An open collection of accounts of something other than yourself: in your thoughts, your body, or the room. From every tradition and none.
We want to collect a million accounts.
It is designed, and not yet built. We are looking for support to build it.
Help us build itHere to tell us what happened? Start here.
People in every culture and every century have described times when something that was not them seemed to be there. In their thoughts, in their body, in the space around them. Some call it spiritual, some medical, some have no word for it at all.
We still know very little about these “not me” experiences. What exists is scattered: a handful of studies in single countries, clinicians’ notes, church records, and stories told only in private. Most people who have lived through one have never been asked about it properly.
Not Myself asks them. The same questions, in their own words, from every tradition and none, spoken or written, and kept safe.
Nobody has ever put these accounts side by side. That is what this is for.
Many people find this easier to speak than to type, and some cannot write it at all. So the form records in the browser: press a button and talk, for as long as it takes, in whatever language comes.
Nobody listens while they speak. They can stop and carry on, delete it and start again. It does not have to be in any order. Most of what we will learn will arrive this way.
Help us gather them. Enough accounts, from enough of the world, that the pattern can be seen rather than argued about.
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When it opens, people will come in by one of three doors.
In the thoughts, in the body, in the room. Which part of the body, what it was like, whether it moved, and how it left. Nobody has ever traced this across traditions.
What was happening in a life when it began. What was taken, if anything. What changed at the moment it lifted.
Priests, doctors, healers, facilitators, nobody. The words they were given for it, and whether any of it helped.
If accounts from people who never met, in languages that never touched, describe the same thing, that will be seen. If they do not, that will be seen too. Everything is published, including what we do not find.
This is a place to be heard, not a service. No clinician is reading these, and it would be dishonest to suggest otherwise.
This is a research collection. Accounts are read and compared — by people and by machine — to find out what these experiences have in common across languages and traditions. Names are removed first.
Accounts are kept for research. If any part is ever quoted, it is with your permission, and without your name unless you ask for it.
At any time, without giving a reason, and it will be deleted.
Nothing beyond your consent is required. Leave out anything you would rather not say.
Twelve languages to begin with. Nothing on these pages is machine translated: they ask for consent, and they meet people in distress. [€ AMOUNT]
Storage in the European Union, under the GDPR, for accounts that are among the most private things a person will ever say. [€ AMOUNT]
A researcher to read, compare and code every account, with names removed first. [€ AMOUNT]
Getting the collection to the places these experiences are told: churches, clinics, ceremonies, support groups, forums. [€ AMOUNT]
A way for people to show, on an outline of a body, where they felt it, like the example above. The first map of its kind. [€ AMOUNT]
We are looking for support to build Not Myself: the recorder, the translations, safe storage, and the people to read what comes in. Taking part will be free, and always will be.