Out of Body Experience in Front of an Audience

From: Mark (markharmer@aol.com)
Story type: Out of Body Experience
Location: A church in Gloucestershire, UK
Source: Form Submission
Date submitted: Mon Jul 19 14:06:38 2010

I took part as a solo harpist in a concert in our local church. I do a lot of concerts - and I play my own arrangements of music. These are variations of existing pieces of music, so they're not free improvisations but rather I tend to modify some of the harmonies or playing styles as I go, depending on how the audience responds.

Normally as I do a lot of musical performance either as a soloist or as part of a group, public performance is no big deal, and most of them are more or less forgotten - they're just a job, really. However, on this particular occasion while I was playing one piece, something happened that's etched so clearly in my mind that I can recall it vividly now, about 5 years after it happened.

Halfway through a piece of music, I suddenly saw myself playing, as if I were hovering about 15 feet in the air behind and to the right of where I was sitting, facing the audience. There was no feeling of leaving my body, just that I was suddenly hovering. I was conscious that the effect lasted quite a few seconds (certainly a few bars of music) before it just melted away again and I was back in my own body. I remember the exact words I thought, as I hovered there watching myself playing the music: "That's interesting. I wonder what he's going to do now" - meaning, would I vary the music, and what exactly would I play, and would I be able to keep playing while watching myself. It was particularly odd thinking of myself in the "third person", as if I were commenting on someone else. I was conscious even at the time that I was thinking of myself as if from outside, and using words as if I were talking about another person.

The other unusual aspect of this is that people often come up to me after the concert and say things about the music, but in this case I received many, many more than usual comments from people - and everyone said the music had meant something different to them and told me their stories of how it had affected them or (in one case) a child who they had brought along to listen.

I have never had another experience like this, and never in any other concert have I had such a variety of stories from people about the impact of the music. I don't have a recording of that concert, alas. I really wish I had, because I would love to get a sense of what was going on for those few seconds.