“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Some Instructions
I Meet Miss Cunningham “Out-of-Body”

While I had a whole string of dreams along these lines, the following episode illustrates almost all of the phenomena mentioned in this session. It happened some months later, on October 19, 1966, and involved Miss Cunningham, the retired teacher. She had finally been taken to another nursing home, and once again she entered my psychic life as she withdrew more and more from ordinary concerns.

The next thing I knew, I was out in the living room having some difficulty standing on the floor, but bumping up and down a few feet above the rug. This, in itself, should have told me that I was out of my body, but the realization didn’t come. As I stood there, trying to figure out what was going on, I heard someone at the door. In came Miss Cunningham, wearing a nightgown and robe. She was mumbling and crying to herself, confused and disoriented. “Mrs. Butts? Mrs. Butts?” she kept saying, exactly as she used to when she came to me for help.

The room was dark, normal in every way, lit to some degree by the streetlights outside. At first I thought that Miss C. was sleepwalking and was worried about awakening her. Something else confused me. I heard very dim jazz music and couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. Miss C. was hardly the type to carry a small transistor radio in her robe pocket.

I stood there a moment, wondering how she got in, and decided that I must have left the door unlocked. But how to get her back to her own apartment, I wondered? I completely forgot that she had moved. Now I stood by the bathroom door. She came closer, muttering under her breath, and for a moment the two of us were clearly delineated by the streetlight. Our eyes met. Instantly I realized that I was out of my body, and so was she. Miss C. gave a deep, frightened gasp and disappeared. Instantly, I opened my eyes to find myself in bed, body and all. I was as bewildered as I’ve ever been. Only one split second ago I’d been in the living room.

Quickly I got up and rushed out to the other room. No one was there. It was 12:30 P.M. I sat down and wrote down the experience and the earlier dreams. As I wrote, I heard dim music. It was coming from the apartment upstairs, and it was exactly the same kind I’d heard earlier. With some excitement I went back to the bedroom. It was quiet and still there. The music could only be heard where I’d met Miss Cunningham.

I’m convinced that I left my body when I decided to go into the living room, and met Miss C. who was traveling in her dream body, wandering about in her old surroundings and coming in for help as she used to do. Unfortunately, my critical sense was fully awakened only toward the end of the experience, though I made several valiant efforts to understand my condition.

Ruburt’s experience with your Miss Cunningham was quite legitimate. He used a most advantageous method of projection without knowing that he did so, and I highly recommend this method to you both. When you awaken — or seem to waken — in the middle of the night, try to get out of the body. Simply try to get out of bed without moving the body and go into another room.

You must want to do this, however. Often, you do not want to see the body by itself, so to speak, and so choose methods that make this more difficult. Just this one exercise will sharpen your control greatly. It is an ABC. This experience is also less startling to the ego than a more abrupt projection, and the ordinary nature of the activities — walking into the next room, for example — will be reassuring. You are more calm in your own surroundings. Of course, Ruburt was out of his body when he saw Miss Cunningham, who was in the same condition.