I WANT to tell you of an experience that occurred on the 12th of May at 1:45 A. M. I lay awake. I had no feeling of my body, and for the first time I rose out of it without any bodily sensations like hard breathing or stiffening of my limbs. I just rose. It was lovely. I came back and rose again. I did this two or three times. I was wide awake, but my eyes were closed.

Then I raised myself a yard above my body, straightened up and glided through my living-room, through the wall and passed outside in midair. A great joy filled my heart and I said, “Father, allow me to go to Jerusalem and kneel at the place where the cross of Christ stood.” But I did not move. Then I said, “Father, Thy will be done.”

Suddenly I found myself out in the country, with the peculiar light of the soul plane around me. Before me appeared a wide stairway with dozens of landings going straight up and very steep, the end lost in the clouds. As I stood at the foot of this stairway a girl joined me. She was just like myself, tall and blond, but of wonderful beauty. I loved her. She put her arm around me and smiled and seemed so happy to be with me.

We started up the steps, pausing at the landings. Once she stopped at a landing and said, “Every landing represents one of your lives. This is the 55th, and I joined you here.” We crossed it and started up again. I realized that this stairway symbolized my entire existence on the earth plane. When we reached the second one above, the girl said, “This is the 57th; I was not with you in the life before this, as I was not with you in this next life.”

When we came to the next landing we did not start up again, but turned into a side path. There were no steps. I looked at her, and she said, “In this life you turned off the straight road and followed your lower nature. An untimely death, which you suffered with many others, put a stop to your earth experiences and saved you.”

As she spoke these words I saw many people around us—men, women and children. They were dressed in the black