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Vol. III, 1997-2002
The Nature of....
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of M. Charles Lensenin, and later expanded that chapter into an independent work. In 1927, he received letters from Sylvan Muldoon who for long years had the experiences of the projection of astral body, all of which were conveyed to him. Some of these experiences were unknown to Lensenin. Carrington analysed this data and in 1974 published his results under the joint authorship with Muldoon in a book entitled The Projection of Astral Body. Herein he presented the evidence of the existence of the astral body as also the causal body covered by the former24. And in 1985, Kyriaco C. Markidas of the University of Maine published the material he had gathered in four separate periods between 1978 and 198325. He has clarified that his researches should be considered as a phenominological study of a spiritual healer and his close associates; it is not a study in parapsychology, since his focus is not to tent or ascertain the empirical validity of paranormal phenomena. Instead, he has tried to present as accurately as possible the world as experienced by the subjects themselves, he himself being an active participant within this group of healers26 William Tiller, the Head of the Department of Material Sciences in the Stanford Research Institute of California, has carried out researches in the seven levels or layers of the Being of every man. He calls these as Physical (P), Etheric (E), Astral (A), Mind (M', M2, M) and Spirit (S), and coördinates these with the seven cakras, nerves spreading out from the spinal cords, veins, and the ductless glands-pineal, pituitary, thyroid, thymus, adrenal, leaden and gonads27. George Meek of the Metascience Laboratory in California confirms these researches by his independent investigations (These, in essence, are regarding the state of the soul after death of the body in which it lived during its lifetime.) Notable men like Eugene Field (1850-1895), Rufus Jones (1863-1948), Mary Roberts Rhinehart (? - 1958), Dorothy Parker (1893-1967), Alan Seeger (1888-1916), Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950), F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940), and Kathleen Norris (1880-1976) were the members of a team of authors, artists, composers, poets and religious leaders, who were by then dead but living in the worlds of Spirits; they coöperated with the laboratary scientists like Sarah Gran, Hans Heckmann, John Paul Jones and Lillian Scott under the leadership of George W. Meek and Dr. Jesse Herman Holmes (1864-1942) who acted as their spokesman in revealing many secrets of the spiritual world which is supra-sensual and beyond the reach of our empirical means of valid knowledge or of the scientific instruments of physical sciences29.
V
Scientific Researches on Life in the Astral Dimension
Muldoon has shown that the astral body is constituted of life-force (prāna) and the presence of this vital force and the existence of an individual human spirit, withdraws more or less completely from the physical body during the hours of sleep, resulting in the discoincidence to the extent of one to six inches, and derives spiritual invigoration
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