Theosophical University Press Online Edition
One of the main tenets or teachings of the Esoteric Tradition which is of the very substance of esoteric Theosophy, i. e., of the Esoteric Philosophy, is the doctrine that the Universe is a septempartite -- or indeed decempartite -- Organism: that is to say, that it is a living Entity or Being of which the various component parts are some more and some less intelligent than others, some more and some less conscious than others, the relative fulness of such consciousness and intelligence diminishing with each step 'downwards' on the cosmic 'Ladder of Life.' So common is this teaching that it is found everywhere, in every ancient religious or philosophical system worthy of the name, although, indeed, the fact is not always immediately perceptible because not always explicitly stated in the outer or exoteric formulations which find imbodiment in the various old literatures of the globe.
Yet, whether such septempartite or decempartite structure of the world be openly proclaimed, or delivered only under the veil or guise of metaphor, it would seem perfectly safe to aver that the earnest student, curious to attain a larger measure of acquaintance with the substance of these ancient literatures, may find it in them all, provided he give to his studies the attentive examination which experience must have shown him is the only way of uncovering the 'body' underneath and enshrouded by the 'garment.'
The facts stated in the preceding paragraphs will be recognised quickly enough to be true, if the researching mind of the student remember that the commonest form in which this doctrine is stated, is that of 'heavens' and 'hells': that is to say, spheres of recompense for right living, and spheres of purgation or purgatorial punishment for evil living. To the best of the present writer's recollection, these realms or spheres were never located, by the most ancient literatures, in any part or parts of the material or physical world in which our bodies live, and of which we human beings are more or less conscious through the avenues of report of our five senses; these realms of felicity or suffering are invariably stated to be in invisible spheres or as being 'spiritual' or ethereal domains of the Universe.
Even such baldly exoteric and monastic ideas as that 'hell' is situated at the center of the earth, and that 'heaven' is located in the upper atmosphere, such as were popular in early and later mediaeval Christianity, and as they were so beautifully and gracefully set forth by Dante in his Divina Commedia -- a distorted echoing of misunderstood Greek and Roman mythological stories about Olympus and Tartarus: even such wholly exoteric ideas invariably carried with them the usually unstated corollary that these realms were nevertheless more ethereal in either sense than our gross earth is; and, furthermore, these ideas were the latest despairing effort of man's mystical instincts to weave a structure of place and time whereto would finally pass the souls of men when their life on earth had run its course.
Similar to the foregoing ideas were the still later notions of some Christian theologians or half-baked mystics, that hell was in the sun, or, mayhap, was located on the arid surface of the moon, or in some other out-of-the-way and unreachable place; or, again, heaven was located beyond the clouds, beyond the sky, in some invisible far-distant region of the ethery blue. Nevertheless, all these quasi-physical localities for either heaven or hell respectively were of extremely late origin; and when the last whispering admonitions of the Esoteric Tradition had been forgotten, and the earliest teachings of invisible realms and spheres had passed out of the memory of the West, then came the new and mentally rejuvenating influence of the teachings of European scientific research and study, showing to the minds of the least reflective that there was no more reason to locate 'hell' in any portion of the physical universe than there was to locate 'heaven' therein.
Nevertheless, for thousands of years past, from a period long preceding the decline and fall of the Graeco-Roman civilization and of that of the other countries surrounding the Mediterranean Sea, and reaching throughout the various and often conflicting views just mentioned regarding invisible realms, and reaching even to our own days, and acting as one of the most widespread of human intuitions, often expressing itself in highly figurative and indeed in superstitious form, there has been the steady flow of a consciousness that the physical sphere around us is but the shell or garment of inner and invisible worlds. This intuition of this grand natural truth has been as widespread and powerful in its influence among civilized men as it has been among the barbarian and the savage peoples.
The science of anthropology, including its studies of the respective mythologies of the races of men, has proved to the hilt the fact that the human mind is far more prone to elaborate systems of thought dealing with invisible or unseen worlds, which are both the origin and final bourne of human souls, than it is to find or to suppose respective places of purgation or of reward in districts of our physical globe, as did the very exoteric mythology of Greece and Rome, and as did the mediaeval mythology of Christendom, the faithful copyist of the former.
The present writer would indeed that his tongue were free to tell the real reason, so logical and simple when once understood, of the translation of such spheres of retribution or punishment from the realms of the invisible to actual localities of the physical globe. But this he cannot do, for obvious reasons.
It would seem sufficient, therefore, to make the simple statement that the farther back in time the student goes in his researches, the more clearly and unmistakably will he discover that so-called 'primitive man' -- who, indeed, has never existed as he has been picturated except in the minds of Western theorists -- who, indeed, was a highly civilized and sophisticated human, was universally of the conviction that the fabric of the Universe is, as said above, of septempartite or indeed of decempartite character; and that the farther this cosmic structure is traced inwards, i. e., into what is to us men the invisible, the more ethereal and finally the more spiritual are these interior realms discovered to be.
It was the worlds invisible, the spheres unseen, because of their high ethereality or indeed spirituality, which were considered to be the causal realms, whence flowed into manifestation, by regular gradations or steps of increasing materiality, the various worlds or spheres of existence -- actual entitative bodies -- which in their aggregate form the living Organism of the Cosmos, and of which Cosmos our own gross physical World is the outer shell or garment.
All these archaic ideas were originally derivatives from the sublime teachings of that pre-historic Wisdom which modern Theosophists have called by divers and diverse names, such as the Ancient Wisdom, Esoteric Theosophy, the Esoteric Tradition, etc., and of which modern Theosophy, as brought in our times to the world by H. P. Blavatsky, is the latest historical formulation.
Now when a Theosophist speaks of 'invisible worlds,' he does not mean worlds which are merely worlds which are invisible in the sense of not being seen: he means worlds which are much more than that, although he means that also; he means worlds which are the background and cosmic foundation of the visible universe that we sense: indeed, he means even far more than a background, because, as stated above, these invisible worlds are the causal realms, the roots of things that are before and around us men.
When the Spiritist -- the modern Occidental Spiritist -- speaks of his 'Summerland,' or when the Christian speaks of his 'heaven' and 'hell,' the Theosophist feels instinctively that neither understands the reality behind the physical veil; but that they both have some vague and fleeting intuition that there is a truth back of what they say; and this intuition is true, although their respective methods of explaining their intimations are to him in each case wrong. Both the Spiritist and the Christian have a feeling that there exists something behind the physical veil. That feeling is undoubtedly correct. But it is more than some thing, it is a vast universe, a Cosmos, an Organic Cosmos of all-varied and manifold kinds of worlds and planes and spheres, interlocked, interrelated, interworking, interconnected, and interliving.
What is this visible physical world of ours, really? What is our globe, Earth, composed of, and how does it keep its place and composite movements in space? How, indeed, does it hang poised safely in the so-called 'void'? How do the other planets and the sun hang or exist in space, or find position in the vast realms of the outer infinitude -- or indeed of the inner infinitude likewise? What are the stars, the nebulae, the comets, and all the other bodies that are scattered apparently at random in the spaces of physical Space -- if one may use so quaint an expression? Is there nothing but the visible celestial bodies that our physical senses do take cognisance of: and back of them, behind them, around them, within them, is there nothing but nothingness? Such questions, seeming perhaps trivial and superficial at first asking, but recurring with imperative insistence to the truly reflective mind, require answers; and the superficiality of the answers that have hitherto been attempted by virtually every branch of established modern Western knowledge, make these answers wholly unsatisfactory.
One is reminded of the early Christian theological idea that the Lord God created the heavens and the earth out of 'nothing.' Nothing is nothing, and from nothing nothing can come, because it is nothing; it is a word, a phantasy, somewhat after the fashion of the phantasy of the imagination when we speak of a flat sphere or a triangle having four sides. These are words without sense and are therefore nonsense. They mean nothing substantial, and so far as the Christian theological explanation goes, one is driven to infer that the theological pre-cosmic 'nothing' must have contained at least the infinitely substantial body of the Divine Imagination, or thought plus will.
One may venture to state that even the most orthodox and most exoteric of theologians would hardly asseverate that the Divine Will and the Divine Imagination and the Divine Creative Power were nothing!
We see just here that, when properly analysed in the light of the Esoteric Tradition, even the Christian scheme, based on half-forgotten and misunderstood pagan philosophy, becomes singularly alike to and akin with the teaching of all historic and indeed of all prehistoric philosophy and religion, to the effect that in the last analysis, and running back to primal manvantaric origins, the universe and all its bewildering web of manifested being was woven out of the substance of the Divine Essence itself. One is fully aware that this conclusion will be, mayhap, extremely unwelcome to the later school of Christian exegetes, but if their biblical, theological scheme means anything, and is to be saved from the trash-heap, it will have to acknowledge its lofty origin, in the manner just hereinbefore outlined.
