Our Place on Earth
The next time our wise man from the east was asked to "say a few words and make his own topic," he spoke, perhaps, as follows:
"How large do you think the earth is? You answer promptly, 7,912 miles in diameter. You are as far out of the way as you were in supposing that our sun could be a centre of gravity of a lot of planets revolving around it and around Alcyone without being a globe of ether. Now that it has been mentioned, you see very clearly for yourself that it must be a solar globe of ether. It follows from one of your physical axioms. When I tell you why the 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 the time, but never stopped to formulate your knowledge. You have had 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 was governed, that the squares of the times of the planets were proportional to the cubes of their distances from the sun; and that this law was true in physics and everywhere. No one of your scientists has had the wisdom to study out what it meant, and for three centuries, for 291 years, you have repeated his words like so many parrots, instead of using the key he gave you to unlock the mysteries of the universe. A corollary of his law is that the planets move in their orbits because they are impelled thereto between the two forces, and move in a mean curve between them; but it was not until 1896 that you discovered that the mean between two forces is always a curve and never a straight line. You have not a text book in a school today that does not repeat this fundamental and absurd error—which you have known for three centuries to be an error—that the motion resulting from a mean between forces is "in a straight line." The curves resulting here are not to be measured easily, and are so large that small segments appear straight lines; and it was not until Carpenter demonstrated it mathematically that any one could believe it true.
"There are two great forces in this universe. Your grandfathers called them Centripetal and Centrifugal forces; your fathers called 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 of the distance.' You understand that it means the attraction at two feet is only one-fourth the attraction at one foot; at four feet only one-sixteenth; at eight feet, only one sixty-fourth.
"But who knows or cares for Kepler's great law of Repulsion, or Apergy? That was that the 'square of the times are as the cubes of the distance.' It has lain fallow for centuries. No one of your western physicists has ever studied it, or tried to explain it. It remains just where Kepler left it, as the mere law of orbital 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 upon prakriti, and that where the two forces are balanced, or equal, the result in motion is a circle or ellipse, the square of the Repulsion being equal to the cube of the Attraction to make them equal and produce a circle. In other cases they produce hyperbola and parabola.
"This is a little dry—nearly all fundamental knowledge is—but the 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 by the motion; more accurately, the speed created by the repulsion. The result of the two forces working together at exact balance is a circle. An ellipse is a circle bent a little, and the ellipse in which the earth actually moves comes from varying attraction and repulsion. Kepler's second law covers that.
"If the orbital speed of the earth were a mile less per hour, or even a foot less, then the earth would wind up around the sun as a dog gets wound up with his chain around a tree. If this speed were a mile more per hour, then the earth would wind out, each year getting farther and farther away, until finally it would be lost. When the speed is exactly proportional to the pull—that is, when it is as 1.6 is to 2,—the result is a circular orbit, the eccentricity of which is caused by certain fluctuations in the attraction and repulsion.
"Suppose a planet were to be placed so that it would have a time of two years. Its distance from the sun would be 1.6 that of the earth. Why? Because to get the time doubled we would have to take the square root of 4; and to get the distance the cube root of the same number, 4. If you wish to be very exact the cube root 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 in six months you would divide the earth's distance by 1.6.
"In proportion you get any time or distance you may desire with absolute accuracy. The distance of any planet from the sun gives its time, or its time gives its distance—when that of any of the others is known. This law applies throughout the universe; in everything and everywhere. It is not a law of orbital revolution alone, but a law of all motion.
"Our moon has a time of 29 days and a speed of about 50,000 miles per day. If the speed were greater it would leave us, if less it would 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 fourteen days? Divide 240,000 miles by 1.6. A seven-day moon, would be 1.6 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 24,998 miles.
"This gives us the line of 24-hour axial rotation, the true surface 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 exactly balance. Inside that line gravity exceeds apergy and everything revolving in less time, or that time, must fall to the centre. It is the true surface of any 24-hour globe of this size and weight. A moon to revolve around the earth in less than one day must move faster than the earth to develop enough apergy to overcome the attraction. That phenomenon we see in the moons of Mars, which are within its atmosphere; within the planet itself.
"We of the East learned this true size of the earth over six thousand years ago, from observing the moons of Jupiter. The times of the first three are doubled. We asked ourselves what this meant and found that their distance was increased by the cube root of 4 when their times were increased by the square root of 4; that time was to distance as 1.6 was to 2. Then we applied the key, and found it unlocked many mysteries.
"The first lesson this taught us was that we did not live on the earth, but within the earth, at the line of liquid and gaseous changes, where the three forms of matter meet and mingle and interchange with each other. We lived at the bottom of a gaseous ocean 21,000 miles above us, and 4,000 miles from the centre of the 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 their condition, combined, and made forms by increasing or decreasing vibration. It was the creative and destructive zone, the evolutionary "mother"—the liquid level of the prakriti—the seat of all physical phenomena. Fifty miles above, the masses of nitrogen and oxygen and argon were too cold to change their rate of vibration. Fifty miles below the surface of the earth all things were too hot for changes in vibration. In this kinetic belt, between two static masses our bodies had been made, and also, in all probability, all combinations of the elementary substances. It was four thousand miles to the centre of the static prakritic mass beneath us; twenty-one thousand miles to the surface of the static prakritic mass above us, and the small kinetic belt between was only one hundred miles thick. But we had one consolation, the prakriti we had was all kinetic, and the best in the whole mass.
