CHAPTER V Astral Travel

 

When you sleep, you often come over here. But you have forgotten it when you wake. I meet you on the border-line, and while the cord that attaches you to your physical body is unbroken, we road about over here. You come to our house, and I explain all the things I cannot put into words when we are writing. Then, when the time has passed, too quickly always, I take you back and you wake up. Sometimes your dreams are mere ramblings of the unconscious, but very occasionally I am able to imprint on your mind some event that is about to happen, especially if it is needed as a warning. This explains what you call prophetic dreams.

We follow many and varied pursuits together during your sleep. We have traveled all over your world, and we have explored the Summerland. It is owning to this impressing of your unconscious mind that I am able to produce this script. All that is described in it is within your own experience, but you have forgotten it until I press the switch and turn on the light. The main difficulty is the jumble of thoughts that flit through your brain, but you are now better able to attend to what I try to impress, without trying to forecast the next sentence. The how and the wherefore of this our contact is easily explained. I have told you how I do it; and you know why: so that you may write it down and help others to glimpse the future.

We have been traveling together, and I will try to tell you where we have been. It was a new journey for you; it was an important advance, as I had never before been able to take you so far afield. First we sped through space and saw the stars growing larger and larger, and finally we landed on one of the nearest planers. It is a mere husk of volcanic matter and no living thing could exist there. Millions of years ago, it was inhabited like your earth, but internal combustion destroyed it. I must remind you of the wonderful feeling of flitting through space and seeing your earth as a globe, just as you see geographical details as a whole from an airplane.

To be alone together in space is an awe-inspiring experience, and I am glad that you have accomplished it. I try to describe to you our doing of the previous night because the details are clearer in your subconscious. That is the technique: I show you in your sleep what I am going to describe for your book, but you will have to cut out repetitions here and there, though you will find some useful facts among the chaff. At one stage of our journey, we met some of the friends that you have made on this side during your nightly visits. They were having a joy-ride, too, and we joined them. We did not stay long on the old planet, as there is no life there, and the chief interest lay in the journey though space.