Part 1 of Personal Experiences
In December 1950, I was coming to the end of my first term at school. I was travelling on the bus with another pupil whose own mother (a neighbour) had decided to send him to school even though he was unwell. Because she was not able to accompany him, she had asked my mother to take him with me. It turned out that he was suffering from scarlet fever, which I caught.
At the time this disease was an epidemic that was proving a major test for the National Health Service, which had only come into existence in 1948. The way it was tackled was to isolate those who were infected and disinfect their homes and possessions. In this context, my soft toys were burnt! Unlike the boy I probably caught it off, who recovered quickly, I became severely ill. I fell into a coma and my parents were warned that I might not survive. I was taken by ambulance, on my own, to an isolation hospital, which was in the countryside many miles from my home and family.
My experience of being separated from my physical ‘self’ started with me apparently looking down on my body, which was on a bed or trolley in a side ward. I watched and heard a nurse saying to someone outside the room that they should keep the noise down because “there is a little boy dying in here”. I know I felt frightened and this caused me to move away in spirit, though not in body. What I became aware of next was a wonderful feeling of being free of all pain and distress. It was if I was being held and surrounded by a loving presence. I was aware of knowing that I could ‘let go’ but I also seemed to have the choice of returning to my body. I had no sense of time during this blissful experience, so I have no idea of how long my body appeared to be unresponsive as a result of the fever. My next bodily memory, set firmly in time and place, was considerably less pleasant. I found myself in a bed in a large ward surrounded by many other boys. I discovered later that there were also separate wards for the girls. But this was not the end of my spiritual journey then or thereafter.
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