generate visionary experiences, NDEs and such (and of course practised NOW and in each and every generation by trance-happy and adventurous youngsters).


The memorable thing was that after passing out you came back not in one piece but you were witnessing all your mental faculties checking in quite sequentially. You experienced amnesia and then the thrill and drama of anamnesis (Philip K. Dick's strongest narrative device). After waking up you were temporarily in the same state as 'the man who mistook his wife for a hat' - not even able to recognize and tell apart animate and inanimate objects.

The world was at first a pointed 'here', then two-dimensional 'me', a flatland without history or perspective but with an up-welling queer current. The third dimension. The towers, alien and impossibly raging at first, murmuring and droning Gods, then slowly merging into your attending friends. Words. Words came back to you. The knowledge of who you were and what you were doing here came at the very last. It was an exhausting and somewhat bruising routine but I remember well that whoever was 'finished' with his journey beyond and back was very eager to repeat the experience. We 'played' many circles until the fad was over and we started meditating in the closet.