Tutti Buono Fine Arts

RBuono writes "This is a story that I tell often and that I have never recorded before. Telling such stories is easier for me if I have someone to talk to, but my stories are alone now.

I Remember Heaven

The first time I remember being on the other side was when I was wounded in December in Vietnam; my last combat action, my last purple heart in country. I was on top of a vehicle full of explosives, when it was blown up by other explosives, so the combined force was about 250….500 pounds of explosives ... which were less than 3 feet underneath me when it went off. I survived that. That it is a separate story from this, but I don’t remember it. I remember everything up until the explosion. After the explosion I remember very little.

I remember knowing, somehow, inside of myself, that the explosion was going to happen. I remember leaping onto the back hatch of the vehicle … a door on top of that 113 ... I used it to protect me from the explosion.   I was fighting with another guy who held my legs over the top of the explosion. Actually he was standing on top of cases of explosives.

I remember the door, the back hatch, that I was laying on becoming detached when the explosion when off. I recall stars like in a cartoon drawing, like a Saturday morning kid’s cartoon …. seeing stars. It was night. I got pretty close I guess.

But I remember seeing stars, and flying, feeling like I was on a magic carpet, as I hung on to the door, as I was blown maybe a mile away from the explosion. At a point I lost my grip on the door and it fell away. I was much lighter and I continued to travel flying through the air. When I came down to land I was in dense jungle. I fell through the trees. I speculate that the trees saved my life. They ripped off all my clothes as I fell through, except for my pistol belt and a few really heavy materials things, but my ordinary clothes were torn away…. I was naked when I hit the ground. Naked and cut up so much I looked like raw hamburger. I do remember that part. That is a separate story.

I remember calling for medics….a lot. I remember fighting with two Viet Cong that heard me and came too kill me. A lot of what happened the rest of the night I do not remember. It was all told to me by other people.

It appears that for about two weeks or so, I was leading two separate lives. Part of me, the physical part of me, was still here on earth and doing very heroic things. I really wish I was that guy all the time. I just envy the stories they told about me. I have no idea if they’re true, but most of my memory of that last battle in Vietnam is stuff that other people told me or sent me letters about.

The army wrote me up for medals, so they had to tell stories when they gave me the medals. But actually my memory is very vague. I remember what I already said I remember. The rest of it I believed to be true, but it was told to me by other people.

What I do remember is that I was in a really, really beautiful place, earth-like on it's best day. Shimmering lights moving through plants and trees as the food for life will in all things. Glitters and beautiful moving, changing colors, Heaven!   I was the only physical body in that place. There were these gaseous clouds that had flickers of light in their outer surface, moving around within this garden-of-eden. I think they were souls. They were intelligent beings. They had no sex and all sexes at the same time. They were gas-light. I was still me. I was a little bitty Tom Thumb in a land of giants. One of them was connected to me and other people in bodies. They spent a great deal of time educating me and they wanted me to remember stuff and they said I had something important to do. Then they said that I had to come back to this body and I didn’t want to come. I told them I wouldn’t do it and that I was staying there. And they said, “No, indeed ... you’re going back.”

One of the gaseous clouds formed a toe. It was huge. It was the jolly green toe in comparison to me. That toe pushed me out of heaven. I’ve come to think that that gaseous cloud was me …. my true self …. my soul. It pushed me out of heaven. I fell down through this tube of light and I woke up in my body. I opened my eyes. I was in so much pain! I started screaming. The nurse came over.

I looked up at the nurse and she said, “What’s wrong?”

And I said, “I hurt. Something’s wrong with my eyes.”

She leaned over me in a very caring way. She said, “What’s wrong with your eyes?”

“It looks like there are tiny hairs sticking out all over your face.” I said. Quickly she made a ugly face at me, and then she punched me in the face!

That was my welcome back to the body. I really shouldn’t say what I believe to be true. I get in a lot of trouble. I always have. Still do it. Haven’t been smart enough to stop the habit.

There I was, laying there in the bed, punched out and in a lot of pain. I couldn’t figure out what was going on. The guy in the bed next to me had been shot in the butt   He had four bullet holes through his butt from one bullet. He was laying on his stomach and he started to laugh. I was offended! Here’s this guy. I just got punched out. I am really hurt. I am laying in a hospital bed. The nurse punches me out and the guy in the next bed is laughing at me and I’m really upset and I decide I am going to do something about it like roll him over on to his boo-boo butt. I discovered I could only move my left arm. Everything else was too trashed. That guy was the only person who was close enough for me to talk to. I had been fragged in my eyes and didn’t see too well. Explosions had blown out my eardrums. I couldn’t hear very well, but this guy made an effort to talk to me. He was mobile enough that he could get up from his bed and talk to me.

He’s the only person who came to believe that I had no knowledge of all the things that I had done while I was laying in that bed after I had been wounded. He’s the only person who came to believe that my conscious self ….. the part of me that I know …….. was in a different place all together. A very beautiful place where I wanted to stay. The only way I could stay is by dying.   But the teachers, they wouldn’t let me. My own way-shower's made me come back.

However, my unconscious self .… my id …. was functioning at a very high level here in this earthly plane. He was heroic. He was aggressive, and he went for the things he wanted. He was well-liked. He was funny and he was a hero. He was my hero. They told me stories about all the stuff I did. I’ve never had the balls to do all that kind of stuff. I wish I could be like him/that/me all the time.

The guy in the next bed was not the only one telling me tales, of the me I did not know, and there was plenty of evidence that he wasn’t making this up. These things just happened.

Basically, I got split in half. The heavenly part of me, the higher mind part of me, the soul part of me, ... was in heaven getting refresher courses of what I was supposed to know, of which I probably don’t remember anything.   I certainly haven’t exhibited any extra abilities to do anything way cool; actually, at a time when most self help Guru's say they got there profound knowledge on a trip to death and back. Therefore people follow them for the divine guidance, I have no one listening to me.

Whereas the physical part of me, the part of me that I don’t really know … the id …. the unconscious … the basic self …. the child within …. depending on what some physiologist wants to call it; but that part of me was still in my body feeling everything and doing everything and being the person of record on the planet.

Since that first time when I was on the other side, I got to stick my consciousness through the barrier that separates this side from the other side. That’s probably the best way to describe it.

I got to look through a window into the other side and actually step into it. I always remember it that way. It was an incredibly beautiful place, no sex, no money, no religion, no government, no lawyers, no law, no leaders, no followers, no need for law. … just these cloud-like forms of energy that had these flickers of color on them, like a translucent shower curtain being hit by water. Their goal was that all of these colors would be progressed up into this rather silvery moon-like color that they were. That was their mark of achievement, that they had their colors in order…..mostly silver. So, I remember being on the other side three times. Consciously. Most people call those death experiences or near death experiences.

Robert P. Buono

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