AT OUR group meeting last week, we had entered into meditation. I had my eyes closed, and was more or less still, not making any effort to focus my mind on anything. Suddenly I had the urge to envision my body to be one of Light. This I did with no trouble. The next thing I knew I was up near the ceiling. I was conscious of being above the Group and of seeing myself sitting in my chair at the same time. In a hazy sort of way I saw the Group below; but when I came to look at myself, I saw myself as clearly as though I were looking with my physical eyes.

It lasted for only a few seconds, and then I seemed to feel myself easing back into my body. The only way I can explain that process is, that it was like the way one slips on a shoe, feeling one’s way gently and slowly. In fact, that was the simile that came to me as I sat there. After I was “back,” my body felt a little numb, and I had to flex my arms and legs to get back normal circulation. This, so help me, is what occurred, and no explanation given.

IN THE beginning, we may as well state that this particular experience comes only to those of a psychic nature, and not to those of the mental type, for reasons that will be given later. The trembling felt by the one of the first letter was undoubtedly due to the gradual loosening of the etheric double from the physical body, and the mind, not understanding what was taking place, grew frightened.

The etheric double is the vehicle of vitality that supplies life to the physical body, and connects consciousness with that of the mind and the soul. In a psychic person, the consciousness within this etheric double seems able under certain conditions to free itself from the brain and to dwell for a limited time in an inner state of being close to the physical, where exists an exact duplicate of the physical world and of everything in it.

However, all things exist only in consciousness, and what appears is only what man thinks exists, and as the etheric world is but the life or living—and therefore more real—part of the physical world, when man withdraws his consciousness (his interest and attention) from the outer physical to some inner state of being, if psychic, he may think he actually leaves his physical body, and