Theosophical University Press Online Edition
One of the most important axioms, postulates, or fundamental conceptions, of the Esoteric Philosophy or Tradition is that the Universe and all in it, great and small and all things intermediate, is builded in and upon and guided from within outwards as well as from without inwards by CONSCIOUSNESS, which includes in its qualities or attributes or characteristics those other phases of Cosmic Being which men call Life, Mind, Substance. Yet it must be remembered that this term Consciousness, when applied to the Universe, is a generalizing term only, an abstraction, and that it is equally proper, and to many minds incomparably more accurate because more descriptive, to speak of the Kosmic Universe as being infilled with Consciousnesses, existing in structural hierarchies, and as being, distributively speaking, infinite in number.
These consciousnesses exist, or rather are, in virtually innumerable grades or degrees or stages of evolutionary development, and are structurally arranged according to Hierarchical Families. Thus it is that everything in the Universe, considered as an individual expression of an indwelling and self-expressing Monad, is not only a point or individualized atom of the Boundless, but in its inmost essence is philosophically to be considered as identic with the Universe itself.
All space, infinitesimal and cosmic, is filled full of forces and substances in all-various grades and degrees of substantiality, of ethereality, and of spirituality. Such relatively physical force-substances as electricity and light may be cited as entitative examples or instances in point. For what are electricity and light, and indeed any other force-substance? They are, without exception, emanations from entities of cosmic magnitude: emanations -- and the word is repeated for emphasis: in other words, the Boundless as above stated, is full of Cosmic Entities, each one of which has its own Universe acting as its own individual 'bearer' or 'carrier'; and the vital forces or energies in any such Cosmic Entity are the identical forces, the energies, the substances, which infill that Universe, and therefore, because substantially of the nature of consciousness, direct it, guide it, control it, and are in fact that inner and eternal urge behind all the outer seeming, the outer phenomenal appearances.
As it is thus in the case of such Cosmic Entity, precisely so is it also in the case of the physical atom. In the atom as in the cosmos: the same rule, the same principles, the same energies, the same substances, and the same structural operations prevail, because both atom and cosmos are forever inseparable parts of the Boundless All, and therefore mirror or reflect, each according to its power and capacity, the Spiritual Primordials which the Boundless contains. Hence all these: cosmos and atoms, inner and invisible, and outer and visible, worlds and planes and spheres, considered as a cosmic composite: all are what we call not only the veils and garments of the Cosmic Life, but the expressions of that Cosmic Life itself.
Is Consciousness then different from Force or Energy? No, Consciousness or Mind is both the root and focus of Force or Energy, the very soul of Force or Energy, and being such, it is substantial, although not 'matter' as we understand 'matter.' Our grossest physical matter is but the concretion of sleeping or dormant consciousness-centers or Monads; in other words, it is but a vast aggregate of psycho-magnetic consciousness-centers, dormant, sleeping, so to say. When they awake to kinetic movement, in other words, when they awake to individual activity, these 'sleeping' Monads, existing and forming the matter around us, begin their respective individual evolutionary journeys upwards again towards that freedom of Spirit, of pure Consciousness-Force, from which in the beginnings of things they originally 'fell' -- to use the old saying of the ancients -- into matter, which is thus their own collective concretion.
This last thought or suggestion, gives the key to a clear understanding of what the Forces of Nature really are in themselves. They are essentially cosmic entities manifesting themselves in an energic fluidic form; and this fluidic form or activity is what we humans sense as Nature's Forces. They are, in other words, and more accurately, the emanations or outpourings of the collective or aggregative Cosmic Consciousness.
We may take gravitation, electricity, magnetism, heat, chemical affinity, light, as instances, because these are the cosmic forces that most usually come under the observation of human beings. They are all forces, i. e., emanations or outpourings from an individual Source, this Source itself being one of the cosmic entities with which Space is filled; and these entities themselves in their turn are ultimately to be traced back to their origins as outpourings or emanations from the general or universal Cosmic Consciousness. Being forces they are likewise substantial, because matter and force are fundamentally or essentially one. Likewise, and in exactly similar fashion, Spirit or Consciousness and Essential Substance are intrinsically and fundamentally one. So that whenever there is force or energy, or its manifestations, such as gravitation, such as electricity, such as magnetism, such as heat, such as chemical affinity, such as light, it -- whatever it may be -- is likewise as substantial as it is energic; therefore from what previously has been said, it is likewise essentially consciousness expressing itself as consciousnesses.
In the teaching of the Esoteric Philosophy (and one may venture the prediction that the science of the future will discover it to be the fact some day, even as Einstein and others are already showing the truth of it concerning gravitation as being the same fundamentally as cosmic electro-magnetism) heat and light, as said, are substantial, and just because they are forces. Being forces manifesting as energies, they have in them the same essential factors and qualities that the human entity has, although not expressing themselves as these essential qualities and factors do in the human entity. These aggregative factors and qualities are to be grouped as consciousness. Nevertheless these various Forces of Nature -- and one may take gravitation as a single illustration in point -- are not in themselves (and please mark carefully this important distinction) each one a consciousness, but each one such force is rather the manifestation or self-expression of a cosmic consciousness or cosmic entity: the emanation, the vital fluid, expressing itself as the phenomena of gravitation, of some living, conscious, cosmic entity behind.
The Forces of Nature, then, are the vital fluids, to use very easily understandable terms, or the nervous energy, so to say, working in the Cosmos, of spiritual beings from whom this vital electricity or nervous energy flows, in whom this vital electricity inheres, and working and operating in their circuits around the vehicular being of the spiritual entity which thus emanationally gives them birth; or to put it in another way: each such cosmic force is the outflowing from some cosmic entity of its characteristic vital fluid of the particular grade belonging to this entity's lowest cosmic body-parts.
It goes without saying, and as a matter of logical course, that this vital force or cosmic electric energy is inherently and throughout guided, automatically to us humans, by the mind and will of the cosmic entity or entities from which it flows in emanational series -- each unit in such series being what we humans call this, that, or some other one of the Forces of Nature. In this picture it must likewise be kept in mind that these cosmic entities in themselves form an interlocking and interwoven hierarchy of lofty Spiritual Intelligences; and because their individual or respective swabhavas or characters are nearly akin, they co-operate in producing the entirety of the cosmical phenomena or operations which commonly are grouped under the one term -- Nature.
Human nerve-aura, human magnetism, will perhaps illustrate this point in the small, as working in even such derivative phenomena as the circulation of the blood or the digestive functions in the human body. None of these, among other functions of the human body, considered alone, is physical man. In their aggregate, combined with the framework of the body, they form physical man, but in themselves they are functions brought about by the interplay of the emanations of man's vital essence, and thus form the operative economy of his body, and are ultimately derived from the real Man of consciousness and thought. These operations and functions, which eventuate in producing and 'running' the physical body, emanate from the man himself by and through the medium of his permeant consciousness and through the instrumentality of his will, acting more or less automatically in the physical body, fortunately for us, perhaps, in our present state of imperfect moral development; but acting nevertheless in him partly consciously and partly unconsciously, in the latter case automatically, precisely as the Forces of Nature act -- but on the macrocosmic scale -- in the Universe surrounding us.
Verily, spirit and substance are essentially one, and hence force and matter -- their physical expressions -- are essentially one, being also merely differing grades or degrees of the ethereality or substantiality of the underlying and fundamental Essence, cosmically the Source of Things -- the Source or origin of the planets swimming in the celestial ether as well as of gross physical matter under our feet and belonging to our mother-planet Terra: of everything, in short, including Man himself of course, who in his inmost is a being of spirit, an inhering and inseparable part or portion of the Cosmic Essence above mentioned. The Forces of Nature are therefore the substances of Nature in ethereally fluidic form; and at the root or origin of both is pure spiritual Force-Substance, which is the same as Consciousness -- Mind. Since these equi-valent factors exist or rather are in Man, therefore do they all exist in the Universe; for the part, Man, contains only what the whole, the universe, contains, otherwise we shall be faced with the incongruous absurdity that a relatively infinitesimal part of the cosmic whole contains something that the whole lacks -- which is impossible.
