Sometimes when I am riding on the bus on my way to work I exhale and imagine a residual oxygen molecule flow out of my lungs and drift through the bus only to be sucked into another persons lungs, diffuse into their blood stream, get pumped through the heart to a place where it nourishes a molecule. And then the next time I exhale I imagine a whole bunch of residual oxygen molecules flow out of my body with my breath and drift about the room, some being absorbed, others getting sucked out of the window and still others going into a persons lungs and back out unscathed. While I am imagining this I also imagine the course of the nitrogen atoms as they travel about the room from breath to breath. And also the CO2 that is exhaled. I also at the same time imagine some CO2 molecules from my breath drifting out of the window of the bus, bombarded by the currents of air created in the wake of the bus and dispersing throughout the new environment they find themselves in. Some of these molecules get sucked up by the leaves of a tree or other plants and are used up by the tree for sustenance and then released back into the atmosphere as oxygen to be absorbed by some other animal life once more. This continues with several breaths, adding more and more stories. I then also start imagining everyone's breath's routes.
At right about this time in my day dreaming things start to get rather intense and the once gentle and musing images grip me and accelerate. I become aware of all of the people and, looking at them, realize that they are just as alive as me. REALLY realize it. and the stories of all of their lives spring up to me (mostly vaguely and definitely imagined). I imagine them all thinking at the same time, each one having a unique internal dialogue. Some are coming home from buying groceries at the mall, others are skipping school on the way into the next town, still others are heading out to their own respective jobs. As I hold the buzzing of all these thoughts in my head they expand and I start imagining their lives, all the moments of present time that they have, are and will experience superimposed upon each other and stretching out forwards and backwards from where they are right now like long undulating snakes beginning at the moment of their conception and ending at their last flicker of brain activity before the long sleep of death.
I also start imagining the inner workings of the bus's engine, the combustion and the moving parts. I imagine the journeys that every material part that makes up the bus took up until that moment. The raw materials they were made of being mined out of the earth by hard working men and women providing for their families. The efficient and money-loving corporations overseeing these activities. The materials passing through many machines and vessels run by man on their way into factories where they are changed and combined with other materials and then shipped off to still other places and through other factories until finally being assembled into the bus. The bus then being bought and shipped off to the place where it is needed. And then the bus running through the streets day by day carrying people, gathering dirt and grime and having that dirt and grime cleaned and polished off. All the daily doings of a bus up until the moment where it is driving me.
While I am imagining these myriad happenings I become more aware of the present moment and where I am situated. I see the bus traveling over the street and whizzing by a multitude of places. I become aware that there are unique things happening all around me. And then I am also aware that there are many miles of earth below me and all around. And that I am traveling through a soup of gases that extends many miles above me. And I see that I am on a crust of earth, a continent, with many myriad happenings taking place upon it and which is slowly drifting on a vast and unimaginably deep sea of molten rock and minerals. And I see that this crust of a continent is in an ancient dance with other crusts that contain myriad materials, happenings and life. I also see that this whole Earth of happenings is slowly rotating in space, in a wobbly way. I see that there is a vast (though smaller) chunk of materials that man has named the Moon which is rotating around the Earth. And I see that the earth is in a dance with many other worlds, all rotating around a HUGE ignited ball of gases called the Sun. Then I see that this whole solar system of happenings is traveling through space together, rotating and dancing with many other solar systems in the great expanse of myriad happenings called the Milky Way. And that this rotating, dancing Milky Way galaxy is, as a whole, traveling around other galaxies, and in a collection of galaxies, all dancing and rotating together, which are all rocketing through space at an incredible rate amongst other collections of galaxies and other cosmic phenomena. And there are an ENUMERABLE quantity of them!
I also imagine each cell and then molecule of my own body and the innumerable myriad of happenings and existences that they consist of. I am impressed with how strange a notion it is that I exist as a life form with a consciousness, and spend most of my time thinking of myself as one thing when there is this multitude of individual lives happening with these organisms inside of me. All of them living and dying many times over whilst I retain a mostly consistent perspective above and over-top of all of them. And in each cell the molecules and their happenings and dances I imagine. And then the dance of forces and vibrations in the atoms. and the probabilistic cloud of electrons, which is swayed by many forces to by more likely to appear in certain places as opposed to others in its furious multi-dimensional dance.
And seeing all these happenings, it becomes impressed on me the possibility that this is but one thread in a vast and innumerable myriad sea of existences. Each three dimensional object no longer existing for my expanding perspective in the regular flow of the present moment but instead existing as a cloud of probability, in many different places and universes at the same time. I experience their entire existences as a sort of dot, and dancing about with other dots. weaving and undulating about they dance together with many other objects and happenings. Many realities.
At right about this time, when I am so far caught up by my visualizations that I no longer see what is in front of my wide-open, staring eyes, nor smell the various aromas around me, nor hear or taste or touch. A rushing sensation fills my thoughts. I feel this sensation with some other sense of feeling besides my sense of touch. It is a rushing sense that is all encompassing. And my perspective, my "me-ness", my consciousness is then separated from my body and is almost above it. Then I look upon my life and am astounded by it. The fact that I have been experiencing all the things that I have been experiencing amazes me. To think that these very odd, and very SPECIFIC things are happening to me is astounding. I am overcome with the sense that I truly exist somewhere much more ABOVE all of this, in a sense. That I know and have experienced vastly more in my existence as whatever I truly am than what I have been experiencing lately. But that's not even the best way to put it really though... It's more that I have been continually experiencing much more, but one tendril of my consciousness was plunged into the existence that I am experiencing, say, right now as I type all of this out.
And then it all snaps back together and I am riding on the bus again with no more visualizations, but in deep thought and contemplating the event that just happened to me yet again. Then I have to attempt to put it out of my mind and go to work and carry on with me life as usual.
I have been having experiences such as this since elementary school. They happen every once in a while, at total random. I just used the time on the bus as an example. It has happened there a decent amount as I have a long bus ride and a lot of time to think. Also, a lot of the time the rushing feeling and separated consciousness happens spontaneously of itself without that visualization thing preceding it.
And so that's what I think I may be the only one that does. Not that I would be at all surprised if other people do the same thing. Or, rather, have the same thing happen to them I suppose.
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