ANCIENT AND MODERN PHYSICS

by Thomas E. Willson

Contents

PrefaceI. Physical Basis of MetaphysicsII. The Two Kinds of PerceptionIII. Matter and EtherIV. What a Teacher Should TeachV. The Four Manifested PlanesVI. One Place on EarthVII. The Four GlobesVIII. The Battle GroundIX. The Dual ManX. The Septenary WorldXI. Stumbling blocks in Eastern Physics

PREFACE

The Editor of the Theosophical Forum in April, 1901, noted thedeath of Mr. Thomas E. Willson in the previous month in anarticle which we reproduce for the reason that we believe manyreaders who have been following the chapters of "Ancient andModern Physics" during the last year will like to know somethingof the author. In these paragraphs is said all that need be saidof one of our most devoted and understanding Theosophists. 

In March, 1901, The Theosophical Forum lost one of its mostwilling and unfailing contributors. Mr. T. E. Willson diedsuddenly, and the news of his death reached me when I actuallywas in the act of preparing the concluding chapter of his"Ancient and Modern Physics" for the April number. 

Like the swan, who sings his one song, when feeling that death isnear, Mr. Willson gave his brother co-workers in the Theosophicalfield all that was best, ripest and most suggestive in histhought in the series of articles the last of which is to comeout in the same number with this. 

The last time I had a long talk with T. E. Willson, he said"

"For twenty years and more I was without a hearing, yet myinterest and my faith in what I had to say never flagged, theeagerness of my love for my subject never diminished. "

This needs no comment. The quiet and sustained resistance toindifference and lack of appreciation, is truly the steadyballast which has prevented our Theosophical ship from aimlessand fatal wanderings, though of inclement weather and adversewinds we had plenty. 

For many long years Mr. Willson was the librarian of the New York"World. " In the afternoons he was too busy to see outsiders, but, beginning with five o'clock in the afternoon until he wenthome somewhere in the neighbourhood of midnight, he always wasglad to see his friends. He had a tiny little room of his own, very near the top of the tremendous building, his one windowlooking far above the roofs of the tallest houses in thedistrict. There he sat at his desk, generally in his shirtsleeves, if the weather was at all warm, always busy with somematter already printed, or going to be, a quiet, yet impressiveand dignified figure. 

The elevated isolation, both figuratively and literally speaking, in which T. E. Willson lived and worked, in the midst of the mostcrowded thoroughfares of New York, always made me think ofProfessor Teufelsdrockh on the attic floor of "the highesthouse in the Wahngasse. " The two had more than one point ofresemblance. They shared the loftiness of their point of view, their sympathetic understanding of other folks, their loneliness, and, above all, their patient, even humorous resignation to thefact of this loneliness. 

Yet in his appearance Mr. Willson was not like the greatWeissnichtwo philosopher. In fact, in the cast of his featuresand in his ways, Mr. Willson never looked to me like a white man. In British India I have known Brahmans of the better type exactlywith the same sallow complexion, same quick and observant browneye, same portly figure and same wide-awakeness and agility ofmanner. 

Last summer I heard, on good authority, that Mr. Willson hadthought himself into a most suggestive way of dealing with theproblems of matter and spirit, a way which, besides beingsuggestive, bore a great resemblance to some theories of the samenature, current in ancient India. Consequently Mr. Willson wasoffered, for the first time in his life, a chance of expressinghis views on matter and spirit in as many articles and in asextensive a shape as he chose. The way he received this tardyrecognition of the fact that he had something to say was highlyinstructive. He did not put on airs of unrecognized greatness, though, I own, the occasion was propitious; he did not say, "Itold you so;" he simply and frankly was glad, in, the mostchildlike way. 

And now that I have used the word, it occurs to me that"childlike" is an adjective the best applied to this man, inspite of his portliness, and his three score and more winters. 

Many a pleasant hour I have spent in the small bookroom of thegreat "World" building. With Mr. Willson talk never flagged. Wediscussed the past and the future of our planetary chain, webuilt plans for the true and wholesome relation of sexes, wetried to find out--and needless to say never did--the exactlimit where matter stopped being matter and became spirit; wealso read the latest comic poems and also, from time to time, wetook a header into the stormy sea of American literature in orderto find out what various wise heads had to say, consciously orunconsciously, in favour of our beloved Theosophical views. Andall this, being interrupted every three minutes or so by someweary apparition from some workroom in the "World" with some suchquestion: "Mr. Willson, how am I to find out the presentwhereabouts of this or that Russian man-of-war? Mr. Willson, what is the melting point of iron? Mr. Willson, when was `H. M. S. Pinafore' produced for the first time?" etc. , etc. And everytime, Mr. Willson got up in the leisurely manner peculiar to him, reached for some book from the shelves that lined the room, gavethe desired information, and as leisurely returned to the "pranicatom, " or to "come and talk man talk, Willy, " or to whatever oursubject chanced to be at the time. 

Mr. Willson's gratitude to the Theosophical Forum for itsrecognition was disproportionately great. As he wrote to theEditor: "give me any kind of work, writing for you, reviewing, manuscript or proof reading, I shall do anything, I shallundertake any job, even to taking editorial scoldings in all goodnature, only give me work. " His devotion to Theosophical thoughtand work in all their ramifications was just as great, as was hisfreedom from vanity, his perfectly natural and unaffectedmodesty. 

At the news of his death many a heart was sincerely sad, but noneso sad as the heart of the editor of the Theosophical Forum. Fora friend and co-worker like T. E. Willson, ever ready to givematerial help and moral encouragement, is not easily replaced. 

For a soul so pure of any kind of selfishness the transition fromthe turmoil of life to the bright dreams of death must have beenboth easy and enviable. --------------

Chapter One

The Physical Basis if Metaphysics

The Hindu system of physics, on which the metaphysical thought ofthe East is based, does not in its beginnings differ widely fromthe latest physics of the West; but it goes so much farther thatour physics is soon lost sight of and forgotten. The Hinduconception of the material universe, taken from the Upanishadsand some open teaching, will serve for an illustration. Theydivide physical matter into four kinds--prakriti, ether, prana, and manasa--which they call "planes. " These differ only in therate of vibration, each plane vibrating through one great octave, with gulfs of "lost" octaves between. The highest rate ofvibration of prakriti is measured by the thousand, the lowest ofthe ether by trillions, and the lowest of prana by--never mind;they have, and we have not, the nomenclature. 

The earth, they teach, is a globe of prakriti, floating in anocean of ether, which, as it has the sun for its center ofgravity, must necessarily be a globe. This etheric sun-globe hasa diameter of over 300, 000, 000, 000 miles. All the planetsrevolve around the sun far within its atmosphere. The ethericsun-globe revolves on its axis once in about 21, 000 years, andthis revolution causes the precession of the equinoxes. Thisetheric sun-globe is revolving around Alcyone with other ethericglobes having suns for their centers and solar systems ofprakritic globes within them in a great year of 5, 640, 000, 000 ofour common years. Its orbit has a diameter of93, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000 miles. 

Beyond the etheric globes, and between them, is a third form ofmatter called prana, as much rarer and finer than the ether asthe ether is rarer and finer than prakriti. As this prana hasAlcyone for a center of gravity, it is necessarily a globe; andthere are many of these pranic globes floating in a vast ocean ofmanasa--a form of matter as much finer than prana as prana isfiner than ether, or ether than prakriti. With this manasa(which is a globe) the material, or physical, universe ends; butthere are spiritual globes beyond. The material universe iscreated from manasa, downward, but it does not respond to orchord with the vibration of the globes above, except in a specialinstance and in a special way, which does not touch this inquiry. 

The physical universe of the ancient (and modern) Hindu physicistwas made up of these four kinds or planes of matter, distributedin space as "globes within globes. "

Professor Lodge in 1884 put forth the theory that prakriti(physical matter) as we call it, was in its atoms but "whirls" ofether. Since then speculative science has generally accepted theidea that the physical atom is made up of many cubic feet ofether in chemical union, as many quarts of oxygen and hydrogenunite chemically to make a drop of water. This is an old storyto the Hindu sage. He tells his pupils that the great globe ofmanasa once filled all space, and there was nothing else. Precisely as on this earth we have our elementary substances thatchange from liquids into solids and gases, so on this manasicglobe there were elementary substances that took the form ofliquids, solids and gases. Its manasic matter was differentiatedand vibrated through one octave, as the prakritic matter does onthe earth. Its substances combined as that does. 

One combination produced prana. The prana collected, and formedglobes. On these pranic globes the process was repeated, withether as the result, and the etheric globes formed. Then theprocess was repeated on the etheric globes, as the modernscientists have discovered, and prakriti and prakritic globescame into being. 

The true diameter of the earth, the ancient Hindu books say, isabout 50, 000 miles. That is to say, the true surface of theearth is the line of twenty-four-hour axial rotation; the linewhere gravity and apergy exactly balance; where a moon wouldhave to be placed to revolve once in 86, 400 seconds. Within thatis prakriti; without is ether. It is also the line of nofriction, which does exist between matter of different planes. There is friction between prakriti, between ether, between prana;but not between ether and prana, or ether and prakriti. Frictionis a phenomenon confined to the matter of each plane separately. We live at the bottom of this gaseous ocean--on its floor--21, 000 miles from the surface and only 4, 000 miles from thecenter. Here, in a narrow "skin" limited to a few miles aboveand below us, is the realm of phenomena, where solid turns intoliquid and liquid into gas, or vice versa. The lesson impressedupon the pupil's mind by Hindu physics is that he lives farwithin the earth, not on it. 

There is a comparatively narrow "skin" of and for phenomenawithin the etheric sun-globe, say the Eastern teachers, where theetheric solids, liquids, and gases meet and mingle andinterchange. Within this "skin" are all the planets--the"gaseous" atmosphere of the etheric globe stretching millions ofmiles beyond the outermost planetary orbit. The earth is in thisskin or belt of etheric phenomena, and its ether is in touch withthe ether "in manifestation" on the etheric globe. The sun andother etheric globes are within the corresponding "skin" ofphenomena of the pranic globes. The prana, manifesting as solid, liquid, and gas, or in combination and in forms, is in perfecttouch with that of the etheric globe, and through that with theprana of the earth. That our prana is in touch with that on thepranic globe in all its manifestations means much in metaphysics. The same is true of the manasic globe, and of our manasa. 

The great lesson the Eastern physics burns into the pupil is thatwe are living not only within the prakritic earth, but withineach of the other globes as well in identically the same way andsubject to the same laws. Our lives are not passed on one globe, but in four globes. It is as if one said he lived in Buffalo, Erie county, New York, United States; that he was a citizen ofeach and subject to the laws of each. 

This question of the four globes, of the four planes of matter, of the four skins, and of the four conditions or states of allmatter and necessarily of all persons, from the purely materialstandpoint, is not only the foundation of Oriental physics, butthe very essence of Oriental metaphysics--its starting-point andcorner-stone. To one who carries with him, consciously orunconsciously, the concrete knowledge of the physics, theabstract teaching of the metaphysics presents no difficulty; itis as clear as crystal. But without the physical teaching themetaphysical is not translatable. 

Our Western physics teaches that physical matter is divided intotwo kinds prakriti (commonly called "physical matter") and ether;that the differences of each of the elementary prakriticsubstances (iron, copper, sulphur, oxygen) are in theirmolecules, the fundamental atom being the same; that each ofthese elementary substances vibrates only through one octave, though on different keys; that it changes from solid to liquidand gas as the rate of vibration is increased and from gas toliquid and solid as its vibration is decreased within its octave;that the ether obeys identical laws; that it has elementarysubstances vibrating through one octave only, and that these aresolids, liquids, or gases on the etheric plane as prakriti is onthis; that these etheric substances change and combine in everyway that prakriti does; and that while all our prakriticsubstances vibrate within (say) fifty simply octaves, the lowestvibration of etheric matter begins over one thousand octavesbeyond our highest, making a gulf to leap. The Eastern physicspresents this with a wealth of detail that dazes the Westernstudent, and then adds: "But beyond the etheric plane (oroctave) of vibration for matter there is a third plane (oroctave) of vibration called prana and beyond that a fourth calledmanasa. What is true of one plane is true of the other three. One law governs the four. As above so below. There is no realgulf; there is perfect continuity. "

The Western scientist teaches as the foundation of modern physicsthat "each and every atom of prakritic matter is the center of anetheric molecule of many atoms;" that "no two prakritic atomstouch, " although their etheric envelopes or atmospheres do touch;and that "all physical phenomena are caused by the chordingvibration of the prakritic atom and its envelope of ether, " each"sounding the same note hundreds of octaves apart. " The "solidearth" with its atmosphere represents the atom with its ether. As all the oxygen and hydrogen do not combine to make the drop ofwater, some remaining in mechanical union to give it anatmosphere, and about one-fourth of its bulk being gas, so theatom formed of the ether does not use all the ether in itschemical union, retaining some in mechanical union for itsenvelope or atmosphere. 

