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Dr Robert Crookall – More Astral projections

Case No. 254 - John L. Lane  sent his account of his projections (in litt.,June 3, 1961): He experienced rigidity of the physical body when 16 years of age and again some three years later. He noted, ‘I could see with the lids of the physical eyes drawn, as in sleep’.  When 26, after the first World War, he often had a nap on the sofa on a Saturday afternoon. On one occasion his 'double' was released. He said,

On this occasion I 'came to' and was standing by the window talking to my wife's mother. She paid no attention. I discovered the reason for this when, on turning round, I saw myself lying on the sofa apparently fast asleep. I woke up without any shock. At the time I had never heard of astral projection, but ... a friend lent me Muldoon's The Projection of the Astral Body.

Brought up C. of E., a choir-boy and a Communicant, I returned from the war full of doubts about religion. Muldoon, and my own experiences made me think again.

One further experience stopped the doubts which suggested imagination, the 'sub-conscious', wishful thinking, etc. as the cause of all ideas about Projection. I was lying in, bed, thinking about the book I had been reading. The room was dark, but I was a long way from sleeping. ... I had learned that the surest way to stop all phenomena was to demand to know the how and the why - so, when a gentle 'swish', like the tide running up and receding on a shingle beach, seemed to play about my feet, I lay perfectly still and mentally accepted without trying to probe or analyse. The 'swishing' grew in volume, gradually covering more and more of my body. By the time the 'wave' was travelling from my feet to my head, the volume of sound was tremendous and I felt that some crisis was approaching. ...

The thread of consciousness had not been broken from the time of my retiring, so when I felt myself gently rising from the bed, it was something I had not anticipated. The room was no longer dark, but the illumination was subdued. As I rose towards the ceiling, I turned and saw my wife lying in bed, fast asleep.

'I'm off!' I cried to her, but she did not respond and I was at the bottom of a chimney-like tunnel which had a small patch of light showing at the top. The sides of the circular tunnel were not, I felt, solid (like brick or stone). Imagine a blackness so dense that it gave the impression of being solid.

Then scoop a tunnel through this blackness. The tunnel varies from its surrounding 'wall' of blackness in so far as it is less solid, but it is just as black. I floated up the tunnel, complete with every faculty and function, every memory and feeling, and I was well aware that my body was 'down there', in bed.

As I approached the top of the tunnel, I found myself in a kind of woodland, but the trees and flowers had form only there was no colour, just shadings from grey to black.  I did not see anyone, but I was not alone. I sensed that others were around me. After a while I returned to the top of the tunnel and started the descent. Near the bottom of the tunnel I lost interest in the proceedings for the first time since retiring to bed, and became conscious in the physical without shock from reinteriorization.

I have experienced repercussion shock on many occasions, usually when falling off to sleep, and sometimes so severe that it could be likened to a flip on the bare brain with a wet towel.

I have found myself in a friend's home, floating near the ceiling, and aware of past events, present conditions, and a 'passing' that was to come. All of these proved to be correct.

I should like to tell you about 'that other existence'. It always happens when I am about to waken up.

I am in a passage or corridor. I call it the pressurizing chamber. If one can become conscious and know, as distinct from dreaming, then I become conscious and know. I am in the 'chamber'. There is a door to my left side and a door to my right. I describe them as 'doors' but they are really the opening and closing of my awareness of experience of my lives -one here and one 'there'. The door on my left is ajar and a world of personal experience - life which is my life - lies on the other side of that door. And it does not fit into my physical life. There are no associations. I now discover that the door on my right hand is also ajar, and I am being pulled, impelled to go through the door on my right. I do not want to enter through the door to my right.

Mentally I resist and then the terror begins. My desire to go to the left is translated into action and I am pulled and stretched, not in body, but in mind, by my desire to go to the left and the force [the physical body] which drags me to the right.

Like a piece of elastic, my mind, my very being, is stretched, and to escape I must let go my desire to my life behind the left door and submit to the pull which brings me back to this present physical life. ... One must be content with the experience of having, for a moment, looked at two lives, each complete in itself, both of which are the lives of the one 'I'