"Aristotle ... said that he had talked with a man who had seen his own double walking down the street. ...

Plato wrote : "When death approaches a man, ... the immortal part departs safe and incorruptible."

p. 185

"The Swedish playwright August Strindberg said that he often traveled in his duplicate body.

Edgar Allan Poe and Dostoevski saw their own doubles.

Poet De la Mare woke up in his astral body while under anesthesia ... .

Guy de Maupassant had an eccentric double that frequently annoyed him while he was at his desk writing. Once in 1899 ... the double began to dictate what Maupassant was writing."

Percy Bysshe Shelley once saw his own double ... . As Stead tells it in Borderland, ... A cloaked figure had appeared at Shelley’s bedside and signaled that the poet should follow him. When they reached the living room, the mystery figure lifted the hood of his cloak, revealing Shelley’s own face."

p. 186

"When Goethe was twenty-one years old, he ... met his own double on the road ... . ... Goethe wrote : "I was ... on the footpath toward Drusenheim and ... saw myself coming to meet myself on the same road ... . ...""

"A British novelist, William Gerhardi, wrote about his astral projections in Resurrection. The first time it happened to Gerhardi ..., he ... woke up with a start and stretched out his arm to press the switch on the bookshelf over his bed but found himself "grasping the void" and "suspended precariously in midair ... ." The room was in darkness but all around him was "a milky pellucid light, like steam." ... He looked back and saw "a coil of light ... ." This light (the cord) extended back to his body sleeping on the bed. Gerhardi ... saw his second body in the mirror".

"When Aldous Huxley was present during the last hours of D. H. Lawrence, they dying man described how his double was coming out of his physical body and standing in one corner of the room looking back.

The American writer Horace Traubel lay dying in September 1919, with his friend ... at his bedside. About 3 A.M. both men noticed a point of light in the room that grew larger and larger and finally contracted into a human face. They recognized their old friend Walt Whitman, who had died twenty-seven years before. Whitman’s complete body materialized and stood beside the bed wearing clothes that Whitman had worn in his lifetime ... . Whitman smiled, then faded away. Psychic researcher Walter F. Prince wrote about Whitman’s ghost in Noted Witnesses to {sic} Psychic Occurrences."

p.

Jung

189

"Jung reported other strange incidents. Once, when he came into

190

Another time, after the funeral of a friend, Jung ... saw an apparition of the man in the room. He felt compelled to ... follow the figure on the road that led to the dead man’s house. Once inside, the figure ... pointed out the second of five books ... on the second shelf from the top. ... The second volume was The Legacy of the Dead."

p. 191

"Swedenborg did automatic writing and said that in much of it his

p. 192

hand was guided by spirits. ... many long passages in his books were the words of spirits he heard".

p.

OOBE

194

In another Crookall case ...

195

In The Enigma of Out-of-Body Travel Susy Smith tells how ... Another child ... felt herself floating up to the ceiling and saw her physical body lying in bed. Her double passed through the ceiling and traveled to different places in town".

"A five-year-old youngster was being taught to swim ... when he was swept away by a waterfall and in danger of drowning. He felt himself going through a tunnel that ended in a pinpoint of light that he knew he must squeeze through. He wriggled through this opening and ... heard soothing music ... . He opened his eyes and was happy to see other people – men, women, and children – drifting along with him, all "carried up towards the stars." They finally reached a distant shore and were pulled out of the river by people gathered there. The boy saw many dead relatives that he recognized from family albums ... . ... Suddenly he was pulled back by a whirlpool ... . The body woke up vomiting water which the fire brigade was pressing out of his body."

p.

OOBE

197

Then, one night, as he was falling asleep, ... invisible hands lifted him out of his body and carried him three times around the room. He ... floated in a circle, the room spinning around him. It lasted only a few seconds, then he was jerked back into his body. ...

198

When Kevin was nineteen he ... lay down on the bed, and immediately flew out of his body. ... He glanced back and saw his physical body lying like a "lump" on the bed, then ... a strange thing happened to the kitchen window – it melted into a circle that gave off ... "swirlies and symbols" and finally coalesced into a dome. Through the dome Kevin saw a clock ... . ...

209

Kevin’s last OOBE occurred ... with a very high fever ... . His body became cataleptic ..., and his I-Consciousness suddenly flew out in an arc and went around the room twice. ... When he came back into his body, the fever had broken and he was well."

p. 206

A New Jersey astral projectrix said : " "I was very ill from an infection. I don’t know whether I was awake or asleep {hypnagogic/hypnopompic?}, but I went to some plane where ... A lovely blond-haired man in a white robe handed me a lotus. I knew then that I would be well. ..." ...

p. 207

The man in the white robe, she said, ... was surrounded by a golden glow. ... . ... she did mention "distinctly passing through a tunnel," where she heard voices with "a hollow, echoey sound." In one of her dreams {projections?}, she slipped out of her body and looked down on it from below."

p.

advice received in a dream

208

The New Jersey astral projectrix "has other dreams in which she goes {is located} forwards or backwards in time. ... She believes that "every human being prepares long in advance for every major thing he goes through," and [that] dreams are the most fruitful channel for this preparation. Sometimes the dream gives her a literal description of the future event, other times it comes in symbols. ... [She] has met people in dreams before she meets them in her waking life. She has received help in dreams that in some cases came from the projected thoughts and

possibly the projected double of a friend,

{Or, perhaps from that friend’s spirit-guide or spirit-helper, appearing in the guise of that friend.}

in others from the source of all wisdom within.

{Any "source of all wisdom within" may be an internal deity.}

The friend arrives in the dream when she is wrestling with a problem and gives her advice, often starting out with "Look, you’ve got to come at this problem from another angle."

