Updated to the present: June 25, 2019

I was born Constantia Maria Oomen on December 2, 1967 at 2:44 PM, time according to my father (or 1:44 PM, time according to my mother) at St. Anna Hospital in Geldrop, which is in the south of the Netherlands. I arrived a few weeks late. I was a Saturday child and a Sagittarius — not a Scorpio, a possible first sign of my free will.

As a toddler, my favorite toy was my stuffed rabbit. The cuddly animal was inextricably linked to my chubby arm. When I lost it, it was a great tragedy and I kept crying until I had an exact substitute back in my arms again.

I had a lazy eye and had to wear a patch for a whole year. Then my stepfather got me some blue-framed glasses. Later I had a squint, especially when I was a little tired, and then I became nearsighted.

When I was seven, I got my tonsils out under anesthesia, and this was when I had my first out-of-body experience: I saw the entire operation from a distance. Only when I was in my teens did I realize that – according to established thought – I had seen something I could not have seen. According to many sources, a spontaneous out-of-body experience during anesthesia is quite common. It took a long time before I had another one, and this time it wasn’t while I was under anesthesia.

A special phenomenon manifested itself when I was 18. I began to experience spontaneous out-of-body experiences, and with such a frequency that my life was steered in a certain direction.

Since leaving home at 17, I consistently kept diaries and wrote down my dreams every day. From 18 on, I started writing down my out-of-body experiences as well. I also wrote a lot about my feelings, crushes, disappointments and other things suitable for the diary. Every time I reread it, I’m struck by the intensity of my feelings and my adventures in the past.

I have done a lot of drawings too, using various materials, but mainly pen and Indian ink.

All this time I had written diaries (starting when I was 11), but not consistently every day. Since so much went through my head and I easily remembered dreams, writing them down was an obvious choice. If I don’t write things down, they keep going endlessly through my head. Writing keeps my brain cleared. I now have more than 300 diaries. I also have five large out-of-body experience notebooks, in which I keep a record of my astral experiences. Taking notes of my nightlife takes me on average about 12 minutes per day. I still write down my dreams, out-of-body experiences and related mind states every day. Now that we’re in the digital age, I share my other experiences, thoughts and feelings mainly in e-mails, Internet forums and with friends.

After becoming a licensed high school teacher in German and Dutch in 1990, I decided to study at Utrecht University (UU), and in 1993 I got my doctorate (Bachelor + Master) in German Language And Literature, With Honors.

One time we had a very difficult test on the German Middle Ages, in a course taught by Professor Lambertus Okken. We had to learn quite impossible German verb conjugations by heart. I knew the conjugations, but I wasn’t clear on what tense to use when (present, perfect, pluperfect, etc.), so I wrote the verbs in two tenses. It annoyed me very much that I wouldn’t get a straight A, as I knew I had done the rest of the test flawlessly. But in the end I did get a straight A, because Professor Okken corrected my test from a different point of view. I conjugated that very difficult verb in two different tenses perfectly, and although that was one too many, it was no reason for him to deduct any points. This incident is only one example of how I can be too hard on myself.

One year after graduating from college, in the fall of 1994, I went to the United States, a country that has always attracted me like a magnet. In Ohio, I had quite some adventures and met the lovely Maria and Joe, who invited me to stay with them. I also got to know the sweet park ranger Janine, who actually had wolves under her care. She had found these wolves as abandoned cubs and took good care of them. Wolves are different from dogs, as they’re not tame and have these very intense eyes that seem to look right through you.

In 1994 and 1995, I worked as a freelance translator, which I didn’t like much, and since 1996 I started working at public and private secondary schools as a German and Dutch teacher.

Throughout the 1990s, I spent six years on and off on my book THROUGH THE WINDOW. Only when it began taking shape did I start to work it more intensely. I finished it around 1997 and began to look for a publisher.

