Altered State of Consciousness: Vardogr

Altered States of Consciousness (ASC), Near Death Experiences (NDE) &  Out of Body Experiences (OBE) can turn around  life like nothing else. 

While reading about these recently, I came across a fresh perspective on consciousness. Though hardly conceivable, believers talk of non-locality of consciousness. Norwegian folklore abound in tales about one such state called Vardogr (pronounce vard-deh-ay’-grr). It has been defined as premonitory sound or sight of a person before he arrives, like a spiritual predecessor. 

It is, perhaps, another facet of human brain resultant of which the sight or sound of a person is perceived by another before the person  actually arrives on the scene. Generally confined to loved ones, such  sightings are even possible to be witnessed by people not so close to the favoured mortal. It is almost like witnessing a person’s double or split personality at a place even though the person is actually miles away from the location.  

I would like to quote the narration given by L. David Leiter from Philadelphia who has had such experiences. 

.... On the day in question, I was driving home alone, although I frequently car-pooled with a colleague. It was a beautiful, warm spring day, and the pressures of my job were quite low at the time, so I was very relaxed. Also, at that time, I had been working for that employer for 3 or 4 years, and thus was very familiar with the route. Finally, traffic was light that day. 

Anyone who has driven under similar conditions, ie, an extremely familiar route, under very relaxed driving conditions, is familiar with a specific state of mind that often occurs, best described as "autopilot", a distinct altered state of consciousness. In other words, driving an automobile is almost riding as a passenger on a train or a bus, except the view is a lot better. Under such conditions, the mind wanders easily to the scenery and surroundings, and to daydreaming. I’ve always had a strong tendency to daydream when physical and mental circumstances will permit it. Daydreaming also often served me well in my R&D pursuits. Interestingly, ADCs also often occur under exactly these same driving conditions (Guggenheim & Guggenheim, 1995:29,39).

In any event, I came to my normal exit on the turnpike, at Willow Grove, and drove the half-mile or so final leg of the commute, over local town streets. I parked in my normal spot in the driveway in front of our house, took my briefcase and sports jacket out of the car, and entered through the front doorway, which was always unlocked in the daytime (with two teen-aged children running in and out constantly).

My wife was at her usual spot in the kitchen preparing supper. Up to this point, it was a scenario that had occurred thousands of times before during our marriage of almost 20 years. She heard me come in, came out of the kitchen, and asked, “What are you doing coming in again?” I answered with my own question, something like, “What are you talking about?” She replied, “You came in about 10 minutes ago and just went upstairs”. At this point, I began to get somehow irritated with her seemingly irrational questions and statements, and said basically, “Hon, what are you talking about? I just now shut down the car in the driveway, and came in.”

She responded with mounting confusion and agitation insisting that I’d come in a little while earlier and had simply gone upstairs. Then to support her contention, she called upstairs to our son, who was in his bedroom with the door closed, and asked, “(Son’s nickname), did you hear your father clump up the steps a little while ago?” He responded with a muffled, “Yeah, Mom.”

At this point my wife became visibly upset and insisted that I check all the upstairs rooms for “the intruder”, which I did dutifully, if somewhat grudgingly. After a full inspection, including closets and under beds, I reported back to her. There was no one upstairs except our son.

In defense of my wife (and for my own marital well-being), she is one of the most practical, level-headed people I know. I have never known her to imagine things, hallucinate, or  behave in an unusual way- never. Further, nothing even remotely like this had ever happened to either of us before. The same goes for our son.

After she calmed down, we talked about what had happened. ..........She told me that in my pre-arrival, I had arrived in a seemingly normal way, because she had apparently heard me come in through the front doorway and had looked out from the kitchen to see me. She said that I looked completely normal, at least physically. Interestingly, she didn’t mention that my clothing was any different in my pre-arrival from what I was actually wearing; so if there was a difference, it wasn’t obvious to her.

What was obvious to her was my atypical behaviour. During my pre-arrival when she looked out from the kitchen at me, she told me that I had simply looked back with a neutral expression on my face and walked upstairs, apparently still carrying my briefcase and sports jacket (although she didn’t comment on those details either). In any event, such behaviour is totally unlike me. Like most people, I'm a creature of habit. When I arrive home, after being away for the day, working or otherwise, and my wife is there, and not out shopping or at her part-time job, my normal pattern is to greet her with, " Hi, Hon. Howya doin'?" Then I give her a little kiss on the cheek, or if she's working at the sink or stove and has her hands full, a kiss on the back of the neck. It's a little ritual that many couples engage in. Accordingly, during my pe-arrival, she had apparently initially assumed that I had had an especially difficult day and was preoccupied in deep thought.

Well, that's essentially all there was to it.The only other aspect is that, after my inspection of the upstairs of our house, our son, curious about all the commotion, was an eye witness to the candor of the dialogue between my wife and me. And, as should be obvious to the reader, when my wife saw “me” come in the first time (we didn’t know the word vardogr then), I was apparently several miles away, driving alone, at about 60 miles per hour........

My second vardogr experience occurred nearly a decade later.......The date was Wednesday, August 31, 1988, 8 (or 9) years after the first occurrence. This time the situation, the percipient(viewer), and the locale were very different. But three aspects were consistent. My image was seen by someone who knows me well, it disappeared when out of view of the percipient, and, once again, I was driving at the time my image was seen....

Such accounts besides those of OBEs, NDEs makes one wonder whether consciousness is actually entwined somewhere within the garb of flesh, blood, bones and DNA we know ourselves to be. An entity separable from the scaffolding of geometric patterns encompassing life in the form of man, bird, animal and the like. Zen biddhism, ashtanga yoga, kundalini yoga, bhakti yoga, pranayama, all of these practices are aimed at achieving higher, altered states of consciousness for the brain to become aware of itself. It is said that life is not lived by the moments we breathe, but by the moments that take our breath away. This, perhaps, can only be realised when the mind looses itself, stops vibrating to the tune of the senses, rises above the confines of space-time warp to exit its cellular enclosures and reaches the wished destination before the physical being actually arrives there.

..... to be continued

For detailed account please see the article  THE VARDOGR, PERHAPS ......... in the Journal of Scientific Exploration by L. David Leiter