Her dreams tell her where to go when she needs a job. ...

209

Many of her dreams give evidence of what is happening or will happen elsewhere or of a thought that may be in someone else’s mind. She dreams of or visits during her dreams those with whom she has an emotional affinity ... .

Like many other psychics ..., [she] seems to have inherited her sensitivity. An uncle was a medium ... . Her sister ... has traveled astrally. ... [The sister] had ... gone out of her body ... and had flown ... over two thousand miles".

Linda White (of New Brunswick, NJ) "began to doze. The bed started to rock violently, Linda began to spin around ... . Someone or something grabbed her ankles, pulling her to her feet ... . ... Then she was suddenly gone, taken to a strange place where there many strange people. She was shown a machine with numbers and told that when a child is born, it has several numbers tattooed on its stomach – a birth number, a draft number, a death number, and many more. Then she was whisked back to her sleeping body."

Linda White "thought that OOBEs had a humanitarian purpose. "It should only be done at special times, when someone needs your help. Like psychic healing. ... I don’t care to go out unless I am called.""

p.

sleep-paralysis

216

... I was in Vienna. I woke up in the middle of the night and found myself in a mass of energy. I wasn’t in my body – I was up by the ceiling and I looked down and saw my body on the bed. ...

217

Finally after this great struggle, I went back into my body, but I was paralyzed. ... I could not move".

{sleep-paralysis}

p.

headline

218

Flo Thompson (of Xenia, Ohio) : "One day she was out in the yard, hanging clothes ..., when flaming words appeared before her, announcing ... : THE CLOTHESLINE IS ABOUT TO BREAK. ...

219

More incidents were announced by banner headlines. ...

Flo didn’t like the idea of headlines in red appearing in front of her with their predictions of disaster. She ... theorized that this was just a trick played on her by her psychic sense to call attention to itself. Once she understood {actually, falsely understood, for it is a false imputation} this, the red letters never came back."

{Actually, the red headlines were being produced by a deity, who was so insulted by her imputation of "a trick" that that deity ceased manifesting such headlines after being so insulted. (Mortal humans have no intrinsic "psychic sense"; any appearance of praeternatural abilities in mortals are always, very strictly, purely favors granted to mortals by deities at those deities own discretion.)}

"Early one morning about 2 A.M., the washing machine in the basement started up ... . No one was near it. The next night it started again at the same time ... . And again the next night."

{Actually, this was being performed by the same deity who had been insulted in the matter of the spectral headlines; it was being performed to demonstrate that a deity who had seen spectral (ghostly, visionary) manifestations can also produce effects in the material world; thus demonstrating that she show contrition for her having already insulted it in regard to the headlines. (An intelligent person ought to be able to realize that a deity who can control both worlds can likewise arrange what will happen to a human after death; the woman, in defying every praeternatural sign, was arranging damnation for herself after death.)}

"Giving birth to her second child, ... [after having been] Unconscious from the anesthetic, she found herself floating above the delivery table. ... She could see the doctor and nurse and heard their words as if in an echo chamber. ... Flo had a recurrent dream in which she saw everything that had happened and could hear what the doctor was saying."

p.

going out

222

Dorie Lawrence (in central New Jersey) said : " "I felt my body swell up like a balloon. It wasn’t my physical body, of course, it was my astral trying to get

223

out ... . My fingertips felt strange – ... very, very fine [slender] ... as if they were drawn out [elongated] almost to infinity. My teeth and mouth ... also had that feeling of fineness [slenderness] – like very thin wires. I felt as though as heavy weight or pressure was pushing down on my body. ... Then all of a sudden I was out of my body, above it ... ."

Dorie ... speaks in decisive, clipped tones. Like ... other astral projectors, she radiates honesty and integrity. She gave ... the precise details of her experience. ... Her double rose in the horizontal position and remained suspended three feet above her physical body. In later projections she went out slowly through her feet. ... . ... her second body ... sometimes ... is taller than her physical body."

p.

activity

223

Dorie said : " "Although I was physically unconscious from the anesthetic, I was very much awake in my subconscious. I was standing there in my double, watching the doctors bending over my body. ..." ...

224

Suddenly she saw her physical body thrashing around on the operating table. "I {read : "my spirit-possessed physical body"} was fighting, trying to take the instrument out of the doctor’s hands. ..." ... This was an offbeat astral happening ..., reminiscent of the officer whose double watched his panic-stricken body rolling on the ground (see Chapter 14 [pp. 136-7]). The second body, particularly in its soul body {mental body?} aspect, is often more alert in thought ... than

the { spirit-possessed } physical, which is more animal-like in its perceptions. ...

{cf. the Japanese (S^into) conventional understanding of spirit-possession, namely regarding spirit-possession as being possessed by an animal’s spirit. Also, in Zanzibar spirit-possession by an animal-spirit is commonplace.}

Suddenly Dorie was back in her ... [material] body. ...

225

When the doctor visited Dorie the next day, she said, "Doctor, ... I’m going to repeat everything you said in the operating room. ..." The doctor

turned white and left the room without saying a word."

{Surely the surgeon was perturbed by conjecturing that the patient had felt (such as "thrashing around" would ordinarily indicate) discomfort during the surgery (which supposed discomfort, however, had not occurred).}

p. 225

Sometimes, in a flash, she finds herself far away, often several thousand miles distant. Once she was ... in a New York City restaurant when suddenly she was in England ... . ...

p. 226

Dorie ... is an ordained minister of the Church of Ageless Wisdom. ... She is also a medium and gives reading to those who wish to communicate with the dead. Spirits contact her with their messages. She won’t give the message unless it is very clear and detailed. ... "... I must give complete, clear information – names, dates, places." ... Her grandmother was psychic, and also her mother."