The Hindu physics goes much farther along this road. It saysthat, when the pranic globes were formed, each atom of prana hadits manasic envelope--was the center of a manasic molecule. When the etheric globes formed, each atom of ether was the centerof a pranic molecule, each atom of which was surrounded withmanasa. When the prakriti was formed from the ether, each andevery atom of prakriti had the triple etheric-pranic-manasicenvelope. "Each and every prakritic atom is the center of anetheric molecule, " says our Western science; but that of theEast adds this: "And each atom of that etheric molecule is thecenter of a pranic molecule, and each atom of prana in thatpranic molecule is the center of a manasic molecule. " The fourgreat globes of matter in the material universe are representedand reproduced in each and every atom of prakriti, which is intouch with each one of the four globes and a part of it. Thesame is true of any aggregation of prakriti--of the earth itselfand of all things in it, including man. As there are fouratoms in each one, so there are four earths, four globes, consubstantial, one for each of the four elements, and in touchwith it. One is formed of prakritic atoms--the globe we know;another, of the ether forming their envelopes; another, of theprana envelopes of ether, and a fourth of the manasa around thepranic atom. They are not "skins"; they are consubstantial. And what is true of atoms or globes is true of animals. Each hasfour "material" bodies, with each body on the corresponding globe--whether of the earth or of the Universe. This is the physicalbasis of the famous "chain of seven globes" that is such astumbling-block in Hindu metaphysics. The spirit passes throughfour to get in and three to get out--seven in all. The Hinduunderstands without explanation. He understands his physics. 

The Hindu physics teaches, with ours, that "the ether is thesource of all energy, " but, it adds, "as prana is the source ofall life, and manasa of all mind. "

"When the prakritic atom is vibrating in chord with its ethericenvelope, " say our textbooks, "we have physical phenomena--light, heat, electricity. " "Yes, " says the Hindu teacher; "butwhen the atom and its ether and its prana are vibrating in chord, we have life and vital phenomena added to the energy. When theatom and its ether, prana, and manasa are vibrating in chord, wehave mind and mental phenomena added to the life and energy. "Each atom has energy, life, and mind in posse. In the livingleaf the prakriti, ether, and prana are sounding the threefoldsilver chord of life. In the animal, the manasa is sounding thesame note with them, making the fourfold golden chord of mind. Even in the plant there may be a faint manasic overtone, forthe potentiality of life and mind is in everything. This unityof the physical universe with the physical atom, and with allthings created--earth, animal, or crystal--is the physicalbackbone of Oriental metaphysics. Prakriti, ether, prana, andmanasa are in our vernacular the Earth, Air, Fire, and Water ofthe old philosophers--the "Four Elements. "

The Oriental physics has been guarded most jealously. For manythousands of years it has been the real occult and esotericteaching, while the Oriental metaphysics has been open andexoteric. It could not be understood without the key, and thekey was in the physics known only to "the tried and approveddisciple. " A little has leaked out--enough to whet the appetiteof the true student and make him ask for more. 

Chapter Two

The Two Kinds of Perception

To the savage, matter appears in two forms--solid and liquid. As he advances a step he learns it has three forms--solid, liquid and gas. He cannot see the gas, but he knows it is there. 

A little further on he learns that matter as he knows it is onlya minute portion of the great universe of matter--the few chordsthat can be struck on the five strings of his senses, and limitedto one octave or key. 

Whether the particular matter he investigates has a solid, aliquid, or a gaseous form depends upon its rate of vibration. Ifit is a liquid, by raising its rate of vibration one third itbecomes a gas; by reducing it one third it becomes a solid. 

Each kind of matter has vibration only through one octave. It isknown to us only by its vibration in that octave. Each kind ofmatter has a different octave--is set on a higher or lower key, so to speak, but all octaves of vibration are between the highestof hydrogen gas and the lowest of carbon. 

In mechanical compounds, such as air or brass, the rate ofvibration of the compound is the least common multiple of the twoor more rates. In chemical compounds, such as water or alcohol, the rate is that of the highest, the others uniting in harmonicfractions. 

All matter as we know it through our senses--prakriti, as it iscalled in the Secret Doctrine to distinguish it from non-sensualmatter--is the vibration of an universal Something, we do notknow what, through these different octaves. The elementarysubstances (so-called) are one and the same thing--thisSomething--in different keys and chords of vibration; keys thatrun into one another, producing all sorts of beautiful harmonies. 

Taking any one of these elements, or any of their compounds, allwe know of it is limited strictly to its changes during vibrationthrough one octave. What happens when the vibration goes aboveor below the octave has not yet been treated hypothetically. 

While some elements are vibrating on higher and some on lowerkeys, we can consider them all as vibrating within one greatoctave, that octave of the universal Something which producessensual matter, or prakriti. 

But matter is not confined, we know, to this great octave, although our sensual knowledge of it is strictly confined to it. How do we know it?

Knowledge comes to us in two ways, and there are two kinds ofknowledge. 

1. That which comes through our senses, by observation andexperience. This includes reasoning from relation. 

2. That which comes through intuition--or, as some writersinaccurately say, "through the formal laws of thought. "

All the observation and experience of the rising and the settingof the sun for a thousand centuries could only have confirmed thefirst natural belief that it revolved daily around the earth;nor by joining this experience with other experiences could anydeduction have come from our reason that would have opposed it. Not our reason but our intuition said that the sun stood stilland the earth revolved daily. The oldest books in existence tellus that this axial revolution of the earth was not only known inthe very dawn of time but that it has been known to every race(except our own of European savages) from before the time thoughtwas first transmitted by writing. 

Ask the ablest living geographer or physicist to prove to youthat the earth revolves daily and he will reply that it would bethe job of his life. It can be done at great expense and greatlabor, but that is because we know the answer and can invent away of showing it, not because there are any observations fromwhich a deduction would naturally follow. 

Nearly if not all our great discoveries have come to us throughintuition and not from observation and experience. When we knowthe lines on which to work, when intuition has given us the KEY, then the observation and experience men prize so highly, and thereason they worship so devoutly, will fill in the details. Theknowledge that flows from observation and the reasoning from thefacts it records, is never more than relatively true, it isalways limited by the facts, and any addition to the factsrequires the whole thing to be restated. We never know all thefacts; seldom even the more important; and reason grasps onlydetails. 

Lamarck's theory of evolution, known to all Asiatic races fromtime immemorial, was the intuitional and absolute knowledge thatcomes to all men when they reach a certain stage of development. Reason could never have furnished it from the facts, as Cuvierproved in the great debate in the French Academy in 1842, when heknocked Lamarck out, for the time being, because "it did notconform to the facts, and did not follow from any relation of thefacts. "

Darwin's theory of the survival of the fittest in the strugglefor existence, as an explanation of the origin of species, wasfrom observation and experience. It was based on observed facts. But Darwin was an evolutionist--a disciple of Lamarck. He heldthe Key. He used the Key. The value of Darwin's work does notlie in his discovering that some bugs have been derived fromother bugs and that the intermediate bugs have died off. Itsoverwhelming value to mankind was in showing that work on thetheory of evolution was correct work and that the theory wastrue. When the intuition of man points out the way the reason ofman can follow the path and macadam the road. It usually doesand claims all the credit for itself as the original discoverer. 

This knowledge through intuition is absolute and exact. It isnot relatively true. It is absolutely and invariably true. Noadditional facts will ever modify it, or require a restatement. 

When Sir William Hamilton based his Logic on the dictum that "Allknowledge is relative, and only relatively true, " the propositionwas self-evidently false. It was in itself a statement ofabsolute knowledge about a certain thing. It was in itselfknowledge that was not relative. All knowledge could not berelative if this knowledge was not. This knowledge could notbe either absolute or relative without upsetting his wholeproposition, for, if relative, then it was not always true;and if absolute, then it was never true. 

Sir William did not know the distinction between the two kinds ofknowledge, and what he meant to say was that "All knowledgeobtained by observation and experience is relative, and onlyrelatively true. "

His knowledge of this relativity was not obtained by observationor from reason. It could not possibly have been obtained in thatway. It came from intuition, and it was absolute and exact. Aman may have absolute and exact knowledge and yet not be able toput it into words that exactly express it to another. Hamiltonhad this knowledge. But it was not clearly formulated even inhis own mind. He had two separate and distinct meanings for theword "knowledge, " without being conscious of it. 

We have yet to coin a proper word to express what comes to usthrough intuition. The old English word "wisdom" originally did. The old verb "wis" was meant what a man knew without being toldit, as "ken" meant knowledge by experience. Try and prove byreason that a straight line is the shortest distance between twopoints, or that a part can never be greater than the whole, andyour reason has an impossible task. "You must take them foraxioms, " it says. You must take them because you wis them, notbecause you know (ken) them. 

Intuitional knowledge must not be confounded with the relativeknowledge that flows through the reason: that "If the sum of twonumbers is one and their difference is five, " the numbers areminus two and plus three. 

The point cannot be too strongly enforced that there is adistinction between the sources of what we know, and that whileall we know through our sensations is only relatively true, thatwhich we know from intuition is invariably and absolutely true. This is seen through a glass darkly, in theology, where intuitionis called inspiration and not differentiated from reason. 

The false notion that we can only learn by observation andexperience, that the concept can never transcend the observation, that we can only know what we can prove to our senses, haswrought incalculable injury to progress in philosophy. 

Because our sensual knowledge of matter begins and ends withvibration in one octave it does not follow that this ends ourknowledge of it. We may have intuitional knowledge, and thisintuitional knowledge is as susceptible to reason as if we hadobtained it by observation. 

The knowledge that comes through intuition tells us of mattervibrating in another great octave just beyond our own, whichScience has chosen to name the etheric octave, or plane. Theinstant our intuition reveals the cause of phenomena our reasondrops in and tells us it is the chording vibration of the matterof the two planes--the physical and etheric--that produces allphysical phenomena. It goes further and explains its variations. 

This knowledge of another octave or plane of matter comes fromthe logical relations of matter and its physical phenomena; butthere was nothing in the observation or experience of mankindthat would have led us to infer from reason an etheric plane ofmatter. It was "revealed" truth. But the flash of revelationhaving once made the path apparent, the light of reason carriesus through all the winding ways. Our knowledge of the ether isnot guess-work or fancy, any more than our geometry is, becauseit is based on axioms our reason cannot prove. In both cases thebasic axioms are obtained from intuition; the structural workfrom reason. Our knowledge of the ether may be as absolute andexact as our knowledge of prakriti, working on physical as wework on geometrical axioms. 

The recognition of the two sources of knowledge, the work of thespirit within us and of the mind within us, is absolutelynecessary to correctly comprehend the true significance of theresults of modern science and to accept the ancient. 

Chapter Three

Matter and Ether

It is not worthwhile translating Homer into English unless thereaders of the translation understand English. 

It is not worthwhile attempting to translate the occult Easternphysics into the language of our Western and modern physics, unless those who are to read the translation understand generallyand broadly what our own modern physics teach. It is notnecessary that they should know all branches of our modernphysics in all their minute ramifications; but it is necessarythat they should understand clearly the fundamental principlesupon which our scientific and technical knowledge of today rests. 

These fundamental principles have been discovered and applied inthe past fifty years--in the memory of the living. They haverevolutionized science in all its departments. Our textbooks onChemistry, Light, Heat, Electricity and Sound have had to beentirely re-written; and in many other departments, notably inmedicine and psychology, they have yet to be re-written. Ourtextbooks are in a transition state, each new one going a stepfarther, to make the change gradual from the old forms of beliefto the new, so that even Tyndall's textbook on "Sound" is now soantedated, or antiquated, that it might have been written indarkest Africa before the pyramids were built, instead of twentyyears ago. 

All this change has flowed from the discovery of Faraday thatthere are two states or conditions of matter. In one it isrevealed by one of our five senses, visible, tangible, smellable, tastable, or ponderable matter. This is matter as we know it. It may be a lump of metal or a flask of gas. 

The second condition or state of matter is not revealed by eitherof our five senses, but by the sixth sense, or intuition of man. This is the ether--supposed to be "matter in a very rarefiedform, which permeates all space. " So rare and fine is thismatter that it interpenetrates carbon or steel as waterinterpenetrates a sponge, or ink a blotting pad. In fact, eachatom of "physical" matter--by which is meant matter in the firstcondition--floats in an atmosphere of ether as the solid earthfloats in its atmosphere of air. 

