My Library

Mr. Fox apologizes for his repeated insistence on the unearthly radiance of the new conditions. YRAM In Le Midecin de I'Ame, rendered into English as Practical Astral Projection, the writer, who signs himself Yram, has made a striking contribution to the literature of the Double, but one quite other from that of Mr. Fox. For him there is no planning of means to get free; he is out of the body, one might say, almost without knowing it, certainly without contriving it. "For most people," he tells us, "the most convincing phenomenon is the act of conscious separation a few feet from the physical body. You leave your body with greater ease than taking off a suit of clothes"; but the only aid he offers to that disrobing is to tell us, at four or five in the morning, when one wakes, to drive away all thought, and, as soon as a vibration affects one of our bodies, to take full possession of ourselves, and to fix our attention on the sensations, images and scenes which are about to occur. "After all," he says, "nothing could be easier, since we are not asleep. Projection, the separation of the conscious 'I and its provisional forms, takes place in full waking consciousness. It has happened at times that I have found myself projected, standing beside my body, at the same instant as I closed my eyes, and without experiencing any particular sensation.... What is most surprising is the reality of the material feelings one experiences. The practice of projection becomes such a habit that there have been times when I have come back to my body in order to make sure that I was really projected and not sleepwalking." It is not, however, even for him, always as easy as that.