utterly impossible to actualize or realize my theoretic belief; and this, too, at the very time that scores of persons, through the practical display of what I can but regard as a mere phase of psycho-vision, were triumphing in a firm, solid, unshaken belief in an hereafter; singular, was it not?
That the soul can, at times, act independent of the body, I am firmly convinced. We see daily proofs of it in the mesmerist's art, in mental telegraphy, and in various other ways; this has long been an accepted fact. How often do we suddenly think of a person, who instantly thereafter enters our presence, his spiritual part having preceded the physical! How often do we visit places during sleep which, in other days, we recognize externally! How frequently we dream of persons and things unknown to us, and subsequently encounter these very persons and things when wide awake! Many persons possess this power of independent soul-action, and can exert it at will. The writer has often done so.
The experience about to be related occurred at a period when the skeptical mood was on my soul; and it overtook me as I wandered distractedly on the borders of the region of Despair. But this experience, strange, fearful, and even terrible, as portions of it were, had a beneficial effect; for it lifted my struggling soul to hights of grandeur and glory, from whose sublime summits my vision 'swept the plains of immortality, and pierced the arcana of death itself!'
Had the wisdom-lessons taught in this immense experience been duly profited by, as they ought, I should have escaped many and many a bitter hour. But, like the majority of people, I refused to learn in any but the severest of all schools.