When the Esoteric Tradition states that there is no such thing as gravitation per se, which means that the scientific explanation of gravitation once so popular is no real truth, does this statement mean that we deny one of the obvious facts of Nature? It most certainly implies no such denial. The entire Esoteric Philosophy, considered as a grand system of Philosophy-Religion-Science, is wholly based on Universal Nature, and almost wholly on spiritual Nature, because the physical nature known to us is but the outward shell of vast hierarchies of invisible and causal character, expressing themselves as best they can and may through this physical or enshrouding veil or body. It is merely denied that gravitation as a technical word involving ideas belonging to the older science and which therefore imbodies a certain hitherto orthodox scientific explanation -- it is denied only, that this explanation of the natural facts falling under the term gravitation is a true explanation. It is averred (and in this point the Theosophist agrees with Sir Isaac Newton, who first gave a formulated law of gravitational attraction to the Occidental world) that the fundamental cause of gravity has not yet been discovered, and that it is essentially a spiritual force or power. (201)
Gravitation, or Gravity, according to the scientific theory of only a few years ago, was supposed to be a sort of thing in itself, whose origin was unknown, it is true, and whose operation was expressed in the well-known scientific formula of the relations of two bodies as regards mass and the inverse square of the distance. It actually is a secondary phenomenon, i. e., an effect of invisible forces working in and through the visible world and hence flowing into this visible world from inner and invisible realms or planes. In other words, as Sir Isaac Newton put it in substance: gravitation is the effect of a spiritual agency; but whereas Sir Isaac Newton evidently supposed this spiritual agency to be 'God,' the Theosophist says instead that it is but one of the manifestations of the inherent activity of conscious cosmic electro-magnetism operating through and by the instrumentality of spiritual agents, spiritual beings -- in other words, gods, if the good old term may be used without offense to the sensitive ears of the wiseacres of the West.
After Newton's time his gravitational hypothesis considered as a law of Nature held undisputed sway -- the entire body of scientists, almost without exception, quietly ignoring the great Englishman's private conviction that gravitation was due to spiritual agency. Then came the usual Nemesis of all materialistic lop-sided theories -- the appearance of another and startling theory evolved out of the consciousness of a representative of a later scientific generation. Einstein has been the cause of much upsetting in scientific circles of classical and supposedly unshakable scientific postulates or axioms, and it is probable that not only all the scientific world, but all thinking men, were at first amazed and indeed bewildered by some of his views when they were first published. And yet it is most interesting how some at least of these views have captured the scientific imagination, thus proving, it would seem, that even the most dogmatically inclined minds were privately dissatisfied with what they had learned in the lecture-halls and orthodox schools of scientific thought.
Dr. Robert A. Millikan some time ago developed a certain hypothesis which had originated in the consciousness of a German scientist, Dr. Werner Kolhoerster, to the effect that there are certain forms of radiation in the universe -- up to that time unknown and unsuspected -- appearing no one then knew whence, but whose existence could no longer be denied, and the nature and action of which could be tested by proper study and experimentation. Dr. Millikan elaborated this hypothesis or theory and by a good deal of difficult and conscientious work has proved the existence of what has since been called the 'Cosmic Rays' -- a form or forms of radiation apparently streaming into the earth on all sides from outer space. These Cosmic Rays, as they are now called, are in Dr. Millikan's opinion radiation streaming forth from matter in the making, forces or energies which arise as the elements of physical matter are born anew from the disintegration of precedently existing atomic corpuscles. They represent the most material form of energic vibrations hitherto known, because on the scale of radiation mentioned in a former chapter, they are found far beyond the ultra-violet portion of this scale, and are therefore radiation or rays incomparably 'harder' and more penetrating than are either the X-rays or the gamma-rays. It has been supposed by Dr. Millikan himself, it would seem, that these cosmic rays may reach us from the nebulae of space -- or from some of the nebulae at least. (202)
If this great American scientist's ideas are shown by future research and discovery to be correct, we see here a striking illustration of how force is turning into concrete matter, physical matter; and the theory is most suggestive because it not merely suggests, but actually sketches, the cyclical vanishing of matter into radiation and the concreting or concretion of such radiation into physical matter again. As Dr. Millikan himself expresses it, in substance -- 'creation' is still going on, and we see no reason to suppose that there ever was a beginning, cosmically speaking, or that there ever shall be an end, of the cyclical process. (203)
The usage of this word 'creation' above is adopted here because it conveys some comprehensive idea, yet care should be taken to note that the word 'creation' is not used here in the old Christian theological sense as meaning something made out of 'nothing,' but in its original Latin etymological significance, which is that of 'formation' of something which is thus caused to 'spring forth,' as, for instance, the Latin poets and philosophers sometimes called a man's son by the term creatus -- the past passive participle of the Latin verb creo, to 'form,' to 'make,' to cause to 'spring forth.' The secondary idea involved in this word, therefore, is the formation or the springing forth into manifested being on our plane of physical matter -- or indeed on other planes -- of new appearances of individualized entities, and that this process of formation is continuous, and that the world, or universe for that matter, is a changing and constantly evolving one; with the reservation, however, that universes, solar systems, and indeed every other manifested being and thing, after a period of manifestation, disappears from the scene for a term of rest. Thus it is that worlds appear and disappear, just as man himself dies and after his devachanic term of rest and recuperation is reborn anew on Earth for a new lifetime, only to die again, which death is followed by the next rebirth and so forth through the ages.
Only a short time ago, relatively speaking -- as is exemplified in Herbert Spencer's Synthetic Philosophy, as he called it -- the Universe was supposed to be all matter which was supposed to give birth to energy or force in a manner which no one understood; and furthermore, it was taught that the Universe was slowly 'running down.' An illustration then frequently given was the coiled spring of a watch, which was slowly unwinding -- such was the idea; and when the universe was totally 'unwound' or 'run down,' it was supposed that there would be nothing left but infinite fields of atoms, sleeping or dead, and spread through something vaguely called 'space.' Everything would then be completely ended -- and people of those days were not even quite sure if the dead atoms themselves would be there -- as atoms. Spencer, it is true, himself had some vague notion that the Universe in some inexplicable way would wind itself up again in order to start a new evolutionary course of 'life' -- a true intuition, imperfectly understood as it was by him. But he seemed to be somewhat notably singular in this optimistic outlook. Yes, in those days, there was supposed to be nothing but dead, insensate 'matter' out of which arose its marvelous offspring 'energy' or 'force.'
But in our own days, scientists are beginning to deny that there is any matter per se at all; they say now -- at least many of them so say -- that there is nothing but 'force' or 'energy.' May we not ask, Why run to this other extreme? Why not take the things of Nature as they are, instead of running off into imaginary vagaries of the speculative mind? After all, what does it matter what we call this underlying reality of things -- whatever it is? It may be called 'force' or 'substance'; the Theosophist calls it Spirit-Matter.
There is a very real difficulty that our modern scientists have to face, and it is a difficulty that students of and writers on the Esoteric Philosophy likewise confront, and this difficulty is the lack of a comprehensible terminology sufficiently expressive to enable them to state with accuracy and succinctness exactly what their new discoveries and the deductions drawn therefrom imply. They are perforce obliged to use, more or less just as Theosophists are, the phraseology -- scientific or otherwise -- of recent generations, when so much less was known of Nature than is known today; although it is of course true that new and often graphically expressive terms are almost yearly coined to fit in with the advancing knowledge and the new insights that are gained into the arcana and secret processes of Mother-Nature. Discovery runs more swiftly ahead than does language. In consequence, when one reads at times of some new discovery, or ponders over some new deduction of a truth from what already is known, as given by various researchers into natural laws and operations, the wording and even at times the conclusions drawn are apt occasionally to strike one as being rather quaintly humorous -- all allowance being made for new ideas and thoughts expressed in old terms: new wine in old bottles!
One writer, commenting on the discoveries of Millikan, recently said in the daily press:
In view of the newly-discovered facts brought to light by recent and more precise measurements of cosmic rays, it seems probable that ordinary matter is being created in the stars, the nebulae, or in the depths of space. Or, as Dr. Millikan himself puts it, "The heretofore mysterious cosmic rays, which unceasingly shoot through space in all directions, are announcements sent through the ether of the birth of the elements . . . ."
