n aware of the
existence of the other, and yet the two accounts are so alike as to be
practically the same.[2]

[2] Vide Appendix II.

The message upon these points seems to me to be infinitely reassuring,
whether we regard our own fate or that of our friends. The departed
all agree that passing is usually both easy and painless, and followed
by an enormous reaction of peace and ease. The individual finds
himself in a spirit body, which is the exact counterpart of his old
one, save that all disease, weakness, or deformity has passed from it.
This body is standing or floating beside the old body, and conscious
both of it and of the surrounding people. At this moment the dead man
is nearer to matter than he will ever be again, and hence it is that at
that moment the greater part of those cases occur where, his thoughts
having turned to someone in the distance, the spirit body went with the
thoughts and was manifest to the person. Out of some 250 cases
carefully examined by Mr. Gurney, 134 of such apparitions were actually
at this moment of dissolution, when one could imagine that the new
spirit body was possibly so far material as to be more visible to a
sympathetic human eye than it would later become.

These cases, however, are very rare in comparison with the total number
of deaths. In most cases I imagine that the dead man is too
preoccupied with his own amazing experience to have much thought for
others. He soon finds, to his surprise, that though he endeavours to
communicate with those whom he sees, his ethereal voice and his
ethereal touch are equally unable to make any impression upon those
human organs which are only attuned to coarser stimuli. It is a fair
subject for speculation, whether a fuller knowledge of those light rays
which we know to exist on either side of the spectrum, or of those
sounds which we can prove by the vibrations of a diaphragm to exist,
although they are too high for mortal ear, may not bring us some
further psychical knowledge. Setting that aside, however, let us
follow the fortunes of the departing spirit. He is presently aware
that there are others in the room besides those who were there in life,
and among these others, who seem to him as substantial as the living,
there appear familiar faces, and he finds his hand grasped or his lips
kissed by those whom he had loved and lost. Then in their company, and
with the help and guidance of some more radiant being who has stoo