visible into two great classes--those whom we call the living, and
those others, most of them infinitely more alive, whom we so foolishly
misname the dead. Among the former he will find here and there one
wide awake and fully conscious, perhaps sent to bring him some
message, or examining him keenly to see what progress he is making;
while the majority of his neighbours, when away from their physical
bodies during sleep, will drift idly by, so wrapped up in their own
cogitations as to be practically unconscious of what is going on
around them.

Among the great host of the recently dead he will find all degrees of
consciousness and intelligence, and all shades of character--for
death, which seems to our limited vision so absolute a change, in
reality alters nothing of the man himself. On the day after his death
he is precisely the same man as he was the day before it, with the
same disposition, the same qualities, the same virtues and vices, save
only that he has cast aside his physical body; but the loss of that no
more makes him in any way a different man than would the removal of an
overcoat. So among the dead our student will find men intelligent and
stupid, kind-hearted and morose, serious and frivolous,
spiritually-minded and sensually-minded, just as among the living.

Since he can not only see the dead, but speak with them, he can often
be of very great use to them, and give them information and guidance
which is of the utmost value to them. Many of them are in a condition
of great surprise and perplexity, and sometimes even of acute
distress, because they find the facts of the next world so unlike the
childish legends which are all that popular religion in the West has
to offer with reference to this transcendently important subject; and
therefore a man who understands this new world and can explain matters
is distinctly a friend in need.

In many other ways a man who fully possesses this faculty may be of
use to the living as well as to the dead; but of this side of the
subject I have already written in my little book on _Invisible
Helpers_. In addition to astral entities he will see astral
corpses--shades and shells in all stages of decay; but these need only
be just mentioned here, as the reader desiring a further account of
them will find it in our third and fifth manuals.

Another wonderful result which the full enjoyment of astral
clairvoyance brings to a man is that he has no longer any break in
cons