Near Death and The Mortal Coil
The summer after sixth grade I went to Boy Scout camp in the Blue Ridge Mountains. We slept in tents. There were latrines and not much running water. We filled canteens and we ate dinner in a mess hall.
We had an exercise where they marched us 5 miles away from camp on a gravel road at sunset and then onto a path into a secluded part of the woods. Everyone was instructed to build a shelter and sleep in it for the night. We were trained beforehand how to make a shelter. So I made one by taking a log and putting it at an angle against a tree, and then lashing sticks over top of it. And I slept in it all night. It was uncomfortable and very cold and damp.
One afternoon behind camp, in a field behind our tents, a group of kids from my Boy Scout troop were gathered in that clearing. I had returned from lunch or some merit badge activity and I approached them and I asked what was going on and they said, "We're making people pass out." This was not a camp activity. It was a couple of the bad kids, really, and they demonstrated how it was done on somebody, and they fainted, and I said that I wanted to do it, because I had never fainted before.
So the instructions were, you crouch down, breathe heavily in and out, deeply for about 30 seconds and when you do this you start to get dizzy. Then you stand up and someone squeezes your chest from behind or pushes on your chest against a wall and essentially you just pass out. When you start out, all the blood is rushing to your head, and you are breathing heavily so there is a lot of oxygen going to your brain. And then you stand up and hold your breath while someone squeezes on you and there is a lack of oxygen, and you pass out.
Here's what happened. I crouched down and started breathing deeply. My head was between my knees and I could feel the blood rushing to my head and I could feel this tingling sensation in my fingers. I did the breathing for about 30 seconds.
The group previously concluded that the longer you breathe in this crouched position the more effective the passing out will be. Either you will stay passed out longer or deeper, but they were somehow related. After 30 seconds I stood up. The preferred method outside is you hold your breath and stand up straight and someone gives you a bear hug with your arms inside of their arms and they squeeze around your chest. After about 5 seconds I started to feel really light headed and tingly and then everything started to fade to black. My surroundings faded around me and I found myself in a dark void. I was floating in this space, I looked down and my body was surrounded by a spiral that appeared to be train tracks. It was a spiral made of train tacks, complete with a double rail and the planks connecting them. And on this train track was a big compartmentalized train, but each of the compartments were more than a 3-dimensional thing, they were ideas and memories from my life.
I was witnessing this in a 3-dimensional scenario, but I also perceived each one of these compartments of this train as a portal into these moments in time. I was floating in the center of this coil, and I was able to extend myself into each compartment, and I would go into a compartment and re-experience that thought, or that moment in time, as if I was there. And I got lost in this happening, and I went in and out of numerous compartment of moments and it felt like a lifetime of being in this world and then instantly – BAM! I hit the ground. The world slowly faded back in visually and then my memory came back as well. I remembered that I was at boy scout camp, that I was in 6th grade and I had just passed out for the first time.
I stood up and I said, " Wow, how long was I out?" And they said that I just hit the ground. They said I fell over and hit the ground. They said I was out for less than a second and that I had my eyes open the whole time! But to me the experience that happened lasted what felt like a lifetime, what felt like an infinite expanse of time. Like this was a vantage point that was natural to be in. They said that I just hit the ground and that I was just out for a second.
At the time I remember there were specific memories that I had, while I was "out", but I was only 12 years old at the time, so I don't remember what they were. I do remember at the time, thinking these were very concrete experiences I went into. Like the time I caught my first fish, or learned to ride a bike. They seemed like very concrete, real experiences that I had gone into, and they gave me this sum of my life to that point.
At that age/ moment I realized that dreams may only last a second but they might seem to last an infinite amount of time. At the time I considered it a dream but I don't consider it a dream anymore. An actual dream can not happen instantaneously at the beginning of a forced "sleep cycle' like being made to pass out. So it to me seems like an altered state induced by the stress of being made to pass out or a near death experience where your "life flashes before your eyes". Apparently mine took the train!
Years later I heard the term "the mortal coil", and after I heard it I thought, the mortal coil? Well wait a second. What was that thing that I found myself in? That could be considered my mortal coil, because it was directly related to my life, and it was literally a coil that surrounded me. The phrase can be found in Shakespeare's Hamlet.
We had an exercise where they marched us 5 miles away from camp on a gravel road at sunset and then onto a path into a secluded part of the woods. Everyone was instructed to build a shelter and sleep in it for the night. We were trained beforehand how to make a shelter. So I made one by taking a log and putting it at an angle against a tree, and then lashing sticks over top of it. And I slept in it all night. It was uncomfortable and very cold and damp.
