Lehal Library

INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN EDITION ASTRAL or 'Etheric' Projection is the ability to travel outside one's physical body. Incredible though this may seem to many materialists, there is ample evidence that people can leave their bodies and travel at will, returning with information that could not be obtained by other means. This book gives a vivid account of the evidence for this amazing phenomenon. It reviews the literature and describes the experiences of the modern pioneers of Astral Projection and the various methods by which they achieve their results. There are not many books on this fantastic subject. Although there are descriptions that go back to ancient Egypt and India, very little was written during the rationalistic nineteenth century, when the suggestion of a soul or any other vehicle for the personality became unfashionable to all but the most devout. There were isolated cases recorded in the literature of spiritualism and psychical research, but it was not until the classic works by Oliver Fox, the Hon. Ralph Shirley, and Sylvan J. Muldoon in collaboration with Hereward Carrington, that any systematic study of the subject was possible. It was Ralph Shirley who first introduced the subject to a broad public in the pages of his fine periodical The Occult Review in August 1907, and in 1938 he published his own survey The Mystery of the Human Double (reissued University Books, 1965), presenting the case for Astral Projection at that date. In 1920, Shirley had printed Oliver Fox's pioneer account of his first-hand experiences, later writing a foreword for Fox's book Astral Projection published 1939 (since reissued by University Books). The other major work on the subject was