Page:The astral world, higher occult powers; (IA astralworldhighe00tiff).pdf/124

 electricity, and I have electricity in my system. There is magnetism, and I have magnetism. There is a life-principle expanding all over the world, and I am in communication with that vital medium, and through it exert a vital influence upon others, and they upon me. This process of healing by mesmerizing is only coming into rapport, so that the vital forces of the healthy person enter in and strengthen the vital forces of the weak. Then there is a nerve-media existing around and in the individual, through which the pains of others are communicated to him. Pain in another causes an action in this nerve-medium which communicates the pain to me; just as my voice causes a vibration of the physical atmosphere, which action is communicated to your organs of hearing. The sounds I produce have certain meanings attached to them. If you understand them precisely as I do, you get a perfect communication. But any description in natural language of a pain would be inadequate. But when I receive it myself, I have in every respect an adequate idea of it. Very often, standing near individuals, I have told them what difficulties they were laboring under by experiencing them in myself. It is in this manner that clairvoyants frequently tell what ails their patient.

If I go on and describe your pains, there is nothing astonishing in it. I am simply in rapport with your nerve-medium. I am sometimes wondered at for this, but I might be a fool and yet do it. There is no wisdom involved in such a power; and it is erroneous to suppose, as some do, that because clairvoyants can tell them what ails them, they can tell them how to cure it. These powers belong to very different classes, but