"The second lesson it taught us was that as the earth had been made in the etheric globe, in a corresponding skin or plane of kinetic etheric energy, with our ether the best of the solar output, that we ourselves were subject through our ether to the phenomena of that kinetic solar plane in precisely the same way we now are to the phenomena of the kinetic prakritic plane. Once rid of the fallacious notion that we were creatures of the surface of the earth, once clearly conscious that we were creatures of the interior, of the bottom of this gaseous ocean, then we could understand not only how the earth could be created in this etheric globe, but how we could be creatures of the solar globe living on it.
"When we learned that lesson, and learned it well, it dawned upon us that we were living in the pranic globe at the same kinetic level or plane of that globe, the line where its solids and liquids and gases mingled and passed from one state to another, the kinetic belt in which our solar globe has been made, and that we were living as truly on that globe as we were on this prakritic globe. Our position on each globe was the same.
"And then the great truth came that we lived in the manasic globe, at the same kinetic level; and that we lived our lives on the four globes simultaneously. Our bodies are fourfold. Every atom is fourfold, ready to respond in our minds to the vibrations of the Manasic world, in our vitality to the pranic vibrations of the pranic world, in our nerves to the etheric vibrations of the etheric world, and in our prakriti to vibrations of the prakritic world. Each one of our bodies lived on its own earth globe, for there were four globes of this earth—in coadunition—in its corresponding kind of globe.
"The four earth globes became one globe, as our four bodies were one body; and the chain of four kinds of globes in matter became one globe, as the manasic with the others on it.
"These four kinds of globes were the beginning and the end of matter, as we distinguish and know matter. They were not the end of vibration; or of planes of vibration; or of realms beyond this material universe; but they were the limits of all that is common to each and every atom of this lower plane of vibration.
"It is upon this solid and perfect foundation of physics, that accounts for and explains every kind of phenomena, we have constructed our metaphysics. All that belongs to these four lower planes we consider and treat as physics. All that relates to the planes beyond we consider metaphysics. Can you teach a child equation of payments before he knows the first four rules? You would not attempt such a task. The first four rules are the physics of arithmetic; all beyond is the metaphysics of arithmetic. It flows out of them. Can you comprehend our system of metaphysics until you have clearly and completely mastered our physics? Would you not get into a fog at the very start?
"There can be no system of metaphysics without a solid foundation of physics. The idea is unthinkable. The one grows out of the other. It is its life; its fruit, its flower.
"You have no western system of physics. Your physics are without form and void; patchwork, constantly changing. There is no substantial foundation for any system of metaphysics. What you say or do in physics is fragmentary or chaotic.
"It is perfectly true, so far as you have gone through the first invisible world of ether, you are much more masters of detail than we are.
"We have not cared particularly for the minor details by which explosives are made, or metals obtained from oxides. We have preferred 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 added unto us."
The Four Globes
That we live in the earth, not on the earth, is one of the most important of the facts of eastern physics in the study of its metaphysics. The mathematical and physical proof that the physical earth is 50,000 miles in diameter should not be passed over lightly in our haste to get on, for the perfect understanding of all this fact implies makes easy the comprehension of how we live etherically in the solar etheric globe, of how we live pranically in the stellar pranic globe, and how we live manasically in the manasic globe.
As we live within the narrow "skin" of phenomena, not more than 100 miles thick, of this prakritic globe, with the whole earth within the corresponding skin of phenomena of the solar etheric globe, within the kinetic belt in which it was made, the ether which surrounds each prakritic molecule is not merely any and every 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 to the kinetic or creative belt of the solar etheric globe. It is not static ether. The ether in our prakriti is in touch with all the prakritic kinetic ether of the solar globe, subject to all solar laws of change; and all our prak-solar laws of change; and all our prakritic matter, a mere detail of it, is a part of the solar phenomena. "Our father, the sun," or "Dyaus pitar" ("heavenly father"—Latin, Jupiter) meant more once than it does now. Then the solar globe was the first heaven, and to live under its laws, puttings off the coat of skin, was an object which men believed to be worth striving for. They recognized, as we 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, of which the lower prakritic laws were merely an outcome and detail, was worthy of the closest study. And they recognized that these higher laws of the etheric globe were metaphysical as well as physical; that our moral law flows out of the moral law of the solar etheric world, as our physics flow from and out of solar physics. Religion is correct in its assumption of this higher law of morals; incorrect only in its grasp and explanation. Science is correct in holding only in its assumption that it is physical science; incorrect only in its assumption that it is physical science of this plane and globe only. There is no quarrel between science and religion when the full knowledge of one stands beside the full knowledge of the other. They are twin-sisters.
This solar-etheric globe in which we are interested revolves around Alcyone within that kinetic belt or skin of prana which is subject to phenomena or vibration through one octave—else it would never have been formed. All prana in the solar-etheric globe is of this particular kind of kinetic prana, which creates life of all kinds—which is subject to vibration through one octave. The solar globe is a detail of kinetic prana only, one of its phenomena. Necessarily, all our prana is of this kinetic kind, and our earth a minor detail of it in the Alcyone globe. All the changes and combinations possible in kinetic prana on the pranic globe are possible here, in our kinetic prana, as all the phenomena of the etheric world are possible here in our kinetic ether.
