THE conduction of od through the various substances is a matter with which you are now acquainted, but you know nothing as to the velocity with which this takes place. The velocity of electricity is, as is well known, extremely great, while that of heat is exceedingly slow; od holds a sort of middle place in this respect.
I stretched an iron wire out to the length of zoo feet, and applied various sources of od to its extremity, one after the other, hands, crystals, and magnets. A highly sensitive person experienced the arrival of the corresponding effect in his hand from the other end of the wire in about half a minute. You can gather from that that the od advanced slowly enough along the wire, and could thus be followed in its course.
You have seen that discharge and conduction could be effected even without actual contact with the wire, that is, by simple approach. Whether this took place by absorption of the light-bearing emanations of the od-container, or by radiation, we do not yet know. As to whether od is distributed by radiation at all, we are not, so far, quite convincingly informed by the mere facts that od accompanies the rays of the sun and can be conducted along with them through glass prisms, therein diffracted, and polarized through sheets of glass; because the od resulting from these incidents could also perhaps be produced by the impact of the rays of light on the fixed targets.
But take up your stand facing a sensitive, and make the double-handed pass down his person at a distance of half an arm's length: he will feel it quite well, as though a cool breath of air ran down his person. Take a pace further back, and repeat the pass movement in his direction: he will still experience the sensation of coolness, though somewhat more weakly. Go back two, three, or four paces. Your sensitive will still feel your passes, in decreasing strength, it is true, but still definitely enough; indeed, he would still feel them were you to separate yourself from him by the whole length of the room. Increase your distance from him still further by graduated steps through the neighbouring room: the effect will become weak, but will continue recognizable still. In the case of a person of medium-sensitiveness you can go back in this way to a distance of 40 to 6o feet, until the sensation aroused by your pass becomes uncertain, and finally imperceptible.
A pass from beneath in an upward direction will be perceived at a somewhat greater distance than one from above downwards. But I have had high-sensitives with whom the effect of my hands administering the pass was not exhausted at a distance of 15o feet: I had no greater distance at my disposal, though I had thrown open the doors of my whole suite of rooms. They also felt the poles of the crystal and strong magnets at as great a distance as this, and on the instant, as soon as I had directed the latter upon them.
You see from this that an uncommon degree of radiation is attributable to the force we call od, whose bounds perhaps, like those of light, lie in the infinite. The consequence of this radiant energy is that we carry about with us continually an illimitable train of radiant light which, undetected by our own eyes, sweeps into space from our fingers, toes and limbs, and that, as living beings formed of matter, we are surrounded by a luminous atmosphere of our own, which we take with us wherever we go. I have often heard it remarked in my dark chamber that my head was encircled by a crown of rays, and that I was enveloped in the aureola of a saint. And there can be little doubt that the myth referred to is directly traceable to this phenomenon, whose light was seen thousands of years ago in the East as it is seen here today.1
This odic atmosphere which every man has about him, and which emanates from every living individual, is not completely similar in every case, but differs somewhat in the case of each, almost as perfumes and flavours differ, as light falls into different colours, and as sound into the various notes of the tonic scale. A woman's differs somewhat from a man's, and a young man's from an old man's; it differs in the sanguine of temperament from the choleric, and in the healthy from the sick; and, taking those who are sick, it differs in the case of a catarrh from that of one who has scarlet fever, or typhus fever with its calor mordax, etc., and all these differences are perceived and distinctly recognized by high-sensitives, and in many cases often by medium-sensitives.
It is from this fact that you are now for the first time in receipt of a hint as to how it is possible, for instance, that sick patients in extreme conditions of sensibility should recognize the approach of their doctor when the healthy persons around them are still unable to perceive it; that you yourself should have so insuperable an objection to many men at the very first meeting, and an unreasoned preference for others; that beasts of prey and hounds should recognize the trail on a leaf trodden on by their quarry; and other things of the same sort, which appear to be wonderful, but which only appear so as long as the physical threads are unknown which connect them, quite simply and in accordance with law, in the material world. But I should transgress the bounds which I have accepted for these letters were I to enter upon a description of these higher odic conditions. I therefore now take leave of you.
You now know the phenomenon I have called od in its main outlines. It is a natural force, analogous with, and closely related to, those already known to science. It comprises in a group of its own imponderable, but sensuously perceptible, natural incidents, for which so far we have no other measure or reagent than the human nerve, and that moreover only under the peculiar conditions bound up with the susceptibility of a sensitive. The reason why it has completely escaped scientific investigation up to the present, or rather, why it has been directly and obstinately rebuffed and locked out by science, consists simply in the absence of any general odoscope or odometer which anyone might use, and so prove its existence with ease, and in a way that would appeal to the senses of the entire world.
And the reason, in turn, why no odoscope has so far been invented springs from the very nature of od itself, that is to say, from its power of penetrating all matter and space without incurring congestion at any point, without ever permitting of its densification up to the point of general perceptibility. Heat, electricity, and light have isolators of their own up to a certain point, but I have never been able to discover an isolator for od. I have considered myself called upon to make use of this property of exemption from all obstructibility, in order to form a convenient name for it, pliable enough to adapt itself to the multifarious needs of science. "Va" in Sanskrit means "to move about." "Vado" in Latin and "vada" in Old Norse means "I go quickly, hurry away, stream forth." Hence "Wodan" in Old Germanic expresses the idea of the "All-transcending"; in the various old idioms it appears as "Wuodan," "Odan," and "Odin," signifying the power penetrating all nature which is ultimately personified as a Germanic deity. "Od " is consequently the word to express a dynamid or force which, with a power that cannot be obstructed, quickly penetrates and courses through everything in the universe.
Had Nature endowed us with a sense of od as clear and distinct
as our sense of light and sound, we should stand on a far higher
grade of knowledge; we should distinguish truth from illusion by
means of that all-transcending power with incomparably greater
ease, rapidity, and certainty than we do at present; we should
see into each other's hearts, as the saying is. A Talleyrand
could no longer misuse his speech in order to conceal his
thoughts, and we should, as a further result, constitute a higher
and nobler order of beings. It would be easy to show how, endowed
with a sense of od, we should be something like angels, and that
it would only need the gift of such a faculty to raise us
straightway to a higher level of morality without having to
increase our intellectual powers for the purpose. The All-wise,
who only wished for an erring mankind, has had on that account to
deny us what would have made us resemble some being half
human, half divine.