OOBE – OPENING PHENOMENA
by UMBERTO Dl GRAZIA
taken from the book “L’ALTRA DIMENSIONE”, Armenia Editore
In August 1961, on one of those sultry afternoons that invite you to rest, I had a disturbing experience that, perhaps, changed my life. Immediately after lunch, I went to rest. Downstairs, I was in the Capranica house, my mother and grandmother were washing dishes while chatting.
I was suddenly attacked by chills, which did not cease even with a heavy wool blanket. Immediately afterward I had the sensation of being nailed to the bed, without the possibility of getting off. I could see what was in front of me, but I couldn’t turn my head. I thought about moving my fingers. I was barely able to articulate the little and ring fingers of my left hand. I then tried to raise my arms, but they refused to obey.
I gathered my strength to the max and, after a while, saw my left hand and wrist pass quickly over my face. I immediately understood that it was the transparent projection of an empty form, a kind of ghost of my limb. I was scared and thought: “I see the window, the ceiling, the wardrobe. I don’t have to be afraid!… But I’m stiff, I can’t move a muscle. How can I go back to a normal state? Perhaps asking for help. I try to scream, but I don’t make a sound, my throat stays tight. I understand that I don’t have to be afraid. I try to fall asleep to escape the nightmare, but I can’t. I then appeal to all energies to lift myself. That’s the window, I say, “I have to reach it, I have to open it.”
After incredible efforts I manage to pull myself up, I’m sitting on the bed… how is this possible? I see things from different points, in all directions at the same time! My person, the one who sits, is transparent; the one lying down is as always. Astral body and physical body. Could it be what they call “doubling”? If I could go down to the kitchen! Maybe if someone touched me I would go back to normal.
Without understanding how, I’m now in the kitchen. My mother is drying the cutlery. Grandma is sitting by the window. They didn’t notice anything. I touch them with my hands and feel the warmth of their bodies but I don’t have the sensation of touch. They do not react. I try to convey a mental message: “Help me!”
I am back in the room: the physical body is always still and lying on the bed. I see from two different points at the same time.
Now something about me is near the entrance to the house. My mother is in the company of a short, stout guy I don’t know. I mentally tell her: “I can’t move my body, I need someone to touch me.”. I’m in bed and I can’t see my double anymore. On the threshold is my mother. Finally, he must have understood! His hand reaches out, touches my shoulder. What’s up? I perceive nothing: no weight, no heat. She too has a transparent and luminous shape. It is not the physical part that I then managed to call! That’s right, his voice always comes from the kitchen. I must not give in to fear. Maybe I need to fall asleep.
Here …, the room darkens, everything vanishes. Shining and threadlike shapes pierce the dark. I’m sleepy, a deep sleep. Now I sleep. It is salvation.
I don’t know how much time passed, however I managed to get up without effort. I was sweaty, my forehead cold.
The phenomenon repeated itself for about three years before I was able to experience it without anguish. Later I tried to move from one room of the house to another. But to get to this I first had to look for an automatic solution to be able to get out of that unpleasant situation. The best way was to mentally repeat that I had to fall into a deep sleep.
These strange experiences always presented themselves the same way. At some point of the day or night, if I was lying down, I felt an unusual form of weakness. At that precise moment I wanted to get up, but something prevented me from acting immediately, even though it made me think that if I wanted to, I would have succeeded. So a certain time passed and then when I tried to move it was no longer possible. Then I brought my attention to a limb, foot, or hand, and after a while, I was partially or totally out of the body. Everything stopped immediately when I managed to force myself to fall asleep. As soon as this happened, I woke up. From 1964 to the end of 1965 I did some experiments, with this strange transparent structure, inside the house. I saw the furniture, the people sleeping, with a different ratio to the colors. It is difficult to describe this perception. I can only say that they were not perfectly distinguishable as in reality, only the “white” remained as it is.
From 1966 I tried to get out of the house. It took a few months before I realized that I could go through the front door without opening it.
Initially, the main block was the locks. I tried, unsuccessfully, to open them. Then I tried to walk through the door with my transparent structure. Again, many difficulties. All arose from the fact that, while making this attempt, I was stopped by the rational component.
