Nature Spirit Sighting (Physical Body, Etheric Vision)
AC 236: July 20, 2004 (Verona Beach State Park, NY)I arrived at Verona Beach State Park, on Lake Oneida in upstate New York, at about 5 PM. I was on vacation, driving from Boston to Dayton, Ohio to see my folks, and camping out along the way.
I set up camp, took a swim in the lake, ate dinner, sat for a while by the side of the lake, looking west, took a shower, and came back to the lake to watch the sunset. I brought with me Swami Muktananda’s spiritual autobiography, Play of Consciousness, which I’d borrowed from my friend Andrea, with whom I’d stayed the night before. I’d seen a reference to it in a book on yoga that mentioned an inwardly perceived blue light. I wanted to see whether my own experience of such a light, recorded in AC 235, was perhaps related in some way to Muktananda’s.
Shortly after arriving at the lake and picking out a park bench that had a clear view of the setting sun, I began to read the front matter of the book. I found myself looking up over my left shoulder again and again, as if someone were standing behind me there. Occasionally, a kid would ride by on a bike, but whenever I looked to see who was standing behind me, there was no one there.
I began to noticed that my thoughts were being strongly pulled to the left, so I turned my attention inward, allowing my conscious to range. I wanted to see whether I was picking up the presence of a nonphysical being. Sure enough, there seemed to be a nonphysical being of some sort sitting next to me on the bench, just to my left.
This being seemed to my inner vision to be about three feet high. It was not human in shape, more like a cylindrical energy capsule. It seemed to be emitting a golden light. Various barely discernible forms were present within it--dark places, glowing bubbles, and a shape like a five-pointed star.
The capsule being was quiet, maybe curious. It seemed to radiate a lot of love--but more like that of an affectionate dog than some higher power.
At first, I didn’t trust my impressions of this nonphysical presence. I figured that somehow my peripheral vision was picking up on the left concrete support of the bench that I was sitting in the center of--and that’s what kept pulling my attention in that direction. So, just to see whether this was the case, I focused my attention in the direction of the concrete support to my right and the empty space on the bench on that side of me.
There was nothing there, no pull on my thoughts. But I still felt the presence and poll on my left.
I went back to reading my book. Then I noticed a slight movement out of the corner of my eye to my right. Sure enough, as if in response to my having shifted the focus of my attention to the right, the nonphysical being had relocated itself there. Now it was to the side of the bench, a foot or two away, instead of right next to me.
The being seemed to be amused at this little game it was playing, picking up and responding to my thoughts. There seemed to be something very simple about this being. I never received a message from it, just love curiosity, amusement, and an intention to be seen.
Once again, I went back to my reading. The being, which moved rather slowly, came back around to my left side. I continued to read while remaining aware of it. At one point, I became so absorbed in my reading that I forgot about the being. The next time I checked on it, I could no longer detect its presence. My thoughts seemed centered now, no longer pulled to the left or right.
I wonder what it was. As I watched the sunset between reading passages from Muktananda, I was thinking about what I’d read in a book by the clairvoyant Geoffrey Hodson, The Kingdom of Faerie. He’d written about spirits of the air called sylphs. It was easy to imagine that the swirls of high clouds that were moving toward me from the west in long trains were airy beings.
When I went back to Hodson’s book later that evening, it seemed to me that he was writing about something else than I had seen in the sky, beings that were more active, less slow moving, than the clouds I’d been looking at. Nothing in his book resembles the nonphysical being that I saw.
I’ve seen other odd nonphysical beings when out in nature, but not since my twenties. Recently, I’ve wanted to see whether I could reactivate the inner senses that have allowed me to see them. It would seem that I’ve been successful. The next problem is determining what I saw.