What meaning this journey into my consciousness can have for anyone but myself, I have no way of knowing. It was for this reason that I was tempted to keep it to myself, disguise myself as an ostrich, and hide my head in the sand.  And, I thought, even if I did decide to go public with what I still think is a very personal story, being an ostrich, I could, if the need arose, outrun everybody.  On the other hand, as a peacock, I wouldn't be able to do so, in any case.  Run, I mean.  Then again, being a peacock, I wouldn't have to.  Without blinking an eye, I would simply display those one-thousand-and-one big blue and beautiful "eyes" of my tailfeathers and put everyone in a trance.  Just like that.

Alas, I'm neither ostrich nor peacock, can't fly or run, or even walk without a cane at the moment; I've never once gone into trance and doubt I ever will.  But I did take a journey...

It all began in the fall of 1983, when I had an out-of-body experience which happened from the dream state.  I was all over the place.  Place?  The places came to me.  No sights, no sound, except inner sound. Most of it is impossible to put into words, but I'll try.

I witnessed strong beams shooting into what I eventually knew to have been Jane Roberts' body.  The configuration looked like an enormous fan.  These thought beams, or channels, appearing as electricity, represented "the wise one."  The fan spanned the horizon.  It was an awesome sight.  I wondered how it could be possible for such enormous energy to be contained in one single human body.  I tried to count the number of beams making up the fan, but every time I did, their number eluded me.  It felt as if I were wearing four different pairs of glasses.  Five...six...seven...eight...

The "electric" display was contrasted against the pitch-black sky.  The latter represented "people in the dark."  On both sides of the fan, strung up on a horizontal line- like bridge lights - there were lights of awareness, or stars, of Jane Roberts' ESP class.  I was amazed at how many there were.  Three or four of them, especially the one right next to the fan representing Rob Butts, were extraordinarily bright and sparkling.  There were no stars in the firmament.  It seemed as if they had all come to join the fan.  I was shown other "electric" displays which did not contain the fan.  In one, there were stars that I sensed would be of personal significance to me, and yet another display I shall mention later.  My first thought was that I wanted to go right into that fan. That should have been me, I thought.  "No room in the "in" and "IN"DIRECTLY", I was made to understand.  I envied all those other lights and again understood that their "time" and mine and that of the wise one, would not intersect in this probability.  Though I didn't know what that meant at the time.  I was sad.

Somewhere, I attended my birth and received a few particulars as to my parents;  my genetic code.  I was given a glimpse of my incarnations which are, of course, interwoven with the rest of humanity, but there were two that were evidently more "me" than "not me."  I've forgotten who they were.  This was just to show me that I was more than I had always thought I was.

In another dimension I felt an unseen presence physically standing so close behind me that we seemed to be the same being;  a very satisfying sexual experience for me.  We couldn't be together yet, but at the end this presence would be back.  At first I thought that I'd have to wait till death.  Now I know it as a psychic orgasm which is, in a way, more satisfying that the mere physical one.

I found myself in a state of absolute emptiness - no sights, no sounds, nothing but my own consciousness of non-thought or non-being - a void, or nothingness that I only was aware of after I had come out of it.  In one dimension, I found myself in various learning centers. A spectacular geography lesson showed me our earth in glorious color on a sunny day with land and water masses, countries and rivers  inscribed on a transparent film that spanned completely around the earth, like a map on a globe.  All I had to do was think myself to a certain place, and there I was.  Then came the biggest challenge;  That of entering into physical reality.  There was a standstill;  something had to be accomplished for me to advance somewhere else.  Would I be able to enter?  It was the tiniest opening that I had to hit at a slant of the most precise angle.  The sensation was that of jumping off a diving board if you've never done it.  I did seem to hear cheering from the sidelines;  people telling me that I had done it before, that I could do it again, though I saw no one and everything was dark and quiet.

