n mental
body. If a man thinks of another, he creates a tiny portrait in just the
same way. If his thought is merely contemplative and involves no feeling
(such as affection or dislike) or desire (such as a wish to see the person)
the thought does not usually perceptibly affect the man of whom he thinks.

If coupled with the thought of the person there is a feeling, as for
example of affection, another phenomenon occurs besides the forming of the
image. The thought of affection takes a definite form, which it builds out
of the matter of the thinker's mental body. Because of the emotion
involved, it draws round it also matter of his astral body, and thus we
have an astromental form which leaps out of the body in which it has been
generated, and moves through space towards the object of the feeling of
affection. If the thought is sufficiently strong, distance makes absolutely
no difference to it; but the thought of an ordinary person is usually weak
and diffused, and is therefore not effective outside a limited area.

When this thought-form reaches its object it discharges itself into his
astral and mental bodies, communicating to them its own rate of vibration.
Putting this in another way, a thought of love sent from one person to
another involves the actual transference of a certain amount both of force
and of matter from the sender to the recipient, and its effect upon the
recipient is to arouse the feeling of affection in him, and slightly but
permanently to increase his power of loving. But such a thought also
strengthens the power of affection in the thinker, and therefore it does
good simultaneously to both.

Every thought builds a form; if the thought be directed to another person
it travels to him; if it be distinctly selfish it remains in the immediate
neighbourhood of the thinker; if it belongs to neither of these categories
it floats for awhile in space and then slowly disintegrates. Every man
therefore is leaving behind him wherever he goes a trail of thought forms;
as we go along the street we are walking all the time amidst a sea of other
men's thoughts. If a man leaves his mind blank for a time, these residual
thoughts of others drift through it, making in most cases but little
impression upon him. Sometimes one arrives which attracts his attention, so
that his mind seizes upon it and makes it its own, strengthens it by the
addition of its force, and then casts it out again to affect somebody else.
A man