My Library

coming event were two dollars. The problem was to find a source for the two dollars before Saturday night. There had been no work available during the week to earn the money. For one reason or another, my parents had been exhausted as a resource. No prospect for work on Saturday was in sight. I went to bed Friday night worrying over this immediate problem. Upon awakening Saturday morning, I had an immediate vivid conviction that two dollars were under an old plank lying outside on the ground beside the house. I knew of the existence of the plank, as it had been there for some time. However, I dismissed the idea as a wishful dream and went down to breakfast. After eating, still preoccupied with the dire financial problem, I thought again of the board and the two dollars under it. Idly, in order to dismiss the idea, I went outside and around the house to where the plank lay on the ground. It looked undisturbed, half-covered with dirt and leaves. It was impossible that someone could have inadvertently "lost" some money or placed it under the board. Still, as long as I was there, it would not hurt to look just to get rid of the compulsion. I pulled at the plank and raised it upward. There were hundreds of ants and bugs on the damp dirt underneath, running frantically in all directions. Also on the wet earth, in the center of the area where the board had lain, were two folded, crisp, dry one-dollar bills. I did not stop to consider how the money happened to be under the board. I made no mention of the incident at the time, except to a friend. I was too concerned that someone might claim the money. The problem for the night was solved. The incident had been forgotten completely until recalled under the personal history search. There was nothing more. No great traumas, just a basic American upbringing in a scholastic family. In view of the fact that it was a "mental" problem, psychiatry seemed to be the answer. Still, no outward evidence of the strong repressions, compulsions, anxieties, and/or phobias which normally show up in mental illness could be found. Close examination of the events leading up to the first out-of-the-body symptom (the severe cramps) brings to light several factors which deserve consideration. In the year immediately preceding the first incident, there was only one relatively unusual physiological change.