Why should it be supposed that matter is in 'creation' in the stars, in the nebulae, and in the depths of space, and nowhere else? Why limit 'creation,' formation, the new springing forth again, the new manifestation, to those three and in one case rather vague, localities? The reason doubtless lies in modern chemical -- or may we not be venturesome and call them alchemical? -- theories regarding the breaking up of atoms and their component electronic and protonic particles in the deep hearts of the suns where these minute corpuscular entities are subjected to such almost incredible conditions of heat and pressure. One is tempted to suggest or to predict that the time is coming, and may not be so far distant, when it will be discovered that the interiors or hearts of the various suns are not at all existing in conditions of such incomprehensibly intense heat, although it is true enough that the outmost ethereal layers of the suns have certain heat of their own, brought about by chemical action.
On the other hand, it is perfectly true that the interior of any sun is a most marvelous alchemical laboratory in which occur changes: molecular, atomic, and electronic: which it would be utterly impossible to reproduce in any chemical workshop. It is the teaching of the Ancient Wisdom, the Esoteric Tradition, that every sun, as indeed every other individual celestial body, is the outward veil or the body, or vehicle, of an indwelling Spiritual and Intellectual Agent or Presence or Solar Spirit -- let the reader use what descriptive name he may choose. It would be perfectly and indeed easily possible for such a Spiritual and Intellectual Agent to exist and to do its work in a sun, even were the interiors of the different suns the vast and incomprehensibly hot furnaces that ultra-modern science supposes them to be.
Yet it is our firm conviction (a) that the interiors of the suns are not such super-heated furnaces, chemical or alchemical or otherwise; and (b) that the time is not so very far distant when intuitions of this great truth will dawn upon the minds of our greatest scientists themselves, and thus they will introduce a still newer and even more fascinating field of research than what has been opened to the astonished gaze of scientific men during the last twenty-five years or so.
The point that one would like to make here is that even on this Earth there is constantly taking place a marvelous series of chemical and of what one may truly call alchemical processes, which are not different in kind from what takes place either in space, or in the nebulae, or in the interiors of the suns, but which are different perhaps solely in degree. The interior of the Earth is another of Nature's marvelous laboratories wherein wonderful and to us men almost unknown things are constantly happening; and, indeed, the same may be said of the unceasing laboratorial work of Nature in the higher and highest ranges or strata of the Earth's atmosphere, and its unceasing interplay of forces and substances with the fields of outer space -- whether this be done through the medium of radiation of various kinds, or partly by radiation and partly by as yet undiscovered natural means.
It seems to be notably unreasonable to the student of the Esoteric Philosophy to suppose that the Earth is 'dead' in the sense of having ceased its play and interplay of forces and substances with the spacial realms of the solar system around it, for this supposition we believe to be entirely unwarranted. It has been for numberless ages past the teaching of the Wise Men, the great Seers and Sages, of the entire globe, that 'matter' in many of its multi-myriad forms or conditions is unceasingly evolving forth, springing forth, on our Earth as well as in the most distant sun or remotest nebula shining with its faint and intriguing light in the abyss of interstellar space. Every part and portion of Mother Nature, and this applies universally, so to say is an alchemical laboratory; and the workings in that laboratory are those of interacting forces and substances which are always and unceasingly throughout time evolving forth or producing what is in themselves -- i. e., their own characteristics, or the respective swabhava of each individual case.
But more specifically, What is it that they evolve forth or produce? It is what is commonly called substance or matter in one or in many of its ranges or types or characteristics of existence.
In connexion with the so-called 'creation' of matter, a clever writer, Alden P. Armagnac, some years ago gave a neat summary in the daily press of Dr. Millikan's views, at least as held some time ago, regarding the so-called 'cosmic rays.' The writer says, quoting in substance from Dr. Millikan:
These rays are the invisible messengers of creation.
Creation, he said, is still going on -- not merely the creation of new worlds or of living things that people them, but the birth of the very particles of substance from which rocks and animals are made. His study of the cosmic rays, he added, revealed the first direct, indisputable evidence that beyond the stars, perhaps even on Earth (204) too, four of the universal substances are daily being born from hydrogen and helium gas. These substances are oxygen, the life-giving gas; magnesium, whose blinding light makes night-photographs possible; silicon, of which the earth, glass, and sand are largely made; and iron. And the mysterious rays from afar, possibly from the great spiral nebulae that astronomers know as half-formed universes in the making, are simply energy hurled forth from the atoms in the mighty travail of new creation.
In other words, the rays are messengers telling us that the universe isn't running down. Rather it is being built up and replenished by continual creation of its common substances from the two simplest substances of all; two gases that are extraordinarily abundant throughout the stellar world.
These two gases are hydrogen and helium; and the example of the birth of elemental substances from which the others of the chemical elements are derivative is most apposite and instructive. Our ultra-modern chemistry no longer believes in the dozens of natural elements, whose names and symbols once occupied several columns in our text-books of chemistry, as being the invariant and indestructible building-bricks of the physical world. Yet this idea of the indestructibility and invariant nature of the chemical atoms was universally held by chemists only a few years ago, relatively speaking, excepting possibly by a few intuitive minds. Times have changed and ideas and consequently things dependent upon ideas have changed with them. In our day the idea of absolute and indestructible elements of matter has gone by. No more 'absolute' matter, no more 'absolute' force, or absolute this, or absolute that: things have become relative throughout, each to each, and all to all. This is a great advance in conceptual knowledge, because it is obviously a better visioning of Nature herself, which is equivalent to saying that the idea is true -- or relatively so! But while things and beings are all relative to each other and none is absolute, this fact obviously does not change their essences, nor their essential characteristics as individuals.
The lightest of physical atoms known today is the hydrogen atom, which consists of but one electron and one proton. Perhaps the next lightest atom known is helium, which consists of four hydrogen atoms in combination, with their protonic-electronic nucleus. But mark this: something drew those four hydrogen atoms into combination in order to form what is called an atom of helium. What was it? And mark this also: the helium atom is said not to weigh, although made of and composed of four hydrogen atoms, as much as four hydrogen atoms are supposed to weigh when taken separately. Something equivalent to weight was lost in the combination-process; and that something was matter or mass, which during the process of combination was alchemically transmuted or evolved into energy, which left the new systemic helium atom and became a ray -- shall we say one of these cosmic rays? Here then is a case of the transmutation of matter or of the changing over of a portion of matter into an equivalent amount of energy.
The idea of the sempiternal nature of the physical atom is only the continuance of the ideas of the older but still fairly recent chemistry as imbodied in coherent theory by Dalton (205) during the early years of the nineteenth century. This idea of the physical atom as being an indivisible, everlasting, elementary body is now no longer held by the more modern school of physical chemists, who, since the discoveries in radio-activity first dazzled their eyes, are coming to know well enough that the disintegration -- in other words the death -- of the atom into other conditions or states of matter is the very probable cause of the birth of the various elements of physical matter. For manifestation of activity is always accompanied with an expenditure of force or energy, whether we can trace it or not. This is a fundamental postulate of modern science, and it is a very true one. Each such expenditure of force or energy means one of two things, we may suppose: a building-up process, an integration, or a process of disintegration. This is likewise an axiom in esoteric cosmology, and hence one may say that some at least of Millikan's ideas are welcome because in them one hears a certain portion of our own teachings expressed in modern scientific and mathematical form. It suggests closer approaches to the Esoteric Philosophy, to come later.
Millikan is quoted in the daily press as saying:
We have known for thirty years that in radio-active processes the heavier atoms are disintegrating into lighter ones. It is therefore to be expected that somewhere in the universe the building-up process is going on to replace the tearing-down process represented by radio-activity.
Thus is science showing clearly that atoms like everything else have their period of life, come into being, grow, reach their maturity, undergo decrepitude and decay, followed by death -- disintegration; and that then they come again into being, because, as Millikan clearly indicates: 'creation' is continuous -- within the Manvantara, say we. This is a dynamic, changing, and constantly evolving world, instead of a merely disintegrating one; and as some atoms disintegrate, thereby giving birth to other atoms of somewhat different kind, why should not this rule apply to all kinds -- otherwise, how came they into being?
