The Mouthpiece of Zitu

Elsewhere, I have told the full details of my meeting and

acquaintanceship with that strangest of all men, Jason Croft. I am Dr.

George Murray, in charge of the Mental Hospital in a Western state. It

began when his housekeeper came to me one night, in great agitation, and

induced me to come with her to Croft's house. I found him in a state of

deep trance, and Mrs. Goss said he had been thus for a week.

My own private studies had been such as to give me some indication of

what Croft's condition might be, and a glance over the esoteric contents

of the bookshelves in his library confirmed my suspicions. It was a

long, difficult task but I managed to bring him out of what he

acknowledged to be a state of astral projection, that strange state,

little understood by Western people but well known to the East, wherein a

person's consciousness can separate itself from the physical body and

wander afield at will. I knew of it from my studies, but had never

encountered it before.

Croft told me that his "astral body" had been on a far world, Palos, a

planet in the system of the Dog Star, Sirius, and that he must return

there at once. He asked me to come and see him the next afternoon, when,

he promised, he would tell me the full story and show how I could assist

him in a most difficult situation. Realizing that he was in full control

of his faculties, I agreed and left him, assuring his frightened

housekeeper that all was well.

The next day, Croft told me of his life, his studies, his travels, his

meetings with adepts where he learned the technique of astral

projection--an art which we of the West unfortunately associate with

superstition and delusion. He had carried it much farther than any of his

teachers, for actually, there are no spatial limits to the extent one can

travel in the entire universe once this technique is mastered. He said

that, from childhood, he had felt himself drawn to Sirius.