necessarily be a strong one, and it
therefore employs a larger proportion of the matter of the mental body,
so that though the form is small and compressed when it leaves the
thinker, it draws round it a considerable amount of astral matter, and
usually expands to life-size before it appears at its destination.

2. That which takes the image of some material object. When a man thinks
of his friend he forms within his mental body a minute image of that
friend, which often passes outward and usually floats suspended in the
air before him. In the same way if he thinks of a room, a house, a
landscape, tiny images of these things are formed within the mental body
and afterwards externalised. This is equally true when he is exercising
his imagination; the painter who forms a conception of his future
picture builds it up out of the matter of his mental body, and then
projects it into space in front of him, keeps it before his mind's eye,
and copies it. The novelist in the same way builds images of his
character in mental matter, and by the exercise of his will moves these
puppets from one position or grouping to another, so that the plot of
his story is literally acted out before him. With our curiously inverted
conceptions of reality it is hard for us to understand that these mental
images actually exist, and are so entirely objective that they may
readily be seen by the clairvoyant, and can even be rearranged by some
one other than their creator. Some novelists have been dimly aware of
such a process, and have testified that their characters when once
created developed a will of their own, and insisted on carrying the plot
of the story along lines quite different from those originally intended
by the author. This has actually happened, sometimes because the
thought-forms were ensouled by playful nature-spirits, or more often
because some 'dead' novelist, watching on the astral plane the
development of the plan of his fellow-author, thought that he could
improve upon it, and chose this method of putting forward his
suggestions.

3. That which takes a form entirely its own, expressing its inherent
qualities in the matter which it draws round it. Only thought-forms of
this third class can usefully be illustrated, for to represent those of
the first or second class would be merely to draw portraits or
landscapes. In those types we have the plastic mental or astral matter
moulded in imitation of forms belonging to the physical