As our earth is a globe of ether and a globe of prana as well as a 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 material universe there is the same kinetic belt or skin of "phenomena" or vibration similar to that kinetic belt in which we live on the earth, and the manasa which permeates the Alcyonic globe, the solar globe, and the earth is that kinetic manasa which is involving and evolving. This involving and evolving kinetic manasa of the Alcyonic globe is that which surrounds every atom of ether of the solar globe and every atom of prakriti of this earth globe. In the great manasic globe this earth of ours is a minute village of Helios (sun) county, in the state of Alcyone. We are actually and literally living in this manasic globe precisely as we live in this earth, and as in the village we are subject to all the laws of the manasic world, we can study them here in this village as well as we could elsewhere. We can study them as easily as we study our prakritic village laws, or our etheric county laws, for all the forms of manasa subject to them anywhere are here with us. We are not limited to a study of the prakritic laws of the village fathers, nor yet to the etheric laws of the supervisors of Helios county, as scientists say, nor even to the state laws of Alcyone; only the manasic laws of the Universe limit our material studies in that direction. As some men on this earth never leave their native village and never know or care for any matters outside of it, so in this little earth village, in the kinetic belt of the manasic globe, there are men who do not care to know anything which relate to matters outside its boundaries. As some men may pass the boundaries of their village, but not of their county, caring only for the matters concerning it, so the western scientists of this earth village on the manasic globe do not pass the boundaries of Helios county, caring only for etheric matters. The philosophers and wise men of the East are broader minded and from time immemorial have taken greater interest in the pranic affairs of Alcyone and the manasic condition of the universe in which Alcyone is a state than in the rustic murmur of their village or the gossip of their county.
There is nothing lacking in our manasic earth-village, nothing that is in more abundant measure in our county, state, and nation. We are of the best.
We of this village may imagine, if we like, that there is nothing beyond the village limits, and nothing in it but that which relates to the village. We have the right to be silly, if we wish to be. And it is no sign of wisdom to say that there is a county beyond, but that the county boundaries end all, and only village and county politics may be studied. The European who believed—no Asiatic or African or American could have believed —that the earth rested on an elephant and the elephant on a turtle was wise, in comparison. Nor is it any sign of intelligence to say that we may learn something of the village and county while we live, but that to learn anything about the state and nation we must wait until we are dead. There are too many in the village who are familiar with both state and nation, and who have studied their laws, for this to be anything but idiotic.
The Battle Ground
Each and every one of our eighty-odd elementary substances owe their condition—whether solid, liquid, or gas—to their rate of vibration. We have reduced all gases to a liquid and nearly all to a solid form. Conversely, we have raised all solids to a liquid and nearly all to a gaseous condition. This has been done by reducing or raising the vibration of each within one octave —each one of the eighty odd having a special octave, a tone or half-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 under Repulsion. Between them, created by the interchange of these two forces, is our "skin" of phenomena, or kinetics.
Broadly, the attraction of the universe comes from its vibration at certain centres in the three higher notes; the repulsion comes from its vibration everywhere else in the three higher notes. The central note, D of the scale, represents the battle ground between the field of kinetics. This in simple illustration is water turning into gas.
This is the great battle ground, the only one worth considering in a general view. There are minor "critical stages" which the chemist studies, but for us, in this broad sketch of the universe, the important battle-ground is that between solid and liquid on one side representing gravity, and gas on the other, representing apergy.
All the solids and liquids of this earth of ours gather at the centre, in a core, each of the elements (or their combinations) in this core vibrating in their three lower notes, producing the attraction, which is "in proportion to the mass" and which decreases from the surface of the core "as the square of the substance."
Around this central core gather all the elements vibrating in the three higher notes of their octave as gases, producing repulsion which increases by 1.6 for each doubled time. It is worth while making this clear. It has never before appeared in print.
Let the amount of apergy, or repulsion, or centrifugal force at the surface of the earth be represented by x. This is the result of motion at the rate of 1,000 miles per hour. Make this motion 2,000 miles per hour, and the apergy is increased 1.6. Four thousand miles above the surface of this earth the rotation is at the rate of 2,000. It is the globe of 48,000 miles in circumference revolving in 24 hours, and the speed is doubled. This apergy has increased by 1.6. As the apergy increases at this rate every time the speed is doubled, at a distance of 21,000 miles the speed is 7,000 miles per hour and the centrifugal force has been increased nearly four times what it was at the surface of the ocean. The attraction has been decreased to about one-thirtieth. At the surface it is equal to 120 x. At 4,000 miles to one-quarter, or 30 x; at 16,000 miles to one-sixteenth, or 7 x; and at 21,000 miles to 4 x.
If "equatorial gravity is about 120 times that of the equatorial apergy," at the ocean level, then at the distance of 21,000 miles from it, in a revolving globe, the two forces would be equal; the "pull" of each being 4 x, and an anchor will weigh no more than a feather, for weight is the excess of gravity or apergy.