It should be obvious from mature consideration of the facts sketched in the preceding paragraphs, that it was the universal consensus of all antiquity that there is an invisible background, a vast cosmical web of beings and things which in their aggregate and in conjunction with the realms in which they live, form the causal realms of all the physical worlds which are scattered over the spaces of Space: the invisible, substantial structure of the cosmos in which these visible worlds find lodgment and position, and in which therefore they live, and from which they derive all the forces, substances, and causal laws of being which make them what they are. This indeed was ever the teaching of the archaic, pre-historic Wisdom-Religion of antiquity, otherwise in its religio-philosophical formulations, the Esoteric Tradition.
Before passing on to a further consideration of the theme of this chapter, it should be carefully noted that the observations of the preceding paragraphs having reference to the so-called 'heavens' and 'hells,' were chosen merely to illustrate one manner in which the human mind phrased its intuition of the existence of invisible worlds. The reader should not imagine that either the Wise Ones among the ancients, and still less the Esoteric Tradition, limited the extent of the invisible worlds and the various ranges of semi-conscious, and self-conscious, beings which infill them, to what we children of Earth have in our brain-mind when we indulge ourselves -- or when our forefathers indulged themselves -- in speculations concerning spheres of retributive justice whether of compensation for unhappiness here on earth or of 'punishment' for evil worked here on earth. The inhabitants of these invisible spheres are good, bad, and indifferent, judging in each case by the standards of the respective spheres in question; yet, it is true enough to say, from one standpoint, that all manifested spheres or worlds of a material or quasi-material character are, strictly speaking, what in the Esoteric Tradition are called 'hells.' This is because the existence of self-conscious beings in worlds of matter or semi-matter is so low, relatively speaking, and by comparison with superior spheres, that their sojourn therein is very properly considered to be, in a sense, retribution for failure to retain their more native position or status in higher realms. It is true enough that these 'descents' or 'falls' and 'ascents' are all involved in the wondrous aeons-long evolutionary pilgrimage that the peregrinating monads have to undergo or to follow in order to gain full self-conscious experience in every one of the manifold planes or spheres of cosmic life; nevertheless such 'descent' into the more material spheres from the higher is justly and properly considered to be a 'fall'; and hence such lower spheres are technically, as above stated, hells.
Many of the ancient scriptures look upon some of these hells or describe some of these hells to be quite the reverse of what the average Christian of mediaeval European times regarded as the theological 'Hell' of his religious guides. Some of the hells in the Brahmanical or Buddhistic scriptures, are, judging by the mystical descriptions of them, quite pleasant places!
It should be noted, furthermore, that the general term or name or appellation for the vast multitudes or armies of beings, semi-conscious, conscious, and self-conscious, inhabiting the worlds or spheres superior in ethereality or spirituality to earth-life, is 'Devas' -- to employ a name commonly used in Hindu writings; and the same term is properly given, therefore, to those classes of self-conscious beings, who, springing forth from the spiritual ranges of life as their fountain-head, under the evolutionary urge make the 'descent' into the lower spheres for the purpose of gaining experience. Such a family, in consequence of the foregoing, is the human family, which, strictly speaking, is therefore a hierarchy, or compact group, or aggregate of devas. Yet the human family is not the only hierarchy of devas.
The importance of this observation will be seen and felt immediately by every student of ancient lore who is acquainted with the usage of this word 'deva' in Buddhist and Brahmanical literatures. Thus, for instance, when it is stated that there are four general divisions or great groups of devas, living in spheres or realms of ethereality or spirituality superior to that of earth-life, the reference here, as any student of the Esoteric Tradition can plainly see, is to the four cosmic planes just above the plane on which our planet Terra is, and therefore has direct and specific reference to the six globes of our Earth's planetary chain superior to this globe, Earth. (61) This fact, alone, sheds a brilliant meaning upon the inner significance of much in the ancient Hindu scriptures, for instance where the Devas are shown under certain conditions to be in strait union with, and in more or less close association with, the human sub-hierarchy or family.
This physical universe of ours, as before stated, is but the shell of inner things, the outer appearance, the manifestation, of inner and causal realities; within the shell are the forces that run it, that govern it, that control it: the inner substances and energies rooted in which it lives, from the life of which it lives, through inner perception with which it lives, without inner union with which it could not be. The inner worlds are its roots in other words, striking deep into the inner infinitude, which 'roots' collectively are that 'endless path' of which all the Great Seers, the World-Teachers, have spoken, and which, if followed faithfully, leads man with an ever-expanding consciousness direct to the Heart of the Universe -- a Heart which has neither location nor dimension, neither position nor clearly defined material definition, because it is Infinitude itself.
True Seers with spiritual training and with the 'inner eye of vision' awakened in them, in the East mystically called the 'Eye of Siva,' can and do have direct knowledge at will of these Worlds and Spheres outside of our own Hierarchy, because these Seers can throw themselves into what modern Westerners might colloquially call 'vibrational intercommunication' with these inner and higher spheres, energies and powers; and thus not merely enter them, but actually, self-consciously for the time being live in those inner planes and then and there gain knowledge of those inner and superior realms at first hand. Yet this 'opened eye,' this spiritual faculty of inner vision, all normal human beings can obtain by 'living the life' as the saying goes, which fits them for it, and, last but not least, by training under a proper teacher. Their own first move in the direction of such communion is for them by willing and doing to set their own feet upon the pathway -- the pathway to Reality and Truth: the pathway leading direct to the Heart of the Universe just mentioned.
Thus it is that Nature in her realms both inner and outer is experienced by the only trustworthy testing-stone in human life -- the consciousness of the individual. The inner consciousness comes into direct relation, without interfering secondaries, with the Heart of the Universe, and realization of Truth then comes to the sincere aspirant because he identifies himself in such manner with the inner and causal energies of which all outer Nature is but the effect, the result, the product, the fruit -- the manifestation. Thus does the Adept learn the inner nature and secret workings of the Universe.
It becomes clear enough from the foregoing thoughts that there is really no other method of coming into touch with and of understanding the inner worlds, than by making one's own consciousness enter into union of substance therewith; for it is one of the first lessons taught to, and learned by, the disciple or chela, that the only way really to understand a being or thing is by becoming, temporarily at least, the being or thing itself. There is far more in this simple statement than appears on the surface of it, because founded upon it are all the rites and functions of genuine initiation.
Furthermore, an examination into the processes of human understanding and psychology shows us clearly that it is utterly impossible to grasp, to comprehend, to understand, anything unless the aspirant's own consciousness actually temporarily becomes the thing studied. As illustration: In so simple a matter as human love or sympathy, it is not possible for a man to understand love or to feel sympathy unless for the time being his own essence becomes love itself or becomes sympathy itself. Standing merely apart, and examining such functions of the human constitution, immediately creates a fatal duality of observer and observed, of subject and object, thus setting up a barrier of distinction. It is only by loving that one understands love, that is by being it; it is only by becoming sympathetic that one understands and comprehends sympathy; otherwise one merely talks about or speculates upon what love and sympathy are in themselves.
Or as another illustration in point: When one studies the form, the beauty, or senses the fragrance of some lovely flower, one senses enjoyment and a certain elevation of both thought and feeling; but we find ourselves different from the flower because we are the observer and the flower is the observed -- thus recognising a difference between the twain; whereas if we can cast our consciousness, as it were, into the flower itself and temporarily become it, we can understand all that the flower means to itself and in itself.
Or again, when a man studies the frolicsome behavior and antics of his pet dog, he finds a certain amusement in so doing, he senses an affection for the creature growing in his heart, but he actually does not enter into the dog's thought or feeling because he stands apart from the beast and studies it as an object, thus creating a barrier of difference between himself and it; whereas if he have the power to throw himself into becoming, as it were, a portion of the dog's consciousness and thought, quaint as the illustration appears, he then enters into the dog's consciousness and understands it because for the time being he is to a certain extent that dog itself.
These are thoughts more or less strange to Occidental minds, but they contain the gist and substance of a great truth. Just as one cannot enter into the soul of a beloved human companion until one has become a portion of that companion's soul, at least temporarily, just so cannot even the greatest Adept enter into and fully understand, relatively speaking, the nature and secrets of the invisible worlds unless he throw his percipient consciousness into spiritual and psychic oneness with these inner and invisible worlds. When this is done, for the time being he is an integral portion of these interior worlds, or of the part or division thereof that he has chosen for his study. He thus has most intimate knowledge at first hand of what these invisible worlds are, what their nature, their respective characteristics and different energies and qualities.
