My Library

Eventually he woke in his own body about five o'clock in the morning, cold and stiff, and still holding his unfinished cigar between his fingers. The lamp was out, its chimney blackened. He got shivering into bed, but found it hard to sleep, and woke when it was broad daylight. Having made friends with his neighbour's caretaker, he obtained permission to view the rooms he had visited. "Entering in company with him," he tells us, "I recognized the pictures and furniture which I had seen the night before, as well as the titles of the books I had especially noticed." This carry-over of memory from the etheric condition makes it probable that the narrator was awake when the projection began, though a similar clarity often remains when the exit is consciously made from what has been called the dream of knowledge. When Ralph Shirley was editing the Occult Review he received a considerable correspondence on this question of projection, some of which he includes in The Mystery of the Human Double. Here is one from a lady who signs herself Hermione P. Okeden. "I wonder if you will allow me to ask if you or any of your readers have the power to travel as I do. Whenever I desire to know how or where a friend is, whom I have not heard of for some time, I go and find them. It is not done in the astral body (sic), but when awake, and I can do it sitting quietly in my chair in the day or before going to sleep when in bed at night; perfect quiet being the only condition necessary. "I close my eyes and have a feeling of going over backwards, which, though unpleasant, is too short for actual