If the pyramids had been built of the heaviest known material on the gases 21,000 miles above us, and so that they should revolve in the same time, 7,000 miles per hour, they would remain there. All the attraction of the solid core of the earth that could be exerted on them at that distance would not be enough to pull them an inch nearer to it through our gaseous envelope. Their gaseous foundation there would be as firm as igneous rock here.
The force of repulsion created by the three higher notes of an octave means just as much at the attraction created by the three lower notes, whether it is in a chemical retort, within this earth, or within this universe. The two forces balance, and are exactly equal. They fight only within kinetic zones.
Given the vast manasic globe of differentiated matter, its atoms uniting in different numbers to form molecules as the bases of elementary substances, manasic substances, of course. The thrill of vibration is sweeping through it from the spiritual plane above, and the elements (and their combinations) which answer in the lower notes gather and form a core, the Invisible Central Sun, with its attraction. The elements answering in the higher notes gather around it with their repulsion. So the two opposing forces were born, with a vast kinetic skin for a battle-ground between them.
The attraction of the invisible central sun manifests itself to us in prakriti as Light. The repulsion of its covering, or the higher static vibration of manasa, manifests itself to us as Darkness. The first creative act in or on matter was the creation of Light and its separation from the Darkness. The next creative act was the establishment of a kinetic skin or zone between them, a firmament in which the two forces of Light and Darkness could strive for mastery. "And God called the firmament Heaven." The third creative act was the gathering of the solids and liquids together, and the beginning of the kinetic work in the creation of forms and shapes, by the cross play of the two forces in their combinations of solid with gases.
All this had to happen before the manasa combined and dropped in vibration to prana—and before the pranic globes were formed and the Light could be manifested to us through them. It may be well to read the first chapter of Genesis over and ask forgiveness for our ignorance, from the writer who records this creation of the pranic globes as the fourth act of creation, and the creation of the etheric sun and prakritic moon to follow that. That record is 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 hide another tale for the priest, the writer of Genesis would laugh last.
But let us return to the kinetic skin of energy between Light and the Darkness—the firmament which God calls Heaven—the battle ground for gravity and apergy, or attraction and repulsion, or good and evil, or the powers of light and darkness. This skin is like that of an onion, thickest at the equator and thinnest at the poles—not only on this earth but in the solar, alcyonic, and manasic globes. The equatorial belt, where phenomena are richest in the manasic globes, we call the Milky Way; in the solar globe we call it the plane of the ecliptic; and on the earth, the tropics. Modern science has not yet found it in Alcyonic globe—because it has never thought of looking for it.
This division of the Light from the Darkness was all that was required for evolution on the manasic globe within the kinetic belt. This evolution was not confined to the making of a few alcyonic or pranic globes. It was (and is) a great and wonderful evolution beyond words and almost beyond imagination. It is the Heaven which mankind has longed to see and know. The writer of Genesis mixed it with the creation of this earth, using earthly metaphors. Before finding fault, we should better his language. We have not the words in physics to do it, and must wait for our metaphysics. But of one thing we may be sure, that the pranic- alcyonic globes here and there at the "sea level" of the manasic globe—in what God calls Heaven—amount to no more on that globe, or in Heaven, than so many balls of thistle-down blown across a meadow do on this earth of ours. Everything that can be created in thought must be there. It is in thought only, but in thought it is differentiated as sharply as anything in prakriti. The manasic world, the Heaven of the Bible, is as real as our own world can possibly be; in fact, more real, for when ours is resolved back into its final elements, it will be but "the dust of the ground" of the manasic world.
The pranic globes created in this manasic skin by Sound, or the Logos, or vibration, evolved in identically the same way—with a central static core and an outer static envelope, of low and high vibration in prana, creating attraction and repulsion, or gravity and apergy. The kinetic skin between, in which these forces play in 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 these alcyonic suns, the Light has something in which to manifest itself, and we "see" this manifesting core and call it Alcyone, and its manifestation Light; but light in its last material analysis is but the static mind or thought vibrating in the three lower notes of the octave.
The Dual Man
Within the alcyonic globes of differentiated pranic-manasic atoms the vibration divided them also into solid-liquid cores and gaseous envelopes, and a kinetic skin of phenomena. And then a new world—a world of Life, came into material existence. All the atoms of thought or manasa, surrounding each and every pranic atom, and making its molecule of energy, so to speak, were that particular kind of kinetic manasa ready to change its rate of vibration within an octave, and the forms prana assumes from the action of thought within the kinetic belt were living and thinking. Each pranic globe, which was a small state of product of the manasic, consisted of two globes in coadunition—two in one. Each pranic atom was the centre of a manasic molecule and represented the universe. All things were two in one, created by harmonic vibration between them, and existence by the greater strength of the lower notes, or attraction. It was at once less and more wonderful than the manasic world—a specialized form of it.
