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The Mystical Life – J H M Whiteman

(August 1931) I was lying down with my eyes shut, in a relaxed but objectively watchful state, when, without any process of separation. I became aware of being in a state of complete release. The 'strait-jacket' of the physical body had fallen away and left me with a vivid but general sense of being in a proper mind-form, restful and satisfying to the heart.

In that state I was lying nearly on my front, with my left arm on the pillow and my head turned the same way, as in the physical world, so that if nothing further had happened I might possibly have thought that I had merely become dissociated, without actually being taken into another world and body. Almost at once, however. I saw myself in that pose, as a person standing about three feet away would have seen me. The effect was therefore partly as if I were seeing through the eyes of another person.

But I was not conscious of any human form or feelings at that point, and the intimate union between seeing and feeling was such that the seeing seemed to be within my own proper body still on the bed, that is, within the very body I was seeing.

In this way I was able to see clearly and vividly my left arm and hair, exactly in the pose in which I felt myself to be, but nothing like my physical appearance. I seemed to be aged about 12 or 13 years, with glossy hair of a golden shade lying in loose waves nearly down to the shoulders; my left arm and shoulder were bare.

The extraordinary beauty and entire fittingness of everything filled me (in that body) with joy and gratitude, but hardly gave surprise, on account of the correspondence between the appearance and the way I felt, so that it never occurred to me to doubt that it was really myself.