IN EARLY life I discovered that within the pages of the Holy Book I could find God. And later I found that within myself, and through my earth teachers, I could find the guidance that would lead me toward the Spiritual Heights. Being sensitive to the influence of the higher forces I decided to educate all my seven senses to a greater degree.

I will try and tell you why I have such an insatiable desire to study into the unknown forces of nature, and why I work day and night to get a true understanding of all that my mind glimpses. My work is to separate the Real from the unreal.

This day of which I write I was taken deathly ill, and I became very weak. I knew I must lie down; for I was conscious of the fact that the Soul of me was going out of my body on a flight into the unknown realms of consciousness. My studies had all led toward this end, and I was fully prepared to meet anything.

I therefore went as quickly as possible and laid down on a couch. I did not go to sleep; I was awake and fully conscious, but I closed my eyes. Directly I was in a higher vibration and found myself caught up in a whirling mass of grey clouds going into space as through a large tube.

While drifting in this condition, I met a coal black cat; its eyes were blazing green, and it had its right front paw uplifted as if to warn me against going any further. This cat seemed to speak, to tell me to stop; but being aware that cats are psychic, and that I was in the astral realm of consciousness, I also knew that I was privileged to reach a higher consciousness; therefore I would not be detained on this journey by the warning of any astral being.

Remember, I was still conscious and anxious to know what the gods would show me; so I continued on my journey. At last I arrived at the brink of a precipice. I stood and looked down into a chasm which was bottomless, and was cognizant of the fact that if I could pass over that chasm, I would pass through the second death. This chasm seemed to represent the dividing line between the astral and the spiritual life.