“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The next thing I knew, I had the feeling that I was hovering in our dark bathroom. We close the door between the bath and living room to keep Willie, our cat, in the living room at night. I was before the closed door, but wasn’t able to penetrate it. I felt no fear or panic. Although I was awake while sleeping and definitely projecting, I didn’t realize this at first. The fact slowly dawned on me. This was the first time that the fear element wasn’t present for me. I had no actual memory of leaving my body, and I must have fallen off into normal sleep for a moment, because the next thing I knew, I found myself out of my body, hovering just above my sleeping physical image.

Physically, I was sleeping flat on my back with my hands down at my sides. My astral body was in the same approximate position, perhaps six inches above. The state and sensation were remarkably steady and pleasant. I felt fully awake, aware of what I was doing and quite free and weightless. I knew I wasn’t dreaming. At the time I remembered asking Jane in the past how you could distinguish between dream projection and dreams. The difference is obvious, when you have the experience at first hand.

I was particularly aware of my lower astral legs, hovering above the physical ones, and took great pleasure in wiggling them about, enjoying the marvelous sense of freedom and lightness they possessed. I knew my physical legs couldn’t move this freely, although they are in good condition. My astral legs felt rubbery, so loose and flexible! I could see that they were light-colored, translucent from the knees down — this without my sitting up in my astral form to see them.

I don’t know if I would have succeeded in getting further or not because now Jane said to me, ‘Hon, you’re snoring. Turn over.’ I heard her very clearly. … That ended it. I had no further success, although the pleasant aura surrounding the episode lingered. The whole time I felt that so much was possible with the state, that just beyond my ability at this moment lay wonderful accomplishments. … At no time did I see the astral cord.

(From his notes:) I was pounding some nails with a hammer, working on some frames. Actually, I’d been cutting masonite and gluing canvas on panels all day. I felt the hammer, saw the nails.

I worked at my drawing table. The light was on, and the windows dark. It was clearly nighttime. After a moment I realized that I wasn’t supposed to be in the studio, that I had just gone to bed and should be in the living room. As soon as I made this connection, I snapped back to my body. Jane was beside me, so she had just come to bed. I knew I had not been dreaming and felt a most peculiar sense of suspension and ease.

I was still walking very slowly, with my astral eyes slitted to cut down the focus of distractions. I closed them to deepen my trance and reached out for the bathroom doorknob. I felt it hard and round, perfectly normal in my astral hand. Then I paused in uncertainty; something didn’t seem right. What had I done wrong now? I opened my astral eyes fully and stared down at my hand. It circled a ‘knob’ of air. For just another moment I felt the hardness, the bulk of that knob. Then only air was there. Obviously, I’d hallucinated the doorknob. The door was still several feet away. Disappointed with myself, I returned to my body, determined to plan out a new course of action.

Between the first episode and the second, I was fully alert, awake in my astral body, but still connected with the physical one. In this state I experienced what I can only call ecstasy, involving the entire body. While the feeling was not localized, it certainly felt strongly sexual in nature, and when I left my body, there was a moment when this continued very intensely.

As I fell off to sleep I had been thinking of Congress Park in Saratoga Springs, New York. Suddenly, I became aware that I had begun a projection, but I wasn’t sure exactly how far the process had gone. I found myself seeing Congress Park very clearly, for example, yet I wasn’t there yet, and my head kept throbbing in a way that wasn’t physical — as if I heard rather than felt the throbs. This was accompanied by a buzzing noise and other loud sounds that I now accept as characteristic of certain kinds of projection. My head felt full of a white light. Everything in my astral visions was opaque white, instead of dark.

At this point the pulsations of the white light inside my head quickened and grew very powerful. I felt for a moment as if my consciousness could really be swept away or as if I could really have difficulty getting back to my body. I kept “testing” the strength of the light during the whole experience, and each time decided to continue despite it. Now I decided I’d better return.

It all started when I turned over to switch on the light next to the bed. It flashed a bright red color which I thought strange and unaccountable. I got up to go to the bathroom, but when I began to walk, I felt very dizzy. When I reached the door, I had the odd feeling that I’d left something behind me. When I looked back toward the body, I nearly flipped. I sure had left something — my body! Then I realized that I was in my astral form.

Then I remembered that on first going to bed, I’d felt that someone was in the room. Right then, Sue Mullin [later Carl’s wife] now appeared, out of thin air. When I saw her, I suggested that we both go to Jane’s house to let her know we were out-of-body, but Sue wanted to talk instead. We talked for some time, but now I can’t remember the conversation. I kept watching my body on the bed. It changed position, lying on its back. Before it had faced the window. I was particularly interested in the eyes. Either the shadow in the room was freaking me out or the eyes were wide open but blank. When I turned around to Sue again, she was gone.