"No two physical atoms touch, " said Faraday. "Each physical atomis the centre of an etheric molecule, and as far apart from everyother atom as the stars in heaven from one another. " This istrue of every form of physical matter, whether it is a lump ofmetal, a cup of liquid, or a flask of gas; whether it is abronze statue or a living man; a leaf, a cloud, or the earthitself. Each and every physical atom is the centre of an ethericmolecule made up of many atoms of the ether. 

This duality of matter was a wonderful discovery, revolutionizingevery department of science. It placed man in actual touch withthe whole visible universe. The ether in a man's eye (and in hiswhole body) reaches in one unbroken line--like a telegraph wire--from him to the sun, or the outermost planet. He is notseparate and apart from "space, " but a part of it. Each physicalatom of his physical body is the centre of an etheric molecule, and he has two bodies, as St. Paul said, a visible physical andan invisible etheric body; the latter in actual touch with thewhole universe. 

Faraday went one step further. He demonstrated that allphysical phenomena come from the chording vibration of thephysical atom with the surrounding etheric atoms, and that thelatter exercise the impelling force on the former. Step into thesunshine. The line of ether from the sun is vibrating fasterthan the ether in the body, but the higher impels the lower, thegreater controls the lesser, and soon both ethers are in unison. The physical atoms must coincide in vibration with their ethericenvelopes, and the "note" is "heat. " Step into the shade, wherethe ocean of ether is vibrating more slowly, and the ether of thebody reduces its vibration. "The ether is the origin of allforce and of all phenomena. "

This etheric matter follows identical laws with prakritic matter, or, accurately, the laws of our matter flow from the ethericmatter from which it is made. The ether has two hundred or moreelementary substances, each atom of our eighty or ninety"elements" being the chemical union of great masses of two ormore of the etheric elements or their combinations. Theseetheric elementary substances combine and unite; our elementarysubstances simply following in their combinations the law whichthey inherit from their parents. They take form and shape. Theyvibrate through one octave, and take solid liquid or gaseous formin ether, as their types here in our world take it in prakriti, as their vibrations are increased or diminished. In short, theether is the prototype of our physical or prakritic world, out ofwhich it is made and a product of which it is. 

As this ether is "physical" matter, the same as prakriti, oneharmonic law covering both, and as this ether fills all space, Modern Science divides physical matter into two kinds, which, forconvenience in differentiation, are here called prakritic andetheric. 

Matter is something--science does not know or care to know what--in vibration. A very low octave of vibration producesprakriti; a very high octave of vibration produces ether. Thevibration of prakriti ends in thousands; that of ether begins inbillions. Between them there is a gulf of vibrations that hasnot yet been bridged. For that reason science divides matterinto two "planes, " or octaves, of vibration--the matter of thisvisible and tangible plane being called prakriti and that of theinvisible and intangible plane being called etheric. Across thisgulf the two planes respond to each other, note for note, thenote in trillions chording when the note in thousands is struck. Note for note, chord for chord, they answer one another, and theminutest and the most complex phenomena are alike the result ofthis harmonic vibration, that of the ether supplying Force andthat of the prakriti a Medium in which it can manifest. 

This knowledge of ether is not guesswork or fancy, and, while itis as impossible of proof as the axioms of geometry, it is worthythe same credence and honor. We are working on physical axiomsexactly as we work on geometrical axioms. 

Modern science represents each and every prakritic atom as aglobe like the earth, floating in space and surrounded by anatmosphere of ether. "The subdivision of prakritic matter untilwe reach etheric atoms chemically united to make the physicalunit" is the correct definition of an atom. The prakriticphysical atom has length, breadth and thickness. And it has anatmosphere of ether which not only interpenetrates the atom asoxygen and hydrogen interpenetrate the drop of water, butfurnishes it with an envelope as the oxygen and hydrogen furnishthe drop of water with one. 

Each physical atom is the centre of an etheric molecule composedof many etheric atoms vibrating at a greater or lesser speed andinterpenetrating the atom. Each may be considered a miniatureearth, with its aerial envelope, the air, penetrating all partsof it. 

The etheric plane of matter not only unites with this prakriticplane through the atom but it interpenetrates all combinations ofit; beside the atom as well as through the atom. The grain ofsand composed of many prakritic atoms is also composed of manytimes that number of etheric atoms. The grain of sand is ethericmatter as well as prakritic matter. It exists on the ethericplane exactly the same as it exists on the prakritic, and it hasetheric form as well as prakritic form. 

As each atom of this physical world of ours--whether of land, orwater, or air; whether of solid, liquid or gas--is the centreof an etheric molecule, we have two worlds, not one: a physicalworld and an etheric one; a visible world and an invisibleworld; a tangible world and an intangible world; a world ofeffect and a world of cause. 

And each animal, including man, is made in the same way. He hasa prakritic body and an etheric body; a visible body and aninvisible body; an earthly body and one "not made with hands, "in common touch with the whole universe. 

Chapter Four

What a Teacher Should Teach

Let us suppose that a certain wise teacher of physics places arow of Bunsen burners under a long steel bar having a Daniell'spyrometer at one end, and addresses his class (substantially) asfollows:

"At our last lecture we found that the matter of the universepermeated all space, but in two conditions, which we agreed tocall physical and etheric, or tangible and intangible. It is allthe same matter, subject to the same laws, but differing in therate of vibration, the physical matter vibrating through onegreat octave or plane, and the etheric vibrating through anothergreat octave or plane one degree higher--the chording vibrationof the matter of the two planes in one note producing what wecall energy or force, and with it phenomena. 

"This is a bar of steel 36 inches long. It is composed ofphysical atoms but no two physical atoms touch. Each physicalatom is as far apart from every other atom as the stars in heavenfrom one another--in proportion to their size. The atoms andthe spaces between them are so small to our sight that they seemto touch. If we had a microscope of sufficient power to revealthe atom, you would see that no two atoms touch, and that thespaces between them are, as Faraday says, very great inproportion to their size. I showed you last term that whatappeared to be a solid stream of water, when magnified and thrownupon a screen, was merely a succession of independent drops thatdid not touch. I can not yet give you proof of the bar of ironbeing composed of independent atoms, but that is the fault of ourinstruments, and you must take my word for it until the proof issimplified and made easy of application. 

"Each one of these physical atoms is a miniature world. It isthe center of an ocean of ether, composed of many atoms; andwhile no two physical atoms touch, their etheric atmospheres dotouch, and any change in the vibration of the etheric atmosphereof one will be imparted to that of the next. As the vibration ofthe physical atom must be in harmony with that of its ethericatmosphere, any change coming to one will be imparted to thenext, and the next, through the ether surrounding them. 

"You can see that the index at the end of the bar has moved, showing that it is now longer. That means the etheric atoms arenow vibrating faster, taking more space, and have necessarilyforced each physical atom farther apart. The bar is not onlylonger, but softer, and as the vibrations increase in rapiditythe time will come when it will bend by its own weight, and evenwhen it will become a liquid and a gas. 

"If you put your hand anywhere near the bar you will feel asensation called heat, and say it has become hot. The reason forthat is that you are in actual and literal touch with the bar oriron through the ether. It is not alone each atom of the bar ofiron that is surrounded by the ether, but each atom of the air, and each atom of your body. Their etheric atmospheres are alltouching, and the increase in the vibration of the ethersurrounding the atoms of iron is imparted to those of the airsurrounding it, and these in turn raise the rate of vibration inthe etheric atoms surrounding the physical atoms of your hand. This rate of vibration in your nerves causes a sensation, ormental impression, you call "heat. " Consciousness of it comesthrough your sense of touch; but after all it is merely a "rateof vibration" which your brain recognizes and names. 

"The bar has now reached a temperature of about 700 degrees, andhas become a dull red. Why do you say the color has changed, andwhy do you say red?

"Because the rate of vibration of the etheric atoms in the bar isnow about 412 trillions per second, and this rate of vibrationhaving been imparted to the ether of the air, has in turn beenimparted to the ether of your eye, and this rate of vibration inthe ether of the nerves of your eye your brain recognizes andcalls 'red. '

"The heat still continues and increases. You now have both heatand light. So you see that the ether is not vibrating in asingle note, but in two chording notes, producing light and heat. There are two kinds of ether around the iron atom. There issound also, but the note is too high for one's ears. It is achord of three notes. 

"Professor Silliman, of Yale, discovered over twenty years ago, that the ether could be differentiated into the luminiferous, orlight ether, and the sonoriferous, or sound ether. 

"Other great scientists since then have found a third ether--theheat ether. 

"Their discoveries show that the atmospheric etheric envelope ofeach etheric atom is made up of etheric atoms of differentvibratory powers. As the atmosphere of the earth is made up ofatoms of oxygen and nitrogen and argon, so that of an atom ismade up of three kinds of ethers, corresponding to three of oursenses. That it consists of five ethers, corresponding to ourfive senses, as the ancient Hindus assert--who can say?

"I mention this subject of the differentiation of the ethermerely that you may not suppose that the ether is a simplesubstance. For the present we will treat it as a simplesubstance, but next year we will take it up as a compound one. 

"This steel bar before you is not one bar, but two bars. Thereis a visible bar and an invisible bar, the visible bar being madeof physical atoms, and the invisible bar of etheric atoms. Theetheric bar is invisible, but it is made of matter, the same asthe visible bar, and it is just as real, just as truly a bar asthe one we see. 

"More than this. The etheric, invisible bar is the source andcause of all phenomena connected with the bar. It is the realbar, and the one we see is merely the shadow in physical matterof a real bar. In shape, strength, color, in short, ineverything, it depends on the invisible one. The invisibledominates, governs, disposes. The visible is merely itsattendant shadow, changing as the invisible, etheric bar changes, and recording for our senses these invisible changes. 

"The invisible change always comes first; the invisiblephenomena invariably precede the visible. 

"In all this physical world--in all this universe--there isnothing, not even a grain of sand or an atom of hydrogen, that isnot as this bar of iron is--the shadow cast on a visible worldby the unknown and mysterious work of an invisible world. 

"Land or water, mountain or lake, man or beast, bird or reptile, cold or heat, light or darkness, all are the reflection inphysical matter of the true and real thing in the invisible andintangible world about us. "If we have a visible body we have aninvisible one also, " said Saint Paul. Modern science has provenhe was right, and that it is the invisible body which is the realbody. 

"If this earth and all that it is composed of--land or ocean orair; man or beast; pyramid or pavement--could be resolved intothe physical atoms composing everything in it or on it created byGod or man, each atom of this dust would be identical physically. There would not be one kind of atom for iron and another foroxygen. 

"The differentiation between what are called elementarysubstances is first made apparent in the molecule or firstcombination of the atoms. It is not in the atom itself, unlessit be in the size, as may not be improbable. The atoms combinein different numbers to make differently shaped molecules, and itis from this difference in the shape of the molecule that we getthe difference between gold and silver, copper and tin, or oxygenand hydrogen. 

"In all chemical compounds, such as water and alcohol, themolecules at the base of the two or more substances break up intotheir original atoms and form a new molecule composed of all theatoms in the two or more things combined. To make this chemicalcombination we must change the rate of vibration of one or theother or both until they strike a common chord. As we saw lastterm, oxygen and hydrogen have different specific heats, and notwo other elements have the same specific heat, while heat raisesthe rate of vibration. Any given amount of heat raises thevibration of one more than another. Apply heat, and the rate ofone will rise faster than that of the other until they reach acommon chord. Then they fall apart and recombine. 

"If we pass a current of electricity through this sealed jarcontaining oxygen and hydrogen in mechanical union, the sparkthat leaps across the points furnishes the heat, and a drop ofwater appears and falls to the bottom. A large portion of thegases has disappeared. It has been converted into water. Whatis left of the gases will expand and fill the bottle. 

"The drop of water but for local causes, but for a certainattraction of the earth, would float in the centre of the jar atthe centre of gravity, as the earth does in space. But thecentre of gravity of the two bodies is far within the earth, andthe drop gets as close to it as it can. The earth's 'pull' takesit to the bottom. If the jar were far enough away in space thedrop would float, as the earth floats, at a point where all pullsbalance, and the drop of water would have enough pull of its own, enough gravity within itself to hold all the gas left in the jarto itself as an atmosphere. It would be a centre of energy, aminature world. 

"The drop of water is not a homogenous mass. About one third ofthe bulk of the drop of water is made up of independent oxygenand hydrogen atoms interspersed through it, as any liquid isthrough this piece of blotting paper. And it has, and keeps, byits own attraction, an atmosphere of the gas. Each molecule ofwater has a thin layer, or skin, of the gas; even as it comesfrom this faucet. 

