who live and move beyond all conditions of matter imaginable by us,
but pure Spirit is at present as inconceivable by us as pure matter.
And as in dealing with possible "communications" we have average human
beings as recipients, we may as well exclude the word Spirit as much
as possible, and so get rid of ambiguity. But in quotations the word
often occurs, in deference to the habit of the day, and it then
denotes the Ego.

Taking the stages through which the living man passes after "Death",
or the shaking off of the body, we can readily classify the
communications that may be received, or the appearances that may be
seen:

I. While the Soul has shaken off only the dense body, and remains
still clothed in the etheric double. This is a brief period only, but
during it the disembodied Soul may show itself, clad in this ethereal
garment.

For a very short period after death, while the incorporeal
principles remain within the sphere of our earth's
attraction, it is _possible_ for spirit, under _peculiar_ and
_favourable_ conditions, to appear.[43]

It makes no communications during this brief interval, nor while
dwelling in this form. Such "ghosts" are silent, dreamy, like
sleep-walkers, and indeed they are nothing more than astral
sleep-walkers. Equally irresponsive, but capable of expressing a
single thought, as of sorrow, anxiety, accident, murder, &c., are
apparitions which are merely a thought of the dying, taking shape in
the astral world, and carried by the dying person's will to some