The Ancient Wisdom teaches and has always taught what science has in part discovered and is on the threshold of understanding more clearly, namely, that all forms of matter are radio-active, had we but the means to perceive it; and that if we do not see any instances, or at least only a few instances if any, of lighter atoms being formed into heavier ones, it is because our planet, Earth, is in the second or ascending arc of its evolution, i. e., its involution, so that disintegration of the heavier into the lighter elements is the first to take place, and it will be ages before easily observable radio-active processes affect the lighter groups of atoms. In the preceding or descending arc along which our planet ran, aeons of ages agone, the converse was Nature's procedure, but only towards the end of the descending arc did the atoms become truly physical and no longer quasi-ethereal or ethereal. On this descending arc the lighter atoms all had the impulse, or showed the tendency, to integrate into the heavier, because the vital essences of the Earth were steadily descending into matter and were expressing themselves in increasingly more material forms and conditions. Now, since we have passed the mid-way point, physical matter is very slowly passing away or disintegrating into more ethereal forms and conditions of substances and force; and necessarily the heaviest elements, such as uranium and thorium, etc., are the ones that tend, first and most, to feel this inner urge or impulse of the universal vital activities of the planet. (206)
'Creation' -- adopting here the word so often used in modern scientific works such as those already cited from -- has always been going on in different parts of space, while at the same time in other parts of space the process of disintegration or dissolution has the temporary upper hand; for the fact is that worlds, and aggregations of worlds, are born, live, grow to maturity, have their period of mature efflorescence, then decay, and finally die, just as everything else in the Universe does; for the Universe as a whole and in all its parts is an evolving Universe, therefore growing, which means changing; and because it is composed of virtually an infinite number of discrete, that is individual, entities -- we may illustrate this by pointing to the atoms -- of many kinds and of differing grades of ethereality, of which each has its own life-term or period: it is obvious that each one and every one of these individual entities copies in its own term or career what happens in the Universe of which it is an integral and inseparable part, because perforce, the part must obey the general laws, functions, operations, and structure of the Universal Whole.
Returning to the idea or teaching of the Esoteric Tradition regarding the integration and disintegration of worlds and universes, it is most interesting to note that adumbrations at least of the fundamental conception involved in this process are beginning to break into open and ready scientific minds. Sir James Jeans, for instance, speaks as one who had received an inspiration or thought-wave from some one of the great Sages and Seers when he writes:
The type of conjecture which presents itself, somewhat insistently, is that the centers of the nebulae are of the nature of "singular points," at which matter is poured into our universe from some other, and entirely extraneous, spatial dimension, so that, to a denizen of our universe, they appear as points at which matter is being continually created. (207)
His 'singular points' -- a remarkable phrase for it suggests that these 'singular points' are what the Esoteric Philosophy calls 'laya-centers,' which idea imbodies a profound philosophical conception as ancient as thinking man -- are, apparently, those 'points' where intercommunication between cosmic plane and cosmic plane or sphere and sphere takes place. There is such a laya-center, or to use Dr. Jeans's phrase, 'singular point,' at the heart of every entity that is -- such as a sun, to take a graphic illustration. Every atom contains one such general atomic laya-center; every corpuscle, every granule, every globe in space, every human being, every individualized aggregate anywhere, contains such a laya-center. Every human ovum contains one such; and it is through the laya-center in that human generative particle that the incarnating entity comes into incarnation: as it were sends its life and its energic ray through it, thus furnishing the urge behind the growing entity and causing the development of the unborn infant to birth, and then through infancy and childhood to adult manhood. In fact, the vital germ of every seed that is contains at its heart a laya-center from which and through which the entity growing to maturity from that seed draws its streams of vitality and the spiritual potencies which build it into the being it is to become.
Jeans speaks of 'dimensions'; and one may ask in passing, why not use plain words in order to imbody his really noteworthy conception? Why should he not say 'other worlds' instead of using the vague and when all is said rather questionable term 'dimensions'? Does this fact show the influence over even a great modern scientific intellect of the familiar fear that it is unsafe to use words conveying old and familiar but yet true thoughts? If so, the great English scientist is not alone in scientific circles in this aversion from employing many old but graphic and truthful terms and expressions, because most scientists apparently are averse from using words which in their minds are too closely linked with bygone religious and philosophical notions. For this very understandable aversion one has no little sympathy and still less blame, yet in a way it is rather unfortunate.
At any rate, he calls these other and inner worlds 'dimensions,' probably according to the new-fangled idea of there being more than three dimensions in and of matter, e. g., four dimensions and five dimensions, and perhaps still others. It seems to be becoming a mathematical bias for mathematicians to think that they think that such dimensions are possible; one can only point out, however much one may object to the use of the term, that there is, nevertheless, a true intuition behind this very striving towards newer and more comprehensive conceptual ideas.
However, there is no need to quibble over words; the essential idea here is that this great modern scientist points with a true intuition to the Reality behind the physical seeming, behind and within the visible and tangible.
Laya is an age-old Sanskrit term which means 'dissolving center' or 'resolving center.' Matter, transforming itself upwards into a higher and more ethereal plane, in other words in leaving our physical realms, passes into such superior plane through laya-centers or points or channels, which are open doors as it were, or canals of both egress and ingress. Equivalently, therefore, these laya-centers are the points or channels or canals where the substances or matters of the superior planes pass downwards and enter our physical universe under what is to us the guise of forces or energies, which is really matter in its sixth or in its seventh and highest state. These forces and energies transform themselves first alchemically and then later chemically into the various 'matters' of the physical world, and thus in time become the chemical elements that are known.
In The Secret Doctrine, we find the following profound, significant, and indeed prophetic, passage, written by H. P. Blavatsky:
We have said that Laya is what Science may call the Zero-point or line; the realm of absolute negativeness, or the one real absolute Force, the NOUMENON [or Causal Beginning] of the Seventh State of that which we ignorantly call and recognise as "Force"; or again the Noumenon [or Causal Beginning] of Undifferentiated Cosmic Substance which is itself an unreachable and unknowable object to finite perception; the root and basis of all states of objectivity and subjectivity too; the neutral axis, not one of the many aspects, but its centre. It may serve to elucidate the meaning if we attempt to imagine a neutral centre -- . . . . A "neutral centre" is, in one aspect, the limiting point of any given set of senses. Thus, imagine two consecutive planes of matter as already formed; each of these corresponding to an appropriate set of perceptive organs. We are forced to admit that between these two planes of matter an incessant circulation takes place; and if we follow the atoms and molecules of (say) the lower in their transformation upwards, these will come to a point where they pass altogether beyond the range of the faculties we are using on the lower plane. In fact, to us the matter of the lower plane there vanishes from our perception into nothing -- or rather it passes on to the higher plane, and the state of matter corresponding to such a point of transition must certainly possess special and not readily discoverable properties. Such "Seven Neutral Centres," then, are produced by Fohat [Cosmic Consciousness-Energy] who . . . quickens matter into activity and evolution. (208)
The above words were written in 1888. Forty years later, in 1928-9, Sir James H. Jeans writes of his 'singular points,' and thereby displays a genuine intuition of the esoteric truth and the teaching concerning it. But as yet Sir James sees only the appearance of matter coming into our own physical world from what he mistakenly calls a 'dimension,' which is really the invisible or next succeeding World above ours, a superior Cosmic Plane. But he does not point out -- which should be pointed out -- that these open doors or channels, these laya-centers, or his 'singular points,' equivalently serve for the passage of the matter of our world which has become through evolution highly etherealized, back again into the force or forces from which it originally came, thus vanishing or passing upwards in a burst of energy to its first and primordial stage, and thus establishing a dual circulation from within outwards and from without inwards: from our world inwards into the spheres superior to ours, and, indeed, into spheres inferior to ours also, if the passage happens to be degenerative and thus follows the downwards tendency.
