To some, this is a mysterious phenomenon, but to those who understand it, it is as easy and natural as ordinary conversation in our everyday life. Everyone can understand that thoughts have existence, and many scientists now perceive that thoughts are vibrations. The ancient mystics and sages throughout the ages have understood that thoughts are made of vibrations. As the physical body is made up of physical atoms, so is our mind composed of vibrations, every activity of mind is "thought." Now thoughts are of two kinds:

1) Imagination.

This is an activity of the mind, as thought is. But in imagination, the activity is not controlled by the will. When a person is resting in a chair without specially thinking over a subject, the mind has a habit of wandering about. In this respect it is like a wild or untamed horse which runs off into the jungle at will. It goes off without knowing whither or why, for it is its habit just to wander about. So the imagination is not specially directed, and goes about on various lines just as it pleases, but following the lines to which the mind has been accustomed.

That is why a musician's imagination naturally dwells on music and musical things, an artist's imagination dwells on artistic things: a thief on how to rob; a writer on the direction he has followed in writing. This is all imagination - that is, it is not controlled by the will. It is this that is the case with the average mind. From morning till evening, the will is actively working on those lines to which the mind has been habituated, the lines which the mind has already formed. For example, consider a person who is always thinking of construction - how to construct a factory, how to build up a certain type of business. During this time he has been forming lines in the area of his mind, or mental being. These lines are open for the imagination, and so the mind goes on working along the same lines which his thought has previously been following, even when he is not specially thinking of those subjects. We still follow the same line we have been thinking on. The line which the will has made in the thoughts are the directions along which the imagination unconsciously travels. "There your heart, there the treasure."

2) Willful Thought

Thought proper is where the power of the will is directing the activity of the mind. This explains the words "thoughtful", "thoughtless." The thoughtful person is one whose will directs his mind - whether he is doing a thing, or speaking, or thinking. So people call him a thinker. But the one who does not control his action, speech, and his thoughts by his will is thoughtless. So his thought is really imagination; his speech does not make sense, his actions become thoughtless or inconsiderate. In brief, these three things - thought, speech, and action - reveal the character of the thought. If they are controlled by the will, they show thoughtfulness; but if not so controlled, they are thoughtless, the person is called thoughtless.

Now we have been given two main faculties of perception: 1) the sense of touch, smell and taste - the lower senses, 2) Samee, the hearing faculty, and Basir, the seeing faculty which are the higher or principle senses. These two groups work with the physical body, with the ears and eyes. One sees, the other hears, but they work in the mind. It is the mind which listens and sees. The mind is listening when it is aware of things without people telling us. We perceive that a person is displeased. A person may say "Thank you", and yet the mind perceives that he does not really thank you, but is using the words out of formality or even out of sarcasm. So it is the mind which discriminates; the ears of the mind listen. The more developed the mind, the more it can listen even without the help of the ears; it listens to another person's thought without utterance of sound. The mind can see the form of the thoughts and discriminate between them; it is a seer. However, it is easier for the mind to perceive by hearing than by seeing.

This brings us to the subject of "concentration." A person who is sitting with closed eyes is not necessarily concentrating - he may be just resting; he may be asleep. If he is dreaming, that is not concentration either. Concentration is an act of the will during which the mind actually sees, during which the seeing faculty of the mind acts, and also the hearing faculty of the mind acts. Whereas our physical being uses five senses to perceive things, our mental being uses only two - seeing and hearing. When we visualize, we see things by the help of the mind.

It is not everyone that can visualize. When there is no power to visualize, it is because things seen that way seem so vague and unsubstantial compared with the things which we see in the external world. We can never think of such visualized things as real. Everything that is before your eyes and ears - that is what we consider the real thing, whereas whatever comes before the mind's "eye" we regard as imagination, something passing, a dream. It is the same mind that perceives and hears the things of everyday life, yet what it perceives, the other way, we think is just imagination - for all that, it is these that are the realities!

To a mystic, the "reality" of the external world is not more real than the reality in the mental plane, because, as this is subject to change, so all things in the mental plane are subject to change too. Two conditions must be fulfilled before external vibrations can be audible. You hear me speak because there is no wall between myself and you. A wall prevents communication. The second point is like a person speaking out in the open with the same pitch of voice as I use at this moment. You cannot hear the voice so well out in the open because the house we are in gives sound a place to echo in and be audible clearly.

These then are the conditions: a current must be established, a channel or opening along which or through which the sound or words can reach another person. Secondly, the sound must not be able to scatter in all directions, but must be directed and concentrated towards the other so that it can reach the inner or mental sound which we call thought. If we wish to retain thought, and transmit thought, we must learn the process of throwing "the ball" to hit a certain aim. We must direct our aim right, and we must put enough force in it to enable it to reach the goal. It is the force of the will that sends the thought to reach another person. The aim whereby the first person focuses his mental eye upon the other, in telepathy, is concentration. In brief, two things are necessary for telepathy - strength of will, and power of concentration.