Every living thing is a dynamic focus.
A dynamic focus tends ever to propagate the motion which is proper to it.
Propagated motion becomes transformed according to the medium it traverses. A force may be transmitted or transformed.
In an identical medium there is only transmission.
In a different medium there is transformation.
A dynamic nucleus, in propagating its motion, sends it out in every direction; but this transmission becomes perceptible only on the lines of least resistance.
A process that is at once chemical, physical, and psychical goes on in the brain. A complex action of this kind is propagated through the grey matter, as waves are propagated in water.
Regarded physiologically, a thought is only a vibration, probably, which does not pass out of its appropriate medium. It is propagated, and it must be along the motor nerves, since science admits no other route. But the thought itself does not radiate; it remains "at home," just as the chemical action of a battery remains in the battery; it is represented abroad by its dynamic correlate, called, in the case of the battery, a current; and in the case of the brain, I know not what; but whatever its name may be, it is the dynamic correlate of thought. Thought, therefore, is dynamic. Thought is transformed; and may be re-transformed, in another organism which supplies the necessary conditions. Thought may be restored.
We have now reached, from a purely physiological standpoint, a position which I desired to reach before I advance the final part of the theory—which may at first sight appear somewhat fantastic. But telepathy itself is fantastic; and yet, being a fact, it must be accounted for somehow, or left altogether unexplained.
It has always been contended by a peculiarly-gifted group of individuals known as "clairvoyants," that we possess a "spiritual body"—just as we possess a physical body—of exactly the same shape and appearance; and that we inhabit this body at death. It is further contended that all our physical senses find their exact counterpart in this "etheric double"; there is a physical eye and a spiritual eye; a physical ear and a spiritual ear, etc. With the spiritual eye we see "clairvoyantly"; with the spiritual ear we hear "clairaudiently," and so forth. I shall not discuss the possibility of such a body, except to say that there is now a mass of evidence in its favour. Assuming it to exist—assuming it to be the exact counterpart of the physical body—then it too possesses a brain; and it too must pulsate and vibrate just as the physical brain does, when accompanying thought.