Nor is there any reason why this passage of matter from the higher to the lower, or conversely, from the lower to the higher, should cease anywhere during the vastly long life-term of a Universe in manifestation or in Manvantara. There is not the slightest reason for thinking so; carrying the thought of laya-centers as existing in inner worlds, as they most certainly do, we are perforce obliged to conclude that other and later stages follow in the progress upwards and inwards of such wave or stream of advancing substance until, at the great last stage for any Universe, it re-becomes the brilliance and substance of the Cosmic Consciousness governing such Universe, which consciousness always was its own root, and from which it originally emanated or flowed forth. Where then can we, may we, put limits or endings to consciousness, to mind, to force, to substance and its illusory child, matter? The matter of our plane becomes and is the energy of the planes below it. The matter of the planes above ours is the source of the forces or energies which stream downwards into our plane on their way to become one or other of the forms or manifestations of 'matter' on this plane. The inflowing streams of force or energy simply traverse the physical universe, and thereafter in due course of long ages pursue their pathway into other and inner planes of being. (209)
All matter therefore is ultimately force or energy, and all matter likewise may be ultimately considered to be pure light, which is both substance and force crystallized, so to say, into material form and shape; hence the world we live in, in its ultimate analysis, is light or radiation, crystallized or concreted light. (210) Thus all things therefore: nebulae and comets, suns and planets; and, on our Earth, stones, vegetation, animals' bodies and our bodies too -- all are crystallized or concreted light or radiation, or, what is the same thing, forces balancing other forces or energies and holding them in more or less stable equilibrium.
The Berlin scientist, Planck, likewise a scientist of international renown, has helped most effectively to break down the barriers once supposed to exist between matter and 'energy,' by the enunciation of his Quantum Theory. In attempting to account for the operation of certain natural forces in the light of more recent discoveries, more particularly certain electro-magnetic phenomena which have always been obscure, an intuition came to him one day to the effect that what is called 'energy' is, like matter, composed of discrete quantities, that is, unit-quantities; and that 'energy' is not a continuous flow. At any rate, if energy or force is conventionally conceivable as a continuous flow, much as a stream of water is, we are nevertheless now driven to the thought that energy or force, which is thus like water, is divisible into particles, or in other words is discrete in type; as water is composed of the atoms of hydrogen and oxygen, so energy or force is now conceived of as being composed of corpuscles or particles or charges -- called 'quanta.' As matter is composed of atoms, generally speaking, so force or energy is now considered to be composed of 'atoms' or corpuscles, likewise. Planck, developing his intuition into the form of a theory, evolved forth a conception of these energic corpuscles or discrete particles -- or whatever is the best manner in which to describe them -- to which he gave the name of quanta -- a Latin plural, meaning 'so-much-es.' These quanta are units not of 'energy' alone, but of energy multiplied by time -- most simply understood by the time during which any one of such units acts as a definite quantity, as for instance, an electrical discharge; and each such quantum or unit, as it is conceived, combined with the time-element, is called an 'action.' Here the terminology of ultra-modern chemical physics is followed as far as these extremely metaphysical and mathematical concepts may be grasped by others than the inventors of them.
From what has been already studied and discussed, it should be abundantly evident to every thoughtful mind, that our Universe in all its phenomena and appearances is illusory; that physical matter in itself is actually the most unsubstantial and unreal thing we know, because we know it only by imperfect reporters -- our physical senses -- which report but a small part of the cosmos -- one or two tones of the gamut of the Song of Life, as it were: only of these few notes do our physical senses tell us of the vast range of vibrational activity that the Universe contains.
Next, it should be evident that force or energy, while substantial, is more ethereal and of a finer and more subtil character than is matter; and that our Universe, our World, or indeed man, or any entity, is infilled with force or energy, which, while substantial, is yet more ethereal than the vehicle or body upon which it works and in which it works.
Further, it is likewise evident that the forces or energies which play through matter and govern it and control it and guide it, are of many different kinds: the physical, the ethereal, the still more ethereal, and so on upwards and inwards until spirit itself -- the Cosmic Originant -- is reached. From here, from this Originant, begins the ascent of a still more spiritual Hierarchy in every sense of the word; and so onwards, ad infinitum, at least as far as human understanding can follow the rising scale which Universal Nature is.
Thus again, viewing the picture from the matter-side and what is beneath it, we can find in this direction no ultimates either. The electron is not an ultimate, for the teaching is that there is something still beyond, still within, in a sense still more infinitesimal, which builds up or constructs the electrons and protons, etc., of which our physical-material universe consists, these infinitesimals being parts of inferior magnitude, although by no means necessarily of inferior energy or potency.
We literally do not know how far we may go in the direction of this kind of divisibility, nor would one even venture to suggest a limiting boundary, unless indeed it be the illuminating Theosophical teaching of the substance-matter or mother-substance of any Cosmic Hierarchy reaching frontiers of 'inwardness' or 'outwardness' which we may call the frontiers of homogeneity. Such homogeneous substance would be but one of the landing-places, or hierarchical ultimates in either direction of the endless Stair of Life or Ladder of Being; so that penetrating in thought still farther, we perceive that what we call homogeneity, as translated to us by our sense-observation and mental concepts, is but the beginning of another and higher -- or conversely lower -- range or scale of hierarchical life-entities.
In connexion with what was said supra concerning the existence and nature and functions of laya-centers, it may be as well to point out here that these laya-centers can, from one viewpoint, be graphically described as originating points between Cosmic Plane and Cosmic Plane, or neutral centers so to speak; and as the junction-line or uniting substance between Cosmic Plane and Cosmic Plane is always the highest of the lower sub-hierarchy fusing into and becoming the lowest substance of the succeeding or higher hierarchy, it is evident that this fusion-substance or line is of homogeneous character. It must be remembered that Nature repeats herself throughout her entire structure, as has been explained before. Thus these laya-centers are not only channels or canals of communication between Cosmic Plane and Cosmic Plane, but, otherwise viewed, could truly be called individualized points or monadic hearts or centers. Their number is literally beyond our powers of human computation and in consequence may be stated as virtually quasi-infinite.
Be it remembered also that these laya-centers are at one time of their existence dormant or passive or latent until awakened into functional activity, after which they become foci of intense motion, and so remain during the life-period or life-term of the being or entity or thing which they through their functional operation bring into manifested being, and, in a very true sense of the word, ensoul.
Our modern scientists say that the ultimate or rather simplest physical atom today is the hydrogen-atom. But let us ask ourselves a question of fundamental import: How comes it that it is here, i. e., how comes it into being, and whence comes it into our physical universe? The mere fact that one may say that it is there or here answers the question in no wise whatsoever; it is merely inverting the question or the query into an affirmation. It will one day have become common knowledge that there are things still more ethereal, still simpler, so far as physical matter is concerned, than is the hydrogen-atom.
There are signs that what was at one time called 'Prout's Hypothesis' is rapidly gaining favor today in the minds of at least a large number of thoughtful scientific men, although even Prout's Hypothesis may seem revolutionary to no small number, even in our own age which is becoming familiar with the pranks of electrons and the elfin movements of their careers. The English physician and chemist, William Prout, who died in April, 1850, evolved the idea from his studies of Nature, and taught it with sincere enthusiasm for a long time during the latter part of his life, that what the ancients called the prima materia or prote hyle -- i.e., primary or primordial physical substance -- is what European chemists know under the name of hydrogen, from which gas he thought that the other elements as listed in the chemical tables were formed by some as yet unknown process of solidification or condensation and final grouping. The hypothesis gained some small currency for a while, but was finally abandoned when it was discovered upon closer research that the other chemical atoms were not exact multiples of the hydrogen-atom.
But the case is now different because wider research since Prout's day and new discoveries have explained what seemed to be the main difficulty in Prout's hypothesis as just stated above. This later and more accurate research-work in chemical physics, largely due to the labors of Thomson, which were taken up and carried to a successful conclusion by F. W. Aston, showed that some at least of the so-called chemical elements actually consisted of a mixture of two elements which have identical chemical properties but actually possess differing atomic weights. These were called by Soddy isotopes -- from the Greek compound iso-topos, signifying having the same place in the chemical table. Chlorine for instance with atomic weight of 35.46 was thus demonstrated to be not a single unitary element but a mixture of atoms possessing chlorine-properties, but with the respective weights 35 and 37. Similar results were obtained with several of the other elements; so that the atomic weights of the other elements in the chemical tables thus far examined are at present known to be very nearly whole numbers, which actually are, as Prout pointed out, multiples of hydrogen. As Dampier-Whetham states:
Prout's hypothesis, that they are all multiples of that of hydrogen, has now been proved to be true, the slight discrepancy being both explicable by and of surpassing interest in the modern theory of the atom. (211)
If our ultra-modern physical chemists are right, and the hydrogen-atom is composed of but two corpuscles -- a single electron with a companionate proton, which together form the hydrogen-atom (and we may for the moment let it go at that) the electron and the proton must de facto be each one a self-contained and self-enduring yet composite entity; otherwise neither could exist as an individual unit. But while this is so, or may be so, it would seem to be vain and allowing ourselves to fall under the sway of a fond delusion to suppose that because as yet we cannot trace things farther back, the electrical corpuscle is the ultimate entity of physical being. All that can be said is that such electronic unit is the last stage in analytic investigation that has thus far been reached. As a matter of fact, it may as well be stated here once for all, for what use it may be to those who are interested, that the Esoteric Philosophy regards every physical unitary entity, however ethereal or gross, however large or small, whether macrocosmic or ultra-microscopic, as a composite; and hence the deduction is to be drawn that even these so-called 'ultimate' particles of physical substance are themselves divisible into still other component units -- were our resources of investigation sufficiently large and our technique sufficiently skilful to enable us to carry our work into the ultra-infinitesimal.
