plain. What is really done by the student who adopts this
method is not so much the setting in motion of a current in astral
matter, as the erection of a kind of temporary telephone through it.

It is impossible here to give an exhaustive disquisition on astral
physics, even had I the requisite knowledge to write it; all I need
say is that it is possible to make in astral matter a definite
connecting-line that shall act as a telegraph-wire to convey
vibrations by means of which all that is going on at the other end of
it may be seen. Such a line is established, be it understood, not by a
direct projection through space of astral matter, but by such action
upon a line (or rather many lines) of particles of that matter as
will render them capable of forming a conductor for vibrations of the
character required.

This preliminary action can be set up in two ways--either by the
transmission of energy from particle to particle, until the line is
formed, or by the use of a force from a higher plane which is capable
of acting upon the whole line simultaneously. Of course this latter
method implies far greater development, since it involves the
knowledge of (and the power to use) forces of a considerably higher
level; so that the man who could make his line in this way would not,
for his own use, need a line at all, since he could see far more
easily and completely by means of an altogether higher faculty.

Even the simpler and purely astral operation is a difficult one to
describe, though quite an easy one to perform. It may be said to
partake somewhat of the nature of the magnetization of a bar of steel;
for it consists in what we might call the polarization, by an effort
of the human will, of a number of parallel lines of astral atoms
reaching from the operator to the scene which he wishes to observe.
All the atoms thus affected are held for the time with their axes
rigidly parallel to one another, so that they form a kind of temporary
tube along which the clairvoyant may look. This method has the
disadvantage that the telegraph line is liable to disarrangement or
even destruction by any sufficiently strong astral current which
happens to cross its path; but if the original effort of will were
fairly definite, this would be a contingency of only infrequent
occurrence.

The view of a distant scene obtained by means of this "astral current"
is in many ways not unlike that seen through a telescope. Human
figures usually app