the time you're thinking it. If you don't believe, then
there's nothing to it. The thing you must think and believe is that your
body is one thing and your spirit is another thing. You are you, and
your body is something else that don't amount to shucks. Your body don't
count. You're the boss. You don't need any body. And thinking and
believing all this you proceed to prove it by using your will. You make
your body die.

"You begin with the toes, one at a time. You make your toes die. You
will them to die. And if you've got the belief and the will your toes
will die. That is the big job--to start the dying. Once you've got the
first toe dead, the rest is easy, for you don't have to do any more
believing. You know. Then you put all your will into making the rest of
the body die. I tell you, Darrell, I know. I've done it three times.

"Once you get the dying started, it goes right along. And the funny
thing is that you are all there all the time. Because your toes are dead
don't make you in the least bit dead. By-and-by your legs are dead to
the knees, and then to the thighs, and you are just the same as you
always were. It is your body that is dropping out of the game a chunk at
a time. And you are just you, the same you were before you began."

"And then what happens?" I queried.

"Well, when your body is all dead, and you are all there yet, you just
skin out and leave your body. And when you leave your body you leave the
cell. Stone walls and iron doors are to hold bodies in. They can't hold
the spirit in. You see, you have proved it. You are spirit outside of
your body. You can look at your body from outside of it. I tell you I
know because I have done it three times--looked at my body lying there
with me outside of it."

"Ha! ha! ha!" Jake Oppenheimer rapped his laughter thirteen cells away.

"You see, that's Jake's trouble," Morrell went on. "He can't believe.
That one time he tried it he was too strong and failed. And now he
thinks I am kidding."

"When you die you are dead, and dead men stay dead," Oppenheimer
retorted.

"I tell you I've been dead three times," Morrell argued.

"And lived to tell us about it," Oppenheimer jeered.

"But don't forget one thing, Darrell," Morrell rapped to me. "The thing
is ticklish. You have a feeling all the time that you are taking
liberties. I can't explain it, but I always had a feeling if I was away
when they came and let my body out