ess working in the
physical brain, the instrument over which we have complete control, is
continually at work contacting the outer world, using the brain as an
instrument on which it can play, and continually bringing down from
higher worlds impressions which it transmits more or less perfectly
to the physical plane, we need not dwell upon our ordinary thinking.
Let us take thinking a little more unusual, where the finer part of
the brain, its etheric matter, is being more largely vitalised, more
definitely used. The powers of the imagination--the creative
power--the artistic powers, all creative in their nature, these
utilise most the ethers of the brain, and, by working in those, bring
into activity the lower and coarser matter of the dense brain. Now,
the thought passes from the consciousness through vehicle after
vehicle to find its clear expression here. But do you not have many
mental impressions that are not clear, not well defined, and yet which
impress you deeply, and of which you feel sure? They are of many
kinds, and reach you in many ways. What is important to you is simply
this for the moment: that being surrounded by the astral and mental
worlds, contacts from these are continually touching you, continually
causing changes in your consciousness. If your astral body were
thoroughly organised like your physical, the impressions made would be
clear and sharp like the physical. If your mental body were well
organised, the impressions of that plane, the heavenly plane, would be
clear and sharp like the physical. But as the astral and mental bodies
at this stage of evolution are not well organised, the impressions
received by them, causing changes in the consciousness, are vague and
indeterminate, and it is these which are generally called "psychic."
And when you have a Psychical Research Society, it is not dealing with
the ordinary processes of thought, but with those which are not
ordinary; and all those things to which it gives many strange names
are all workings of the consciousness, in sheaths or bodies of which
it has not yet gained the mastery, which it has not yet definitely
organised for its purposes. Slowly and gradually they become
organised, and strenuous thinking is the method for the astral body,
and the working of the pure reason is the method for the mental body.
Let us consider with regard to this, whether there is any other way of
bringing the astral body and mental body into activity. For you m