ated immense thought-forms, working as it were on a
new plane of matter whose resources were inexhaustible.

That night I built my ideal bungalow and when I had finished it I
constructed my ideal garden. And then I made a sea and a coast-line, and
when it was finished it was so real to me that I actually seemed to go
into its rooms, sit on the verandah, breathe in its sea-airs and listen
to the surf below its cliff. I remember that one of its rooms did not
please me entirely, and that I seemed to pull it down--in thought--and
reconstruct it according to my wish. This took time, for brick by brick
I thought the new room into existence. One law that governed that state
was easy to grasp, for whatever you did not think out clearly assumed a
blurred unsatisfactory form. It became clear to me as early as that
first night of immortality that the more familiar a man was with matter
on the earth and its ways and possibilities, the more easily could he
make his constructions on that plan of thought.

The whole of that night I lay in this state of creative joy and I know
that my body remained motionless. It seemed that only a film divided me
from the use of my limbs, but that film was definite. At eight o'clock
on that morning, I became aware of a vague feeling of strain. It was a
very slight sensation, but its effect was to make the thoughts that
occupied my consciousness to become less definite. I had to make an
effort to keep them distinct. The strain slowly became greater. It had
begun with a sense of distance, but it seemed to get nearer, and I
experienced a feeling that I can only compare to as that which a man has
when he is losing his balance and about to fall.

The strain ended suddenly. I found myself moving my limbs. I opened my
eyes and looked round. The graphic, visible quality of my thoughts had
now vanished. I was awake.

I have given the above account of the night of an Immortal, because it
has seemed to me right that some record should be left of the effect of
the germ on the mind. I would explain the inherent power of thought as
being due to the freedom from the ordinary desires of mortals, which
waste and dissipate the energies of the mind ... but of that I cannot be
certain.

CHAPTER XXV

OUR FLIGHT

I got out of bed and began to examine my clothes. They were strewn about
the floor and on chairs. The colour of them seemed peculiar to my
senses. My frock coat, of heavy black material, with cur