sh
between them. However, in this lesson I shall endeavor to bring out the
characteristics of astral body visioning, that the student may learn to
distinguish them from those of the ordinary clairvoyant astral visioning,
and recognize them when he experiences them.

The main points of distinction are these: When visioning clairvoyantly by
means of the astral senses, as described in the preceding chapters of this
book, the clairvoyant usually perceives the scene, person or event as a
picture on a flat surface. It is true that there is generally a perfect
perspective, similar to that of a good stereoscopic view, or that of a
high-grade moving picture photograph--the figures "stand out," and do not
appear "flat" as in the case of an ordinary photograph; but still at the
best it is like looking at a moving picture, inasmuch as the whole scene
is all in front of you. Visioning in the astral body, on the contrary,
gives you an "all around" view of the scene. That is to say, in such case
you see the thing just as you would were you there in your physical
body--you see in front of you; on the sides of you, out of the corner of
your eye; if you turn your head, you may see in any direction; and you may
turn around and see what is happening behind you. In the first case you
are merely gazing at an astral picture in front of you; while in the
second place you are ACTUALLY THERE IN PERSON.

There are some limitations to this "seeing all around" when in the astral
body, however, which I should note in passing. For instance, if when in
the astral body you examine the akashic records of the past, or else peer
into the scenes of the future, you will see these things merely as a
picture, and will not be conscious of being present personally in the
scene. (An apparent exception is to be noted here, also, viz., if your
past-time visioning includes the perception of yourself in a former
incarnation, you may be conscious of living and acting in your former
personality; again, if you are psychometrizing from fossil remains, or
anything concerned with a living creature of the past, you may "take on"
the mental or emotional conditions of that creature, and seem to sense
things from the inside, rather than from the outside. This, of course, is
also a characteristic of the ordinary clairvoyant vision of the past.) But
when, in the astral body, you perceive a present-time scene in space, you
are, to all intents and purposes, an actual participant-