One might add in conclusion to this brief excursus that it is only thus, by sympathetically becoming one with the subject or object of study that one can translate into human thought for others what one experiences. It is thus that the great geniuses of the world of whatever type or kind have enriched human life and have clarified it with what they have brought to their fellow-men. It is only thus that the true poets have brought to us their differing and respective messages of inner realities and of beautiful and unsuspected relations among things both seen and unseen. For the time being such men have themselves become what they were studying and thus have understood.
One is keenly cognisant of the truth of all this when one reads some of the mystical, or mystical and theological, poetry of all ancient lore, as for instance, in both Celtic and Scandinavian mythology, when one reads of the seer or bard hearing the growing of the grass or the singing of the celestial bodies in their orbits, or being able to understand the language of the bee or interpret the voices of the wind.
As a matter of fact it is not only possible, but feasible, indeed easy to one who knows how to do it, to pass self-consciously from one universe or hierarchical range of being into some other hierarchical sphere. As a matter of fact, it is one of the commonest human experiences, so common and ordinary indeed, that the experiences in so doing enter our consciousness as mere routine transitions of thought, and we do not see the forest in its beauty because of the trees; the details of familiar things are so numerous and so common-place that we fail to catch the messages that they are constantly telling to us.
Each and every one who sleeps enters into another plane or realm of consciousness. This is meant to be considered literally, not to be taken merely as suggesting a pictorial variation of the thoughts and emotions of the day just closed. Change the rates of vibration of any particular state and you then have, or enter into, different realms of the Universe, higher or lower than our own as the case may be. Every one who changes his emotional vibration of hatred to love, and does so at the command of his will, is exercising a part of his internal constitution which some day, when trained more fully along the same line, will enable him to pass behind the supposedly thick veil of appearances, because in so exercising his power he will have cultivated the proper faculty and its co-ordinate organ for doing so. Everyone who successfully resists temptation to do wrong, to do evil, to be less than he is, is exercising the faculty within him which one day will enable him to pass self-consciously behind the veil in the dread and even dreadful tests of initiation.
We live in a wonderful universe, full of mysteries, mysteries which are on the one hand strange and beautiful, and on the other hand equally strange but on occasion involved in horror and dread; but they are mysteries only because we have not solved them, not mysteries in the sense of being unsolvable.
They are as yet hid and mysterious to us only because our physical senses are such poorly evolved instruments of report, imperfect tools which have not yet reached the plenitude of their powers. We thus get but extremely imperfect and often frightfully distorted reports of things as they really are in themselves. This aggregate sense-apparatus of ours, consisting of five senses, has not yet reached its full perfection by any means. It is still in a very imperfect state, so much so, that our organ of sight for instance, was declared as much as fifty or sixty years ago by one or two of the greatest optical physicists of that time -- Helmholtz is here referred to particularly -- to be so imperfect that as Helmholtz put it in substance, "If an optician constructed for me a physical apparatus so imperfect as the human eye is, I would send it back to him with a reprimand." (62)
Therefore, as our senses tell us of but a small part of the scale of forces, of the gamut of universal energies and substances, that infill, yea, that verily are, the Universe around us, there must obviously exist other worlds, other planes, other spheres, which are invisible to our sight, intangible to our touch, unknown or relatively unknown, and that we can cognise in no other manner than through the far more delicate apparatus of the mind -- and even hesitatingly and imperfectly and haltingly, because here too we have not yet trained our mind to become, to make itself to become, at one in sympathetic vibrational union with what it investigates.
Our physical sense-apparatus is but a channel, or fivefold channel, through which we gain knowledge of the physical world alone, and imperfect knowledge at that; and it is the thinking entity within or behind -- the receiving entity, call it what you like: the mind, the soul, the consciousness -- possessing senses far finer and more subtil than those of our gross physical body, which is the real thinker and the cognising Knower; and no man, particularly in the Occident, has yet tested the vast powers of this psycho-spiritual receiver -- what it can do, what it can know, what it can gain, by looking within or by throwing itself back upon itself. Indeed, our physical sense-apparatus, our five senses, actually distract our attention away from the very channels to wisdom and knowledge, outwards into the vast confusing welter of phenomenal things, instead of turning it into the causal realms within, whether of the Universe or of our own constitution, where we can know the causes of things by knowing ourselves.
Nor have we any adequate control even over our thoughts. They run helter-skelter and wild through our brains like the horde of elementals that they are, playing havoc often even with our morals. We have little self-control, and even less capacity for continued self-conscious and self-directed, one-pointed thought. We know little indeed of our inner faculties -- spiritual, intellectual, psychical -- and of the sense-apparatus corresponding to each category thereof which in every case is far higher and more subtil than is the physical. Were these our inner senses more fully recognised and exercised, what the average man would call 'more fully developed,' one then could and would be cognisant, at least in degree, of the inner and invisible planes and worlds and their inhabitants, and one would have conscious intercourse with them -- and in the higher realms actually be able to confabulate with the gods. These remarks have no reference whatsoever, nor in any manner however remote, to intercourse with spooks or the so-called 'spirits' of 'dead men.'
What we learn through our senses, therefore, is but a very small part of what Nature must enclose within her myriad enshrouding veils. Wonderful in their own way as our senses are, wonderful as the fact is that we have been enabled to build them up through evolution to the point of sensitivity that they now possess, so that they can and do respond to the impacts of the vibrational forces of the universe as well as they do, nevertheless, we are obliged to say that they are still but lamentably imperfect reporters of what even these purblind senses of ours constantly receive as messages from surrounding energies and substances. Yet even what our senses tell us about, limited though it is, nevertheless gives abundance of food for serious thinking even if we did not have the far higher inner apparatus of our understanding faculty, working in the field of our consciousness, which latter in its highest reaches is divine and therefore godlike.
Indeed, we human beings live in a marvelous world, of which we are beginning to know somewhat, but as yet know very little; and our physical scientists are constantly telling us more about it. The discoveries that they are making -- some of them -- are very wonderful indeed, and so far have completely altered the outlook of human beings on life. These scientists are showing us more and more of the mysteries of the physical nature surrounding us; and the manner in which the facts of the latest scientific discoveries are explained by our most eminent scientific men, so closely follows Theosophical ideas in some respects, that we can but pause and marvel at it all, having, withal, a sensation of pure delight that some at least of the Theosophical teachings are beginning to be proved to be based upon facts existent in Nature itself. These new discoveries, growing in volume with each passing lustrum, are leading our scientists, in fact, straight into the teachings of the Ancient Wisdom -- those teachings about the inner as well as outer structure and functioning of the Universe which the Western world has known so little of for the past two thousand years.
Our scientists of these modern days are beginning to dream dreams of truth, and to see visions of reality, although indeed many are the strange and wondrous imaginings in which they indulge. Wonderful things they are beginning to think, and from these thoughts they are making deductions, sometimes equally wonderful, which are acting as it were not merely as an evolutionary influence in the minds of men, giving them broader outlooks, but these deductions are actually overthrowing the older ideas and so-called principles of science, as well as of Western religion and philosophy, which were considered at one time to be so stable, so settled, so proved, as the saying runs, that nothing might ever undermine the supposedly eternal bases on which they rest. The greatest minds in modern science are approaching a vaster conception of Universal Life and man's relations therewith. They are saying some amazing things, if we contrast them with the scientific ideas of even fifteen years agone.
The Manchester Guardian (England) quite recently published an article entitled 'New Vision of the Universe,' written by a well-known scientific author who spoke as follows:
Why should all the matter in the universe have divided itself up into millions of fairly uniformly sized and distributed systems of stars and gas and dust? Why should these systems be about a million and a half light-years apart, and why should each system be about five times as broad as it is thick, and contain some decades of millions of stars? (63) These astonishing uniformities in the universe imply that the laws of mechanics are being obeyed everywhere, under comparatively simple conditions. In the scale of magnitudes we have first the universe. The second order of objects are the great nebulae. These are approximately uniform in size and constitute the second scale of magnitude. In the great nebulae the chief unit is the star. Like the great nebulae themselves, the stars have extraordinary uniformity, in mass if not in brightness. The stars give the third scale of magnitude. From the stars we have to plunge down to the puny, dark and cold objects called planets. These are about one ten-thousandth the mass of the sun. Then there are the planets' satellites, which make a fifth scale of magnitude. . . . Smaller things than these nature has huddled together in a miscellany of oddities, until the uniformity of molecules and atoms is reached. Ourselves are in the miscellany, looking round proudly and feeling a little hurt. We regret our size but admire our intelligence.