One afternoon behind camp, in a field behind our tents, a group of kids from my Boy Scout troop were gathered in that clearing. I had returned from lunch or some merit badge activity and I approached them and I asked what was going on and they said, "We're making people pass out." This was not a camp activity. It was a couple of the bad kids, really, and they demonstrated how it was done on somebody, and they fainted, and I said that I wanted to do it, because I had never fainted before.
So the instructions were, you crouch down, breathe heavily in and out, deeply for about 30 seconds and when you do this you start to get dizzy. Then you stand up and someone squeezes your chest from behind or pushes on your chest against a wall and essentially you just pass out. When you start out, all the blood is rushing to your head, and you are breathing heavily so there is a lot of oxygen going to your brain. And then you stand up and hold your breath while someone squeezes on you and there is a lack of oxygen, and you pass out.
Here's what happened. I crouched down and started breathing deeply. My head was between my knees and I could feel the blood rushing to my head and I could feel this tingling sensation in my fingers. I did the breathing for about 30 seconds.
The group previously concluded that the longer you breathe in this crouched position the more effective the passing out will be. Either you will stay passed out longer or deeper, but they were somehow related. After 30 seconds I stood up. The preferred method outside is you hold your breath and stand up straight and someone gives you a bear hug with your arms inside of their arms and they squeeze around your chest. After about 5 seconds I started to feel really light headed and tingly and then everything started to fade to black. My surroundings faded around me and I found myself in a dark void. I was floating in this space, I looked down and my body was surrounded by a spiral that appeared to be train tracks. It was a spiral made of train tacks, complete with a double rail and the planks connecting them. And on this train track was a big compartmentalized train, but each of the compartments were more than a 3-dimensional thing, they were ideas and memories from my life.
I was witnessing this in a 3-dimensional scenario, but I also perceived each one of these compartments of this train as a portal into these moments in time. I was floating in the center of this coil, and I was able to extend myself into each compartment, and I would go into a compartment and re-experience that thought, or that moment in time, as if I was there. And I got lost in this happening, and I went in and out of numerous compartment of moments and it felt like a lifetime of being in this world and then instantly – BAM! I hit the ground. The world slowly faded back in visually and then my memory came back as well. I remembered that I was at boy scout camp, that I was in 6th grade and I had just passed out for the first time.
I stood up and I said, " Wow, how long was I out?" And they said that I just hit the ground. They said I fell over and hit the ground. They said I was out for less than a second and that I had my eyes open the whole time! But to me the experience that happened lasted what felt like a lifetime, what felt like an infinite expanse of time. Like this was a vantage point that was natural to be in. They said that I just hit the ground and that I was just out for a second.
At the time I remember there were specific memories that I had, while I was "out", but I was only 12 years old at the time, so I don't remember what they were. I do remember at the time, thinking these were very concrete experiences I went into. Like the time I caught my first fish, or learned to ride a bike. They seemed like very concrete, real experiences that I had gone into, and they gave me this sum of my life to that point.
At that age/ moment I realized that dreams may only last a second but they might seem to last an infinite amount of time. At the time I considered it a dream but I don't consider it a dream anymore. An actual dream can not happen instantaneously at the beginning of a forced "sleep cycle' like being made to pass out. So it to me seems like an altered state induced by the stress of being made to pass out or a near death experience where your "life flashes before your eyes". Apparently mine took the train!
Years later I heard the term "the mortal coil", and after I heard it I thought, the mortal coil? Well wait a second. What was that thing that I found myself in? That could be considered my mortal coil, because it was directly related to my life, and it was literally a coil that surrounded me. The phrase can be found in Shakespeare's Hamlet.
"To be, or not to be, that is the Question:
Whether 'tis Nobler in the minde to suffer
The Slings and Arrowes of outragious Fortune,
Or to take Armes against a Sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them: to dye, to sleepe
No more; and by a sleepe, to say we end
The Heart-ake, and the thousand Naturall shockes
That Flesh is heyre too? 'Tis a consummation
Deuoutly to be wish'd. To dye to sleepe,
To sleepe, perchance to Dreame; I, there's the rub,
For in that sleepe of death, what dreames may come,
When we haue shuffel'd off this mortall coile,
Must giue vs pawse. There's the respect
That makes Calamity of so long life:"
Whether 'tis Nobler in the minde to suffer
The Slings and Arrowes of outragious Fortune,
Or to take Armes against a Sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them: to dye, to sleepe
No more; and by a sleepe, to say we end
The Heart-ake, and the thousand Naturall shockes
That Flesh is heyre too? 'Tis a consummation
Deuoutly to be wish'd. To dye to sleepe,
To sleepe, perchance to Dreame; I, there's the rub,
For in that sleepe of death, what dreames may come,
When we haue shuffel'd off this mortall coile,
Must giue vs pawse. There's the respect
That makes Calamity of so long life:"
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