It is exactly what we should expect to happen, granted
the double identity. In a painless and natural process the
lighter disengages itself from the heavier, and slowly draws
itself off until it stands with the same mind, the same emotions,
and an exactly similar body, beside the couch of death, aware of
those around and yet unable to make them aware of it, save where
that finer spiritual eyesight called clairvoyance exists. How,
we may well ask, can it see without the natural organs? How did
the hashish victim see his own unconscious body? How did the
Florida doctor see his friend? There is a power of perception in
the spiritual body which does give the power. We can say no
more. To the clairvoyant the new spirit seems like a filmy
outline. To the ordinary man it is invisible. To another spirit
it would, no doubt, seem as normal and substantial as we appear
to each other. There is some evidence that it refines with time,
and is therefore nearer to the material at the moment of death or
closely after it, than after a lapse of months or years. Hence,
it is that apparitions of the dead are most clear and most common
about the time of death, and hence also, no doubt, the fact that
the cataleptic physician already quoted was seen and
recognised by his friend. The meshes of his ether, if the phrase
be permitted, were still heavy with the matter from which they
had only just been disentangled.
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