When within this kinetic belt of the prana the etheric solar globes formed here and there, they were three fold, each atom of the new plane of matter having its surrounding envelope of prana- manasa—a specialization of the pranic world in which (what we call) force had been added to life and mind. The static ether, vibrating in each of its elements through one octave, divided into central core (our sun, and other suns) and outer covering, with a skin or belt of kinetic energy, "as above" which developed an etheric world. All things on this etheric world were caused by the harmonic vibration between the etheric atoms and their surrounding envelopes, except that while all things in this etheric world must have life, not all need have mind. The chord of three was not necessary to create; the chord of two was enough, and the manasic atoms might cease to vibrate in chord with the prana and ether without affecting the creation. Only in the etheric world (and below it) could there be living mindless ones. To the etheric globes the stellar pranic cores transferred their light, which manifested itself in the solid static ether as Attraction and in the gaseous static ether as Repulsion, within the kinetic skin of each etheric world more specialized and less varied than the pranic.
Our sun is not of prakriti, but of static ether, composed of the separate and individual elementary substances of the ether, and their compounds vibrating in the lower notes of their octaves. It is our father, not our elder brother. Its envelope of static ether in which the planet revolves is composed of the elementary substances and combinations vibrating in the higher notes of their octave. The light transferred to this etheric globe from its mother, Alcyone, manifests itself in the lower vibration of the sun as Attraction; in the higher vibrations of its envelope as Repulsion, and within the kinetic skin wherein these forces play, the prakritic globes, planets, were born.
Take our earth. Each atom is fourfold—whether of the static core or of the static gaseous envelope. Creation on it is limited to the kinetic skin, wherein the attraction of the lower and repulsion of the higher notes in each octave of vibration have full play. All things on it must have come from the chording vibrations of the atoms of the prakritic elementary substances and their envelope of ether. They may or may not have life or mind the ether atom may have lost its chord with its pranic envelope, or the pranic envelope may have lost its chord with the manasic; but the combination must have force or energy within it. It may have lost Mind and Life in acquiring it, or after acquiring it; but it had to have life before it could become prakriti.
All things in the prakritic world flow from the Life of the etheric and the Mind of the pranic worlds. Everything in the etheric 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. The thrill of vibration in one octave through the differentiated consciousness of the universe by which the light was separated from the darkness, the lower from the higher, was all that was required to create each star and sun, and world, and all that in them is. And it was all good.
Each thing on every lower world was but the translation into form of the type of the next world (or plane) above. As each element on this prakritic type, so each combination of those elements into crystal or tree or animal is but the translation. The normal earth from the crystal to (the animal) man was pure, and clean, and holy. Sin had not entered.
How did it come?
On the vast manasic world there was "a special creation"—that of the Angel Man. The three planes of Spirit above were undifferentiated consciousness, but they were in different octaves of vibration, and these working on the three highest forms of differentiated consciousness (manasic matter) brought them to chording Vibration so that when they combined and reached their highest point in evolution they "created" the Angel (or manasic) man. He was the product in kinetic manasa of the three spiritual planes above him, precisely as the animal man was the product in kinetic prakriti of the three material planes above him. 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 probably is, that his manasic body is not sounding in chord with his prakritic body, but only with those atoms of it which are in his brain and nerves; but that is immaterial—for future consideration.
The Angel man had but one body, of manasa, in which the spirit dwelt; but that body was identical in substance with the body that made the mind of the animal man. His manasic body joined the manasic body of the animal man, joined with it by entering into the animal man's mind, as easily as water from one glass is added to water in another glass, and the animal "man became a living soul," endowed with speech, while the Angel-man was given "a skin coat."
The prakritic body of the animal man was the result in prakriti of an etheric-pranic-manasic, or "astral" body, formed in accordance with the Universal Law. For what he was by nature, he could not be blamed. He stood naked and not ashamed before the Radiance. He did not make his astral body; he was the mere translation of it into prakriti, as all other created things were, and that invisible astral self (figuratively) stood at his right 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 added the Spirit—the Atma-Buddhi's Consciousness of the three Spiritual planes. He has become "as one of us," said the Angel- men of the firmament, of Heaven. He now held the seven planes and was a creator. Each thought and desire that, when an animal only, fell harmless, now created on the pranic and etheric world. Soon beside him, at his left hand (figuratively) there grew up a second etheric or astral body, that of his desires; and his prakritic body was no longer the product of the astral body on his right hand. It was the joint product of the left-hand Kamic astral body he had created, and the right hand normal astral body. He was no longer in harmony with the Radiance. He could no longer face it. He had created discord—Sin.
The pretty legend of the two "Angels," one on the right hand and one on the left, has its physical basis in this truth, but, of course, as a matter of actual fact, the normal and abnormal astral bodies are in mechanical union. It is the Kamic self-made astral body that remains from one incarnation to another, producing in joint action with a new normal astral body, a new physical body for the Inner-Self, or Angel taking the pilgrimage through the lower world.
All the Angel-men did not enter the animal men on the pranic etheric-prakritic globes; only a few. It was a pilgrimage through matter in which those who make it are meeting many adventures, but the legends are many, and have no place in the physics, although the legends are all founded on the facts of the physics.
Of the number of monads, willing to undertake the pilgrimage, only a few of those within the kinetic belt of the manasic globe have reached the pranic. Only a few of those within the pranic kinetic belts reached the etheric. And of all who have reached this earth, only a few may win their way back before the great day Be-With-Us.