I used to say mentally, at the very moment when I was able, for example, to enter it with one arm: “It’s not possible.” Thus the wood seemed to regain its hardness and I could not continue. Finally, one day, I arrived on the landing. I had a strong feeling of cold. It was so real it made me go back. Again it took several attempts to overcome this obstacle. I then tried to go to the neighbor’s apartment. It was not difficult, even if the experiments were always short-lived because I was awakened by the barking and howling of his dogs.
I have on my conscience the various reproaches they suffered they were scolded because they reacted without any apparent reason. More than once I heard the door of the apartment next door slam and someone say to the dogs: “You idiots, there is no one!”
I tried then, and we are at the beginning of 1968, to go to other pre-established starting places. But I rarely succeeded. I have been to various places, but it has not been part of my conscious will.
In 1969, even the dreams changed. They acquired a greater clarity and richness of details to seem like a real descent into parallel dimensions, superimposed on ours.
I believe that we have all the potential. The problem is not to make them emerge but, if anything, to know how to follow them. On this, I am reminded of the work of Hui Neng who, towards 713, incited not to follow contemplation, but to abandon oneself to the intuition that has sunk into our consciousness. In fact, for him, the truth is in the heart and the answer to our questions must be found in the same place where the questions were born.
The truth, hidden by a world of appearances and falsehoods, emerges to those who manage to establish direct contact with themselves and with nature. Directly, without intermediaries and with purity of spirit and intentions.
Can the faculty of doubling have practical applications? Certainly yes, but as far as I know, there is still a long way to go. To begin with, a group of psychics should meet, as has been done for some time in other countries, for example in the city of Brasilia, to work around common research. Supported by specialists from various disciplines they could, in a short time, understand errors, distortions, and achieve satisfactory results. But this will hardly be possible in our country. We run the risk, even in this sector, of leaving room for others.
Once I tried, in a very artisanal way, to carry out a group experiment. It was on the occasion of the kidnapping of Aldo Moro.
About fifteen days had passed since the episode when the journalist Lando Landi asked if I wanted to organize and be part of an experiment with psychics. It was naturally a question of tracing the possible prison. The collected data would be published and compared with the eventual real finding.
I pointed out that the experiment would be very difficult because, given the sensational case, some character components could contribute. In fact, for a few days already, in the paranormal environment, there was an intertwining of telephone calls, each of which gave a solution to the problem. You could run the risk of being solicited more than by a human fact, by the hope of suddenly becoming famous. There was no need to be happy. They heard all kinds of them and the most incredible rumors circulated. Among other things, I believe that all the embassies present in Rome have also been named.
At first, I didn’t want to agree, but in the end, I accepted to test the possibilities of teamwork. I gave the reporter the name of several psychics whose positive results I had already known. Later someone spread the word that they had been contacted directly by the Ministry of the Interior.
Each worked alone and according to their systems. The results were interesting at least in some coinciding aspects. This time, having to do a commission work, I followed, contrary to my principles, a particular technique. Without going into details, which would only create confusion, I can only say that the fundamental principle was to tire the conscious part to have fewer blocks and fewer rational distortions. I didn’t sleep for two nights and went around a lot trying to distract myself as much as possible from the work I was supposed to do.
With difficulty, I managed to control the thought that such a job, if carried out successfully, could have involved more people on the need to do serious research in this area.
During the night of the third day, I lay down on a very hard sofa and began to stare at a specific point in the room. Almost immediately the body began to stiffen until it prevented any movement. The eyes were half-closed and dark gray swirls formed all around. I felt that I would rise and then sink into a dark area full of sounds. Longboards stuck to a wall began to emerge.
There were many objects, I noticed a series of books. It could have been a large wall bookcase and behind it, there was an environment created to hide something. Now I was outside some villas that more or less resembled those on Via Camilluccia in Rome. It was still a residential area of the capital. Then the darkness and the noises, many of them annoying and metallic. Soon after I saw the figure of Aldo Moro standing with one hand on his right ribs. He was slightly bent to one side due to excruciating pain in the stomach. It was in a narrow, high-ceilinged room. In an attempt to understand the locality, I found myself visualizing the Via Salaria. I walked it up to an unspecified point near the town of Rocca Sinibalda, a place I knew well for its archaeological discoveries. From there I moved towards the sea and glimpsed a military depot. I did not know the area which in any case must have been north of Rome, at a shorter distance than that of Rocca Sinibalda.
