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Dr Robert Crookall - More Astral projections

Case No. 18- Mr C. Heine of Tenterden, said (in litt., Oct.6, 1960):

In answer to your appeal for any person who feels they may at some time [have] stepped out of their bodies, I wish to report an experience of mine. Whether it was a dream or not, I cannot say, because I got back into my body and awoke (as it were from a dream). But was it?

To begin with I will make plain to you this point-some weeks ago I happened to speak to my relations of this strange, but not frightening, experience, telling of how I had left my body in bed and seen it lying there (as it were) dead. Now, coincidence or not, on Tuesday you printed the picture of a person lying in bed and the spirit looking down. My point is that my story was told before your picture appeared ...

On the night in question I lay asleep. Of a sudden, however, my mind began to work and, as it would seem, for no particular reason, I said, 'I shall have to get up !' Making the effort, however, my body seemed heavy and refused to lift itself: at this moment, though, my mind or spirit with no effort at all, lifted up and through my body, leaving it behind. I felt myself leave. It just appeared that the body was too heavy to lift.

 Having done so, naturally it struck me as curious. I sat upon the side of the bed unafraid yet fully conscious of what might have happened. I thought, 'Could it really be so?'

For a few seconds I sat there a little puzzled. Then, slowly turning my head, I found that what I had suspected was correct-there lay my body on the bed:

'It's me all right !'

By now I was in a standing position. Stretching out my hand, I patted its cheek. There seemed no life there. With that I said, 'It's dead ! I shall have to go back!' This I did and awoke. I never felt myself return. One wouldn't. There's no load to leave.

That was my experience of leaving oneself. Since [then] I have often thought about it, asking myself questions such as: 'How could it be possible for the mind to create a situation where it actually feels itself lift out and through its body and look down upon the body from without-i.e., if one was only dreaming?' For surely we dream from within ourselves-but I was dreaming (if it was a dream) from without ! Again, ''What made me pass the remark, "It's dead. I'll have to go back !"?' And again, I did not wake until the spirit returned. ...

I myself believe my spirit left my body that night, and, because of it, I think that at the approach of death my mind will tell me, 'Get up !'

I have had no other experience like this. In dreams perhaps I have found myself floating over countryside etc., looking down on it. But on these occasions I was always dreaming from within myself, and not, as in this, from without. A frightening experience? No, and to all who may fear death I would say, I believe that we ourselves never enter the grave at all, only the body goes there.

"P.S. The dream happened a few years ago. It was your print that caused me to write this."