Where did the primeval cloud come from? Possibly from the fifth dimension! Sir J. H. Jeans considers that the difficulty of explaining the shape of the spiral arms in the great nebulae may only be solved by the discovery that the centers of such nebulae are taps through which matter pours from some other universe into ours. . . .
Immortal gods! Here we have a modern scientist, at any rate a well-known scientific writer, talking in this extract from his most interesting article like a mystical theosophical seer!
To continue the quotation:
If this should be true, what of the fifth dimension? What is the hyper-universe of the fifth dimension like? What sort of entities populate it? Where did the fifth dimension itself come from?
Here we have a modern scientific writer speaking along the lines that might have been followed by an ancient seer. He talks of these other 'dimensions' as he calls them, and apparently draws the conclusion that it is from these other 'dimensions' that there pours into our own physical universe matter, which means energy, from a universe superior to our own, which is an old teaching of the archaic Theosophy of the pre-historic ages, and of the great religions and philosophies of subsequent times, which drew from that pre-historic Esoteric Tradition their own substantial contents.
Sir J. H. Jeans, whom this writer quotes, at that time brought forward certain ideas that the present writer frankly cannot altogether agree with; yet nevertheless Jeans expresses in most remarkably terse and brilliant phrasing a very wonderful Theosophical teaching, a truth of Nature. This old teaching, unconsciously by Jeans imbodied in the deduction which he has drawn from his scientific studies, is a true and intuitional statement of occult wisdom, to the effect that at the heart of the nebulae which bestrew the spaces of Space, there exist what he called 'singular points' or centers from which and through which matter streams into our own physical universe, and, as he expressed it, this stream of substantial energy comes to us from a 'fifth dimension'; or to give his own words, these centers are 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. (64)
But this usage of the word 'dimension' the Theosophist strongly objects to, first because it is inadequate; second, because it is inexact; and third, because it is non-descriptive. 'Dimension' is a term of mensuration, of measurement. But, after all, what does it matter, if the essential idea that we are discussing be there? This 'fifth dimension,' of which this writer speaks, he calls 'fifth' because, according to modern science, following the lead of Dr. Albert Einstein of Relativity-fame, the 'fourth dimension' is time, apparently; and time in one sense can be rightly so called, because time is subject to mensuration or measurement; but otherwise these 'dimensions' of this very interesting scientific writer and of other modern scientists, the Theosophist would prefer to call 'worlds,' 'spheres,' 'planes,' according to each respective case; and we say that they form the causal background of all the universe we see, and that our own higher human principles, the superior parts of our constitution, live in these invisible realms, in these so-called, but mis-called 'other dimensions.' We are as much at home there, as our physical bodies are at home here on our physical earth.
For the Universe is one vast Organism, of which everything in it is an inseparable because inherent and component part; and therefore likewise man is an inseparable part thereof, and therefore again man has in himself everything that the Universe has, because he is an inseparable portion of the Cosmic Whole. He cannot have more, because the part cannot have more than the Whole. Further, because he is an inseparable part of the Universe, every energy, every substance, every form of consciousness, in the infinitudes of Boundless Space, is in him, latent or active, as the case may be. Therefore he can know by following the path leading inwards into himself and ever more within himself, ever more within, towards his Essential Self, the spirit of him which is a ray from the Universal. In this way is knowledge of reality obtained by him at first hand. Upon this fact is based all the cycle of initiation and the vast wisdom and knowledge that are gained therein and thereby.
The old Hermetic teaching of the Alexandrian Greeks, transmitted by them from still older sources, is a fine one. It is roundly expressed in their well-known aphorism: 'What is above is mirrored below; what is below is a reflexion from the superior worlds.' Or, more commonly phrased: 'What is below is the same as what is above; what is above is the same as what is below.'
This is one of the foundation-doctrines of the ancient Wisdom-Religion, of the Esoteric Tradition: upon it is based what is called the Law of Analogy; that is to say, that the Great is mirrored in the minute, in the infinitesimal; in other words, the infinitesimal reflects the kosmic. Why? Because the Universe is one vast Organism, as before stated, ensouled by one Universal Life, and one Law runs through all; therefore and consequently, what is active or latent on one plane or in one world or in one sphere must be active or latent in all, mutatis mutandis -- making due and necessary allowances for differing degrees of ethereality or materiality of the substances of these respective worlds.
Therefore our world is as it is, with the things and beings that we can see and feel, with the humanity of our present time, with our types of civilization, bearing the humans, vegetation, beasts, and minerals, which live and are on it, because it is a reflexion, a mirroring, an effect, a manifestation in other words, of inner, hid, vital causes which reproduce themselves analogically around us and make our world what it is. These inner worlds so control the outer, that all that happens on this our physical plane is the resultant of the inner forces, energies, substances, powers, at work expressing themselves outwardly. A man's faculties work through his physical body in exactly the same manner; for man in the small is a copy of what the Universe is in the great.
Earthquakes, tidal waves, the belching volcanoes, the aurora borealis and the aurora australis, wind-storms, rain-storms, hail-storms, and electrical storms; the precession and recession of glacial periods; diseases endemic, epidemic, and pandemic; the quiet growing of the grass in the fields or the blossoming of the flowers; the development of a man from a microscopic cell into a six-foot human being, or the equivalent evolution of any other animate entity; the vast and titanic forces working in the bosom and on the surface of our Sun, and the regular and periodic pathways followed with unvarying precision and punctuality by the planets, as well as the phenomena of their own planetary evolution, are still other instances, and everywhere in physical Nature the same observation applies. These are all examples of how these inner causal forces work outwards from within, illustrations of the inward and driving and impelling forces locked up and at work in the inner worlds, and now self-expressing themselves outwards. In fact, and speaking in plainer language, all these physical phenomena which have just been enumerated, and all others which the reader's own knowledge and imagination will readily suggest, are but the effects in our outer physical sphere of what is taking place in the inner and invisible realms -- the inner and invisible worlds and planes. Things are happening there within, and when the points of union or contact are sufficiently near us, then our own physical sphere feels the effects as exemplified in the bewildering mass of phenomena which Nature produces.
As before said, scientists are saying some amazing things which, on the whole, and making due allowances for the modern scientific methods of guarded expression, corroborate some of the teachings of the Ancient Wisdom, but as yet they have not accepted the existence of invisible and causal worlds -- unless, indeed, many of our scientists of outstanding merit and penetration have private opinions of their own along the same line which they are either too canny publicly to voice, or too uncertain in their own judgment openly to declare.
One heard much a few years ago about 'the laws of probability,' so-called, which, as one scientist puts it, is just another name for chance or luck. The idea is that if a person take a certain set of circumstances, whatever they may be, and perform a certain number of operations with that set of circumstances, certain numerical factors inherent in the group of circumstances will always reappear on account of the quantitative relations which this set of factors has to the aggregate. If, for example, he put a certain number of black beans in a bag with a certain number of white beans and shake the bag thoroughly and then withdraw the beans at random by ones or twos or tens or by dozens -- by machinery, if you will, in order to eliminate the personal equation -- then when he shall have withdrawn one hundred, followed by another hundred, succeeded by a third, a fourth, and a fifth hundred, perhaps, and then compare the number of the black with the number of the white beans withdrawn, he will find that the ratio of the black beans to the white is always -- more or less -- numerically the same. If he were to continue doing this until the hundreds become tens of thousands repetitively, he would find that the same general ratio of numbers of black to numbers of white beans withdrawn, would still hold. This, in brief, exemplifies the meaning of the law of probabilities.
Now, what does this 'law' mean? It means that all things are related; that they are connected together; and that when certain things are numerically taken in certain ways, the operation will show forth numerical results; handled in other ways, the same things or circumstances will make different appearances, but probably produce similar if not absolutely identical results: the manner of handling the operation and the things themselves thus handled producing in all cases certain mathematical consequences. In other words, we have here the general case of the 'law of averages,' which is so well known, for instance, to insurance companies. But where is the 'chance' or 'luck' about it? One might consider a lottery, if you will, or a roulette-wheel. A man may keep drawing lots and the chances are nearly all against him, because he has one chance perhaps in a million; yet he may hit the millionth 'lucky number,' as the saying goes, and then he speaks of 'luck.'
