tance of his higher bodies, interpenetrating each
other, and extending beyond the confines of his physical body, the
smallest of all. They know also that two of these bodies, the mental and
desire bodies, are those chiefly concerned with the appearance of what
are called thought-forms. But in order that the matter may be made clear
for all, and not only for students already acquainted with theosophical
teachings, a recapitulation of the main facts will not be out of place.

Man, the Thinker, is clothed in a body composed of innumerable
combinations of the subtle matter of the mental plane, this body being
more or less refined in its constituents and organised more or less
fully for its functions, according to the stage of intellectual
development at which the man himself has arrived. The mental body is an
object of great beauty, the delicacy and rapid motion of its particles
giving it an aspect of living iridescent light, and this beauty becomes
an extraordinarily radiant and entrancing loveliness as the intellect
becomes more highly evolved and is employed chiefly on pure and sublime
topics. Every thought gives rise to a set of correlated vibrations in
the matter of this body, accompanied with a marvellous play of colour,
like that in the spray of a waterfall as the sunlight strikes it, raised
to the _n_th degree of colour and vivid delicacy. The body under this
impulse throws off a vibrating portion of itself, shaped by the nature
of the vibrations--as figures are made by sand on a disk vibrating to a
musical note--and this gathers from the surrounding atmosphere matter
like itself in fineness from the elemental essence of the mental world.
We have then a thought-form pure and simple, and it is a living entity
of intense activity animated by the one idea that generated it. If made
of the finer kinds of matter, it will be of great power and energy, and
may be used as a most potent agent when directed by a strong and steady
will. Into the details of such use we will enter later.

When the man's energy flows outwards towards external objects of desire,
or is occupied in passional and emotional activities, this energy works
in a less subtle order of matter than the mental, in that of the astral
world. What is called his desire-body is composed of this matter, and it
forms the most prominent part of the aura in the undeveloped man. Where
the man is of a gross type, the desire-body is of the denser matter of
the astral plan