Page:Heavenly Bridegrooms.djvu/74

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5. Falling asleep with an earnest desire fixed in one's mind to visit such or such a person or place.

Any of these may be induced accidentally and, so far as we know, without the conscious will of the ego.

6. Deliberately willing, under some of the above circumstances, to have one's double appear at such and such a place. This act may or may not include according to the extent of the psychic's training an after memory of the event.

From the above it will be seen that the apparition of the double, whether spontaneously or deliberately induced, seems to be brought about by a sudden focusing of mental force. I am inclined to think that some of the surest vouchers for the material objective substantiality of the world beyond the grave will be found among the phenomena attending the appearance of the double; inasmuch as the double, when most clearly manifesting, comforts itself like an earthly being, with earthly necessities, and if this double be, as appears, identical with the soul-body which quits our mortal frame at death, we have only to collate and compare instances of the earthly double, and acquire the art of projecting our own double intelligently and without loss of memory while in earth-life, and we shall know beyond all doubt what its habits of ..thought, its appetites and necessities are likely to be beyond the grave.

In the witchcraft days, what is called repercussion was a common phenomenon. That is, the witch who appeared in astral form to her victims, if wounded with a knife, might be afterwards found to have sustained a similar wound in her physical body. This carries out the idea of the Theosophists and other occultists, that thought has power over matter, and that our physical frame is in reality moulded by the spirit and soul which inhabit it. Col. Olcott gives an interesting account of repercussion in his own case.

Instances are not wanting where fthe .'earthly double has shown that its sex capacity remains apparently unaffected by temporary separation from the body. The