"Let us return again to the physical dust, the atom. Why shouldit form by fives for iron, by nines for hydrogen? Where did theatom come from? What is it? We know that like the drop ofwater, it is a miniature world with an atmosphere of ether; andthe natural inference is that it is made from ether as the dropof water was made from gas. Many things confirm this inference, and it may be accepted as 'a working hypothesis' that it is madefrom ether as the drop of water is made from gas, by the chemicalunion of a large amount of ether of different kinds, the ethericmolecules of which consist of 2 and 3 or 5 and 4 etheric atoms, and that the tendency to combine in this or that number inphysical matter is an inherited tendency brought with it from theetheric world of matter on which, or in which, each element ofthis world is two or more. There is no kind of matter in thisphysical world, that has not its prototype in the etheric, andthe laws of its action and reaction here are laws which itinherits and brings with it. They are not laws made here. Theyare laws of the other world--even as the matter itself is matterof the other world. 

"In 1882, Professor Lodge, in a lecture before the RoyalInstitution on 'The Luminiferous Ether' defined it as:

"'One continuous substance, filling all space, which can vibrateas light, which can be sheared into positive and negativeelectricity, which in whirls constitutes matter, and whichtransmits by continuity and not impact every action and reactionof which matter is capable. '

"This reads today like baby-talk but at that time (eighteen yearsago), it was considered by many timid conservative scientists as'a daring movement. ' It is noteworthy in that it was the firstpublic scientific announcement that the physical matter is amanifestation or form of the ether. And it was made beforegeneral acceptance of the division of the ether into soniferous, luminiferous and tangiferous. 

"'Which in whirls constitutes matter. ' Professor Lodge believedthat 'some etheric molecules revolved so rapidly on their axisthat they could not be penetrated. ' Watch the soap-bubbles thatI am blowing. Each and every one is revolving as the earthrevolves, from west to east. What I wish to call your attentionto is the fact that can be proven, both mathematically andtheoretically, that at a certain rate of speed in the revolutionthey could not be penetrated by any rifle-ball. At a higher rateof speed they would be harder than globes of solid chilled steel, harder even than carbon. Professor Lodge believed that theetheric molecule revolved so rapidly that, thin as it was in itsshell, it gave us the dust out of which worlds were made. Thereis one fatal error in this idea, although it is held even now bymany. It is based entirely on gravity, and gravity is aloneconsidered in its problems. There are two great forces in theuniverse, not one, as many scientific people fail to remember--Gravity and Apergy, or the centrifugal and centripetal forces. The pull in is and must be always balanced by the pull out. There is in the universe as much repulsion as attraction, and theformer is a force quite as important as the latter. The bubble'sspeed kept increasing until apergy, the tendency to fly off, overcame gravity, and it ruptured. 

"Professor Lodge failed to take into account this apergic force, this tendency to fly off, when he gave such high revolutionaryspeed to the etheric molecules, a speed in which apergy wouldnecessarily exceed gravity. The failure to take apergy intoconsideration has been the undoing of many physicists. 

"Today we know that the ether is matter, the same as our own, only finer and rarer and in much more rapid vibration. We knowthat this ether has its solids, liquids and gases formed frommolecules of its atoms, even as our own are formed. We know thatits atoms combine as ours do, and while we have but eightyelementary combinations, it must have more than double thenumber. We know that every form and shape and combination ofthese elements from this plane flows from inherited tendencieshaving their root in the etheric world. 

"The two worlds are one world--as much at one with ours as theworld of gas about us is at one with our liquids and solids. Itis 'continuity, not impact. ' They not only touch everywhere andin everything, but they are one and the same in action andreaction. "

Thus spake a certain wise teacher of physics. To his wiseutterances, we can only add that such as we are today "we seethrough a glass, darkly. " Yet there will come a day when thephysical bandages will be removed from our eyes, and we shall seeface to face the beauty and grandeur and glory of this invisibleworld, and that in truth it 'transmits by continuity and notimpact every action and reaction of which matter is capable, 'forming one continuous chain of cause and effect, without a linkmissing. There are no gulfs to cross; no bridges to be made. It is here; not there. It is at one with us. And we are at onewith it. One and the same law controls and guides the ethericatom and the physical atom made from its molecules, whether thelatter are made in "whirls, " as at first supposed, or by orderlycombination as now believed. 

In fact, this visible world of ours is the perfect product of theother invisible one, having in it its root and foundation, thevery sap of its life. 

Chapter Five

The Four Manifested Planes

The oriental idea of the universe does not differ fundamentallyin its general conception, from that of modern science, but itgoes farther and explains more. The physics of the secretdoctrine are based upon a material universe of four planes ofvibration and a spiritual universe of three planes of vibrationbeyond matter. This Something in vibration may be given theEnglish name, Consciousness--without entering upon its nature. 

Spirit is consciousness in vibration and undifferentiated. 

Matter is consciousness in vibration and differentiated. 

As we divide the seven octaves of a piano into Treble and Bassfor clearness of thought and writing, so the Hidden Knowledgedivides the seven octaves of vibration, or planes, into Spiritand Matter. In their ultimate analysis they are one and the samething, as ice and water are the same thing; but for study theymust be differentiated. 

The material and physical universe consists of four planes ofmatter, or four great octaves of vibration, each differentiatedfrom the other as in our physics prakriti is differentiated fromether. The material universe, the ancient physics teach, wasoriginally pure thought, Manasa, the product of the spiritualplanes above. This manasic world was differentiated, a realworld. That is to say it was given elementary substances by theunion of its atoms in different sized molecules. Some of itselements combined and formed Prana. The prana gathered andformed other worlds, pranic worlds. Then in the pranic worldetheric worlds were formed; and finally in the etheric worlds, prakritic globes like the earth were formed. The earth is thecentre of a prakritic globe, revolving in ether around the sun. The sun is the centre of a solar globe of ether, revolving inprana around Alcyone. Alcyone is the centre of a stellar globeof prana revolving in manasa around the central and hidden sun ofthe great manasic globe. These four conditions of matterprakriti, ether, prana, and manasa are the earth, water, fire, air of the Ancient Metaphysics, the four elements of matter, andare present in every atom of prakriti. When the atom of pranawas formed, it had an envelope of manasa. When the atom of etherwas formed it had an envelope of pranic-manasic atoms. When theprakritic atom was formed it had an envelope of etheric-pranic-manasic atoms, each of its encircling etheric atoms being thecentre of a pranic molecule, and each pranic atom of thatmolecule being the centre of a manasic molecule. 

Each atom of prakriti was the material universe in miniature. Itheld the potentialities of mind, life, and phenomena. In everyaggregation of atoms, there were the four planes, each in touchthrough the Cosmic Mind, its manasa, with other atoms in theuniverse, with every other globe of whatever kind. "As above, sobelow, " was the secret Key-word. The unity of all the materialuniverse in its prakriti, ether, prana and manasa, was the cornerstone of this knowledge. The three planes above prakriti werecalled Astral, and in common speech there was the ordinarydivision into two planes, visible and invisible, or "Spirit, " asthe invisible was called, and "Matter, " as the visible wascalled. Only in the hidden secret doctrine of physics, and inthe open metaphysics which were a "stumbling block" and"foolishness" to those who had not the "inner light" of thephysics, were the three divisions of the "astral" made known, andthe true distinction between the spirit of the three higherplanes and the matter of the four lower was kept out of themetaphysics, or only vaguely alluded to. 

There is no "oriental science" because the oriental does notattach the same value to merely physical knowledge that we do. But that must not be understood to imply that there is nooriental physics. In all the matters that interest us now, asfar as principles are concerned, the oriental knew all that weknow. He knew it thousands of years ago, when our ancestors weresleeping with the cave bears. 

"That is all the good it did him, " the scientist says. No. Thatis not true. It is perfectly true that the oriental, theBabylonian who carved on the Black Stone now in the BritishMuseum the five moons of Jupiter, exposing himself to thederision of our astronomers prior to their own discovery of thefifth moon in 1898, did not care particularly whether there werefour moons or five, and had no sale for any telescopes he mightmake, for no one else cared particularly. But it was not truethat he did not care for any and all knowledge that would improvehis spiritual condition by giving him correct ideas of theuniverse and of his own part in it. To him life was more thanmeat and the body more than raiment. He was more afraid of sinthan of ignorance. We are more afraid of ignorance than of sin. He preferred to better men's moral condition; we prefer tobetter their physical condition. 

If one of the Sages of the East could be called up and put on thestand to be questioned, he would say, substantially:

"You are right in regard to your ether, and to prakriti beingether that has been dropped a great octave in vibration. Yourphysical atom is surrounded by a molecule of ether, this moleculecontaining many atoms of ether. The chording vibration doesproduce all physical phenomena. 

"But where did the ether atom come from? How can you explain howand whence life comes, or what it is? This explains physical, but how do you explain vital phenomena?

"You are wrong in assuming that all the matter of the universeapart from the earth or planets is ether and only ether. Theetheric world in which you are interested ends with your solarsystem. It ends with each solar system, to the people of thatsystem. Between each solar system and another there is anotherform of matter that is not ether. 

"This etheric solar world of ours is very large, many billions ofmiles in diameter; but it is not the whole universe. You knowthat the sun and all its planets are revolving around the starAlcyone. Your astronomers told you that years ago, and they haverecently given you the rate of speed as 4, 838 miles per hour. 

"Did you not see and know that if they had this revolution arounda central sun it must be within a solar globe?

"Did you think that the sun and its planets, and other suns andtheir planets, were tearing their way through the ether like somany fish on a dipsy-hook from a Marblehead fishing smack runningbefore the wind?

"Did it never occur to you that the ether of this solar systemmust be revolving around this central sun? The whole solarsystem, ether and planets, are revolving around Alcyone, and thereason why their minor revolution around the sun is not affectedby it is because the solar system is a vast globe of ether, having a thinner and rarer medium to revolve in, the same as ourearth has. It is the motion of a fly in a moving car. 

"Now fix your attention on this globe of ether, this solar globe. You must do it to get the concept before you. You have known ofit all your life without once really apprehending it, for youhave never learned to think, or to utilize the knowledge that wasgiven you. The idea is as new and as strange as if you had neverknown it. 

"What lies beyond the surface of the solar globe? Somethingmust; something as much rarer and thinner than the ether as theether is rarer and thinner than prakriti. Can you not guess?

"It is Prana, the life force of the universe. As prakriti ismade from ether, so ether is made from prana. It is made in thesame way. Each atom of the ether is the centre of a molecule ofprana, surrounded by an atmosphere of pranic atoms, exactly asyour prakritic atom is surrounded by an atmosphere of ethericatoms. You say that each atom of prakriti is the centre of amolecule of ether. So it is. But each atom of that ethericmolecule is the centre of a pranic molecule. Each atom of yourphysical matter is triple, not double. 

"You say that all physical phenomena come from the chordingvibration of the etheric and prakritic atoms of the two planes ofmatter. Yes. But do you not see that all vital phenomena comefrom the chording vibration of the pranic, etheric, and prakriticatom of the three planes of matter which are in each atom?

"In the living leaf the three planes are sounding in chord in eachatom of it. In the dead leaf, drying up and falling to pieces, only the lower two are sounding in chord. The silver chord hasbeen broken. 

"Each atom of prakriti you say has the potentiality of some kindof phenomenon. We add 'and of life also. ' The potentialities oflife are in every atom of prakriti. Even the atom of iron maylive in the blood. It cannot become a part of any livingorganism until its prana is sounding the chord of life in unisonwith the ether and prakriti--the threefold silver chord. 

"What is the centre of this prana? It is Alcyone. There areother solar globes beside ours circling around Alcyone, and wehave been considering only our own solar globe of ether. Alcyoneis the centre of the prana in which they revolve as the sun isthe centre of our ether in which the planets revolve. As thisprana has a centre around which we revolve with other solarsystems, then it must have a center of gravity. 

"Then this prana is a globe. 

"The prana does not then fill this material universe. There mustbe yet another form of matter rarer and finer than prana, fromwhich prana is made, as ether is made from prana and prakritifrom ether. Have we any other class of phenomena to explain, except vital and physical? Yes, there is a very important class, mental. And here we have the explanation, if we exercise ourreason. 

"These pranic globes are floating in an ocean of manasa, matterin its rarest form. 

"Each atom of prana is formed from manasa, exactly as ether wasformed from prana, and each pranic atom in the universe is thecentre of a manasic molecule, having an atmosphere of manasicatoms. 