All around me and far below was a void, a dimension of pure thought and feeling.  I sensed the presence of others and telepathically picked up their encouraging and loving thoughts.  I felt safe where I was.  I also felt that I had come from "behind some kind of barrier" where I had friends also.  I wouldn't be able to "get back there" until I had accomplished this feat of sorts.  Apparently, I had been waiting for this a very long time, and were I not to take this chance now it was highly doubtful if, or when, I'd get another one quite like this.  I also remembered that I'd been shown some kind of projection which didn't make me feel too good.  There, I was a real latecomer.  Everyone had done it, except for me.  However, where I found myself next, my ego got a real boost because here, they seemed to think that only I could do it.  Not only that, they thought that I had done it before.

Still I was scared and hesitated to jump.  But I felt a great urgency;  I knew now quite clearly that I "had no time to lose," that this had something to do with numbers and with the specific date of my birth in this specific reality which could not be altered.  Absolutely everything hinged upon it.  It seemed to me then that it was a case of "do or die."  I must have done it, for I am here to tell about it.  The actual jumping, or reentering, I do not recall.

One morning in the fall of 1983, I woke up with all these memories.  They must have inserted themselves into my memory banks seemingly between moment and unmoment.  But this had been no dream.  This had been real!  At first, I thought the fan represented the only trance personality I knew of at the time, namely Edgar Cayce.  And I still think it does in another probability.  But in the spring of the following year, when I read my first Seth book, I knew exactly whom it represented for me.  Some time before, I dreamed of a leprechaun who told me that I was good at writing, which was news to me and made me jump for joy, while in waking reality I used a cane because of a severe arthritic condition.  This condition had been the reason why a friend had introduced me to the Cayce books in 1982, which prepared me for what was to come.  Until then, I had been skeptical with regards to psychic phenomena of any kind.

Right from the start, I got surprises.  I encountered my dream leprechaun as the painting that Rob Butts did of Seth.  When I came across the picture in the book store, I almost dropped the book.  This was just a bit too much for me:  there he was, white smock and all.  "What clairvoyance!"  I thought.  Then coincidences kept happening that were, of course, no coincidences at all.  I think of them as coinciding incidences.  Events where creative energy manifests almost instantly in physical reality so that they can't be overlooked and are seen as the result of our creative energy, rather than random events.  I started writing verses again.  The day I sat down to type them and realized that they told my own story, an inner odyssey of sorts, turned out to be the 26th anniversary of my arrival in the United States.  I arrived here on May 12, 1958.  Another co-incidence?  They kept piling up.

There was a life-or-death race on concerning my manuscript (in my dreams, of course).  I mailed it to Rob Butts.  It arrived a few weeks after Jane Roberts' death, and I hadn't even known she was sick.  I was too late;  Jane did not get to read my little narrative.  I reflected on past events in my life and about what correlations could be made to the present.  In 1969, I had written what I now think of as my three "Seth poems":  "Universal Ideas,"  "Thoughts", and "Now".  That was fifteen years before I ever heard of Seth.

In 1937, as a six year old, I had a white light experience on my garden path in, of all places, Berlin, Germany.  There was nothing but this pure white light.  No world, no body;  I was myself, that white light.  The feeling I had was pure ecstacy;  everything was so simple.  It had to do with time and with five.  And I was made to understand, or I just understood, that I had to be patient and wait till I grew up.  Then it would be like this again;  so wonderful.  All fear went out the window.  After a little while, the golden sun came back.  I wondered at the difference in color between the white and the normal golden sun.  "There must be two suns," the six year old thought.  I thought that everyone must have had this experience and told no one.

I seem to have two memories, however.  One in which I did not have this experience, and one in which I most definitely did.  Did it insert itself into my memory banks after my out of body experience of 1983?  Were there barriers to me so that I could not remember the event before?  Or is this what Seth meant by being able to change the past from the present and thereby changing the future?  No matter.  The same thing occurred with the Sumari and cordella dreams I used to have as an eighteen year old in 1950, thirteen years before Seth came around.

All happenings during my 1983 adventure were, of course, my own symbols which only I could sort out after the fact.  Some are still biding their "time" until they manifest - or don't manifest - in physical  reality, for I do have a choice.  When they do, their meaning will become clear to me, though some interpretations will of necessity change with my ever-growing comprehension.