Do things, however, 'just happen' so? The Theosophist says no. This is not a helter-skelter Universe, governed by fortuity, by chance, by unreason, by what one may call unrelated or haphazard action of material particles which are called atoms, and so forth. To the contrary, the Theosophical teaching is that of all the great thinkers of all times, and of the greatest thinkers among men of science today: that precedent causes produce effects, which in a sense are the children of what preceded them; and these effects in their turn become causes and produce something else. We call this natural system or operation of Nature, 'Karman' or 'action' -- in other words, the so-called law of cause and effect. One may follow this operation of Nature wherever he will, and he will always find that the root precedes the tree, which then produces the seed, which drops to the earth and produces another root followed by another plant and other seeds, and so forth indefinitely. There is neither 'luck' nor 'chance' nor helter-skelter action in this, nor anywhere in the Universe, which is itself the resultant of an endless chain of causation; because if there were crazy, haphazard action then there is no possible reason or rule that the root should produce a tree, nor that the tree should produce a seed which again would produce another root and another tree and other seeds, thus following the consequent regular action demonstrating the law of cause and effect -- in other words the law of causation.
Apparent exceptions more or less prove a rule to the mind which is capable of understanding what an exception means; and did we know enough we should see that these exceptions are exceptions only because of our ignorance. For instance, as regards the geniuses in the world: if we followed the law of averages alone, and applied it to the almost universal run of human intelligence, we might argue: It is impossible for such a man as a genius to exist, because the 'law of averages' in the example given takes no note of genius. Nevertheless we know that geniuses exist. Suppose one should gather all the geniuses of the world together and analyse their various characteristics so that we have a full and complete case of all these geniuses before us, lacking not one, and applied the 'law of averages' to them also, we should then find that, granting this number of geniuses, such a one out of the number would be a musician, such a one would be a poet, such a one a philosopher, and so forth. These classes the observing and exacting mind would take note of as varieties or species of the genus 'genius': but they would all be geniuses.
Actually there are no exceptional cases in Nature herself. What we humans call 'exceptions' are merely such to our understanding which cannot at the time of examination properly classify them where they belong. There are merely manifestations of causation, link by link, endless and beginningless, and every being, every entity, whether high or low, ordinary or genial, is such a link in Nature's unvarying and at bottom strictly mathematical processes and procedures.
One is brought to believe that the idea of some scientists that 'luck' or 'chance' prevails throughout the Universe, may perhaps be due to their being unconscious mental victims of the old materialistic 'physical determinism,' as it has been called -- which is substantially the idea that there is nothing in the Universe except unimpulsed, unensouled, vitally unguided matter, moving in haphazard fashion towards unknowable, or at any rate unknown, ends: in other words a soulless Universe wherein things occur by hap or chance, yet wherein, nevertheless, in some perfectly unexplained manner, cause and effect blindly rule. These scientists have revolted against the illogic of this conception of our recent forebears, and have sought to find in the newer speculative theories of ultra-modern science a refuge in purely mathematical conceptions, where their unvoiced hunger for law and regularity are everywhere manifest, but where there is sufficient vagueness of causative background to admit the intrusion of a cosmic governing intelligence; yet they fail to see that this idea of 'luck' or 'chance' is itself but a falling back into the same old materialistic physical determinism under a different, a new, form and name.
One feels, however, a certain genuine sympathy and unqualified respect for those scientists of this character but of fore-seeing vision like Jeans and Eddington as examples, who in their more recent works do not hesitate to state that to them the Universe and its bewildering operations seem to be like the productions of a cosmic mind. (65)
The mere fact that scientific research in our era of change and development seems to the unthinking to alter its speculative bases of thought almost from year to year, so that what is an opinion of scientific men in 1930 is no longer that of the same men in 1935, merely shows that the average man, however interested he may be in scientific work, does not fully realize the progressive nature of scientific research and discovery. Each new step forwards in science should not be looked upon as adding a new brick, or another trowelful of mortar to the building of the Temple of Knowledge, but should rather be considered for what it all is -- a manifestation of a relative or complete revolution in the scientific outlook.
For the changing views of scientific men, brought about by the discovery of new natural facts, do not mean that the universe is what these gentlemen think it is, but signify only that these very eminent scientific discoverers are steadily undergoing a radical change of opinion; that there is a flux in scientific thought, of which no man has yet given us the end. Doubtless many ideas which have been broadcast as being scientific during these later years, and subsequently abandoned for other and newer ideas, may be re-called and re-shaped and re-modeled to fit what the future has in store.
Particularly is this possibility the fact in connexion with the extremely vague and unsatisfactory scientific opinions about what it is now popular to call 'indeterminism' which in some ways is as baldly materialistic as was the old physical determinism now going into the discard, and which again to many minds seems to be but the same old physical determinism in a new form. For it should be obvious to any thinking man, that if indeterminism is to be considered as being mere fortuity or chance, or haphazard action, this cannot exist in water-tight compartments in a universe which these same scientific gentlemen so often proclaim to be the work of 'a cosmic mathematician' -- i. e., of a cosmic intelligence. Intelligence and chance will as little mix as would cosmic order, implying law and determined action on the one hand, and irresponsible fortuity, implying cosmic disorder, on the other hand.
The Theosophist is no fatalist. When we speak of the Universe and all in it as being bound in and the result of an inherent chain of causation stretching from the infinity of the past into the infinity of the future, when we say that everything in the Universe is a product, a consequence, a result, a fruit, of previous causes engendering present effects, we bring this forward as proof of the action or operation of countless wills and intelligences in the Universe; or to put the matter with still greater accuracy, the proof of the action or operation of countless wills and intelligences of all-varying power and of all-varying quality rising along the scale of life, which scale virtually has neither beginning nor end, for it, like the Universe itself, which indeed is itself, lies precisely in that chain of beginningless and endless causation; for this chain is not other than the Universal Kosmos acting from and strictly according to its own innate being.
Even as Spinoza, the Netherlandish, Jewish, Pantheist, re-echoed the teaching of the Upanishads of ancient Hindusthan in stating as the essence of his own philosophical doctrine that the Universe is but a manifestation or a reflexion of the consciousness of the Kosmic Divinity, just so does the Esoteric Tradition derive all that is from this primal, incomprehensible, Divine Source, from which all sprang, into which all is journeying back; and therefore says that the Kosmos and all in It is builded on Consciousness-Substance as its essence. It were sheer stupidity to suppose that between this invisible Divine Source and our gross physical material universe, there are no intermediate grades or stages of inter-acting links, these 'links' being verily the vast ranges of invisible worlds or spheres, which, as hereinbefore stated, are the causal factors in Kosmic Manifestation.
Man, in consequence, precisely because he is one minor hierarchy emanating from the same Divine Source, possesses his proportion, so to speak, of intelligence and will-power, which are inherent parts of his interior constitution. Man, or rather mankind collectively, is one of the numberless hosts of the hierarchical aggregates of intelligences and wills infilling the Universe, each such hierarchy living on and in its own world or sphere, invisible or visible to us. Man is enabled thereby to carve his destiny as he will, because he has in him, in the inmost of his inmost, the same factors which inspirit and govern the Universe; and from this fact flows the ineluctable consequence that he takes his part in fashioning that portion of the Universe which he can cover within the sphere of his own activities derivative from his will, his intelligence, and spirit. The inescapable laws of the Universe surround him, with which he is inescapably solidary because he is a portion thereof; and out of the Universe nothing may go and into it nothing may come from outside because there is no outside. And because he contains all that the Universe contains, he has possibilities of understanding everything in the Universe: the greatest problems of Kosmic Nature may and must find their solution in him if he penetrate deeply enough into the invisible realms of his own constitution.
What we see around us, our own world, and the stars and the planets, cannot just be there because they are there, or in other words, they cannot be the products of 'chance.' What is 'chance'? Chance is a word which expresses or tells our ignorance of facts. When something happens whose causative relations we cannot trace, we say, popularly, it 'chanced' so; but it should not be forgotten that giving words to things somewhat after the Hebrew legend of Adam in the Garden of Eden naming the beasts as they passed before him, by no means tells us what the things are: naming things is merely a convenience so that we may be able to call them or define them when we wish to speak of them. Man's logical mind demands links of thought; and rejects as unintelligible any conception which is senseless and therefore illogical. Man's mind, being one expression of the energies in the Universe and belonging to it, must function fundamentally after the pattern of that Universe, which is equivalent to saying that because man's mind is conscious and logical, therefore the Universe is essentially conscious and logical; and because man's intellect demands causative links, therefore the Universe is linked together and is not a haphazard and insane dream of a kosmic lunatic.
From what has been previously said, therefore, it will be seen that these 'links' in the Universe are the various spheres and planes all interworking and interconnected, and thus forming the kosmic structure. As man is both visible and invisible in his constitution, as he has both body and mind or intellect, and spirit: equally so must the Universe be visible and invisible; for the part cannot contain more than the Whole of which it is an integral portion.