The problem of man, and his relations to the universe, are an entirely different line of study from that of the Spiritual Monad, the over-soul of every prakritic atom. Each prakritic atom has what may be called a soul, its three-fold astral cause; and an over-soul, or the three-fold spiritual archetype, or causeless cause.
Every combination of these atoms, whether a knife, a leaf, an animal, an earth, a sun, or a star, has this soul and oversoul.
Once the idea of what is meant by these terms becomes clear, the difficulty in understanding them vanishes. The study of man is physical in its lower branches; metaphysical only in its highest and last analysis. The study of the Monad is metaphysical from start to finish. The two studies are apt to be confused, because metaphysically they are often joined for study, the teacher taking it for granted that the pupil fully understands the simple and easy physics of the problem of humanity.
This, in crude and bold outline, is the story of creation to the fall of man according to the ancient physics, translated into the words and phrases of modern physics. The latter, in the latest discoveries of modern science, seem to have stolen a shive from the ancient loaf in the expectation that it would not be detected. Each and every step forward that modern science has made in the past twenty years, each and every discovery of every kind in the physical field, has been but the affirmative of some ancient doctrine taught in the temples of the East before "Cain took unto himself a wife."
The Septenary World
In the physical universe we have the four informing physical globes, so that as a whole or in its parts, it is "a string of seven globes," reaching from the highest spirit to the lowest matter. The awakened Universal Consciousness in vibration —undifferentiated in the three globes above, differentiated in the four globes below—in its last analysis is all one. But there is a gulf between matter and spirit, radically dividing them, and in the physical universe we are concerned only with physics and physical laws, until we reach its outmost boundaries and come in touch with the spiritual planes beyond.
This is the view of the universe at first glance, as in the smaller universe of this earth we at first see only its solid and liquid globes. And even after the discovery of the gas, we do not apprehend its important work in and behind the others until it has been pointed out to us. Nor do we at first apprehend the work of the spiritual in the material, and the object of metaphysics is to show, through the physics, the connection between them that the spirit works through matter; that where we can 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 they come.
On each unraveled string leading from our central sun down to a planet there are seven beads corresponding to the seven globes in the chain of each planet, each to each, yet not the same. There is a distinction, and it is no wonder there should have been confusion at first and a mixing of "strings" with "chains." The physics as they progress will clear this confusion away.
In the manasic globe, which is the first differentiation of that which forms the spiritual globes above, the resulting mind or manasa is mainly the differentiated Divine Mind of the highest. It has a "chain" of two globes only, itself and the Divine Mind globe, although its "string" of globes is four.
It is the perfected differentiation of the Buddhi in manasa that causes the formation of the pranic globes, which have chains of four and strings of five, and the full and perfect differentiation of the Atma in manasa-prana that causes the formation of the etheric globes, which have chains of six and strings of six. Consciousness, Buddhi and Atma are practically the same as the manasa, prana, and ether, each to each, only the latter are differentiated and the former are not.
Each of the three astral globes is the reflection in matter of the three spiritual globes beyond, each to each, and all to all.
The difference between matter and spirit is a difference in Motion only. Both are vibrating, so that both are in mechanical motion, from force without, like the waves of the ocean, but only the matter has what we may properly call motion of its own, or that produced from within—from the atom and each organism of it up 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 of vibration, or rather beside it, which we call "differentiation." Brinton's "daring psychological speculation" that "mind was coextensive with motion" (from organization) was but a repetition of 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. They are not beyond it, or beside it, but one with it, atom for atom. But what are they in reality? Globes of Atma, Buddhi, and Consciousness in which the atoms, having organized, are in motion, are they not?
Let this motion in this material universe cease, and matter would melt away and resolve into spirit. From spirit it came, to spirit it belongs, and to spirit it returns.
Behind each and every astral globe, whether the globe be but an astral atom, or an astral planet, or an astral world; beyond its physics there is a meta-physical globe, its cause, and that is the real globe, of which the astral is but a temporary phenomenon. Take a spiritual globe and differentiate it. The Motion resulting produces a material astral globe. Stop the motion; bring it to a state of rest. The astral shadow disappears. It was merely spiritual phenomena.
Each and every astral atom is a model in miniature of the material and spiritual universe. Each and every prakritic atom is the joint result of spirit and matter united and working together—of physics and metaphysics; and in its last analysis pure spirit; pure metaphysics.
Behind each and every prakritic atom of our earth there are six other atoms (or globes), three material shadows and three spiritual realities, so that it is a string of seven—the whole universe in miniature—material and spiritual. And all things combined 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 descent from the Light through the star and sun to planet are "strings." The "chains" are beads of the same size strung on a thread. The strings are beads of different sizes strung on a thread. The beads of the chain are in coadunition—in the same space, as gas in water and the water in a sponge.
In metaphysics this earth can only be regarded as a chain of seven globes, its three astral globes in coadunition having their three spiritual doubles. Of course no one of the higher globes can be seen by the prakritic eye, but that is not to say the astral world cannot be seen by the astral eye in sleep, or by the person who qualifies himself for the astral world, through the development of his astral body. "No upper globes of any chain in the solar system can be seen," says H.P. Blavatsky in the Secret Doctrine (vol. I, p. 187), yet she means by astronomers, not by sages. And she does not mean the upper globes in the stellar system of Alcyone and its companions.
