This exercise can help to develop a sense of the continuity of consciousness across the threshold to the next world. It begins with the inner imagination that we are in our bodies looking out at a starry sky. We imagine that our soul is expanding outwards towards the stars. It is expanding in a circle. That is we try to imagine that our soul when it leaves our body spreads out to the right and left of our body in a circle. The first part of the exercise involves seeing the circle spreading out right and left from our position. This is a difficult step and brings with it some fairly unpleasant experiences as if we were seeing ourselves become nothing. The part of the soul that is connected most intimately with the body will struggle to maintain the perspective in which we are the center of concentric circles. It takes spiritual will to maintain the imagination that we can expand our awareness around the circumference of a vast circle.

However once we can maintain this imagination it is possible to feel a very complete sense of silence and peace while our consciousness is expanded along the circle. Into that silence place the image of your body and its daily consciousness waiting at the center of the circle for you to come back to it. This thought usually brings us back right into our bodies. To prevent having a shock when you enter your physical body, practice consciously gliding back into your body while simultaneously maintaining the integrity of the circle in your consciousness. It helps to see your body in the center as an axis or hub of the circle. As a variation try to circle around your body as you observe it from the periphery of the circle. 

Once the imagination of yourself extended along the periphery of the circle can be maintained try to hold on to both the sense of having a body in the center of the circle and simultaneously imagining that your soul is extended along the periphery of the circle. Alternate this viewpoint with the imagination that you are in the center of the circle looking out at yourself as the circumference of the circle.

This exercise has great value for developing a feeling of being centered no matter what the situation we find ourselves in.