"So we are not exact in giving the prakritic atom three planes oroctaves of vibration. It has four. You merely surround it withetheric atoms, and this is correct so far as it goes. You onlywish to explain physical problems. But there are other problemsto be explained, problems of life and mind, and the sameknowledge you have explains them as well as the others, if yousimply avail yourself of it. That you do not consider the atomas four-fold instead of two-fold is your own fault. I have nottold you anything you did not already know. I have only askedyou to apply your present knowledge of physics to these problemsof life and mind, and apply your reasoning powers. 

"The chording vibration in an atom of matter of

"The two planes produces Force, or phenomena

"The three planes produces Life--the silver chord

"The four planes produces Mind--the golden chord. 

"You say there is no gulf between the prakritic and ethericworlds; that it is one continuous world; and all its phenomenaare by continuity and not impact. That is true, but it is notthe whole truth. 

"There is no gulf to cross between the prakritic and ethericworlds; none to cross between that and the manasic. The fourworlds are one great world, continuous, interchangeable. Throughthe four as well as through the two, there is continuity and notimpact. Whether it is an atom or a world, the four are there. Nothing, no combination of atoms, no matter of any kind, howeversmall or large, can exist in this prakritic world unless it hasthe four elements, which from time immemorial our philosophershave called Earth, Water, Fire, Air, meaning the four globes orforms of matter in the universe. We do not have to leave theearth to live in the etheric globe. It is here. Nor do we haveto go millions of miles to reach the pranic globe. It is here. The problems of light and heat are no easier than the problems ofbirth and death. The pranic globe is within us; withineverything. So is the manasic. 

"It is here on these higher planes that the chances for worthystudy are greatest. At least we think so, though you may not. We live on the manasic--pranic--etheric globe on precisely thesame terms that we live on this of prakriti, and the problems ofthe three are equally open to us. 

"If there are any who care to follow up the line of thought Ihave opened, who care for the questions that interest us of theEast, I will talk as long as they care to listen, provided theywill not ask for knowledge that will give them power over others, which cannot fail to be used for evil. "

This is but a glimpse of Hindu physics, yet it has helped us inthe metaphysics. We now understand the chain of globes--inpart. The earth is fourfold. As each atom of the earth isfourfold, so their aggregations give us prakritic earth, anetheric earth, a pranic earth, and a manasic earth--incoadunition and not like the skin of an onion. They are separateand distinct globes, each on its own plane. It is four down andthree up for the Angel entering matter, whether from the outmostboundary of manasic matter, or the surface of the earth, or thecover of a baseball. The "chain of globes" in the SecretDoctrine represents the unity of the material universe. 

The three-fold nature of the astral model is revealed, and theunity of all prakritic things. But more than that, to manyminds, will be the explanation it gives of why there are but fourplanes of vibration in matter; that the highest form ofdevelopment in prakriti shows only four elements, prakriti orbody, sensation or force, life, and mind, and that these lastthree, present in all things in esse, become present in possewhen they work together harmonically. 

Chapter Six

Our Place on Earth

The next time our wise man from the east was asked to "say a fewwords and make his own topic, " he spoke, perhaps, as follows:

"How large do you think the earth is? You answer promptly, 7, 912miles in diameter. You are as far out of the way as you were insupposing that our sun could be a centre of gravity of a lot ofplanets revolving around it and around Alcyone without being aglobe of ether. Now that it has been mentioned, you see veryclearly for yourself that it must be a solar globe of ether. Itfollows from one of your physical axioms. When I tell you whythe earth is and must be about fifty thousand miles in diameter, you will see that it must be so, and that you knew it all thetime, but never stopped to formulate your knowledge. You havehad the knowledge for three centuries without applying it. 

"It was in 1609 that your greatest astronomer, John Kepler, announced as one of three harmonic laws by which the universe wasgoverned, that the squares of the times of the planets wereproportional to the cubes of their distances from the sun; andthat this law was true in physics and everywhere. No one of yourscientists has had the wisdom to study out what it meant, and forthree centuries, for 291 years, you have repeated his words likeso many parrots, instead of using the key he gave you to unlockthe mysteries of the universe. A corollary of his law is thatthe planets move in their orbits because they are impelledthereto between the two forces, and move in a mean curve betweenthem; but it was not until 1896 that you discovered that themean between two forces is always a curve and never a straightline. You have not a text book in a school today that does notrepeat this fundamental and absurd error--which you have knownfor three centuries to be an error--that the motion resultingfrom a mean between forces is "in a straight line. " The curvesresulting here are not to be measured easily, and are so largethat small segments appear straight lines; and it was not untilCarpenter demonstrated it mathematically that any one couldbelieve it true. 

"There are two great forces in this universe. Your grandfatherscalled them Centripetal and Centrifugal forces; your fatherscalled them Gravity and Apergy, names which still cling to them;and you call them Attraction and Repulsion. 

"It was Kepler, not Newton, who discovered that Attraction orGravity was in inverse proportion to the square of the distance. 

"You know the meaning of this mystic phrase, 'as the squares ofthe distance. ' You understand that it means the attraction attwo feet is only one-fourth the attraction at one foot; at fourfeet only one-sixteenth; at eight feet, only one sixty-fourth. 

"But who knows or cares for Kepler's great law of Repulsion, orApergy? That was that the 'square of the times are as the cubesof the distance. ' It has lain fallow for centuries. No one ofyour western physicists has ever studied it, or tried to explainit. It remains just where Kepler left it, as the mere law oforbital revolution of the planets only. 

"It is the key to the proper understanding of the universe. 

"'The squares of the times are as the cubes of the distance'means that all motion is the result of two forces acting uponprakriti, and that where the two forces are balanced, or equal, the result in motion is a circle or ellipse, the square of theRepulsion being equal to the cube of the Attraction to make themequal and produce a circle. In other cases they producehyperbola and parabola. 

"This is a little dry--nearly all fundamental knowledge is--butthe reward of patience is great. 

"The orbital speed of the earth is about 60, 000 miles per hour. The attraction of the sun exactly equals the repulsion created bythe motion; more accurately, the speed created by the repulsion. The result of the two forces working together at exact balance isa circle. An ellipse is a circle bent a little, and the ellipsein which the earth actually moves comes from varying attractionand repulsion. Kepler's second law covers that. 

"If the orbital speed of the earth were a mile less per hour, oreven a foot less, then the earth would wind up around the sun asa dog gets wound up with his chain around a tree. If this speedwere a mile more per hour, then the earth would wind out, eachyear getting farther and farther away, until finally it would belost. When the speed is exactly proportional to the pull--thatis, when it is as 1. 6 is to 2, --the result is a circular orbit, the eccentricity of which is caused by certain fluctuations inthe attraction and repulsion. 

"Suppose a planet were to be placed so that it would have a timeof two years. Its distance from the sun would be 1. 6 that of theearth. Why? Because to get the time doubled we would have totake the square root of 4; and to get the distance the cube rootof the same number, 4. If you wish to be very exact the cuberoot is 1. 5889, but 1. 6 is near enough for all ordinary work. 

"If you wanted to find out the distance of a planet revolving insix months you would divide the earth's distance by 1. 6. 

"In proportion you get any time or distance you may desire withabsolute accuracy. The distance of any planet from the sun givesits time, or its time gives its distance--when that of any ofthe others is known. This law applies throughout the universe;in everything and everywhere. It is not a law of orbitalrevolution alone, but a law of all motion. 

"Our moon has a time of 29 days and a speed of about 50, 000 milesper day. If the speed were greater it would leave us, if less itwould wind up, falling to the earth in the form of a spiral. 

"At what distance would it have to be to have a time of fourteendays? Divide 240, 000 miles by 1. 6. A seven-day moon, would be1. 6 that distance. And the exact distance for a one-day moon, for a moon that would always be in the same place in the heavens, moving as the earth revolved on its axis, would be about 24, 998miles. 

"This gives us the line of 24-hour axial rotation, the truesurface of the earth, and the sheer-line of prakritic matter. Beyond that line is the ether; within that line is prakriti. 

"It is the line of no weight, where gravity and apergy exactlybalance. Inside that line gravity exceeds apergy and everythingrevolving in less time, or that time, must fall to the centre. It is the true surface of any 24-hour globe of this size andweight. A moon to revolve around the earth in less than one daymust move faster than the earth to develop enough apergy toovercome the attraction. That phenomenon we see in the moons ofMars, which are within its atmosphere; within the planet itself. 

"We of the East learned this true size of the earth over sixthousand years ago, from observing the moons of Jupiter. Thetimes of the first three are doubled. We asked ourselves whatthis meant and found that their distance was increased by thecube root of 4 when their times were increased by the square rootof 4; that time was to distance as 1. 6 was to 2. Then weapplied the key, and found it unlocked many mysteries. 

"The first lesson this taught us was that we did not live on theearth, but within the earth, at the line of liquid and gaseouschanges, where the three forms of matter meet and mingle andinterchange with each other. We lived at the bottom of a gaseousocean 21, 000 miles above us, and 4, 000 miles from the centre ofthe globe. It gave us an entirely new conception of the earth, and of our place in it. 

"We saw that we lived in a narrow belt, or skin, of the earth, not more than 100 miles thick, perhaps not more than ten miles. Within this belt the prakritic elementary substances varied theircondition, combined, and made forms by increasing or decreasingvibration. It was the creative and destructive zone, theevolutionary "mother"--the liquid level of the prakriti--theseat of all physical phenomena. Fifty miles above, the masses ofnitrogen and oxygen and argon were too cold to change their rateof vibration. Fifty miles below the surface of the earth allthings were too hot for changes in vibration. In this kineticbelt, between two static masses our bodies had been made, andalso, in all probability, all combinations of the elementarysubstances. It was four thousand miles to the centre of thestatic prakritic mass beneath us; twenty-one thousand miles tothe surface of the static prakritic mass above us, and the smallkinetic belt between was only one hundred miles thick. But wehad one consolation, the prakriti we had was all kinetic, and thebest in the whole mass. 

"The second lesson it taught us was that as the earth had beenmade in the etheric globe, in a corresponding skin or plane ofkinetic etheric energy, with our ether the best of the solaroutput, that we ourselves were subject through our ether to thephenomena of that kinetic solar plane in precisely the same waywe now are to the phenomena of the kinetic prakritic plane. Oncerid of the fallacious notion that we were creatures of thesurface of the earth, once clearly conscious that we werecreatures of the interior, of the bottom of this gaseous ocean, then we could understand not only how the earth could be createdin this etheric globe, but how we could be creatures of the solarglobe living on it. 

"When we learned that lesson, and learned it well, it dawned uponus that we were living in the pranic globe at the same kineticlevel or plane of that globe, the line where its solids andliquids and gases mingled and passed from one state to another, the kinetic belt in which our solar globe has been made, and thatwe were living as truly on that globe as we were on thisprakritic globe. Our position on each globe was the same. 

"And then the great truth came that we lived in the manasicglobe, at the same kinetic level; and that we lived our lives onthe four globes simultaneously. Our bodies are fourfold. Everyatom is fourfold, ready to respond in our minds to the vibrationsof the Manasic world, in our vitality to the pranic vibrations ofthe pranic world, in our nerves to the etheric vibrations of theetheric world, and in our prakriti to vibrations of the prakriticworld. Each one of our bodies lived on its own earth globe, forthere were four globes of this earth--in coadunition--in itscorresponding kind of globe. 

"The four earth globes became one globe, as our four bodies wereone body; and the chain of four kinds of globes in matter becameone globe, as the manasic with the others on it. 

"These four kinds of globes were the beginning and the end ofmatter, as we distinguish and know matter. They were not the endof vibration; or of planes of vibration; or of realms beyondthis material universe; but they were the limits of all that iscommon to each and every atom of this lower plane of vibration. 

"It is upon this solid and perfect foundation of physics, thataccounts for and explains every kind of phenomena, we haveconstructed our metaphysics. All that belongs to these fourlower planes we consider and treat as physics. All that relatesto the planes beyond we consider metaphysics. Can you teach achild equation of payments before he knows the first four rules?You would not attempt such a task. The first four rules are thephysics of arithmetic; all beyond is the metaphysics ofarithmetic. It flows out of them. Can you comprehend our systemof metaphysics until you have clearly and completely mastered ourphysics? Would you not get into a fog at the very start?

"There can be no system of metaphysics without a solid foundationof physics. The idea is unthinkable. The one grows out of theother. It is its life; its fruit, its flower. 

"You have no western system of physics. Your physics are withoutform and void; patchwork, constantly changing. There is nosubstantial foundation for any system of metaphysics. What yousay or do in physics is fragmentary or chaotic. 

"It is perfectly true, so far as you have gone through the firstinvisible world of ether, you are much more masters of detailthan we are. 

