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letter."
Here is an account of a single flight illustrating the effect
of an emotional reaction on the Double, of which all
pertinacious projectors are conscious. It is recorded in Life and
Action, and is told by Captain Sumner E. W. Kittelle.
"In April, 1913," he writes, "I was for about a month
Captain of the gunboat Marietta, and was lying alongside the
dock in Brooklyn, N.Y. My wife remained at the house in the
Naval Yard at Boston. One night I returned to the ship, from
the city, at about eleven o'clock, went to the cabin, and in due
time retired to my stateroom and went to sleep in my bunk.
"During sleep I was conscious that I left my physical
body, and travelled with seeming great speed over, but some
distance above, the ground to Boston, where I sought my own
room and took my accustomed place in bed.
"Here after a while I was conscious that my wife had
placed her hand upon my shoulder, and I made a strong effort
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to turn over and respond to her touch. This effort seemed to
cause me to leave the bed and room, and return over the same
route to New York at the same speed, and thereupon I
reoccupied my bunk on board ship and awoke.
''At once it occurred to me that this must be an
experience, so I reached out and switched on the electric light
and noted the exact time. The next day I wrote to my wife and,
without telling her anything about my experience, I asked her if
she had noticed anything during the night in question.
"Her reply was that she had strongly felt that I was in
bed, and had reached out and touched me on the shoulder! So
real did it seem to her that she sat up to investigate, and finding
nothing thought, nevertheless, that she would make a note of
the time, which she did, and the two times, hers and mine, were
identical."
Both Sylvan Muldoon and Oliver Fox describe how,
yielding to the irresistible temptation (irresistible, at least to
their etheric forms) to attract the attention of a charming lady,
had sent them hurtling back to their physical moorings.
Here is a case with unusual corroboration cited by Dr.
Britton in Man and his Relations.
The episode occurred in Canada to a Mr. Wilson, who
was living at the time in Toronto.
Mr. Wilson, on falling asleep in his arm-chair, dreamt
that he was at Hamilton, a town forty miles to the west. In his
dream he went to call on a lady friend, and rang the door-bell
of her house. A maid answered, and said that her mistress was
not at home. Knowing the family well, however, he walked in
and asked for a glass of water. He then left, instructing the
servant to give his kind regards to her mistress. When Mr.
Wilson awoke he made a note that he had been asleep for forty
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minutes.
A few days later a certain Mrs. G., a friend of the lady in
question, received a letter from her which mentioned the fact
that Mr. Wilson had called at the house in her absence, and had
left without returning, after, she was informed, asking the maid
for a glass of water.
TMs, she said, caused her much annoyance, as she
particularly wished to see him.
Mr. Wilson, on being shown the letter, declared that he
had not been at Hamilton for a whole month. However,
recalling his dream, he asked Mrs. G. to write to their mutual
friend on the matter, requesting, at the same time, that nothing
on the subject should be mentioned to the servants.
He thereupon paid a visit to Hamilton in company with
some friends, and they took the opportunity to call together at
the house of the lady in question. Two of the maid-servants at
once recognized Mr. Wilson as the gentleman who had
previously called, and who had drunk in the house the glass of
water they had brought him; an incident of which, as has been
said, they had informed their mistress.
Of course the only strange feature in the story is the
water-drinking, and it is very hard to imagine what becomes of
water drunk by an Etheric Double. But then it is equally hard to
imagine what becomes of water drunk by a materialized form
which, the next moment, may vanish, water and all, into the
floor.
I should very much like to include here a story told by
Robert Vale Owen in The Debatable Land, but unfortunately
the Etheric Double of Miss Cecilia L. was accompanied across
America by the spirit of her just departed sister, and its
introduction might be regarded as spiritualistic propaganda. It
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is a most interesting and helpful tale.
It is amazing how timorous most people are of being
associated with any sort of psychic experience.
Sylvan Muldoon, when trying to collect acceptable
evidence of the Double, found himself up against this strange
reluctance.
After recounting a number of miscellaneous cases, he
says: "I have received many, many letters similar to the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]