There was the case of the impenetrable barrier, for instance.  I couldn't, for the life of me, figure out what it was supposed to mean.  I knew that there were no physical barriers anywhere in the inner realm;  yet there it was!  I could sense it.  Then, all of a sudden, it hit me like a lightning bolt.  It represented the psychological barrier that only Seth could break, thanks to the very close relationship he had with both Jane and Rob and thanks to the attributes of Jane's special consciousness.

I had also been wondering about the meaning of the lights of awareness I saw sprinkled all over the United States.  There may have been as many as thirty.  I had seen these lights as latent channels who were waiting for Seth's break-through.  The religion-maker within me needed the hierarchy, I suppose.  Now I believe that I would do Jane, Rob and Seth a disservice were I to see it that way.  Did the religious fanatic in me want to impose my view on others?  But I did see it that way.  Thoughts have reality.  Some can certainly manifest.  Right now, for instance, I am surrounded by fans.  Not people, but fans that are used "to make wind."  Two days ago, my daughter was given a fan by her aunt.  She won't show it to me.  Lest I make too much of it?  I almost did anyway.

Last night, the whole town congregated on Greenmount Avenue, the street we live on.  20th Century Fox is shooting the movie BIG, for which they'd considered using our house.  They had taken pictures already, but since they needed two houses next to each other and our neighbor, because of sickness, couldn't do it, they moved over a block.  Returning from the site where they did the shooting for the movie my son tells me, "Mom, you should have been there.  It was fantastic!  They used two huge fans to make wind, to stir up the leaves on the ground, the sand..."  A little later, I looked at this week's TV record.  There's Joan Collins holding in her hand - you guessed it - a most elegant fan.

A few days after sending this article to The Coordinate Point, the zine that published it, my daughter received her FMR (Franco Maria Ricci) Nr. 27, an Italian art magazine, in the mail.  Usually I get to read my daughter's FMRs after she's through with them.  This time, she surprises me. The magazine is still hermetically sealed in its cellophane wrapper revealing the usual folder with the black on gray three-leaf-clover design behind which this issue's beautiful cover is hidden.  She hands it to me, almost as if presenting me with a gift and obviously enjoying the look of surprise on my face.  She leaves me alone with it, since she would not appreciate my letting her in on "my findings" which I might only too easily be tempted to do.  But how does she know?  For when I, detective Ute, leaf through the pages, there's enough material in this one issue to continue at great length my shell story of co-inciding incidences, so aptly called coincidences (TCP, VOL. 2, No. 5).  There's my calico scallop, long since another symbol of the fan for me - complete with horizontal line - the very shell that covers the top of the exquisite box in said story, by the way, and the real reason the latter caught my eye in the first place.

But there is also something else in this issue.  It is the very immediacy of finding Giovanni Boldini's detail of the Marchionesa Luisa Casati with peacock feathers....spanning two whole pages!  And having come upon it right in the wake of having written the introductory paragraph to this very article?  It's the sychronicity again!  The feeling that the personal is so intimately connected with the seemingly impersonal.

No wonder I had trouble deciding which color to choose for the "eyes" of the peacock's fantail.  Blue or green?  On the photographs which my daughter had taken on her visit to Peacock Isle in Berlin, Germany, they looked blue.  From the inner realm I had "remembered" their green color in this FMR with just enough intensity to make me indecisive, though I had forgotten the reason for the difficulty.  Now I reember all right.  In the inner realm, my eyes had seen this issue already.  And what about my daughter?  Sometimes I think everyone in my family knows - without consciously being aware of it - but me.  Then I become quiet and especially grateful, for simply by being who they are, they help me realize who I really am.

For instance, yesterday, I was listening to a tape my son made for me.  In it, there is the line, "...you see, I've forgotten, if they're green or they're blue..."  I rewound the tape to get the line correctly;   I had never noticed it before.  The writer wrote the line a long time ago.  He wrote it .  It's his song.  In a round, some of us come in late.  What goes around comes around, as they say.  Still, we make music together.  Separate strings of one instrument, we do play ONE SONG.