Ancient and Modern Physics - Thomas E. Willson (android e book reader .TXT) 📗

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

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

"'One continuous substance, filling all space, which can vibrate as light, which can be sheared into positive and negative electricity, which in whirls constitutes matter, and which transmits by continuity and not impact every action and reaction of which matter is capable.'

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

"'Which in whirls constitutes matter.' Professor Lodge believed that 'some etheric molecules revolved so rapidly on their axis that they could not be penetrated.' Watch the soap-bubbles that I am blowing. Each and every one is revolving as the earth revolves, from west to east. What I wish to call your attention to is the fact that can be proven, both mathematically and theoretically, that at a certain rate of speed in the revolution they could not be penetrated by any rifle-ball. At a higher rate of speed they would be harder than globes of solid chilled steel, harder even than carbon. Professor Lodge believed that the etheric molecule revolved so rapidly that, thin as it was in its shell, it gave us the dust out of which worlds were made. There is one fatal error in this idea, although it is held even now by many. It is based entirely on gravity, and gravity is alone considered in its problems. There are two great forces in the universe, 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 the former is a force quite as important as the latter. The bubble's speed 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 revolutionary speed to the etheric molecules, a speed in which apergy would necessarily exceed gravity. The failure to take apergy into consideration 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 know that this ether has its solids, liquids and gases formed from molecules of its atoms, even as our own are formed. We know that its atoms combine as ours do, and while we have but eighty elementary combinations, it must have more than double the number. We know that every form and shape and combination of these elements from this plane flows from inherited tendencies having their root in the etheric world.

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

Thus spake a certain wise teacher of physics. To his wise utterances, we can only add that such as we are today "we see through a glass, darkly." Yet there will come a day when the physical bandages will be removed from our eyes, and we shall see face to face the beauty and grandeur and glory of this invisible world, and that in truth it 'transmits by continuity and not impact every action and reaction of which matter is capable,' forming one continuous chain of cause and effect, without a link missing. 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 one with it. One and the same law controls and guides the etheric atom and the physical atom made from its molecules, whether the latter are made in "whirls," as at first supposed, or by orderly combination as now believed.

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

The Four Manifested Planes

The oriental idea of the universe does not differ fundamentally in its general conception, from that of modern science, but it goes farther and explains more. The physics of the secret doctrine are based upon a material universe of four planes of vibration and a spiritual universe of three planes of vibration beyond matter. This Something in vibration may be given the English 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 Bass for clearness of thought and writing, so the Hidden Knowledge divides the seven octaves of vibration, or planes, into Spirit and Matter. In their ultimate analysis they are one and the same thing, as ice and water are the same thing; but for study they must be differentiated.

The material and physical universe consists of four planes of matter, or four great octaves of vibration, each differentiated from the other as in our physics prakriti is differentiated from ether. The material universe, the ancient physics teach, was originally pure thought, Manasa, the product of the spiritual planes above. This manasic world was differentiated, a real world. That is to say it was given elementary substances by the union of its atoms in different sized molecules. Some of its elements combined and formed Prana. The prana gathered and formed other worlds, pranic worlds. Then in the pranic world etheric worlds were formed; and finally in the etheric worlds, prakritic globes like the earth were formed. The earth is the centre of a prakritic globe, revolving in ether around the sun. The sun is the centre of a solar globe of ether, revolving in prana around Alcyone. Alcyone is the centre of a stellar globe of prana revolving in manasa around the central and hidden sun of the great manasic globe. These four conditions of matter prakriti, ether, prana, and manasa are the earth, water, fire, air of the Ancient Metaphysics, the four elements of matter, and are present in every atom of prakriti. When the atom of prana was formed, it had an envelope of manasa. When the atom of ether was formed it had an envelope of pranic-manasic atoms. When the prakritic atom was formed it had an envelope of etheric-pranic- manasic atoms, each of its encircling etheric atoms being the centre of a pranic molecule, and each pranic atom of that molecule being the centre of a manasic molecule.

Each atom of prakriti was the material universe in miniature. It held the potentialities of mind, life, and phenomena. In every aggregation of atoms, there were the four planes, each in touch through the Cosmic Mind, its manasa, with other atoms in the universe, with every other globe of whatever kind. "As above, so below," was the secret Key-word. The unity of all the material universe in its prakriti, ether, prana and manasa, was the corner stone of this knowledge. The three planes above prakriti were called Astral, and in common speech there was the ordinary division into two planes, visible and invisible, or "Spirit," as the invisible was called, and "Matter," as the visible was called. Only in the hidden secret doctrine of physics, and in the open metaphysics which were a "stumbling block" and "foolishness" to those who had not the "inner light" of the physics, were the three divisions of the "astral" made known, and the true distinction between the spirit of the three higher planes and the matter of the four lower was kept out of the metaphysics, or only vaguely alluded to.

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

"That is all the good it did him," the scientist says. No. That is not true. It is perfectly true that the oriental, the Babylonian who carved on the Black Stone now in the British Museum the five moons of Jupiter, exposing himself to the derision of our astronomers prior to their own discovery of the fifth moon in 1898, did not care particularly whether there were four moons or five, and had no sale for any telescopes he might make, for no one else cared particularly. But it was not true that he did not care for any and all knowledge that would improve his spiritual condition by giving him correct ideas of the universe and of his own part in it. To him life was more than meat and the body more than raiment. He was more afraid of sin than of ignorance. We are more afraid of ignorance than of sin. He preferred to better men's moral condition; we prefer to better their physical condition.

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

"You are right in regard to your ether, and to prakriti being ether that has been dropped a great octave in vibration. Your physical atom is surrounded by a molecule of ether, this molecule containing many atoms of ether. The chording vibration does produce all physical phenomena.

"But where did the ether atom come from? How can you explain how and 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 universe apart from the earth or planets is ether and only ether. The etheric world in which you are interested ends with your solar system. It ends with each solar system, to the people of that system. Between each solar system and another there is another form of matter that is not ether.

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

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

"Did you think that the sun and its planets, and other suns and their planets, were