Magic Part # 3


	Here is a perfectly ordinary chair in normal incandescent light - before I turn the lights off to perform my experiment.

In the photo above I am sitting on the chair you saw in the preceding picture. The room is dark as far as the eyes ca n tell, but the photographic film "sees" an astral body! (We will speak more about astral bodies later.) If you look carefully you can see that within this energy field there are lighter colored areas which identify the crown chakra (C), the forehead chakra, the two streams of energy coming from the right and left hemispheres of the brain, the chakras in the torso, and at the base of the spine.
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In the photo below, I am sitting on the chair you saw at the top of the preceding page. (My shirt is off because the air conditioner has failed and it is uncomfortably hot in my windowless lab.) The photo on this page and the large one on the preceding page were made from the same negative. However, the one below was printed in a way to bring into visibility still other items not normally visible. The chair back should be invisible as it is separated from the camera view by at least eight inches of flesh, bone and blood. My lower right leg has "disappeared" and you can count the upholstery nailheads behind the missing knee. (We will comment on this matter of transparency later.) Please note the small white light above my crown chakra.*

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*If you are scientifically or photographically oriented, it is almost a mathematical certainty that you already have not one but several ideas for "explaining" the strange effects in these two photos! But consider these four points. First, I am not a photographic novice. I acquired my first 35 mm camera 55 years ago, and in the following half-century I have used practically every type camera and am familiar with all stages of the photographic process. Second, all qualified critics who have examined the photographic blowups have found no sign of fraud. Third, I had no motive to foul myself or any other person. Fourth, after prolonged effort to learn more about the parameters (which lie in part outside present scientific knowledge) I replicated the transparency effect under controlled conditions. (35 mm Minolta camera, Fiji 400 color print film, a source of light shorter than 400 and longer than 700 nanometers, and an 18A ratten filter.)

From the two preceding photographs you can begin to see that the physical body is not the solid mass you thought it was. Not only is it made up largely of water, which we know is highly transparent, but it is made up of almost empty space! Certain light waves passed through my "empty" body as easily as one can see through a window glass. In recent years through the advancement in our knowledge of physics, we have learned that the physical body is 99.99% empty space. All we need, to be able to see through it, is the necessary wavelength of light.
	By now you know something about the invisible energy fields of which the body is composed. You can begin to see that the real "you" is mind and spirit and not your physical body. If you can comprehend that both physi- cal body and mind are almost entirely empty space, then you can begin to understand the magic by which two things can occupy the same place at the same time.
Now I am going to stretch your mind a little further and ask you to play a game with me. You will see how seven things can occupy the same place at the same time! All of us have had the experience of standing in front of a mirror as we try on a new dress or suit. When there is a mirror in front of us and one behind us, we often see what appears to be a whole series of images extending behind us.

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Let us assume that the first image we see represents our physical body; the next one represents our etheric (or as the Russians say, bioplasmic) body; the next the astral body; then three bodies representing the three levels of our mind; and finally our spirit or soul.

	Let us now rearrange or regroup these bodies as indicated here. To the left we show our physical body and its interpenetrating etheric (or bio-plasmic) body. Let us call this electro-biochemical mechanism our "computer." Now, as we know, no computer is of any value whats- oever - not even the most expensive one devised by man - unless it has a programmer.
To the right we have pictured that bundle of energy fields we call our astral body, containing our three levels of mind and soul (or spirit). This actually serves as the programmer and is attached to the electro-biochemical mechanism through a "cord" in almost the same way that the umbilical cord connected us to our mother's body while we were afloat in the sea of salt water that you saw in an earlier illustration. While the cord in this case is invisible, it is as real as was the physical umbilical cord. As was reported 4,000 years ago in the Bible, wise men knew that when this cord was severed, as I have indicated at point C, then death of the physical body would take place.
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To develop this basic concept still further, let us use another analogy. When we were children, we experimented with cutting doll-like figures out of folded sheets of paper. In this case, as we extended the cutfigures, we have the physical and etheric body to the left and then the astral body containing the three levels of mind and the soul.
By now it is easy to grasp the idea that the portion to the right, the astral body containing the levels of mind and soul, is, in effect, the butterfly which we referred to earlier. At the moment of death, your astral package (or butterfly, if you would like to visualize it that way) is freed from the physical body and, by the greatest of magic, you are still very much alive.
Now there may be some who are thinking, "Well, that all sounds like a very fine theory for why and how survival can take place. But what actual evidence is there that it does take place?" I make no attempt in these few pages to present the full range of proof. You will be getting such evidence on the accompanying recording. Even more is reported in my book After We Die, What Then? in which the evidence is summarized under these headings: . Communications through Individual Mediumistic Persons . Deathbed, Near-Death, and Out-of-Body Experiences . Apparitions, Hauntings and Ghosts . Historical and Religious Writings . Obsession and Spirits
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And there are several other categories of research that have provided evidence of survival: "Spirit Doctors" came to our attention during the seven years we were gathering information in various parts of the world on the activities of persons called Healers. We were at first mystified when an uneducated Filipino, for example, would say that he got his information from his "Spirit Doctors." It would be quite sophisticated information about what was wrong with the patient and what treatment was required. We thought much of this was a figment of his imagination, but we gradually learned, and later reported in our book, Healers and the Healing Process, that this is a very definite reality. "Spirit Photographs" is another area of evidence of survival. As in other types of spiritualistic practice, spirit photographs sometimes involve trickery. However, we have learned that it is possible for beings in spirit to physically modify photographic film to record pictures.
Here are four valid photos in which persons in the Spirit world impinge their likeness on the picture being taken of a living person. These were among the hundreds of such photos taken over a period of 40 years by my good friend Bertha Harris, one of the truly great English mediums. (Such pictures could be obtained only when Bertha's psychic energy fields were supplemented by those of a particular type of male medium, such as Willie Hope.)
"Materialization" is by all odds the most difficult aspect of survival evidence for us to accept with our rational mind. In 1972 I organized a team of British and American scientists to go to Brazil to try to capture on video tape or movie film, evidence of materialization. For various reasons we were not successful in the 2-week period which we could spend in Brazil, but I thought you might be interested in seeing these few photographs of what I consider a successful demonstration of the phenomenon of materialization, previously accomplished by a team of 14 medical doctors, psychiatrists and lay persons in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
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