My final, and most profound, dual consciousness experience happened in 1983 during the Russell Formula Ford Festival finals. I started 4th, got a good run through turn 4, and pulled left to pass the reigning SCCA FF National Champion. However, as I was pulling out to the left, he juked left; taking my nose cone off with his left-rear tire.
The rules required a pit stop for any car-to-car contact, so when I pitted, that was the end of my race because it was a two-heat final with aggregate time deciding the winner. I rejoined the race knowing my chance of winning the race and my ‘career’ was over, but I intended to put on a show and make a statement on my way out.
It was during those laps, running alone, pushing to the limit and beyond that the experience materialized. I first noticed it during the run up the hill towards the corkscrew. I suddenly realized that “I” was viewing the visual stream of information that was flowing by, but I was almost completely detached from it. That is, it was as if “I” was floating above ‘it’. It’s hard to describe, but imagine a movie film that instead of running vertical in front of you, from top to bottom, is laid out horizontally beneath you, so that you can look down on it as it as the images flow from the distance, toward you and then beneath you (or perhaps into you) as they move into the past.
However, the really interesting thing was that “important” frames of the flat ‘movie’ (critical braking points and turning points) would be automatically presented to ‘me’. Imagine an ‘important’ frame becomes visible at the top of the horizontal movie film (for example as a braking point approaches), and then, as that frame moves closer, it begins to tilt up out of the stream of visual information until it is vertical just as you physically get to that point on the track… then the frame disappears into the past and you’re floating above the movie again until the next important frame begins to raise.
To me, this felt as though the movie film was my subconscious’ interpretation of the sensory information that was flowing in, which my intuition was using to actually do the necessary driving activities. Instead of another peak into what was going on under the hood, it was like the door to my subconscious was kicked open and I was able to watch ‘him’ (my subconscious/intuition/right hemisphere ?) take care of his task (the actual driving), while at the same time ‘he’ was also feeding ‘me’ (my consciousness/intellect/left hemisphere ?) only the information that ‘I’ needed to do my job (navigate around the track, and synchronize time-specific actions with specific locations around the track).
For me, this was the most intense dual-consciousness experience I ever had in a race car because it went on for several laps, and there was such a high level of consciousness separation… to be looking down on the track as it passes beneath you… it was a very cool, and somewhat mind-blowing experience.