The reason I wanted to write a book about out-of-body experiences originated from my own broad experience in this area, and I didn’t want to keep this to myself. The many positive comments on my website and book THROUGH THE WINDOW made me realize that the out-of-body experience is universal. That said, there is still a lot of work to be done to get the phenomenon the recognition it deserves. My main goal is to spread knowledge about all kinds of astral phenomena.

Dr. Jos Scheerboom, a good friend of mine, got Sigma Press enthusiastic about my book, and so THROUGH THE WINDOW was published in 2000. In 2004, THROUGH THE WINDOW was republished by Schors Publishers in a revised and extended version.

As for my personal life, I got off to a slow start, but I caught up abundantly. Then I met J, and this would change my life – and his – forever.

After 20 years in Utrecht, I went looking for work in The Hague because my future seemed to lie elsewhere. I’d always spent a lot of time in Scheveningen, the beach resort of The Hague. Apparently, I had channeled the energy to pave the way to a home there, because later on we bought a house there that had a view of the sea from our house. A few years before I went to live in Scheveningen, I had some out-of-body experiences in a house where I lived right at the seaside, so that out-of-body experience had a predictive character. Or who knows, maybe I traveled in time.

My dream came true, because now I was a teacher in The Hague at the STEBO, a private school in downtown The Hague. After commuting for one year, almost every day, from Utrecht to The Hague and back again, my new employer Daan Stekelenburg (the brother of Johan Stekelenburg, a famous Dutch politician) offered me a full-time contract and made it possible for us to buy a house in the heart of Scheveningen. J and I got married on January 6, 2005 and he took my surname, because we were a modern couple. He was dressed in white, I in black during the wedding ceremony, but that wasn’t done intentionally.

After a few years I left STEBO and founded my one-woman company DHR – Soul Travel in early 2005. Teaching is in my veins and in 2006, I again started to work as a teacher at the Amsterdamsche School in Amsterdam. So far I have worked at the following schools: 1996-1997: AOC in Houten, now Wellantcollege, 1998-2001: Nimeto in Utrecht, 2001-2003: ICT Lyceum of the ROC in Utrecht, 2003-2005: STEBO in The Hague, and 2006-2007: The Amsterdamsche School in Amsterdam.

In 1998, I launched the website THROUGH THE WINDOW. Together with my eponymous book, it gave me a rewarding position in the spiritual communities of the Netherlands, Belgium, and beyond. My heart was increasingly dedicated to promoting knowledge and understanding in the field of out-of-body experiences. Furthermore, my creative nature is expressing itself through my love for spiritual art, which shines through on several websites of mine. I don’t draw anymore as I used to, but a lot of my creativity goes toward computer activities and photography. For example, I worked a lot with the graphics program Fireworks.

My second book THROUGH THE GATE – Experiences with Astral Love was published on May 11, 2007. My third book THROUGH THE NIGHT was released on August 1, 2008.

In 2009, I finished my first children’s book: THROUGH HEAVEN – Everybody Has Wings, which was published in 2011 as an e-book in the iTunes Store. This book is also about out-of-body and near-death experiences, but this time from the perspective of children.

In 2009, J and I took a one-month trip to the U.S. and visited Washington, Oregon and California. We had the time of our lives and this again made me realize that my dream (and now J’s dream, too) was to live in America. I felt like California was my true home. I loved the idea of going there and carry out scientific investigation of the out-of-body phenomenon, especially under the perspective of electric wind, which I write about in my book THROUGH THE NIGHT.

Now this dream has become reality: J won the 2011 United States Diversity Lottery after I had submitted us both separately in the US Diversity Lottery and we emigrated to California in 2011. We started living in Davis, California, since October 2011.

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UPDATE APRIL 2018.

J and I are divorced! I understand that this may come as a big surprise, but you can read all about it here: 🦁 LION HEARTS PART V – THE ROAR 🦁

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This story gives a brief impression of my life. For Dutch readers who’d like to know more, especially about out-of-body experiences, read my books.

Love,

Constantia Oomen