"Open your eyes," said my guide, "you have no cause for fear."
I acquiesced in an incredulous, dazed manner.
"This unusual experience is sufficient to unnerve you, but you need have no fear, for you are not in corporal danger, and can relax your grasp on my person."
I cautiously obeyed him, misgivingly, and slowly loosened my hold, then gazed about to find that we were in a sea of light, and that only light was visible, that form of light which I have before said is an entity without source of radiation. In one direction, however, a great gray cloud hung suspended and gloomy, dark in the center, and shading therefrom in a circle, to disappear entirely at an angle of about forty-five degrees.
"This is the earth-shelf from which we sprung," said the guide; "it will soon disappear."
Wherever I glanced this radiant exhalation, a peaceful, luminous envelope, this rich, soft, beautiful white light appeared. The power of bodily motion I found still a factor in my frame, obedient, as before, to my will. I could move my limbs freely, and my intellect seemed to be intact. Finally I became impressed with the idea that I must be at perfect rest, but if so what could be the nature of the substance, or material, upon which I was resting so complacently? No; this could not be true. Then I thought: "I have been instantly killed by a painless shock, and my spirit is in heaven;" but my earthly body and coarse, ragged garments were palpable realities; the sense of touch, sight, and hearing surely were normal, and a consideration of these facts dispelled my first conception.
"Where are we now?"
"Moving into earth's central space."
"I comprehend that a rushing wind surrounds us which is not uncomfortable, but otherwise I experience no unusual sensation, and can not realize but that I am at rest."
"The sensation, as of a blowing, wind is in consequence of our rapid motion, and results from the friction between our bodies and the quiescent, attenuated atmosphere which exists even here, but this atmosphere becomes less and less in amount until it will disappear altogether at a short distance below us. Soon we will be in a perfect calm, and although moving rapidly, to all appearances will be at absolute rest."