In cases where the apparition has been deliberately produced as the result of an act of will on the part of the agent, the apparition has invariably been preceded by the agent concentrating his mind on the person to whom he wishes to appear, not on himself.
In view of these considerations I frankly do not see how the telepathic theory can be unreservedly maintained.
When we add that in some of these experimentally produced cases the agent has himself seen the percipient and given details, subsequently verified, of the circumstances prevailing at the percipient's end; and then compare this with certain of the varieties of clairvoyance at a distance, we must surely admit that the supposition that the agent was really present, though not in the physical body, is by far the simplest explanation.
For cases of this sort the reader should consult "Phantasms of the Living." Some good selected instances are also given in "Death, it's Causes and Phenomena," by Messrs. Carrington and Meader.
The idea that conscious existence in a vehicle other than the physical body is possible even during life is borne out to some extent by the evidence of those who testify to having seen their own body, from outside, while in a state of unconsciousness. An interesting one is given in the above mentioned work. The narrator describes how as he lay in bed he felt a cold sensation creeping up his legs from the feet and gradually extending throughout his body. After this had gone on for some time he became momentarily unconscious and on coming to himself again "seemed to be walking on air" and to be entirely free from his body. He thought of a friend who was some hundreds of miles distant and in a few seconds he found himself in the presence of his friend in circumstances which he describes. His friend spoke to him but he could not stay. After much difficulty and perplexity he decided that he ought to return to his body and as soon as he had made up his mind on the point he found himself looking at his apparently dead body propped up in bed as he had been when this experience began. He tried to control it and in due course was able to do so and after a time successfully "re-embodied" himself apparently none the worse for his experiences.
The credentials of this case are good, and it is important to note that the friend referred to wrote spontaneously to say that he had seen the narrator at the time and in the circumstances which the latter describes.
For this reason it can hardly be dismissed as a mere hallucination or dream and it is relevant to the present discussion because the narrator saw his own body from outside and was apparently embodied all the time in a vehicle of some sort.
Another somewhat similar and equally remarkable case is given in the same work. This I shall deal with in a later chapter. In view of the foregoing considerations, I think it fair to say that the idea of a non-physical vehicle of consciousness capable, under the proper conditions, of temporary detachment from the physical body, has strong claims to be adopted as a working hypothesis for future investigations even though it is too early, as yet, to accept it as a proven fact.