unable to create; and for a very considerable time people will have to practise by creating the thought-image before they will have anything to be definitely sent to another. But that is one of the means of organising the astral and the mental body as an instrument of the larger consciousness. Some people, of course, have it by nature, as you say, but what does that mean? Only that they have practised it in previous life. No one gets anything for nothing from nature. On the other hand, nature is a good paymaster, and pays the exact wages that we have earned, never withholding anything. If you can do it easily, it is because you have done it before; if you find it difficult, it is because you are beginning that definite kind of work. But no one obtains it without labour, no one can develop it without long and continued practice. But there is one form in which the astral body shows its organisation when you are out of the dense body and not in it, in the form of dream. Whenever you go to sleep you leave your dense body behind. Some dreams belong only to the brain; it is because people do not distinguish dream from dream that so much foolish ridicule is sometimes cast on the dream-state altogether. It is perfectly true that there are dreams which grow out of conditions of the physical body, where a little change in the circulation, a momentary block in some vessel of the brain, will cause a dream, incoherent, senseless, without meaning or illumination. That is the physical dream; it may be caused by any disturbance of the body—indigestion, a hundred other things. The dream that shows that the astral body is becoming organised is a dream in which some definite knowledge is conveyed, in which some definite warning is given, in which something is added to you that you had not before, or in which you come into contact with someone who has passed out of the physical conditions through the gateway of death, and whom you may meet in the astral world when you yourself have temporarily dropped the dense body. Those dreams are coherent, rational, sometimes illuminative. Remember how many dreams have now been put on record in which a man has gained in the dream-state knowledge that he had not in the waking state. How often that knowledge gained in the dream-state has enabled him in the waking state to cover over some gap that he was before unable to bridge. You will find in Myers’ book on _Human Personality_ some of these dreams given, although not very definitely explained, and if you find in your experience that those are becoming more frequent, then you may be sure that your astral body is becoming a vehicle of consciousness, an instrument by which consciousness can work in the other world. It is true that in some dreams, especially of warning, the thought may be thrown into your mind from without when you have not found it out for yourself, but have been informed of it by another. Such a warning may come through, given you by some friend,