A friend of mine wrote me a letter this week and stated something that happened to her. Having read it and reread it, I thought it would be quite a lesson for tonight. She said that having tried to change others and failed, she thought the whole thing over and thought, “Well, after all, I’ll change myself, for the other is only myself pushed out. The whole vast world is myself personified.” So she began to work on freedom, that I am free. And she and a friend of hers who is here tonight too discussed freedom. Then she said a vision developed soon after that which was very disturbing. It came unexpectedly, and here I found myself flat on the ground, stretched out like a cross, face up, and all in chains. And here is my body, my physical body, chained to the ground. It would come without warning. It was not a pleasant vision to see myself there, all chained and anchored to the ground with these iron chains. And one day when it happened, I thought I would look closer, take a closer look, to find that it was not only chains, but there were locks. The whole thing was completely anchored and locked to the ground. Then I felt myself rise out of this body while it began to sink into the ground. And I rose up and up out of the body. I realized then that the body was part of the earth. It belongs to the earth; of the dust it came, and to dust it returned. And I rose up out of it. And from that day on I have never had that vision again. I feel myself free.1073 ¶1