I was walking along the beach one day recently at about noon. I looked down and couldn’t see a shadow so I check my watch and confirmed it. As I walked I noticed a round object near the shoreline that I though was a discarded frisbee. It had a metallic look to it and I tried to pick it up. As soon as I touched it my vision was filled with images. I was seeing what one might see when wearing those virtual reality glasses. My eyes were wide open but my entire field of vision was filled with these scenes. I saw myself receeding back into the water. Slowly at first I was moving over the shallow reef. Then suddenly deeper and faster past schools of fish. As I descended further into the depths at increasing speed the light slowly began to fade. Deeper and deeper I went and at first it felt like sensory deprevation and finally I started experiencing a sense of vertigo. I couldn’t tell which way was up. I continued on into the murky depths until I sensed that I was moving in a zig zag pattern as if searching for something. It went on this way for a few minutes until I somehow felt that I started ascending. Still at such a great speed that the tiny eddies in the water looked like lightly colored streaks of light going by. Higher and higher I went until I noticed light coming from above again. Still faster and faster I went until finally I broke free of the surface of the ocean. I noticed immediately that there was no splash of water from the surface and then realized that what I was seeing was in reverse order. I was seeing the path of this sphere in reverse. I was now hurtling through the sky. I started seeing edges of land mass in my periphery. Finally, I could see North America and within seconds could see the entire western hemishpere. Suddenly, I don’t know how I knew this but, I broke free of the earth’s atmosphere and what I saw was impossible to describe while doing it justice. The Grand Canyon, the Great Barrier Reef, Niagra Falls are all worthy of the acollades they receive but now I know what Astronauts must feel, there is no greater emotion that one can experience than seeing the Earth from space. At first, an inexplicable feeling of pride, like viewing your new born baby for the first time. Then as it grew smaller as I was moving farther into space, I felt a feeling of such vulnerability and insignificance in the vastness of outer space. I saw myself getting further away and the images now were like most pictures you see in movies or books about our solar system floating past. I started feeling great anxiety. My heart started pounding through my chest and I had difficulty breathing. I felt myself covered with sweat and I was still traveling at an incredble speed. I couldn’t take it anymore and release my hand from that object. I found myself back on shore but in perfectly stable physical condition. No sweating no hard breathing, just normal. Although during that experience I was moving at an impossible rate of speed I thought the entire process must have taken at least 30 minutes. when I looked at my watch, it was still noon. It all happened in a matter seconds. I was wondering how I was going to pick up this object without touching it but when I looked down again, it was gone.