"We have not cared particularly for the minor details by whichexplosives are made, or metals obtained from oxides. We havepreferred to push on into realms beyond as fast as we could, seeking first the Kingdom of Heaven and its Righteousness, knowing that when it was found all these things would be addedunto us. "

Chapter Seven

The Four Globes

That we live in the earth, not on the earth, is one of the mostimportant of the facts of eastern physics in the study of itsmetaphysics. The mathematical and physical proof that thephysical earth is 50, 000 miles in diameter should not bepassed over lightly in our haste to get on, for the perfectunderstanding of all this fact implies makes easy thecomprehension of how we live etherically in the solar ethericglobe, of how we live pranically in the stellar pranic globe, andhow we live manasically in the manasic globe. 

As we live within the narrow "skin" of phenomena, not more than100 miles thick, of this prakritic globe, with the whole earthwithin the corresponding skin of phenomena of the solar ethericglobe, within the kinetic belt in which it was made, the etherwhich surrounds each prakritic molecule is not merely any andevery kind of ether, but that particular kind of kinetic ether, which, by changing its rate of vibration through an octave, creates phenomena. The ether of all prakritic matter belongs tothe kinetic or creative belt of the solar etheric globe. It isnot static ether. The ether in our prakriti is in touch with allthe prakritic kinetic ether of the solar globe, subject to allsolar laws of change; and all our prak-solar laws of change;and all our prakritic matter, a mere detail of it, is a part ofthe solar phenomena. "Our father, the sun, " or "Dyaus pitar"("heavenly father"--Latin, Jupiter) meant more once than it doesnow. Then the solar globe was the first heaven, and to liveunder its laws, puttings off the coat of skin, was an objectwhich men believed to be worth striving for. They recognized, aswe do not, that our prakritic laws were not all they had to obey;that the higher law of the solar globe on which they lived, ofwhich the lower prakritic laws were merely an outcome and detail, was worthy of the closest study. And they recognized that thesehigher laws of the etheric globe were metaphysical as well asphysical; that our moral law flows out of the moral law of thesolar etheric world, as our physics flow from and out of solarphysics. Religion is correct in its assumption of this higherlaw of morals; incorrect only in its grasp and explanation. Science is correct in holding only in its assumption that it isphysical science; incorrect only in its assumption that it isphysical science of this plane and globe only. There is noquarrel between science and religion when the full knowledge ofone stands beside the full knowledge of the other. They aretwin-sisters. 

This solar-etheric globe in which we are interested revolvesaround Alcyone within that kinetic belt or skin of prana which issubject to phenomena or vibration through one octave--else itwould never have been formed. All prana in the solar-ethericglobe is of this particular kind of kinetic prana, which createslife of all kinds--which is subject to vibration through oneoctave. The solar globe is a detail of kinetic prana only, oneof its phenomena. Necessarily, all our prana is of this kinetickind, and our earth a minor detail of it in the Alcyone globe. All the changes and combinations possible in kinetic prana on thepranic globe are possible here, in our kinetic prana, as all thephenomena of the etheric world are possible here in our kineticether. 

As our earth is a globe of ether and a globe of prana as well asa globe of prakriti; we are actually living on a small "cabbage"of that pranic globe, and subject to all its laws. 

In the vast manasic globe that includes this whole materialuniverse there is the same kinetic belt or skin of "phenomena" orvibration similar to that kinetic belt in which we live on theearth, and the manasa which permeates the Alcyonic globe, thesolar globe, and the earth is that kinetic manasa which isinvolving and evolving. This involving and evolving kineticmanasa of the Alcyonic globe is that which surrounds every atomof ether of the solar globe and every atom of prakriti of thisearth globe. In the great manasic globe this earth of ours is aminute village of Helios (sun) county, in the state of Alcyone. We are actually and literally living in this manasic globeprecisely as we live in this earth, and as in the village we aresubject to all the laws of the manasic world, we can study themhere in this village as well as we could elsewhere. We can studythem as easily as we study our prakritic village laws, or ouretheric county laws, for all the forms of manasa subject to themanywhere are here with us. We are not limited to a study of theprakritic laws of the village fathers, nor yet to the ethericlaws of the supervisors of Helios county, as scientists say, noreven to the state laws of Alcyone; only the manasic laws of theUniverse limit our material studies in that direction. As somemen on this earth never leave their native village and never knowor care for any matters outside of it, so in this little earthvillage, in the kinetic belt of the manasic globe, there are menwho do not care to know anything which relate to matters outsideits boundaries. As some men may pass the boundaries of theirvillage, but not of their county, caring only for the mattersconcerning it, so the western scientists of this earth village onthe manasic globe do not pass the boundaries of Helios county, caring only for etheric matters. The philosophers and wise menof the East are broader minded and from time immemorial havetaken greater interest in the pranic affairs of Alcyone and themanasic condition of the universe in which Alcyone is a statethan in the rustic murmur of their village or the gossip of theircounty. 

There is nothing lacking in our manasic earth-village, nothingthat is in more abundant measure in our county, state, andnation. We are of the best. 

We of this village may imagine, if we like, that there is nothingbeyond the village limits, and nothing in it but that whichrelates to the village. We have the right to be silly, if wewish to be. And it is no sign of wisdom to say that there is acounty beyond, but that the county boundaries end all, and onlyvillage and county politics may be studied. The European whobelieved--no Asiatic or African or American could have believed--that the earth rested on an elephant and the elephant ona turtle was wise, in comparison. Nor is it any sign ofintelligence to say that we may learn something of the villageand county while we live, but that to learn anything about thestate and nation we must wait until we are dead. There are toomany in the village who are familiar with both state and nation, and who have studied their laws, for this to be anything butidiotic. 

Chapter Eight

The Battle Ground

Each and every one of our eighty-odd elementary substances owetheir condition--whether solid, liquid, or gas--to their rateof vibration. We have reduced all gases to a liquid and nearlyall to a solid form. Conversely, we have raised all solids to aliquid and nearly all to a gaseous condition. This has been doneby reducing or raising the vibration of each within one octave--each one of the eighty odd having a special octave, a tone orhalf-tone different from any other. Normally, the solids, vibrating in the lower notes, gather together under Attraction;while the gases, vibrating in the higher notes, diffuse underRepulsion. Between them, created by the interchange of these twoforces, is our "skin" of phenomena, or kinetics. 

Broadly, the attraction of the universe comes from its vibrationat certain centres in the three higher notes; the repulsioncomes from its vibration everywhere else in the three highernotes. The central note, D of the scale, represents the battleground between the field of kinetics. This in simpleillustration is water turning into gas. 

This is the great battle ground, the only one worth consideringin a general view. There are minor "critical stages" which thechemist studies, but for us, in this broad sketch of theuniverse, the important battle-ground is that between solid andliquid on one side representing gravity, and gas on the other, representing apergy. 

All the solids and liquids of this earth of ours gather at thecentre, in a core, each of the elements (or their combinations)in this core vibrating in their three lower notes, producing theattraction, which is "in proportion to the mass" and whichdecreases from the surface of the core "as the square of thesubstance. "

Around this central core gather all the elements vibrating in thethree higher notes of their octave as gases, producing repulsionwhich increases by 1. 6 for each doubled time. It is worth whilemaking this clear. It has never before appeared in print. 

Let the amount of apergy, or repulsion, or centrifugal force atthe surface of the earth be represented by x. This is the resultof motion at the rate of 1, 000 miles per hour. Make this motion2, 000 miles per hour, and the apergy is increased 1. 6. Fourthousand miles above the surface of this earth the rotationis at the rate of 2, 000. It is the globe of 48, 000 miles incircumference revolving in 24 hours, and the speed is doubled. This apergy has increased by 1. 6. As the apergy increases atthis rate every time the speed is doubled, at a distanceof 21, 000 miles the speed is 7, 000 miles per hour and thecentrifugal force has been increased nearly four times what itwas at the surface of the ocean. The attraction has beendecreased to about one-thirtieth. At the surface it is equal to120 x. At 4, 000 miles to one-quarter, or 30 x; at 16, 000 milesto one-sixteenth, or 7 x; and at 21, 000 miles to 4 x. 

If "equatorial gravity is about 120 times that of the equatorialapergy, " at the ocean level, then at the distance of 21, 000 milesfrom it, in a revolving globe, the two forces would be equal;the "pull" of each being 4 x, and an anchor will weigh no morethan a feather, for weight is the excess of gravity or apergy. 

If the pyramids had been built of the heaviest known material onthe gases 21, 000 miles above us, and so that they should revolvein the same time, 7, 000 miles per hour, they would remain there. All the attraction of the solid core of the earth that could beexerted on them at that distance would not be enough to pull theman inch nearer to it through our gaseous envelope. Their gaseousfoundation there would be as firm as igneous rock here. 

The force of repulsion created by the three higher notes of anoctave means just as much at the attraction created by the threelower notes, whether it is in a chemical retort, within thisearth, or within this universe. The two forces balance, and areexactly equal. They fight only within kinetic zones. 

Given the vast manasic globe of differentiated matter, its atomsuniting in different numbers to form molecules as the bases ofelementary substances, manasic substances, of course. The thrillof vibration is sweeping through it from the spiritual planeabove, and the elements (and their combinations) which answer inthe lower notes gather and form a core, the Invisible CentralSun, with its attraction. The elements answering in the highernotes gather around it with their repulsion. So the two opposingforces were born, with a vast kinetic skin for a battle-groundbetween them. 

The attraction of the invisible central sun manifests itself tous in prakriti as Light. The repulsion of its covering, or thehigher static vibration of manasa, manifests itself to us asDarkness. The first creative act in or on matter was thecreation of Light and its separation from the Darkness. The nextcreative act was the establishment of a kinetic skin or zonebetween them, a firmament in which the two forces of Light andDarkness could strive for mastery. "And God called the firmamentHeaven. " The third creative act was the gathering of the solidsand liquids together, and the beginning of the kinetic work inthe creation of forms and shapes, by the cross play of the twoforces in their combinations of solid with gases. 

All this had to happen before the manasa combined and dropped invibration to prana--and before the pranic globes were formed andthe Light could be manifested to us through them. It may be wellto read the first chapter of Genesis over and ask forgiveness forour ignorance, from the writer who records this creation of thepranic globes as the fourth act of creation, and the creation ofthe etheric sun and prakritic moon to follow that. That recordis mutilated, fragmentary; but the writer of it knew the facts. If we had the full story, instead of a sentence here and there, taken from an older story not to tell of creation but to hideanother tale for the priest, the writer of Genesis would laughlast. 

But let us return to the kinetic skin of energy between Light andthe Darkness--the firmament which God calls Heaven--the battleground for gravity and apergy, or attraction and repulsion, orgood and evil, or the powers of light and darkness. This skin islike that of an onion, thickest at the equator and thinnest atthe poles--not only on this earth but in the solar, alcyonic, and manasic globes. The equatorial belt, where phenomena arerichest in the manasic globes, we call the Milky Way; in thesolar globe we call it the plane of the ecliptic; and on theearth, the tropics. Modern science has not yet found it inAlcyonic globe--because it has never thought of looking for it. 

This division of the Light from the Darkness was all that wasrequired for evolution on the manasic globe within the kineticbelt. This evolution was not confined to the making of a fewalcyonic or pranic globes. It was (and is) a great and wonderfulevolution beyond words and almost beyond imagination. It is theHeaven which mankind has longed to see and know. The writer ofGenesis mixed it with the creation of this earth, using earthlymetaphors. Before finding fault, we should better his language. We have not the words in physics to do it, and must wait for ourmetaphysics. But of one thing we may be sure, that the pranic-alcyonic globes here and there at the "sea level" of the manasicglobe--in what God calls Heaven--amount to no more on thatglobe, or in Heaven, than so many balls of thistle-down blownacross a meadow do on this earth of ours. Everything that can becreated in thought must be there. It is in thought only, but inthought it is differentiated as sharply as anything in prakriti. The manasic world, the Heaven of the Bible, is as real as our ownworld can possibly be; in fact, more real, for when ours isresolved back into its final elements, it will be but "the dustof the ground" of the manasic world. 

The pranic globes created in this manasic skin by Sound, or theLogos, or vibration, evolved in identically the same way--with acentral static core and an outer static envelope, of low and highvibration in prana, creating attraction and repulsion, or gravityand apergy. The kinetic skin between, in which these forces playin the pranic world, makes a real, not an imaginary pranic world, though but a faint reflection of the manasic. When our father, the Central Invisible Sun, transfers his attraction to thesealcyonic suns, the Light has something in which to manifestitself, and we "see" this manifesting core and call it Alcyone, and its manifestation Light; but light in its last materialanalysis is but the static mind or thought vibrating in the threelower notes of the octave. 