Our globe, the sun, the other planets, the stars, and the nebulae, and the comets, and the atoms and the electrons: whatever body it may be: are all of them ruled and governed after the same general kosmic plan by infilling and inspiring energies which, because they are substantial, have their own inner planes, and express themselves on our physical plane as they work down towards it and through it. These energies originate in, and indeed, in the last analysis are, those invisible worlds.
Everything and every being, no matter how small, no matter how great, is an evolving Life, and hence, as every one of these visible bodies in the Universe around us is but an aggregate of such lives, we have here a clue to the real meaning of many of the ancient philosophers who spoke of the suns and stars as being living entities, alive and intelligent, making and unmaking what the Theosophist calls karman. They are what the ancient Greeks called 'ensouled entities,' zoa, from which comes the word 'zodiac,' used even in our current astronomical books, and meaning the circle of the 'living ones'; and which the Latin philosophers called Animals -- a word of course which they used with the original Latin meaning of animate entities, and not in the restricted meaning of modern European speech, signifying only the beasts.
Even some of the greatest of the early Christian Fathers taught more or less exactly the same thing: that the suns and stars and planets were 'living beings,' and such indeed is the explicit teaching of the great Greek theologian Origen, as well as of Clement, doubtless.
For the sake of their intrinsic interest, a few passages from Origen are quoted here:
Not only may the stars be subject to sin, but they are actually not free from the contagion of it; . . . (66)
And as we notice that the stars move with such order and regularity that these movements never at any time seem to be subject to derangement, would it not be the highth of stupidity to say that so consistent and orderly an observing of method and plan could be carried out or accomplished by beings without reason. . . . Yet as the stars are living and rational beings, unquestionably there will appear among them both advance and retrogression. . . . (67)
Again Origen observes in his tract Against Celsus:
As we are persuaded that the sun himself and the moon and the stars also pray to the supreme deity through his Only-begotten Son, we think it improper to pray to those beings who themselves offer up prayers. (68)
And again in the same tract Against Celsus, Origen remarks once more, quite after the Christian manner of his time:
For we sing hymns to the Most High only and to his Only-begotten who is the logos and also God; we praise God and his Only-begotten, as also do the sun, the moon, the stars, and all the multitude of the heavenly host. (69)
Furthermore, in order to show the early Christian view about the innate vitality working in and through the celestial bodies as vehicles of that Cosmic Life, the reader will find in the writings of the Latin Father Jerome, the following passage which repeats Origen's teachings:
Respecting the heavenly bodies, we should notice that the soul of the sun, or whatever else it ought to be called, did not begin to exist when the world was created, but before that it entered into that shining and luminous body. We should hold similar views regarding the moon and the stars. (70)
It is also interesting to note that despite the condemnation of the views of Origen and his School by the two Constantinopolitan Councils of the sixth century previously referred to, those views prevailed more or less openly throughout the Christian community, and lasted until a fairly late period of Christian history; indeed echoes of them continued even into the Middle Ages. The ecclesiastical writers of the Dark and Mediaeval periods have many passages with reference to the sun and the stars, which, historically speaking, are understandable only on the supposition that they are more or less distorted reflexions of the views of Origen and his School, which in themselves, as we have already pointed out, were distorted reproductions from original so-called 'pagan' teachings. For all such doctrines as those of Origen just described were already largely degenerate and misunderstood in the time when Origen and his School enunciated them to the Christian community, and were, furthermore, more or less distorted from their original pagan meaning by the theological mental bias of the Christians who later taught them.
It is to the Ancients themselves that we must turn, if we wish to gain a clearer and more definite outline of the original thought; and it may be said in passing, that it is from Plato in especial, and from Pythagoras and his School, that are derived these doctrines which certain ones of the Christian Fathers took over and modified for their own especial Patristic purposes.
The ancient teaching was not that the stars and other shining celestial bodies were in their physical forms 'angels' or 'archangels,' but that each one was the 'dwelling' or vehicle or channel of expression of some 'angelic' entity behind it. The truth of the whole matter is this: each and every celestial body, whether it be nebula, comet, sun, or star, or hard and rocky planet like our own earth-sphere, is a focus or psycho-electric lens, if one can so express it, through which pour the energies and powers and substances passing into it from the invisible spheres; and this statement is based on sound philosophical principles and scientific facts of invisible Nature.
Bearing this ancient occult teaching of the Esoteric Schools in mind, it will be at once seen that the Earth as the mother and producer of the animate beings which draw their life from her, is very properly considered an 'animal,' or animate being, and is obviously therefore an entity, an animate and ensouled organism. The Earth even has a mysterious principle of instinct or 'quasi-thinking principle'; and it has also its vital actions and reactions, which manifest as the electro-magnetic phenomena known to science -- actually arising out of the earth's jiva -- electrical storms, magnetic storms, earthquakes, and so forth. Even as the human being in his lower principles is an 'animal,' or animate entity, just so is the Earth in its lower principles an animate being, and is therefore an 'animal'; though it would be misleading and would lead one into too great a mass of confusing details to try to trace too closely the analogies between man's physical body and the earth, in such matters as sense-properties, psycho-magnetic qualities, and so forth. Each has its own evolutionary progress, although the Earth and its physical children are very intricately and closely linked together. As man came into being as a human from a microscopic human seed, so did the Earth, or in fact any world, come into being from a cosmic seed. Just as man is born, so, relatively speaking, and making the necessary changes of circumstance and time, is a world born. Both are born from points or centers of energy; and these points of energy or energy-points, are always imbodied in a more or less large aggregate of atomic substances.
Thus came man forth. Thus came the Earth forth. Thus came the Solar System forth. Thus came the Galaxy forth. Thus came a billion Galaxies forth. And then when the great change of life that men call death comes, man or world or system of worlds is withdrawn into the invisible spheres for rest and peace, and comes out again and begins a new evolutionary course on a somewhat higher scale or plane.
Take a planet as an instance in point: Out of the invisible spheres, in its progress downwards into grosser matter than that prevailing in the invisible world which it left, comes the life-center or seed or energy-point, collecting unto itself, as it grossens and becomes more and more material, what are called in Theosophy life-atoms, which are ready and waiting for the passage downwards of this evolving seed or energy-point. The latter continues its journey into grosser matter, passing through the various inner and invisible spheres earthwards, or rather matterwards, until it appears in the higher material part of our own World-System, as a nebula, a wisp of faint light that we see in the midnight skies. It then passes through various stages and conditions in the grossening process, one such transitory process being that of a comet; and it finally becomes a planet in a highly ethereal state or condition. The process of thickening or grossening or materialization continues until it reaches such a stage as that of the planet Saturn, for instance, of our solar system; for Saturn, as we know, is less dense than even water is on our Earth. Such a planet is in one of the earliest phases of its existence as a planetary sphere; and as time passes, it will grow still more dense as the planet follows the evolution of its life-course, until it becomes finally a rocky, hard, and solid globe like our own Mother-Earth.
This ancient teaching of both world and man rising into physical existence and growing therein from the small to the larger, and both along the same general energical lines of development, is one which H. P. Blavatsky re-enunciated to the West some fifty years or more ago; but it has not been accepted by modern scientists -- except perhaps in the sense of a vague mental suggestion arising in the consciousness of some few semi-intuitive scientific spirits. The birth of worlds has always been and still remains a riddle which scientific research and discovery have not yet fully solved, and consequently there are a number of theories about it, each one in some points bettering its predecessor, and each one in certain points seeming to be less satisfactory than its predecessor.
One such fairly recent planetary hypothesis is the theory of Professor Moulton and Professor Chamberlin, set forth by them with characteristic scientific ability first in 1929 in an interesting pamphlet entitled The Planetesimal Hypothesis. The writers here describe their theory of the birth of planets from the sun at some remote period of the past, caused by the disruptive effect of the approach of another sun or star near to our sun, at that time supposed to be without planetary children or companions, thus arousing enormous tides on the surface of the sun leading to vast masses of the solar substance being torn from the solar body; and the collecting of the solar pieces thus wrenched from the sun by means of the commonly known action of gravity, these collections or aggregates of the solar pieces forming the beginning of the respective planets that now are. (71)
It is a lack of knowledge of the existence of invisible and powerfully causal realms, clothing themselves in what thus becomes the garment which we call the physical universe, which is responsible for such theories as the above. All the great religions and philosophies of past times, yea, all the ancient sciences likewise: all possessed and in fact were founded upon this universal and fundamental idea of inner, invisible, intangible, but causal realms, as the foundation and background of their respective formulations in religio-philosophical thinking. Universally they taught that our physical World, including stars, suns, planets, etc., is but the outer shell or garment or veil of an inner, vital, intelligent aggregate of causes, which in their collectivity form or rather are the Kosmic Life. This Kosmic Life is not a person, not an individualized entity. It is far, far beyond any such merely human conception, implying logical limitations as all individualizing necessarily does, because It is infinite, boundless, beginningless, endless: co-extensive with infinity in magnitude, co-extensive with eternity in endless duration. The Kosmic Life is in very truth the Ineffable Reality behind all that is, within all beings and things that are. Spirit and matter both are but two manifestations of this indescriptible because unthinkable Mystery, this Universal Life-Substance, i. e., Universal Consciousness-Substance. Sometimes the Theosophist calls it abstract Space, which is not the same as the mere bald spacial extension of European Science, but is the essential and also instrumental cause, through its agents which are its own offspring, as well as the substantial cause of both spirit and matter, alias energy and substance; for spirit and matter, or energy and substance, are really one -- two forms, two attributes, two qualities, two manifestations, of the one underlying Invisible Reality.
