Dr. Robert Crookall has assembled a collection of accounts by people who have experienced a temporary but usually stable state of consciousness independent of the physical body. These experiences are not restricted to any particular gender, age, ethnic background, religious affiliation, time of day, climate, education level, period of history, country of origin, nor political affiliation. They include variations beyond the typical “I went to sleep then came to full awareness while outside the physical body” which is often in clear distinction to lucid dreaming. Although one can be in an “ordinary” dream and make a transition to a state of lucid dreaming this is to be distinguished from conscious (or otherwise) projection in which one is fully aware -- including self-aware -- with a clarity equal to any experienced while inhabiting the physical body. There is a great deal of literature, interest and effort these days aimed at helping people become proficient in lucid dreaming. But lucid dreaming is to be distinguished from conscious projection of the subtle body.

This book could be considered somewhat of a classic in the literature not only because of the year it was written but also because the number of reported examples is extensive and the context they are placed in is very broad. This does not mean each example is not without detailed specifics however and each account is categorized into one of the following types: natural out-of-the-body experiences (which I’ll abbreviate as “OOBE” for simplicity), and enforced OOBEs. Of the first “class” there are sub-categories that include: people who nearly died, who were very ill, who were exhausted, who were quite well. Of the enforced kind of OOBEs we find first- and second-hand accounts of episodes caused by anesthetics, suffocation, falling or hypnosis. Crookall doesn’t stop there however; he goes on to examine the history of the subjects, looks at dreams and the environments they occur in, and relates accounts of dreams individuals have of friends and relatives who have died as well as dreams of living and dead individuals the subjects have never met before.

The book contains nine appendices most of which I consider worth reading. The least authentic and more troubling are accounts, opinions, observations and interpretations given by individuals considered mediums. Such people existed in quite a few numbers at one time, especially during the heyday of spiritualism and seances. I consider most if not all of these untrustworthy. They are often in direct contradiction to the frequently verified classical literature from eastern esoteric yogic sources and come off as being naïve and poorly informed.

On the plus side I found the appendix on thoughts to suggest much more and in-depth investigation and research needs to be done on the topic. In our daily lives most of us are quite able to distinguish between our physical environment and thoughts we are having in our minds. It is quite common however for people to become so engrossed in their thinking that they don’t pay attention to their surroundings and even often don’t see objects right before their physical eyes. There is no reason to believe this kind of mental function does not also occur while one is absent from the physical body at night. This can easily lead to the countless juxtapositions, or superpositions, of internal thought images with sights of objects around oneself and then occurs the very common instance of afterwards recalling a dream as being a mash-up of very unlike things.

In gathering accounts of OOBEs the author made systematic efforts to determine whether someone relating an experience was previously acquainted with concepts that could have biased her or his viewpoint. Since spiritualism was prevalent at that time and there was considerable literature available it was always possible someone had read something and then interpreted an ordinary dream so as to elevate it to OOBE status when in fact it was not. Crookall used a questionnaire to screen participants. It is included in the book. This could serve as a reference for constructing new questionnaires for new research.

It is interesting to note on page 138 an account is given of use of light filters coated with calcium sulphide. To investigate whether a hypnotized individual’s subtle form could be detected investigators set up these screens in proximity of a test subject claiming the ability to externalize consciousness from the physical body. At a certain point after the experiment began the detectors fluoresced. When questioned afterwards the account given by the “dreamer” of movements around the experimental space corresponded with activity showing in the detectors. If this is a true and accurate account, then the experiment bears repeating in depth and with variations. Coatings of calcium sulfide are inexpensive and relatively easy to prepare.[i] [ii] The absorption peak in the first paper referenced here shows to be around 325nm or in the near ultraviolet, so beyond the range of human eyesight. This suggests the filter will have a peak sensitivity to EM radiation of that wavelength and corresponds to an energy of around 3.8 eV. That suggests one is dealing with a photon having that energy or an energetic particle having at least 3.8eV. Such values could point a researcher in the direction of energetic phenomena directly related to an externalized subtle body.

As this was not Crookall’s first book on the subject he had previously developed a language and terminology in conjunction with other researchers or authors which he used throughout the book. This included terms such as “paradise” or “Hades” to refer to environments that were either uniformly luminous and well-lit, populated by individuals usually in a state of ease and well-being, or individuals experiencing some mental moral or emotional complications while inhabiting an environment having hazy, dark, murky conditions. Use of these religiously and culturally charged terms I believe introduces a level of mental noise that interferes with the reader’s hearing the accounts in as clear and clean a way as possible so he can learn and judge for himself. The text would have been aided enormously by inclusion of a separate glossary in which the definitions of terms used could be found in one place and serve as a helpful reference. In many cases different states of a subtle body – or an astral body – are interspersed with references to an intermediate body that stays close to the physical body. Different terms used for these two forms are often used interchangeably with little cross referencing and can tend to make a muddle of things. Were there related terms described in a separate short introduction and then a single terminology used for each item the reader’s journey would be greatly helped.

Furthermore, in almost all accounts Crookall inserts bracketed comments in the text and makes interpretations and inserts his explanations (and in some cases bias) of what’s occurring such that it constantly interferes and prevents an uninterrupted reading. I found this ultimately annoying and took to skipping everything inserted in square brackets. At the very least he could have made footnotes instead; chapter endnotes although themselves annoying would have interfered with the reader the least.

Overall however I have to say despite the various challenges mentioned above this text is a landmark for its time and continues to this day to serve as a foundational aid in education and practical application. A reader well-educated in these subjects who also has a practical and common-sense approach – as well as a healthy ability to discriminate assumptions and fabrications in some areas – will find it a useful resource when constructing a framework to interpret and extend our knowledge of extension of human consciousness beyond the confines of the physical body.