Chapter Nine

The Dual Man

Within the alcyonic globes of differentiated pranic-manasic atomsthe vibration divided them also into solid-liquid cores andgaseous envelopes, and a kinetic skin of phenomena. And then anew world--a world of Life, came into material existence. Allthe atoms of thought or manasa, surrounding each and every pranicatom, and making its molecule of energy, so to speak, were thatparticular kind of kinetic manasa ready to change its rate ofvibration within an octave, and the forms prana assumes from theaction of thought within the kinetic belt were living andthinking. Each pranic globe, which was a small state of productof the manasic, consisted of two globes in coadunition--two inone. Each pranic atom was the centre of a manasic molecule andrepresented the universe. All things were two in one, created byharmonic vibration between them, and existence by the greaterstrength of the lower notes, or attraction. It was at once lessand more wonderful than the manasic world--a specialized form ofit. 

When within this kinetic belt of the prana the etheric solarglobes formed here and there, they were three fold, each atom ofthe new plane of matter having its surrounding envelope of prana-manasa--a specialization of the pranic world in which (what wecall) force had been added to life and mind. The static ether, vibrating in each of its elements through one octave, dividedinto central core (our sun, and other suns) and outer covering, with a skin or belt of kinetic energy, "as above" which developedan etheric world. All things on this etheric world were causedby the harmonic vibration between the etheric atoms and theirsurrounding envelopes, except that while all things in thisetheric world must have life, not all need have mind. The chordof three was not necessary to create; the chord of two wasenough, and the manasic atoms might cease to vibrate in chordwith the prana and ether without affecting the creation. Only inthe etheric world (and below it) could there be living mindlessones. To the etheric globes the stellar pranic cores transferredtheir light, which manifested itself in the solid static ether asAttraction and in the gaseous static ether as Repulsion, withinthe kinetic skin of each etheric world more specialized and lessvaried than the pranic. 

Our sun is not of prakriti, but of static ether, composed of theseparate and individual elementary substances of the ether, andtheir compounds vibrating in the lower notes of their octaves. It is our father, not our elder brother. Its envelope of staticether in which the planet revolves is composed of the elementarysubstances and combinations vibrating in the higher notes oftheir octave. The light transferred to this etheric globe fromits mother, Alcyone, manifests itself in the lower vibration ofthe sun as Attraction; in the higher vibrations of its envelopeas Repulsion, and within the kinetic skin wherein these forcesplay, the prakritic globes, planets, were born. 

Take our earth. Each atom is fourfold--whether of the staticcore or of the static gaseous envelope. Creation on it islimited to the kinetic skin, wherein the attraction of the lowerand repulsion of the higher notes in each octave of vibrationhave full play. All things on it must have come from thechording vibrations of the atoms of the prakritic elementarysubstances and their envelope of ether. They may or may not havelife or mind the ether atom may have lost its chord with itspranic envelope, or the pranic envelope may have lost its chordwith the manasic; but the combination must have force or energywithin it. It may have lost Mind and Life in acquiring it, orafter acquiring it; but it had to have life before it couldbecome prakriti. 

All things in the prakritic world flow from the Life of theetheric and the Mind of the pranic worlds. Everything in theetheric world has life, and our unconscious personification or"vivification" of etheric life transferred into fauna or flora, or into force of any kind, has a natural explanation. Thethrill of vibration in one octave through the differentiatedconsciousness of the universe by which the light was separatedfrom the darkness, the lower from the higher, was all that wasrequired to create each star and sun, and world, and all that inthem is. And it was all good. 

Each thing on every lower world was but the translation into formof the type of the next world (or plane) above. As each elementon this prakritic type, so each combination of those elementsinto crystal or tree or animal is but the translation. Thenormal earth from the crystal to (the animal) man was pure, andclean, and holy. Sin had not entered. 

How did it come?

On the vast manasic world there was "a special creation"--thatof the Angel Man. The three planes of Spirit above wereundifferentiated consciousness, but they were in differentoctaves of vibration, and these working on the three highestforms of differentiated consciousness (manasic matter) broughtthem to chording Vibration so that when they combined and reachedtheir highest point in evolution they "created" the Angel (ormanasic) man. He was the product in kinetic manasa of the threespiritual planes above him, precisely as the animal man was theproduct in kinetic prakriti of the three material planes abovehim. The latter was the "shadow" of the other. 

The Angel-man had a material (manasic) body, but his energy life, and mind were spiritual. The animal man had a prakritic body, with energy, life and mind that were material. 

So far all was good. 

The animal man has four bodies--one of prakriti, one of ether, one of prana, and one of manasa. It may be true, and probablyis, that his manasic body is not sounding in chord with hisprakritic body, but only with those atoms of it which are in hisbrain and nerves; but that is immaterial--for futureconsideration. 

The Angel man had but one body, of manasa, in which the spiritdwelt; but that body was identical in substance with the bodythat made the mind of the animal man. His manasic body joinedthe manasic body of the animal man, joined with it by enteringinto the animal man's mind, as easily as water from one glass isadded to water in another glass, and the animal "man became aliving soul, " endowed with speech, while the Angel-man was given"a skin coat. "

The prakritic body of the animal man was the result in prakritiof an etheric-pranic-manasic, or "astral" body, formed inaccordance with the Universal Law. For what he was by nature, hecould not be blamed. He stood naked and not ashamed before theRadiance. He did not make his astral body; he was the meretranslation of it into prakriti, as all other created thingswere, and that invisible astral self (figuratively) stood at hisright hand, moulding and shaping him. 

But when the Angel-man entered his mind, all this was changed. He "knew Good from Evil. " To his mind of manasa had been addedthe Spirit--the Atma-Buddhi's Consciousness of the threeSpiritual planes. He has become "as one of us, " said the Angel-men of the firmament, of Heaven. He now held the seven planesand was a creator. Each thought and desire that, when an animalonly, fell harmless, now created on the pranic and etheric world. Soon beside him, at his left hand (figuratively) there grew up asecond etheric or astral body, that of his desires; and hisprakritic body was no longer the product of the astral body onhis right hand. It was the joint product of the left-hand Kamicastral body he had created, and the right hand normal astralbody. He was no longer in harmony with the Radiance. He couldno longer face it. He had created discord--Sin. 

The pretty legend of the two "Angels, " one on the right hand andone on the left, has its physical basis in this truth, but, ofcourse, as a matter of actual fact, the normal and abnormalastral bodies are in mechanical union. It is the Kamic self-madeastral body that remains from one incarnation to another, producing in joint action with a new normal astral body, a newphysical body for the Inner-Self, or Angel taking the pilgrimagethrough the lower world. 

All the Angel-men did not enter the animal men on the pranicetheric-prakritic globes; only a few. It was a pilgrimagethrough matter in which those who make it are meeting manyadventures, but the legends are many, and have no place in thephysics, although the legends are all founded on the facts of thephysics. 

Of the number of monads, willing to undertake the pilgrimage, only a few of those within the kinetic belt of the manasic globehave reached the pranic. Only a few of those within the pranickinetic belts reached the etheric. And of all who have reachedthis earth, only a few may win their way back before the greatday Be-With-Us. 

The problem of man, and his relations to the universe, are anentirely different line of study from that of the SpiritualMonad, the over-soul of every prakritic atom. Each prakriticatom has what may be called a soul, its three-fold astral cause;and an over-soul, or the three-fold spiritual archetype, orcauseless cause. 

Every combination of these atoms, whether a knife, a leaf, ananimal, an earth, a sun, or a star, has this soul and oversoul. 

Once the idea of what is meant by these terms becomes clear, thedifficulty in understanding them vanishes. The study of man isphysical in its lower branches; metaphysical only in its highestand last analysis. The study of the Monad is metaphysical fromstart to finish. The two studies are apt to be confused, becausemetaphysically they are often joined for study, the teachertaking it for granted that the pupil fully understands the simpleand easy physics of the problem of humanity. 

This, in crude and bold outline, is the story of creation to thefall of man according to the ancient physics, translated into thewords and phrases of modern physics. The latter, in the latestdiscoveries of modern science, seem to have stolen a shivefrom the ancient loaf in the expectation that it would not bedetected. Each and every step forward that modern science hasmade in the past twenty years, each and every discovery of everykind in the physical field, has been but the affirmative of someancient doctrine taught in the temples of the East before "Caintook unto himself a wife. "

Chapter Ten

The Septenary World

In the physical universe we have the four informing physicalglobes, so that as a whole or in its parts, it is "a string ofseven globes, " reaching from the highest spirit to the lowestmatter. The awakened Universal Consciousness in vibration--undifferentiated in the three globes above, differentiated inthe four globes below--in its last analysis is all one. But thereis a gulf between matter and spirit, radically dividing them, andin the physical universe we are concerned only with physics andphysical laws, until we reach its outmost boundaries and come intouch with the spiritual planes beyond. 

This is the view of the universe at first glance, as in thesmaller universe of this earth we at first see only its solid andliquid globes. And even after the discovery of the gas, we donot apprehend its important work in and behind the others untilit has been pointed out to us. Nor do we at first apprehend thework of the spiritual in the material, and the object ofmetaphysics is to show, through the physics, the connectionbetween them that the spirit works through matter; that where wecan see but four there are seven beads on each material string;and that the last bead of each string is itself a chain of beads, the "chain of seven" applying only to the seventh manifestation, or prakriti, while the "strings" apply to the way in which theycome. 

On each unraveled string leading from our central sun down to aplanet there are seven beads corresponding to the seven globes inthe chain of each planet, each to each, yet not the same. Thereis a distinction, and it is no wonder there should have beenconfusion at first and a mixing of "strings" with "chains. " Thephysics as they progress will clear this confusion away. 

In the manasic globe, which is the first differentiation of thatwhich forms the spiritual globes above, the resulting mind ormanasa is mainly the differentiated Divine Mind of the highest. It has a "chain" of two globes only, itself and the Divine Mindglobe, although its "string" of globes is four. 

It is the perfected differentiation of the Buddhi in manasathat causes the formation of the pranic globes, which havechains of four and strings of five, and the full and perfectdifferentiation of the Atma in manasa-prana that causes theformation of the etheric globes, which have chains of six andstrings of six. Consciousness, Buddhi and Atma are practicallythe same as the manasa, prana, and ether, each to each, only thelatter are differentiated and the former are not. 

Each of the three astral globes is the reflection in matter ofthe three spiritual globes beyond, each to each, and all to all. 

The difference between matter and spirit is a difference inMotion only. Both are vibrating, so that both are in mechanicalmotion, from force without, like the waves of the ocean, but onlythe matter has what we may properly call motion of its own, orthat produced from within--from the atom and each organism of itup to the ALL, as the vibration is from the ALL down to the atom. It is this centre of force in an atom, this motion outside ofvibration, or rather beside it, which we call "differentiation. "Brinton's "daring psychological speculation" that "mind wascoextensive with motion" (from organization) was but a repetitionof one of the most ancient axioms. 

Take our solar etheric globe. It has two other globes of matter, consubstantial; a globe of prana and a globe of manasa. Theyare not beyond it, or beside it, but one with it, atom for atom. But what are they in reality? Globes of Atma, Buddhi, andConsciousness in which the atoms, having organized, are inmotion, are they not?

Let this motion in this material universe cease, and matter wouldmelt away and resolve into spirit. From spirit it came, tospirit it belongs, and to spirit it returns. 

Behind each and every astral globe, whether the globe be but anastral atom, or an astral planet, or an astral world; beyond itsphysics there is a meta-physical globe, its cause, and thatis the real globe, of which the astral is but a temporaryphenomenon. Take a spiritual globe and differentiate it. TheMotion resulting produces a material astral globe. Stop themotion; bring it to a state of rest. The astral shadowdisappears. It was merely spiritual phenomena. 

Each and every astral atom is a model in miniature of thematerial and spiritual universe. Each and every prakritic atomis the joint result of spirit and matter united and workingtogether--of physics and metaphysics; and in its last analysispure spirit; pure metaphysics. 

Behind each and every prakritic atom of our earth there are sixother atoms (or globes), three material shadows and threespiritual realities, so that it is a string of seven--the wholeuniverse in miniature--material and spiritual. And all thingscombined and formed on a prakritic base are a chain of seven--whether a peach or a planet. 

The "chain" belongs to the prakritic plane. The lines of descentfrom the Light through the star and sun to planet are "strings. "The "chains" are beads of the same size strung on a thread. Thestrings are beads of different sizes strung on a thread. Thebeads of the chain are in coadunition--in the same space, as gasin water and the water in a sponge. 