One might aver: Show me anything that has physical, i. e., material existence, however sublimated or ethereal it may be, which is at the same time truly homogeneous and therefore entirely non-composite. If it were such, it could not be physical material, the very meaning of which words signifies composition, construction -- in other words, heterogeneity.
The idea of all this is, therefore, that the roots of things, their foundations as it were, are in the inner and invisible worlds; in consequence, the true explanations of things are to be found likewise in the inner and invisible worlds; furthermore, the seeds of things, or their monadic essences, are in the inner and spiritual worlds; and there we also live in our own inner and spiritual consciousness.
Few indeed realize how immense are the forces and powers of the invisible realms or worlds. Leaving aside for the moment our own invisible sheaths of being -- i. e., our invisible clothing or garments between us and the spirit, and still higher inwards to our Divine Spark, the Monad -- few indeed realize, that the atoms of even our physical frames imbody and therefore enclose truly terrific forces, which, because they are so amazingly balanced in more or less stable equilibrium, hold these bodies of ours in coherent and enduring form and shape. Yet we as monadic beings in our inmost manage in some wonderfully instinctive manner, outside of our ordinary human understanding, to hold together in fairly stable equilibrium those fearfully powerful and almost incomprehensible forces that constantly play through us, so that we exist on this physical plane as corporeal entities and do so almost unconsciously; and we are not torn to pieces by these natural genii that we unconsciously imprison within our physical frames!
It has long been a dream, more hopeful than as yet practicable, that man could harness the immense sources of power in the atomic world. It has been estimated by a recent well-known scientific thinker that a single cubic centimeter of the earth is so packed with electrical power, that if the latter's positive and negative poles could be divorced and concentrated at points a centimeter apart, the attraction between them would be a force equivalent to a hundred million million million tons!
One hundred quintillion tons! Think now, how many cubic centimeters of matter are contained in our physical bodies; and reflect over the incomprehensibly stupendous play of forces, and balancing of them, that occurs at every instant and all the time, incessantly; consider also how this physical body of ours retains its form in adulthood relatively unchanged as the years go by; how, from a microscopic human seed it grows through infancy and youth on to manhood, changing and evolving during those transitory periods most marvelously and, from the first, working steadily and without intermission, teleologically towards one end: human adulthood, doing so under the gripping and infallibly directing control of the inner and invisible monadic entity, as we call our spiritual Self. What a wonder it all is! It is this amazingly powerful inner and invisible monadic being, controlling these immense forces of the etheric realms of Nature, which molds us both astrally and physically -- to say nothing for the moment of the still more subtil forces working in the psychologic and spiritual fields of our being -- and which thus makes us what we are physically; and as just hinted, behind these psychologic and astral parts of us there is the vastly more wonderful spiritual entity, controlling forces still more marvelous and more amazingly subtil -- for the spiritual monadic entity is the root of our being. Unthinkably vast as the source of energy is which is locked up in the atom, it differs both in potency and in quality from those far higher and more potent spiritual wave-lengths of energy of the spirit which pass from star to star.
In far distant future aeons, when evolutionary development shall then have carried us far along our future path of destiny, we shall come into self-conscious control of the still more mysterious and wonderful powers and forces and faculties of the spiritual parts of our constitution, which at present work in us and through us in a manner that seems automatic to our present lower and limited psychologic consciousness, now expressing itself, this latter consciousness, as thought and will: the composite faculty and power which enables us to raise an arm or some other part of the body, or to think consciously to definite ends, and doing so more or less as we will.
Sir Oliver Lodge, in his Ether of Space, says that the available energy, could man only harness it, lying in one cubic millimeter of etheric matter, which is a particle no larger than the head of an ordinary pin, is enough to supply a million horsepower working continuously for forty million years!
Such things does science tell us of this seemingly empty space, this 'emptiness,' which is in reality the etheric world of the plane next superior to our physical plane, in other words what in Theosophy is called the cosmic astral plane. Our senses therefore do not report to us faithfully, or, perhaps better, they cannot report more than what they themselves can gather from within the range of etheric vibrations that they have been evolved, or have learned, to utilize. They are very imperfect instruments. When we recollect that our own gross physical sphere, which seems so material and so dense to us, is, after all, nothing but a vast agglomerate of electric charges, which are resident in the bodies of the different atoms of which physical matter is composed, and which electronic 'sub-atoms' are as widely separated from each other, more or less, as are the celestial bodies in our own physical sphere; when we recollect all this, there is small difficulty in recognising the fact that beings with a sense-apparatus different from our own could easily enough look through the physical bodies of us humans and through the physical body of our Earth as if these were -- 'empty space.' (212)
Indeed, had we the 'etheric eye,' we should perceive the intra-atomic ether in which we physically live, and we should be invisible to each other as physical bodies; only an occasional electron would flash like a streak of light across our vision -- an electron symbolical of electric energy. But there is something more in man, by which he may learn and look out upon universal and invisible Nature, than his mere sense-apparatus: it is the faculties and powers of his own inner god, of practically infinite capacity, of practically infinite possibilities, because it is linked inseparably with the God-Nature of the Universe, and therefore is it able to go to and to reach the roots of things, in other words, to Cosmic Reality itself, for this inner god is an individualized but identic part of that Cosmic Reality.
When the science of the future shall have realized that physical beings cannot exist without an inner focus of energy -- call this inner focus 'soul' or by any other name one may please to adopt -- then the truly philosophical science of the future will with every year tend to become more definitely and more fully in line with the Esoteric Philosophy, the Esoteric Tradition. When the science of the future shall have come to understand, and in understanding to realize, that the physical world is but the expression of the forces or energies and ethereal substances flowing into it, and thereby composing it, from spheres and worlds which to our present sense-apparatus are invisible -- and which we may call the 'soul' of the physical world -- then too shall we in all probability, indeed of necessity, see the science of that future day becoming with the passage of each year more and more Theosophical.
Science is even now very rapidly moving in the direction just outlined; and the signs are growing daily more numerous that the brilliant minds of ultra-modern scientific thinkers are becoming restive under the rapidly accumulating facts of discovery for which there has as yet been evolved or found out no unifying and satisfying philosophical system, bringing them all together into a definitely coherent and satisfyingly logical synthesis.
Unfortunately, this marriage of Science with the Father of all human Wisdom, the Esoteric Philosophy, has not yet been reached, and altogether too large a part of ultra-modern science is still soulless, and this descriptive word is not here used with any desire to be disrespectful to nor forgetful of the really magnificent work of our scientists in all countries in doing whatever they can and may to unveil Nature's secrets -- and this they are most certainly trying to do and to a certain extent are doing. They are using all their efforts, mental and other, to penetrate behind the veils of the outward physical seeming. Truth is perhaps the holiest thing that man can aspire to have, and unquestionably today the best minds in science are seekers after Truth.
When that future, hereinbefore alluded to, shall have arrived, science then will have become distinctly religious, but in a cosmical sense, and not in the restricted sense which this word 'religious' is ordinarily understood to have in Occidental countries. Then, in those future times, a new and very beautiful Religion of Nature of a truly spiritual type will take the place of the present period of agnostic uncertainty, for it will be not a religion, but Religion, founded entirely and wholly throughout on the facts of the Spiritual Universe.
