My Library

ear. I reached back carefully and felt the face with the whiskers. It was the same as my own. I held my breath, or thought of so doing, and the panting stopped in my ear. I breathed again, once, twice, then held my breath again. The "body" behind me panted in exact synchronization. The warm body clinging to my back was me! I went back into the physical, sat up, and thought about it. The question is, which was which? Thinking it over, it seemed that the one in back—the one I could hear and feel—was the physical "I" and the "I" in front was the mental or real "I." I assume this because the physical sensations and related action were in the rear body, while thought was in the front "I." Confusing, but very real. From then on, I had no problem when I experienced the sensation. Speak of people being afraid of their own shadows! 8/8/60 Afternoon I conducted another interesting experiment. After lying down, and working through the count-up procedure, the vibrations surged in strong and rough, then smoothed as they took on a more rapid frequency (starting just around 30 c.p.s., as nearly as I can determine, and speeding up until I felt them only as a sense of warmth). I decided to lift out slowly to examine the process. I tried, and out came the glowing legs, then the hips, but no more! I could not get my chest and shoulders out, try as I might. It was very strange. I spent the entire time moving the legs and hips up and down. I observed them visually with my physical eyes, which seemed to be astigmatic. Several times, 1 tried moving my legs up out of the physical, then to the right, and let them fall; when I did, they floated slowly down, touched the side of the couch, then draped over to the floor. They bent around and over the edge of the couch as if they had no bones, just like a slow-motion version of a piece of cloth falling loosely and bending where it made contact with a solid object. There was no noticeable aftereffect when I re-entered and sat up. Time away was twenty-two minutes. 9/16/60 Afternoon I was out of the physical, again on a Saturday, trying to keep "local," i.e., staying in the same room. Again I noticed the strange rubbery elasticity of this other body. I could stand in the middle of the room and reach out to touch the wall some eight feet away. At first, my arm did not come anywhere near the wall. Then I kept pushing my hand outward, and suddenly the texture of the wall was against my hand. Just by pushing out, my arm had stretched to twice its length without my noticing anything different. When I relaxed the pushing out, the arm came back and seemed normal. This