In pure physics the earth can only be regarded as a chain of four globes consubstantial and in coadunition—four in and three out. This makes seven, and the metaphysician when talking physics uses the metaphysical terms interchangeably and speaks of "the chain of seven globes" meaning in one sentence the four material globes making this earth; in another meaning the line of descent or string of beads of different sizes reaching down from the Divine Consciousness; and in still another the seven beads or globes of the same size in coadunition to form this earth chain. To the student who is thoroughly grounded in the eastern physics this interweaving of the physical and metaphysical presents no difficulties; but to the western mind just beginning the study it is a tangle.
We can now see what is meant by illusion, or Maya, and understand why such stress is laid upon it by every teacher.
Take the physical side first. The motion of a top gives it bands of color to our eyes that it does not have at rest. They are temporary and not permanent, a result of motion merely; illusion and not reality.
The motion of the material atoms of the four planes, in harmony with their vibration, a motion the spiritual world does not have, produces all material phenomena. This is of course within the kinetic belts, for above or below them there is no change, and its phenomena are the mere change in relation of one atom to another caused by motion. The changes are not real. They disappear when the motion stops. They have no existence in matter above or below the belt.
All phenomena of every kind are as much an illusion as the supposed bands of colour around the top. The illusion is the result of changes of relation in differentiated atoms caused by their motion. Without this motion the four material globes would dissolve into the atomic dust of the manasic world, with all that is within them. The whole material universe is all illusion; a mere temporary relation of its atoms through motion, without Reality or permanence.
What then is real? What is not illusion? That which is beyond the physical, that which is its cause and root; broadly, the metaphysical, which is not the result of differentiated atoms through relation. What was real in the top is real here. What was 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 the solid ground of reality. The spiritual world is here in every physical 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 on Alcyone, there is reality and permanency in the undifferentiated cause, the spiritual archetype, the three higher beads on the string which are the proper study of metaphysics.
Stumbling Blocks in Eastern Physics
The Western student of the ancient Eastern physics soon meets serious stumbling-blocks; and one at the very threshold has in the last half century turned many back. In beginning his study of the solar system, the pupil is told:
The first three planets—Mercury, Venus, and the moon—are dead and disintegrating. Evolution on them has ceased. The proof of this is found in the fact, that they have no axial rotation, Mercury and Venus always presenting the same surface to their father, the sun, and the moon the same surface to its daughter, the earth.
This is a concrete statement of physical fact at which the Western student protests. If in the whole range of Western astronomical science there is any one fact that he has accepted as absolutely proved, it is that Mercury revolves once in 24h., 5m., 30.5s., and Venus once in 23h., 21m., 22s. He would as soon credit a statement that the earth has no axial rotation as that Mercury or Venus has none; and if he continues his study of Eastern physics it is with no confidence in its accuracy, and as a matter of curiosity.
The statement that Mercury, Venus, and the moon "are dead and disintegrating," the former two "always presenting the same surface" to the sun, is the basis for an elaborate superstructure, both in the physics and the metaphysics of the East. It is used in physics to explain how the "evolutionary wave" came to an end at the perfection of the mineral on Mercury with the loss of its axial rotation; how the "wave" then passed on to Venus with the seed of the vegetable kingdom, where the vegetable evolution ended with the loss of axial rotation; how from Venus it leaped to the moon, mother of animals and controller of animal life, with the seed of animal life in the vegetable; and how finally it came to the earth, when the moon ceased to revolve, bringing in the animal the seed of man. Here man will be evolved and perfected. Man has not yet been "born" on this earth, they say. He is still in a prenatal or embryonic condition 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. Axial rotation is necessary in evolution, the ancient physics teaches, which must cease with it. The reasons for this are too lengthy to give here. Briefly, the rotation makes the electrical flow and a thermopilic dynamo of each planet.
The ancient astronomical teaching is absolutely true. There will not be a work on astronomy published in Europe or the United States this year, or hereafter, that will not state that "Mercury and Venus revolve on their axes in the same time that they revolve around the sun," which is another way of saying that "they have no axial rotation, always presenting the same face to the sun," and an inaccurate way of presenting the truth. The screw that holds the tire at the outer end of the spoke does not revolve "once on its axis" each time the wheel revolves. Run a cane through an orange and swing it around; the orange has not revolved "once on its axis." Nor does the stone in a sling revolve "once on its axis" for each revolution around the hand. The motion of Mercury is identically that of the impaled orange or the stone in the sling. It has no axis and no axial rotation. The modern astronomers, detected in pretenses to knowledge they never possessed, let themselves down easy.
This "discovery," of no axial rotation by the interior planets, made by Schiaparelli and confirmed by Flammarion in 1894, has since been fully verified by our Western astronomers. All the new astronomies accept it. But the admission of astronomical "error," to speak politely, comes too late for the student it turned back from his study of Eastern physics. He cannot regain his lost faith and lost ground.
Thirty years ago Proctor made it clear to Western students that the 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 satellite of the sun, not a satellite of the earth. This has been the Eastern view and teaching from time immemorial.