FOOTNOTES:
201. The reference here to Newton is to statements made by him in certain letters of his to Bentley, and these statements have always been entirely ignored by former scientific writers, although they are true. These were certain letters written by Sir Isaac Newton to Richard Bentley in the years 1692-3; and in these letters, among other things, Newton expressed his strong opposition to the idea that gravity was a property inherent or innate in matter and also of the idea of actio in distans, or action at a distance, without an intervening medium or without intervening media, active or passive.
In Newton's letter to Bentley, dated Jan. 17, 1692-3, Newton expresses himself as follows with respect to the nature of gravity: "You some times speak of gravity as essential and inherent to matter. Pray, do not ascribe that notion to me; for the cause of gravity is what I do not pretend to know, and therefore would take more time to consider of it."
In another letter to Bentley, written in the same interval, 1692-3, Newton expressed himself as follows: "It is inconceivable, that inanimate brute matter, should, without the mediation of something else, which is not material, operate upon and affect other matter without mutual contact, as it must be, if gravitation, in the sense of Epicurus, be essential and inherent in it. And this is one reason why I desired you would not ascribe innate gravity to me. That gravity should be innate, inherent, and essential to matter, so that one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum, without the mediation of any thing else, by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an absurdity, that I believe no man, who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking, can ever fall into it. Gravity must be caused by an agent acting constantly according to certain laws; but whether this agent be material or immaterial, I have left to the consideration of my readers."
It is abundantly evident from the first sentence of this second citation that Newton himself without doubt held to something "which is not material" as the agent or medium causing and controlling gravitational action; although the last sentence would seem to imply desire to obscure his real opinion, possibly because of a disinclination to attribute immaterial or spiritual agency to gravitational action.
Although in many ways a disciple of the ancient Greek philosophers, Newton unquestionably repudiated the mistaken opinion -- based upon mistaken exoteric statements of the ancients themselves -- that Democritus and Epicurus taught the fortuitous and chance action and re-action of dead, insensate atoms in an utterly empty void. It has been before pointed out that the real meaning which Democritus and Epicurus and their followers gave to the term 'atom,' i. e., 'individual,' was what the Esoteric Philosophy calls a Jiva or Monad. It remained for the materialistic school of modern scientific thinkers from Newton's day to choose the course with regard to the nature of gravity which Newton himself rejected, as is shown by the second letter to Bentley above quoted from.
Methinks that after all is said, Empedocles was not so far wrong in his teaching of cosmic 'Love' and 'Hate,' two principles in nature working both in the universe itself and in and among the atomic individuals which compose that universe. Whether this 'Love' and 'Hate' be called by other names more familiar to modern ears such as Attraction and Repulsion, is a matter of indifference; the point here being that both are the manifestations of the vital force or energy of invisible cosmic entities of differing grades or degrees in evolutionary development, such vital magnetic outflow being strictly dependent upon the amount of the respective emanations and the distance separating two or more individuals thus involved in mutual action or re-action -- a statement which reminds one strongly of Newton's law of gravity acting according to the respective masses of two or more bodies and likewise depending upon the inverse square of the distance separating them.
On the whole, and although there is much that is attractive in Einstein's mathematical theories, many minds will find this idea preferable to the purely theoretic notion that gravitation is in some way dependent upon, or brought about by, or caused by, 'curved' or 'crumpled' space.
The simpler Platonic idea that the circle or the sphere is the most perfect form in Nature to which she automatically tends, seems both more reasonable and accordant with fact than the highly metaphysical albeit mathematical conception of a supposititious 'curvature of space' -- as if space which is an abstraction per se, could be spoken of as if it were a limited material body only.
The Esotericist would have far less objection to the Einsteinian hypothesis of space-curvature if it were supplemented by two fundamental principles of Nature which Einstein seems to have ignored in his mathematical work, to wit: (a) that any 'space,' in the Einsteinian sense, is but a portion of spacial extension and is included in a still larger spacial extension or body, and this latter itself is again included in 'space' or spacial extension larger still, and so on indefinitely, ad infinitum; and, (b) that the different 'spaces,' or body-extensions, of the physical Universe are but an outward shell or veil or garment of inner and ethereal as well as spiritual Worlds or Spaces, which are the causes of whatever appears in the physical worlds.
With these considerations in view, it is at once seen that the Einsteinian hypothesis, while exceedingly clever and in some ways intuitive, deals with but small parts or portions, so to speak, of abstract SPACE ITSELF, and being thus limited, is, de facto, but a partial explanation at best, and therefore is imperfect. (return to text)
202. While it is quite true that the precise or exact origin or origins of the so-called 'cosmic rays' has or have not yet been absolutely discovered, there seems to be no doubt about the fact that these cosmic rays are born in the fields of space outside the Earth, because they reach the Earth as radiation apparently coming from all quarters of outer space with virtually equal intensity. (return to text)
203. Here again, if the present writer has correctly understood Dr. Millikan's ideas of this process of cyclical destruction and regeneration by means of radiation, it would appear that his idea is that the stars radiate substance from themselves which in some as yet unexplained manner (apparently) rebecomes electronic and protonic particles in the abysses of space separating star from star. The cyclical process therefore seems to be, briefly, that atoms or atomic bodies are dissipated into radiation in the bosoms of the suns or stars of interstellar space, and that this radiation in the trackless fields between the stars is again aggregated into electrons and protons which combine to form atoms, which in their turn again are concreted to compose the bodies of stars, which thus furnish the theater anew for the same cyclical processes of destruction and regeneration already described.
There is a good deal in Millikan's theory which is extremely attractive to the Esotericist because of approximations to the Esoteric Philosophy that Millikan makes on several points which his theory covers; but one is nevertheless obliged to enter a caveat as regards the idea that the universe through eternity involves the process by which radiation becomes matter which in its turn vanishes again into radiation only to re-enter upon a new cycle of concretion into matter, and that this process -- so true in some of its aspects -- continues throughout endless duration without longer solutions of continuity or interruption of time-periods than those suggested by Millikan's theory, however long may be the intervening time-spaces between the vanishing of matter into radiation and the latter's rebecoming matter.
The truth is, as the Esoteric Philosophy teaches it, that any such process as Millikan in his theory approximates to, or adumbrates as a natural fact, at certain vastly long intervals of time recurring in regular serial and cyclical order throughout eternity, is interrupted or marked by what the Esoteric Philosophy calls the Cosmic Pralayas -- or enormously long periods in which a Universe, large or small, vanishes from visibility into invisibility, such dissolution or 'death' of a Universe meaning the beginning or opening of the Cosmic Pralaya or Cosmic Rest-Period. When each such Cosmic Pralaya in its turn comes to an end, as it infallibly does in the serial cyclical order above alluded to, then the individual Universe which had thus dissolved or vanished from the scene, begins a new period of Cosmic Manifestation or Cosmic Manvantara, which, from the instant of its beginning, involves a vast series of evolutionary changes bringing said individual cosmic unit into appearance on the cosmic scene again.
This period of active evolutionary manifestation is followed when completed by a new cosmic Rest-Period; and thus throughout endless duration.
It should be carefully noted, however, that each such new World-Appearance or Cosmic Manvantara, takes place on a somewhat higher -- or it may be lower -- Cosmic Plane, than the one on which it had previously lived its former manvantaric existence. The "Sparks of Eternity" appear and disappear endlessly. (return to text)
204. This is excellent, indeed; and is corroborative of the teaching of the Esoteric Philosophy that the Earth itself should likewise be regarded as an ever-active and never-tiring chemical or alchemical laboratory as has been already stated. It is a hopeful sign or portent that our great men of science are coming to the realization that Mother-Earth itself is no dead and inactive agent, but is as fully 'creative' in its relatively small way, as are the far more active stars in their usually immensely greater bulk. Nature's operations are universally identic. (return to text)
205. 1766 -- 1844. (return to text)
206. For a brief sketch of the manner in which this takes place, consult chapter x, 'Esoteric Teachings on the Evolution of Human and Animal Beings.' (return to text)
207. This is a noteworthy passage, and is found in Astronomy and Cosmogony, p. 352; by permission of the Macmillan Company, publishers. (return to text)
208. The Secret Doctrine, Vol. I, p. 148. (return to text)
209. The course of the reflexions contained in the above text brings us almost irresistibly to the ultra-modern conception of all forms of physical matter as being derivatives of radiation in its manifold manifestations. It is no far cry, but an almost inevitable deduction, to suppose that physical matter as our senses report it to us, is, when all is said, easily describable as concreted or crystallized radiation or light, to adopt a familiar term -- not so much the one octave called 'visible' light, but light in its more general significance imbodied in the word radiation. We must remember that 'radiation' now means the many 'octaves' of radiative activity from the 'cosmic rays' to those used in 'radio'-work.