Space itself, therefore, by which is meant abstract Space, is Reality, the underlying Noumenon or ever-enduring and eternal and boundless, substantial Causation, which in its multi-myriad forms or activities shows itself as the Kosmic Life, expressing itself over the face of the Boundless, and in and through and from the Boundless, as eternal Motion combined with Consciousness and Intelligence, and through manifestation as unceasing Kosmic Motion, directed by Kosmic Consciousness and Will.
Shall one then call it God or a God? Why? Such allocation to it of individualized attributes or qualities, limits and bounds its essentially limitless and boundless being. Fundamentally it is Spiritual Entity, Divine Entity indeed, of which we with our imperfect sense-apparatus perceive naught but what we humans call the material and energic aspects. But is Itself 'God,' in the modern or rather old-fashioned Occidental religious sense? Emphatically No, because there are many Universes, not merely one, our own Home-Universe, the Galaxy; therefore are there many 'spaces' with a background of a perfectly incomprehensible greater Space, without limiting magnitude, inclosing all -- a Space which is still more ethereal, more tenuous, nay, spiritual, yea, divine, than the space-matter that we humans know or even conceive of in our highest flights of analogical imagining, which, in this lowest aspect called our Universe, manifests the grossness of the physical matter of common human knowledge. Our own Home-Universe is only one among literally innumerable such or similar Universes scattered over the fields of the spaces of Boundless Space, the latter beginningless and endless, each such Universe vitalized and intelligently inspired by the indwelling and inworking boundless Kosmic Life working through such Universe and all its countless hosts of congeners. Therefore, each such other Universe is the physical expression or vehicle of another to us incomprehensibly great and vast Kosmic Entity, even as one man on our own tiny earth differs from another man and from any other animate entity here. The World Universal, Space Universal, is full of gods, 'sparks of eternity,' links in an endless causative chain of cosmic intelligences that live and move and have their being in the vast spaces of Infinitude, precisely as we do in our own Home-Universe on our own smaller scale.
While some of the inner and invisible worlds are of substance and energy, or rather of substances and energies, much more ethereal and subtil than the substances and energies which function in and animate, in fact structurally compose, the visible and tangible worlds, there are likewise worlds much more material and gross than is the world cognised by our physical senses; and these latter are as invisible and intangible to us as are the more ethereal and more subtil worlds, and for precisely the same reason: because our physical senses do not respond to the vibrational rates that these higher and lower worlds possess, but respond only to those particular and restricted vibrational rates that characterize our own particular physical world -- indeed only to one small range of the far-flung ranges or scales that even the physical universe contains, which latter is the mother of our senses and also their relatively limited field of action; and it is this restriction of the powers of our sense-apparatus which prevents us from 'tuning in,' to use the modern expression, with the other and widely differing vibrational rates that prevail in the visible and invisible worlds.
The amazingly successful results of scientific research and study in those fascinating fields of discovery which modern scientific thought has grouped under the general name of 'Radiation,' which in the last analysis is but a collective term for energies and matters vibrating in different amplitudes and rates, has demonstrated clearly to us that despite the really wonderful ability of our sense-apparatus in catching and transmitting to our perceiving brain certain portions of the wonderful gamut of radiation, we humans know as yet very little about the amazing mysteries that Nature has even in this one field of its activity.
It has been stated by modern scientific research-workers, that radiation alone covers a gamut of vibrating substances comprising some seventy octaves, ranging from the most penetrating and hardest rays known as yet, first named by Dr. Millikan 'cosmic rays,' through octaves of less amplitude and vibrational degree such as the X-rays, ordinary light, heat, to that form of radiation used in radio-work; and of this entire range or scale or gamut of seventy octaves, our eyes perceive barely one octave at best. Our sense of touch is cognisant but imperfectly of another small patch in this long gamut, which we call heat-rays, for heat is as much a form of radiation as is light itself.
Thus, then, amazing and intriguing as is the ability of our physical optics to translate the radiation which we call light to the brain, it is, after all, but one part in seventy, one octave out of seventy octaves, which they tell us something about -- and that something itself is imperfect information. Small wonder it is that the Great Theosophist, H. P. Blavatsky, wrote in her master-work, The Secret Doctrine, that our entire physical universe is but concreted or crystallized 'light,' by which term she meant almost exactly what twentieth-century science calls radiation: a statement apparent enough today when it is indeed understood that what we call physical light is but one octave in the gamut of radiation extending in both directions on either side of the light-octave into what are to us invisible and intangible realms and spheres of force and matter.
If light, then, is the substantial basis of our physical universe, how about the universes, or worlds, or realms, or spheres, of intense activity suggested to us by the right- and left-hand ranges of the radiation which we can neither see, nor feel, nor cognise by any other of our five senses, but of which the industry of modern scientific workers is at present apprising us? As a matter of fact, the Occultist, or student of the Esoteric Tradition, would call this gamut of seventy octaves but a larger portion of that particular field of cosmical activity and substance comprised in the lower ranges of what he calls the Astral Light.
To the Occultist, instead of there being some seventy octaves of radiation, or vibrational activity in matter, there are at least one hundred whose particular range is the physical and astral worlds. Above and beyond these, in point of greater ethereality, lie literally unimaginable fields of cosmic activity, each field or plane or realm possessing its own set of substances and forces, and in consequence infilled with worlds and spheres and beings and things belonging thereto. Here, the careful student may see some beginning of a scientific proof of the statement of the Ancient Wisdom, alias the Esoteric Tradition, that there are Worlds within worlds, substances more ethereal existing within substances more gross, the former being the causal noumena of the latter; and thus do we see the reason for the ancient saying that the visible, tangible, so-called physical World is but the veil or garment inclosing and covering the invisible and intangible.
Nor is this all: for these invisible or unseen, these intangible, unfelt worlds or universes, are, as frequently hereinbefore stated, the causal noumena of what we humans sense and can more or less successfully cognise and therefore know as the World of material substances and forces.
Many are the thinkers in modern scientific work who are approaching, both in inward conviction and in published statement, to the teachings of the prehistoric Esoteric Tradition on a number of most interesting parallels, and indeed in many cases making approximations to what might be called a modern exoteric exposition of archaic philosophy.
Dr. James Arnold Crowther has recently written on radiation in a manner which provides an amazing scientific parallel with one or two of the teachings of the Esoteric Philosophy, and he is by no means alone in his views. He points out in graphic and striking language that the entirety of our globe Earth with all its apparent solidity and its manifest diversity and variety of physical appearances and substances is after all but radiation intimately connected and probably identic with electricity, and yet electrically held enchained so that the radiation is not lost in outer space. (72)
This really thoughtful man furthermore utters a distinctly esoteric tenet in stating that the essential or intrinsic substance of the Universe is radiation which is but another name for force or energy. With such corroboration from eminent scientific sources, the Theosophist might well feel that it is needless further to labor the argument concerning the substantial character of radiation, or to prove that H. P. Blavatsky was perfectly correct in stating, in The Secret Doctrine (1888), that the physical world, when all is said, is but concreted or crystallized light, i. e., radiation. As she phrased it: An lumen sit corpus nec non?, 'Is light not a body, i. e., substantial, also?'
Perhaps Professor Crowther's most interesting point of agreement with the Esoteric Philosophy, however, is the declaration of his own conviction that the law and order so obvious in the Universe are not the product of irrationality but of reason.
Consciousness in whatever form it may express itself, fundamentally is the noblest and most spiritual form of cosmic energy -- indeed, consciousness is the source and origin of all the forms of cosmic force; and as all these inner and invisible worlds exist by and from and through force in its dual form of vital movement and substantial basis, and as these inner, invisible worlds are in fact nothing but forms of force or energy expressing itself in countless fashions and manners, the inescapable deduction therefore is that these inner and invisible worlds or spheres are filled full of consciousnesses and lives -- with hosts and countless multitudes of conscious and living and self-expressing entities, operating and functioning in their own respective spheres or worlds even as we are also doing in this part of the kosmic whole, all of which, or of whom, are under the sway of the general kosmic laws of evolutionary development; all, therefore, even as with us humans, advancing steadily and continuously from relative imperfection to ever enlarging perfections.
