individual personality which ends where another personality begins, in
other words that the two personalities are entirely separate. This is an
error. There is no such hard and fast line of demarcation between
personalities, and the boundaries between one and another can be increased
or reduced in rigidity according to will, in fact they may be temporarily
removed so completely that, for the time being, the two personalities
become merged into one. Now the action which takes place between healer and
patient depends on this principle. The patient is asked by the healer to
put himself in a receptive mental attitude, which means that he is to
exercise his volition for the purpose of removing the barrier of his own
objective personality and thus affording entrance to the mental power of
the healer. On his side also the healer does the same thing, only with this
difference, that while the patient withdraws the barrier on his side with
the intention of admitting a flowing-in, the healer does so with the
intention of allowing a flowing-out: and thus by the joint action of the
two minds the barriers of both personalities are removed and the direction
of the flow of volition is determined, that is to say, it flows from the
healer as actively willing to give, towards the patient as passively
willing to receive, according to the universal law of Nature that the flow
must always be from the _plenum_ to the _vacuum_. This mutual removal of
the external mental barrier between healer and patient is what is termed
establishing a _rapport_ between them, and here we find one most valuable
practical application of the principle laid down earlier in this book, that
pure spirit is present in its entirety at every point simultaneously. It is
for this reason that as soon as the healer realizes that the barriers of
external personality between himself and his patient have been removed, he
can then speak to the sub-conscious mind of the patient as though it were
his own, for both being pure spirit the _thought_ of their identity _makes_
them identical, and both are concentrated into a single entity at a single
point upon which the conscious mind of the healer can be brought to bear,