Many of them are doubtless cases of telepathy; but in those cases which seem to demand the presence of a body of some sort, we may suppose that the spiritual body may become detached, at times, under certain peculiar conditions, from the material body which it inhabits and animates, and can then manifest independently at a distance. The following cases are illustrative, apparently, of this fact; showing us that the “etheric body” can manifest on occasion at will at a distance from the physical body.
HOW THE SOUL MAY LEAVE THE BODY
“... I put out the light and returned, but no sooner had I done this than ... I could feel a creeping sensation moving up my legs. I got up and lit the gas and went back to bed; with pillows arranged in such a way as to make me comfortable. In a comparatively short time, all circulation ceased in my legs, and they were as cold as those of the dead. The creeping sensation began in the lower part of the body, and that also became cold.... There was no sensation of pain or even of physical discomfort. I would pinch my legs with my thumb and finger, and there was no feeling or no indication of blood whatever. I might as well have pinched a piece of rubber so far as the sensation produced was concerned. As the movement continued upward, all at once there came a flashing of lights in my eyes and a ringing in my ears, and it seemed for an instant as though I had become unconscious. When I came out of this state, I seemed to be walking in the air. No words can describe the exhilaration and freedom that I experienced. At no time in my life had my mind been so clear and so free. Just then I thought of a friend who was more than a thousand miles distant. Then I seemed to be traveling with great rapidity through the atmosphere about me. Everything was light and yet it was not the light of the day or the sun, but, I might say, a peculiar light of its own, such as I have never known. It could not have been a minute after that I thought of my friends, before I was conscious of standing in a room where the gas-jets were turned up, and my friend was standing with his back toward me, but, suddenly turning and seeing me, said: ‘What in the world are you doing here? I thought you were in Florida’—and he started to come toward me. While I heard the words distinctly, I was unable to answer. An instant later I was gone; and the consciousness of the memorable things that transpired that memorable night has never been forgotten. I seemed to leave the earth, and everything pertaining to it, and enter a condition of life of which it is absolutely impossible to give here any thought I had concerning it, because there was no correspondence to anything I had ever seen or heard or known of in any way. The wonder and the joy of it was unspeakable; and I can readily understand now what Paul meant when he said ‘I knew a man, whether in the body or out of it I know not, who was caught up to the third heaven, and saw things which it is not possible (lawful) to utter.’
“In this latter experience there was neither consciousness of time nor of space; in fact, it can be described more as a consciousness of elastic feeling than anything else. It came to me after a time that I could stay there if I so desired, but with that thought came also the consciousness of the friends on earth and the duties there required of me. The desire to stay was intense, but in my mind I clearly reasoned over it—whether I should gratify my desire or return to my work on earth. Four times my thought and reason told me that my duties required me to return, but I was so dissatisfied with each conclusion that I finally said: ‘Now I will think and reason this matter out once more, and whatever conclusion I reach I will abide by.’ I reached the same conclusion, and had not much more than reached it when I became conscious of being in a room and looking down on a body propped up in bed, which I recognized as my own! I cannot tell what strange feelings came over me. This body, to all intents and purposes, looked to be dead. There was no indication of life about it, and yet here I was apart from the body, with my mind perfectly clear and alert, and the consciousness of another body to which matter of any kind offered no resistance.
“After what might have been a minute or two, looking at the body, I began to try and control it, and in a very short time all sense of separation from the physical body ceased, and I was only conscious of a directed effort toward its use. After what seemed to be quite a long time, I was able to move, got up from the bed, dressed myself, and went down to breakfast....
“I may add that the friend referred to as having been seen by me that night was also distinctly conscious of my presence and made the exclamation mentioned. We both wrote the next day, relating the experience of the night, and the letters corroborating the incident crossed in the post.”
Such strange doings certainly tend to prove that the human spirit can leave its body and rove abroad, at times; and if this is the case, it shows us that our body is far more detachable than we usually suppose; and hence that it can probably continue to exist after the death of the physical body, when it is detached altogether. Once this is proved, all objection to the reality and existence of “objective” ghosts will have been done away with.