The Eastern distinction between father Sun and mother Moon, and the classification of the latter as a planet, did not disturb the Western student. He understood that. It was the "absolute accuracy" of modern astronomers in regard to the length of the day on Mercury or Venus, which the astronomers declared had been corrected down to the fraction of a second, that made it impossible for him to accept the Eastern physics when the latter squarely contradicted his own.
This was but the first of many similar stumbling-blocks in the path 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—all except the very small amount the minor specks of cosmic dust may receive. There is not the least particle of the sun's light, or heat, or any one of the seven conditions of the solar energy, wasted. Except for the planets, it is not manifested; it is not. There is no light, no heat, no form of solar energy, except on the planets as it is transferred from the laya center of each in the sun to them. The etheric globe is cold and dark, except along 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. [This alludes to the moon, whose laya center in the sun is now also that of the earth; but it is considered as a planet]. What each receives, that it also gives back. There is nothing lost."
"That settles it," says one student; and the others agree. Of the 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 first stumbling-block, this statement may be worth following out, "to see what it means," and how "absurd" it can be. An etheric globe; cold as absolute zero, dark as Erebus, with here and there small pencils of light and heat from the sun to the planets —just rays, and nothing more—is a very different one from the fiery furnace at absolute zero of the modern physicist.
On a line drawn from the center of the earth to the center of the moon there is a point where the "weights" of the two bodies are said in our physics exactly to balance, and it lies, says our physics, "2,900 miles from the center of the earth, and 1,100 miles from the surface." This is the earth's "laya center" of the Eastern physics. It is of great importance in problems of life; but it may be passed over for the present.
Between the earth and the sun—precisely speaking, between this laya center and the sun—there is a "point of balance," which falls within the photosphere of the sun. This point in the sun is the earth's solar laya, the occult or hidden earth of the metaphysics.
A diagram will make this clearer. Draw a line from the laya center 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 of the axis strike the beginning of an ellipse that will be tangent. If positive energy is along the shaded ellipse, negative energy is in each field beyond—earth and sun. This is a very crude illustration of a fundamental statement elaborated to the most minute detail in explanation of all astronomical phenomena; but for the moment it will do.
The point is that along this axial line connecting the laya centers play all the seven solar forces—light, heat, electricity, etc.—that affect the earth, and on every side of this line is the "electric field" of these forces. To this line any escaping solar energy is drawn, as the electricity of the air is drawn to a live wire or magnet. But there is little or none to escape. From the laya point in the sun to the laya point in the earth, the solar energy is transferred as sound is carried along a beam of light (photophone), or electricity from one point to another without a wire.
To the advanced student of electricity the ancient teaching is easily apprehended; to others it is difficult to make clear. These laya centers, it says, are "the transforming points of energy." From the earth laya to the solar laya centre, the energy, we may say, is positive; beyond both the solar and the earth laya centre, in the fields touching at them, it is negative —or vice versa. The line connecting the layas is the "Path of Fohat"—the personification of solar energy.
This is a very crude and brief way of putting many pages of teaching, but the important point is that this line between the layas is one of solar energy, with a dynamic "field" of solar energy, elliptical in shape, connecting with the reverse fields at the laya points. These "dead points" are the limits of each electric field, which "create", we say in electrical work, opposing fields beyond them.
Each one of these planets has its laya centre inside the sun's photosphere. Each planet has a line of solar energy with its "field" of solar energy—not only a wireless telegraph, but a wireless lighting, heating, and life-giving system. These six solar laya points are the six "hidden planets," the earth and moon being one, of the ancient metaphysics. The moon is the one "laid aside." In their reception of energy from the sun, it is as if the planet were at the solar laya point, or connected with it by a special pipe-line. The position of these six planetary laya points in the sun is indicated by the position of the planets in the heavens, and they may often influence or modify one another. If Mars, Jupiter, or Saturn is anywhere near conjunction with the earth, not only will a part of their "fields" be joined, but their laya points in the sun will be modified.
The physical basis of the old astrology was the physical interferences of these fields of solar energy; and what it depended on mainly in its work was the position of the six hidden planets, or laya centers, which was shown by the position of the planet with reference to the earth. That the planets themselves affected any one or anything on this earth, no real astrologer ever believed; that their position in the heavens indicated certain changes and modifications of the flow of solar energy to the earth, they knew from their knowledge of physics. "The twelve houses are in the sun," says Hermes, "six in the north and six in the south." Connect them with the zodiac, and the position of the planets shows the interferences of the solar currents.
The one objection to this ancient theory is that it does not present enough difficulties. The present value to science of the many theories in relation to the sun is the impossibility of reconciling any two of them, and the fact that no two theorists can unite to pummel a third. This ancient theory does not call for any great amount of heat, light, or energy in any condition to keep the Cosmos in order—not even enough for two persons to quarrel over. It merely turns the sun into a large dynamo connected with smaller dynamos, and these with one another with return currents by which "there is nothing lost." In its details, it accounts for all facts—neatly, simply, and without exclamation points. It is so simple and homespun, so lacking in the gaudiness that makes (for example) our light and heat less than 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 at the end of the nineteenth century, its students may at least hope.
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."
End of Project Gutenberg's Ancient and Modern Physics, by Thomas E. Willson