The idea is not at all new, although for hundreds of years it has been either forgotten or quietly overlooked. Newton in his Opticks had a sufficiently clear conception of the idea when he wrote:
"Are not gross Bodies and Light convertible into one another, and may not Bodies receive much of their Activity from the Particles of Light which enter their Composition? . . ."
And again:
"The changing of Bodies into Light, and Light into Bodies, is very conformable to the Course of Nature, which seems delighted with Transmutations."
The great English scientist never wrote a more admirable thing than this; and one can only marvel that for so long a time it has been so utterly ignored. (return to text)
210. Instances where intuitive modern scientists are approaching the confines of some of the teachings of the Esoteric Philosophy are so numerous that it would require too much space to do more than make an occasional selection which for its appositeness and modern scientific substantiation of the Theosophical teaching becomes particularly interesting. Thus, Sir James Jeans in his The Mysterious Universe, p. 83 (quotation by permission of the Macmillan Company, publishers), states:
". . . the tendency of modern physics is to resolve the whole material universe into waves, and nothing but waves. These waves are of two kinds: bottled-up waves, which we call matter, and unbottled waves, which we call radiation or light. If annihilation of matter occurs, the process is merely that of unbottling imprisoned wave-energy and setting it free to travel through space. These concepts reduce the whole universe to a world of light, potential or existent. . . ."
One is strongly reminded of the declaration of H. P. Blavatsky, the Great Theosophist, that it will one day be discovered by scientific research that what we call our physical universe is but condensed or concreted or crystallized light. This statement was made by her in 1888, and was then considered to be merely the play of her mind, indulging in phantasy. Her justification has arrived! (return to text)
211. This extract is taken from Dampier-Whetham's A History of Science, p. 391 (1931). (By permission of the Macmillan Company, publishers.) (return to text)
212. So closely are all the parts of Nature and its functions linked together as an interworking web of not only 'space-time' but of what we may call 'force-matter,' that it is now coming to be suspected that nothing at all in the Universe can be excepted from this general rule -- and this is one of the fundamental postulates of Esotericism.
The five human senses, for instance, as expressed through their respective organs, are themselves the products not only of evolution in the common understanding of this term, as signifying unfolding or development, but likewise the products of interworking and interwoven forces active in the various matters which compose the Universe.
Furthermore, it is the teaching of the Esoteric Tradition that even the senses of man, with their respective sense-organs, numbering five at the present time, but to number seven, if not ten, in the distant future, were not all evolved or unfolded simultaneously, but appeared one after the other in serial order, albeit there were always in every sense the sensory adumbrations of the other senses or of the other sense-organs before they appeared in the relative perfection that they later attained.
Thus the present five human senses, with their respective organs, appeared in the following order as regards time and sequence: hearing was the first sense developed; touch followed it; then in regular series came sight, taste, and smell. It is interesting to compare this series of five organs with the 'octaves' of radiation which modern science has now discovered and is studying with such care and interest. The senses are expressions, one and all, of various forms of 'radiation,' i. e., of forces working in material substance; although in these cases the radiation or radiations are as much of a psycho-mental character as they are physical, as demonstrated in the organs through which they work.
No one can as yet say just how many octaves of radiation exist. Theoretically, and in fact it is thus taught in the Esoteric Philosophy, these octaves of radiation extend indefinitely in both directions of what we may call the 'scale of radiation.' If we take the ordinary scale, and consider the visible radiation of light in its sevenfold varieties as the central part of this scale, and consider the right hand to be the ultra-violet range, followed by octaves of still shorter wave-length, and if we take the left-hand as being a series of octaves of radiations of longer wave-length, we have here a scale which corresponds singularly with the five human senses as thus far developed in connexion with their respective organs.
Thus, beginning at the extreme left-hand in the range of long wave-lengths, we have, as thus far discovered, the wireless waves covering some eleven or twelve octaves as thus far known, and which express themselves as sound, thus corresponding to our sense of hearing. Passing along the scale towards the right, and thus through octaves of wave-lengths which grow progressively shorter, we pass through those waves which produce in us the sense of heat, i. e., touch, which thus follows hearing. Continuing our journey to the right and thus traversing octaves of waves of steadily decreasing length, we reach the range of visible radiation with its sevenfold spectrum, and thus find our organ of sight responding here to the impacts upon it of wave-lengths which it can receive and translate to the mind. Continuing our journey through the scale to the right, and thus entering into wave-lengths of constantly decreasing length, i. e., entering into shorter wave-lengths, we enter the ultra-violet range of the scale, which, could we see the facts, we would recognise to correspond to our sense of taste, represented by its functional organ in the human body; and continuing our journey to the right and into wave-lengths growing still shorter, we enter into the range of the X-rays, which correspond to our sense of smell.
Two other senses, with their corresponding organs, will be developed in the human body before our time-period on this globe in this Fourth Round is ended, and these two senses hitherto undeveloped or of which we have only intimations, will, by comparison with the radiation-scale above spoken of, be discovered to correspond with the wave-lengths which are found towards the extreme right end of the radiation-scale, thus far known -- i. e., reaching into the end of the X-rays and into the beginning of the gamma-rays.
Then, when evolution in the far distant future brings forth the three senses which will be evolved or unfolded before humanity leaves this planetary chain, scientists of that distant time will realize that these three senses, as yet utterly inactive in man, will correspond in their regular serial order as they unfold with what in that time will be the farthest reaches of the radiation-scale towards the right -- i. e., wave-lengths still shorter than the gamma-rays, and which we may briefly describe under the generalizing or collective term 'cosmic rays.'
Of course this does not mean that the radiation-scale in Nature ends there. It merely signifies that the perfected humanity of that far future will have become responsive to radiation, and self-consciously so, which now is but slightly understood or only suspected.
As concerns the many ranges of different radiations on the scale of Nature, it is interesting to remember that these octaves are virtually endless; science is beginning to have some adumbration of this fact. As pointed out by Sir James Jeans in his book Through Space and Time, p. 53 (1934; quotation by permission of the Macmillan Company, publishers): "Our ears can hear eleven octaves of sound, but our eyes can only see one octave of light." Logically this could seem to mean that our ears as a sense-organ are far older and therefore more capacious in function than are our eyes. The difference between ability to sense and interpret eleven octaves as in hearing, and one octave as in sight, while not immense is certainly significant, and should be remembered in our conclusions.
Be it noted also that in Occultism every one of the human senses, considered now as psycho-mental, vital-astral organic functions, contains within itself the potentialities and capacities, albeit latent, of every one of the other senses. Thus, the sense, and to a less extent the organ, of sight, contains not only its own capacity and particularized function -- vision -- but likewise, more or less latent, the other four senses of hearing, touch, taste, and smell. Similarly so with the other senses, which, each one, contains the potentiality and latent functional capacities of the other four.
Every one of the seven great Root-Races of mankind succeeding each other serially in time, brings out into full functional activity, and likewise in regular serial order, one of the seven senses, although including each of the as yet undeveloped senses, in imperfect manifestation or unfoldment. Thus:
First Root-Race: Hearing
Second Root-Race: Hearing and Touch
Third Root-Race: Hearing, Touch, and Sight
Fourth Root-Race: Hearing, Touch, Sight, and Taste
Fifth Root-Race: Hearing, Touch, Sight, Taste, and Smell etc.
It is thus seen that each sense contains in potentiality the radicles or rudiments of all the other senses which will follow at any time; and, as a matter of fact, as is well known to students of Occultism, all these senses are but specializations of what might be called the interior and unifying Source of them all. The reader is referred to the author's Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy for an explanation of how the Originants, whether a planetary chain or any other evolving entity, unfold and roll forth from themselves, in regular serial order, the chain of manifested 'events' which in their aggregate produce the entirety of a manifested being or entity. The matter is too complicate fully to explain in a footnote, nor would it be wise even to attempt to do so. (return to text)