When I was about six years old I was walking through the kitchen thinking about death. I don’t recall exactly why I was thinking about death but it may have had something to do with my brush with death a short time earlier. I was specifically contemplating what would happen if I should die.  As I thought about this I wondered just what I was anyway. I wanted to be able to picture what would happen if I ceased to exist. I couldn’t have put my thoughts into those words but I was just looking at it.  Suddenly I realized that what I was, was consciousness, and that if I died other people would still be conscious, and that their consciousness was the same as mine. Not just LIKE mine, but one and the SAME. I realized that there was only one consciousness and it was shared by all, included everyone, and was, in a way, outside of everyone. It was also who I was but only if I stopped being this little guy, which was a bit scary. I also saw that “this” ( I had no words for it) could never die. Then for a moment it was like I was out of my body and experiencing other people’s consciousness. I actually saw these people and saw through their eyes. I didn’t know these people but they seemed to represent anyone and everyone. There was a moment in that realization that was so profound that it startled me. I felt like I was disappearing so I stopped this vision suddenly – but I never forgot it because it felt like a secret I wanted to explore later on. It intrigued and baffled me any time I thought about it. I wondered at the time why nobody ever talked about this but I never mentioned it to anyone because I always got in trouble when I talked about experiences that other people never talked about – these included anything spiritual or paranormal. I had learned to keep these things to myself and this seemed like one of those things.