by bosco, with responses from Bob Thomson

Shamanic journeys sometimes go wrong in instructive ways. In February 2007, bosco posted a brief account to alt.religion.shamanism of being violently expelled from a journey after exploring unfamiliar territory in the upper world — foggy silver arches, an empty white house, and then a room where he surprised a dark-haired woman who had not sensed him. The thread attracted two of the group's most thoughtful respondents: an anonymous poster who interpreted the woman as a doppelganger from a parallel reality, and Bob Thomson, who recognized the foggy-bright threshold as a transit space for the recently dead. Together the exchange illuminates how this small community thought about the geography of the otherworld.

The Account

I was journeying yesterday and went to a few places I have never been to before. At the end I was in a room in a house. There was a dark haired woman there in a green business-like outfit made out of silk I think. She had not realized I was there, but suddenly I was thrown almost violently out of my journey. I came back with a huge jerk of my body. Has this happened to you? The reason I ask is, I have been thrown out of dreams before, but never a journey.

In reply to a question about the earlier parts of the journey, bosco added:

Yes, I was at a few places I had never been to before. The first seemed to be in the upper world, a bright foggy place if that makes sense. There were silver grey arches there covered with fog. I climbed one, and stepped into a cloud. Through the cloud and into a white house with white interior, though it was completely empty and no one was living there. I went downstairs out the front door, down a rock path into a second house. I walked into a room, and boom.

Two Interpretations

On the doppelganger:

When we visit "us" at other places — other realities, not other places in the reality here — we tend to kick ourselves out pretty quickly. It's not pleasant to meet otherworldly doppelgangers; the incident can be quite disturbing for both. The woman was you in another place. When looking at herself, she would not have seen the human form you did; she may not even have experienced the same physics you did.

She would have been aware of you on some level, but only like one's own breath sometimes lingers long enough in the air before them to smack them back in the face. It's just a shocking sensation, a jolt of sorts, to sense something about yourself that's ordinarily only ever in the realm of "other's" senses.

On the threshold place:

I know about several occurrences where people were thrown out of a place during a journey. The most common reason was that they were not supposed to be there, but they had somehow managed to get in and to get a glimpse of the place.

I do clearly remember a place both foggy and bright during a few journeys. I can't tell if it's the same type of place as your one, but in my case, it was a transit place for very recently deceased people.

— Bob Thomson

Colophon

"Thrown out of a journey" posted to alt.religion.shamanism by bosco on February 10, 2007. Message-ID: 2007021009185816807-boscopelone@yahoocom. Bosco's follow-up: Message-ID: 2007021010542575249-boscopelone@yahoocom. Bob Thomson's responses: Message-IDs eql3p3$mj7$[email protected] and eql42m$mj7$[email protected]. The anonymous doppelganger interpretation is paraphrased and condensed from post 13642.

Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.

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