Here’s an interesting quote from Henry Durville:

“Thought reaches us from outside, in the form of wave-like movements, originating in one or many brains that came before. These movements are perceived by our nervous system and transmitted to our brain, which begins to vibrate and, in a certain way, automatically reproduces the same thought.

This foreign thought combines with our own, sets our astral matter into vibration; and these vibrations transmit, at a distance, through waves, a movement of new thoughts, more or less original and marked, as I have already said, by the stamp of our individuality.

It can be said that space is filled with impressions, desires, information, even with good and bad projects moving in all directions, and that we attract or repel them by virtue of this law of similarity and affinity: thoughts of the same nature attract each other; those of opposite nature repel each other.

There is, therefore, an exchange of thoughts from others to us and from us to others, such that constantly, day and night — during sleep even more than in the waking state — we receive and emit influences that gradually modify our way of being.

It is thus by means of impulses coming from outside that we end up becoming what we are, good or bad, happy or unhappy.

Happiness is not a favor from heaven, nor is misfortune a punishment. The first condition is merely the outward sign of a strong and superior individuality; the second, the manifestation of a weak and inferior individuality.”