In metaphysics this earth can only be regarded as a chain ofseven globes, its three astral globes in coadunition having theirthree spiritual doubles. Of course no one of the higher globescan be seen by the prakritic eye, but that is not to say theastral world cannot be seen by the astral eye in sleep, or by theperson who qualifies himself for the astral world, through thedevelopment of his astral body. "No upper globes of any chain inthe solar system can be seen, " says H. P. Blavatsky in the SecretDoctrine (vol. I, p. 187), yet she means by astronomers, not bysages. And she does not mean the upper globes in the stellarsystem of Alcyone and its companions. 

In pure physics the earth can only be regarded as a chain of fourglobes consubstantial and in coadunition--four in and three out. This makes seven, and the metaphysician when talking physics usesthe metaphysical terms interchangeably and speaks of "the chainof seven globes" meaning in one sentence the four material globesmaking this earth; in another meaning the line of descent orstring of beads of different sizes reaching down from the DivineConsciousness; and in still another the seven beads or globes ofthe same size in coadunition to form this earth chain. To thestudent who is thoroughly grounded in the eastern physics thisinterweaving of the physical and metaphysical presents nodifficulties; but to the western mind just beginning the studyit is a tangle. 

We can now see what is meant by illusion, or Maya, and understandwhy such stress is laid upon it by every teacher. 

Take the physical side first. The motion of a top gives it bandsof color to our eyes that it does not have at rest. They aretemporary and not permanent, a result of motion merely; illusionand not reality. 

The motion of the material atoms of the four planes, in harmonywith their vibration, a motion the spiritual world does not have, produces all material phenomena. This is of course within thekinetic belts, for above or below them there is no change, andits phenomena are the mere change in relation of one atom toanother caused by motion. The changes are not real. Theydisappear when the motion stops. They have no existence inmatter above or below the belt. 

All phenomena of every kind are as much an illusion as thesupposed bands of colour around the top. The illusion is theresult of changes of relation in differentiated atoms caused bytheir motion. Without this motion the four material globes woulddissolve into the atomic dust of the manasic world, with all thatis within them. The whole material universe is all illusion; amere temporary relation of its atoms through motion, withoutReality or permanence. 

What then is real? What is not illusion? That which is beyondthe physical, that which is its cause and root; broadly, themetaphysical, which is not the result of differentiated atomsthrough relation. What was real in the top is real here. Whatwas illusion in the top is illusion here. 

The meta-physical or spiritual (the terms are interchangeable)does not have to pass beyond the manasic globe to get on thesolid ground of reality. The spiritual world is here in everyphysical atom and in every aggregation of them; in every planet, sun, and star; for they are seven, each and every one, not four. Behind the illusion of one atom or many, whether here or onAlcyone, there is reality and permanency in the undifferentiatedcause, the spiritual archetype, the three higher beads on thestring which are the proper study of metaphysics. 

Chapter Eleven

Stumbling Blocks in Eastern Physics

The Western student of the ancient Eastern physics soon meetsserious stumbling-blocks; and one at the very threshold has inthe last half century turned many back. In beginning his studyof the solar system, the pupil is told:

The first three planets--Mercury, Venus, and the moon--are deadand disintegrating. Evolution on them has ceased. The proof ofthis is found in the fact, that they have no axial rotation, Mercury and Venus always presenting the same surface to theirfather, the sun, and the moon the same surface to its daughter, the earth. 

This is a concrete statement of physical fact at which theWestern student protests. If in the whole range of Westernastronomical science there is any one fact that he has acceptedas absolutely proved, it is that Mercury revolves once in 24h. , 5m. , 30. 5s. , and Venus once in 23h. , 21m. , 22s. He would as sooncredit a statement that the earth has no axial rotation as thatMercury or Venus has none; and if he continues his study ofEastern physics it is with no confidence in its accuracy, and asa matter of curiosity. 

The statement that Mercury, Venus, and the moon "are deadand disintegrating, " the former two "always presenting thesame surface" to the sun, is the basis for an elaboratesuperstructure, both in the physics and the metaphysics of theEast. It is used in physics to explain how the "evolutionarywave" came to an end at the perfection of the mineral on Mercurywith the loss of its axial rotation; how the "wave" then passedon to Venus with the seed of the vegetable kingdom, where thevegetable evolution ended with the loss of axial rotation;how from Venus it leaped to the moon, mother of animals andcontroller of animal life, with the seed of animal life in thevegetable; and how finally it came to the earth, when the moonceased to revolve, bringing in the animal the seed of man. Hereman will be evolved and perfected. Man has not yet been "born"on this earth, they say. He is still in a prenatal or embryoniccondition within the animal. 

The lunar Pitris, the men-seed, have a physical reason for being, if this evolutionary theory be true; none if it is not. Axialrotation is necessary in evolution, the ancient physics teaches, which must cease with it. The reasons for this are too lengthyto give here. Briefly, the rotation makes the electrical flowand a thermopilic dynamo of each planet. 

The ancient astronomical teaching is absolutely true. There willnot be a work on astronomy published in Europe or the UnitedStates this year, or hereafter, that will not state that "Mercuryand Venus revolve on their axes in the same time that theyrevolve around the sun, " which is another way of saying that"they have no axial rotation, always presenting the same face tothe sun, " and an inaccurate way of presenting the truth. Thescrew that holds the tire at the outer end of the spoke does notrevolve "once on its axis" each time the wheel revolves. Run acane through an orange and swing it around; the orange has notrevolved "once on its axis. " Nor does the stone in a slingrevolve "once on its axis" for each revolution around the hand. The motion of Mercury is identically that of the impaled orangeor the stone in the sling. It has no axis and no axial rotation. The modern astronomers, detected in pretenses to knowledge theynever possessed, let themselves down easy. 

This "discovery, " of no axial rotation by the interior planets, made by Schiaparelli and confirmed by Flammarion in 1894, hassince been fully verified by our Western astronomers. All thenew astronomies accept it. But the admission of astronomical"error, " to speak politely, comes too late for the student itturned back from his study of Eastern physics. He cannot regainhis lost faith and lost ground. 

Thirty years ago Proctor made it clear to Western students thatthe orbit of the moon was a cycloidal curve (a drawn-out spring)around the sun, the earth's orbit being coincident with its axis;and that the moon was, astronomically and correctly, a satelliteof the sun, not a satellite of the earth. This has been theEastern view and teaching from time immemorial. 

The Eastern distinction between father Sun and mother Moon, andthe classification of the latter as a planet, did not disturb theWestern student. He understood that. It was the "absoluteaccuracy" of modern astronomers in regard to the length of theday on Mercury or Venus, which the astronomers declared hadbeen corrected down to the fraction of a second, that made itimpossible for him to accept the Eastern physics when the lattersquarely contradicted his own. 

This was but the first of many similar stumbling-blocks in thepath of the student of Eastern physics. 

 "Few were the followers, straggling far, That reached the lake of Vennachar;"

and when they did, this was what they had to face:

"The planets absorb and use nearly all the solar energy--allexcept the very small amount the minor specks of cosmic dust mayreceive. There is not the least particle of the sun's light, orheat, or any one of the seven conditions of the solar energy, wasted. Except for the planets, it is not manifested; it isnot. There is no light, no heat, no form of solar energy, excepton the planets as it is transferred from the laya center of eachin the sun to them. The etheric globe is cold and dark, exceptalong the lines to them--the "Paths of Fohat" [solar energy]. Six laya centers are manifested in the sun; one is laid aside, though the wheels [planets] around the One Eye be seven. [Thisalludes to the moon, whose laya center in the sun is now alsothat of the earth; but it is considered as a planet]. What eachreceives, that it also gives back. There is nothing lost. "

"That settles it, " says one student; and the others agree. Ofthe hundred who started, "The foremost horseman rode alone, "

before the next step was won. 

In the light of the tardy but perfect justification of the firststumbling-block, this statement may be worth following out, "tosee what it means, " and how "absurd" it can be. An ethericglobe; cold as absolute zero, dark as Erebus, with here andthere small pencils of light and heat from the sun to the planets--just rays, and nothing more--is a very different one from thefiery furnace at absolute zero of the modern physicist. 

On a line drawn from the center of the earth to the center of themoon there is a point where the "weights" of the two bodies aresaid in our physics exactly to balance, and it lies, says ourphysics, "2, 900 miles from the center of the earth, and 1, 100miles from the surface. " This is the earth's "laya center" ofthe Eastern physics. It is of great importance in problems oflife; but it may be passed over for the present. 

Between the earth and the sun--precisely speaking, between thislaya center and the sun--there is a "point of balance, " whichfalls within the photosphere of the sun. This point in the sunis the earth's solar laya, the occult or hidden earth of themetaphysics. 

A diagram will make this clearer. Draw a line from the layacenter in the sun to that in the earth. Draw a narrow ellipse, with this line as its major axis, and shade it. At each end ofthe axis strike the beginning of an ellipse that will be tangent. If positive energy is along the shaded ellipse, negative energyis in each field beyond--earth and sun. This is a very crudeillustration of a fundamental statement elaborated to the mostminute detail in explanation of all astronomical phenomena; butfor the moment it will do. 

The point is that along this axial line connecting thelaya centers play all the seven solar forces--light, heat, electricity, etc. --that affect the earth, and on every side ofthis line is the "electric field" of these forces. To this lineany escaping solar energy is drawn, as the electricity of the airis drawn to a live wire or magnet. But there is little or noneto escape. From the laya point in the sun to the laya point inthe earth, the solar energy is transferred as sound is carriedalong a beam of light (photophone), or electricity from one pointto another without a wire. 

To the advanced student of electricity the ancient teaching iseasily apprehended; to others it is difficult to make clear. These laya centers, it says, are "the transforming points ofenergy. " From the earth laya to the solar laya centre, theenergy, we may say, is positive; beyond both the solar and theearth laya centre, in the fields touching at them, it is negative--or vice versa. The line connecting the layas is the "Path ofFohat"--the personification of solar energy. 

This is a very crude and brief way of putting many pages ofteaching, but the important point is that this line between thelayas is one of solar energy, with a dynamic "field" of solarenergy, elliptical in shape, connecting with the reverse fieldsat the laya points. These "dead points" are the limits of eachelectric field, which "create", we say in electrical work, opposing fields beyond them. 

Each one of these planets has its laya centre inside the sun'sphotosphere. Each planet has a line of solar energy with its"field" of solar energy--not only a wireless telegraph, but awireless lighting, heating, and life-giving system. These sixsolar laya points are the six "hidden planets, " the earth andmoon being one, of the ancient metaphysics. The moon is the one"laid aside. " In their reception of energy from the sun, it isas if the planet were at the solar laya point, or connected withit by a special pipe-line. The position of these six planetarylaya points in the sun is indicated by the position of theplanets in the heavens, and they may often influence or modifyone another. If Mars, Jupiter, or Saturn is anywhere nearconjunction with the earth, not only will a part of their"fields" be joined, but their laya points in the sun will bemodified. 

The physical basis of the old astrology was the physicalinterferences of these fields of solar energy; and what itdepended on mainly in its work was the position of the six hiddenplanets, or laya centers, which was shown by the position of theplanet with reference to the earth. That the planets themselvesaffected any one or anything on this earth, no real astrologerever believed; that their position in the heavens indicatedcertain changes and modifications of the flow of solar energy tothe earth, they knew from their knowledge of physics. "Thetwelve houses are in the sun, " says Hermes, "six in the north andsix in the south. " Connect them with the zodiac, and theposition of the planets shows the interferences of the solarcurrents. 

The one objection to this ancient theory is that it does notpresent enough difficulties. The present value to science of themany theories in relation to the sun is the impossibility ofreconciling any two of them, and the fact that no two theoristscan unite to pummel a third. This ancient theory does not callfor any great amount of heat, light, or energy in any conditionto keep the Cosmos in order--not even enough for two persons toquarrel over. It merely turns the sun into a large dynamoconnected with smaller dynamos, and these with one another withreturn currents by which "there is nothing lost. " In itsdetails, it accounts for all facts--neatly, simply, and withoutexclamation points. It is so simple and homespun, so lacking inthe gaudiness that makes (for example) our light and heat lessthan the billionth part wasted on space always at absolute zero, that we may have to wait many centuries to have it "verified" and"confirmed" by our Western Science. That it will be "verified"in time, even as the first stumbling-block has been removed atthe end of the nineteenth century, its students may at leasthope. 

The lesson, if there is one, is that the Western student ofEastern physics does not ride an auto along asphalted roads. He must own himself and not be owned by another man, or evenby "Modern Science. "