Then he added, looking closely at his companion, "and in your own case this Double—it has always seemed to me—may be peculiarly easy of detachment from the rest of you."
"I certainly create my own world and slip into it—to some extent," murmured the Irishman, absorbingly interested; "—reverie and so forth; partially, at any rate."
"'Partially,' yes, in your reveries of waking consciousness," Stahl took him up, "but in sleep—in the trance consciousness—completely! And therein lies your danger," he added gravely; "for to pass out completely in waking consciousness, is the next step—an easy one; and it constitutes, not so much a disorder of your being, as a readjustment, but a readjustment difficult of sane control." He paused again. "You pass out while fully awake—a waking delusion. It is usually labeled—though in my opinion wrongly so—insanity."
"I'm not afraid of that," O'Malley laughed, almost nettled. "I can manage myself all right—have done so far, at any rate."
It was curious how the rôles had shifted. O'Malley it was now who checked and criticized.
"I suggest caution," was the reply, made earnestly. "I suggest caution."
"I should keep your warnings for mediums, clairvoyants, and the like," said the other tartly. He was half amazed, half alarmed even while he said it. It was the personal application that annoyed him. "They are rather apt to go off their heads, I believe."
Dr. Stahl rose and stood before him as though the words had given him a cue he wanted. "From that very medium-class," he said, "my most suggestive 'cases' have come, though not for one moment do I think of including you with them. Yet these very 'cases' have been due one and all to the same cause—the singular disorder I have just mentioned."
They stared at one another a moment in silence. Stahl, whether O'Malley liked it or no, was impressive. He gazed at the little figure in front of him, the ragged untidy beard, the light shining on the bald skull, wondering what was coming next and what all this bewildering confession of unorthodox belief was leading up to. He longed to hear more about that hinted Cosmic Life … and how yearning might lead to its realization.
"For any phenomena of the séance-room that may be genuine," he heard him saying, "are produced by this fluid, detachable portion of the personality, the very thing we have been speaking about. They are projections of the personality—automatic projections of the consciousness."