I had no other elements. In the end, the various results were compared and we found that many had indicated, more or less, the same places. A sorceress, perhaps the most loved and hated in Rome, described the interior of an abandoned railway tollbooth a few kilometers from Rome. She was obsessed with this vision. We all waited for publication which, for reasons I do not know, never happened. At the moment I am writing there is no sure news on the sad story of Aldo Moro. If there are, it would be helpful to know in detail what the psychics said. Only in this way could we ascertain, given the coincidences, if only a telepathic form had taken between us or if instead we had perceived something real.
On the other hand, I had confirmation with another experiment. Some psychologist friends begged me to try to track down a missing person from home. I had already tried other similar cases but with always inaccurate results. I had sometimes managed to identify the area, about twenty square kilometers, too vast to be able to obtain good results. But that case, perhaps because of my friendship with the person who made the request, I felt I could solve it.
The missing man was thirty-five, married, and father of three children. He had achieved a good social position thanks to the help given to him by his father-in-law and this had produced in him a state of dependence that made him suffer a lot. Suddenly, on the eve of an important job negotiation, he was gone. What was underneath? It was not known. They feared a kidnapping.
I got a photograph of the person to be traced. For two days in a row, I mentally repeated that I had to somehow get in touch with him.
The night of the second day I went to bed very tired. I slept for about three hours and nothing happened. Upon awakening, I took the photograph and pasted it on the door of a wardrobe placed in front of my bed. I watched her closely until she fell back into a strange numbness.
Slowly, the phenomenon of bodily stiffening reappeared, or rather it was a state of complete relaxation in which, however, the mental commands to move the physical body did not affect. I saw everything in front of me as if through half-closed eyes. I tried to reach the photograph. I tried my best and after a while, the transparent form with my features was out of my body.
Again there was the sensation of being able to see both with the eyes and with the “double” in all directions. Between the two structures, there was a strange dependence and a very difficult form of communication to describe. The fact is that if I thought about the physical figure, the reasoning passed through it, while the opposite happened if the attention fell on the transparent part. I stayed awhile in the room, and as long as I stayed there, I always saw the physical body. Then I found myself, with a precise detachment, walking in a street on the outskirts of Naples, a city I know well. Immediately after I was in front of a small villa, in a hilly area a few kilometers from the city. A door opened and the missing man came out. He was arguing animatedly with two other people. He did not want to go home for several reasons, including a certain business that required him a large sum that he did not have. The next day I reassured the relatives. The experiment had worked and I added that, I don’t even know why, they would have heard from him by next Thursday. We were on Tuesday.
On Friday morning they phoned to say that the missing man had returned, after having been a few days near Naples. For understandable reasons I cannot, in this case, publicly name it, but I could give it to anyone wishing to study the incident thoroughly.
Despite my efforts to understand what may depend on the ease or otherwise of projecting “out of the body”, I have not yet found the answer.
When this phenomenon occurs spontaneously I don’t always have the memory. In four years I have met ten times people who claimed to have met me previously in some dream or the form of a ghost.
In this regard, I can only record their testimonies. Up to now, they have been more or less similar. The one of Mrs. Mimma Sartini from Rome applies to all: “I met Umberto Di Grazia at a friend’s house in October 1970. I said “I knew”, but, in reality, I should say “I recognized”, as he had already appeared to me in a dream two years earlier. At that time I was in a particular state of anxiety about some important decisions that I would have to make. In a dream, I saw Umberto, as he is in his physicality, sit next to me, staring at me for a long time and finally tell me how the things that were so close to my heart would go. What he foretold had exact confirmation … ”
This type of phenomenon is among those that most shocked me. At first, I didn’t want to believe it. Following the testimonies of people who did not know each other and who lived in different cities, I had to accept, in part, this hypothesis. But what are we? What types of communication exist between us? Difficult to answer. Completely impossible for those who constantly want to reduce us. Generally, they disguise themselves behind the: “It must be demonstrated, it must be objective … etc.”.
It is useless to start a speech with them. But if you want, ask them to give you an example of “a uniform rectilinear motion”, or to quote you a “logical” system that does not start from an “unprovable” premise.
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