Just as our physical world, and others like ours that belong to this general material kosmic plane or sphere, have inhabitants of many and various kinds and classes, so exactly do these higher (and lower) worlds have inhabitants, which are their own particular denizens, with senses and minds built to know and to respond to the vibrational rates of the worlds in which they are, just as our physical senses here are so built and evolved that they respond to the vibrational rates of that part of the gamut of life belonging to the physical plane on which these senses function and to which they belong organically.
Furthermore, just as Man, for instance, knows dimly of other planes and spheres, because of his more delicate psychical and mental faculties: and will in the future know vastly more about them than he now does, as evolution perfects these interior senses and faculties: just so is it with the inhabitants or denizens of these higher (and lower) worlds: evolution or progressive growth in faculty and sense-organs brings all entities and beings slowly into contact and communication with and knowledge of other planes and spheres, on whatever planes or spheres of action and consciousness these armies or hosts of beings may be at present.
To the inhabitants or populations of any one of these higher or lower worlds, their own matter is as sensible and real to them as is ours to us, and actually, on the other hand and in truth, as unreal as is ours to us, when we understand, as we ought to understand, how temporary and therefore unreal our physical matter is. For matter in the higher worlds and composing the higher worlds is force or forces to us; and our matter is force -- and forces -- to the worlds below or rather inferior to our own.
What is called objective existence or being, is that part of the boundless Whole which, on any one Plane or in any one World or Sphere, is cognised by the beings whose consciousness at the time acts and functions there; but this objective is subjective to beings whose consciousness contemporaneously acts and functions on other planes or in other worlds or spheres. Obviously, therefore, our entire physical universe is as subjective -- therefore as invisible and intangible -- to beings whose consciousness at this time is acting and functioning on other planes, as these inner and invisible worlds are subjective to us, and therefore to us are invisible and intangible.
But where are these invisible and to us humans intangible worlds and spheres of the general Kosmos, the Universe, with which we are in kosmic relations only? When we speak of 'superior' or 'inferior,' 'high' or 'low,' in relation to these other planes and spheres, we do not necessarily mean that they are 'above' or 'below' us.
These other worlds and spheres and planes interpenetrate our world and sphere and plane, we moving through them and they moving through us, blending indeed with our physical world, and are as unperceived by us with our gross physical senses, as their inhabitants are unconscious of us and of our own world and sphere.
There is a very striking passage in The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky bearing on this subject. She says:
. . . the Occultist does not locate these spheres either outside or inside our Earth, as the theologians and the poets do; for their location is nowhere in the space known to, and conceived by, the profane. They are, as it were, blended with our world -- interpenetrating it and interpenetrated by it. There are millions and millions of worlds and firmaments visible to us; there [are] still greater numbers beyond those visible to the telescopes, and many of the latter kind do not belong to our objective sphere of existence. Although as invisible as if they were millions of miles beyond our solar system, they are yet with us, near us, within our own world, as objective and material to their respective inhabitants as ours is to us. . . . each is entirely under its own special laws and conditions, having no direct relation to our sphere. The inhabitants of these, as already said, may be, for all we know, or feel, passing through and around us as if through empty space, their very habitations and countries being interblended with ours, though not disturbing our vision, because we have not yet the faculties necessary for discerning them. . . .
. . . such invisible worlds do exist. Inhabited as thickly as our own is, they are scattered throughout apparent Space in immense number; some far more material than our own world, others gradually etherealizing until they become formless and are as "Breaths." That our physical eye does not see them, is no reason to disbelieve in them; physicists can see neither their ether, atoms, nor "modes of motion," or Forces. Yet they accept and teach them. . . .
But, if we can conceive of a world composed (for our senses) of matter still more attenuated than the tail of a comet, hence of inhabitants in it who are as ethereal, in proportion to their globe, as we are in comparison with our rocky, hard-crusted earth, no wonder if we do not perceive them, nor sense their presence or even existence. (73)
How indeed could we sense their presence or even existence, as long as we have no senses evolved to perceive these invisible worlds and their inhabitants and therefore capable of reporting them to us denizens of this our physical plane? Yet we have, nevertheless, our more subtil and interior sense-organs and apparatus of understanding which are the real, inner man: that part of our constitution whose still more interior portions are linked to the inner and higher parts of the cosmos, even as our physical body is similarly, perhaps, indeed identically, connected with this physical world.
The following extract taken from a recent book by the American scientist, M. Luckiesh, echoes H. P. Blavatsky's teaching, though it is probable that this scientific writer was unconscious of the fact. He had been discussing the imperfections of our physical senses as instruments of report even as regards the outer physical world. Then he continues:
This emphasizes the extreme limitations of our human senses in appraising all that may exist in the universe about us. With our mere human senses we may be living in a world within a world. Anything is possible beyond our experiences. Our imagination could conjure up another world coincident with our 'human' world, but unseen, unfelt, and unknown to us. Although we know a great deal of the physical world in which we live, beyond the veil unpenetrated by our senses may be other worlds coincident. (74)
Or again, for what is perhaps an even more remarkable statement running to the same effect, the reader is referred to a book just recently published, written by Professor W. F. G. Swann, which still more clearly shows how amazingly close the best thought of ultra-modern scientists is approaching to the borderland of the Occult. Certain paragraphs in this work set forth in admirably lucid language what amounts to a paraphrase of the last given citation from The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky.
In this exceedingly interesting work, Dr. Swann writes like a Theosophist born, speaking as he does of the mathematical possibility of different universes, virtually limitless in number, which -- if his words are properly understood -- could occupy the same space, apparently interpenetrating, but which would be, each one, distinct from all the others, so that beings inhabiting any one such universe would not be cognisant of other universes and the respective inhabitants of these last. This distinction of universe from universe, however, in no wise destroys the possibility, and indeed the probability, that there are relations of a mathematical and perhaps other kind between such mathematically differing universes; therefore, due to these interconnecting or related lines of union, beings in any one universe might find it possible not merely to become conscious of the existence of universes other than their own, but even to pass -- in some mathematical manner? -- into another universe or other universes and thus to become cognisant of and acquainted with such other universes and the respective denizens thereof. (75)
This might seem an attractive thought to Christians of either the old school or the modern as suggesting the possibility of the existence of the old-fashioned heaven and hell; but one may safely venture the guess that Dr. Swann's intuitive mind was not envisaging so much the establishment of a scientific foundation of the existence of the old theologic heaven and hell, but rather was holding in thought what the modern Occultist or Esotericist means when he speaks of the Invisible Worlds and the inhabitants thereof.
These higher and lower worlds, including our own world, are literally as incomprehensibly numerous as are the atoms which compose physical matter, which latter again but reflects itself in every one of its component atoms. For instance, in a body of physical matter no larger than a bean or a small grape, the number of atoms that form or compose its substance is so incomputably immense that they must be reckoned in sextillions of sextillions; and the higher and lower worlds of the spaces of Space are at least equally numerous, for they are but the 'atoms' of THE UNIVERSE on the scale of kosmic magnitude, and in the other direction, to human vision, that equally unimaginable UNIVERSE on the scale of infinitesimal magnitudes -- the one reflecting faithfully the other, and interpenetrating it and interpenetrated by it.
Now such UNIVERSE, on the scale of kosmic magnitudes, is itself composite or compounded or builded of minor universes, varying among themselves, each one, nevertheless, faithfully copying its incomprehensibly great Parent. Each such minor Universe, considered alone, is itself an organic whole or unit, a cosmic molecule formed of incomprehensibly numerous hosts of cosmic 'atomic' entities, 'cosmic atoms.' These last are the various suns and their accompanying planetary systems scattered over the wide fields of space. Each one of such celestial bodies, whether sun or planet, nebula or comet, is likewise an organic entity, composed in its turn of incomputably numerous hosts of entities or beings still smaller than itself. Our earth, for instance, is compounded of atoms ultimately, in their turn built of other still more minute particles or entities called protons and electrons and positrons and neutrons by modern scientists; and these last again are very likely also compounded things, built of infinitesimals still more minute.
The interpenetration and interlocking of the vast hosts of worlds, both great and small, higher and lower, and illimitable in both directions as regards high and low, is the root-idea in the Theosophical teaching of Kosmic Hierarchies. Each one of these Hierarchies has its own summit and its own base; in other words, its own highest plane or world or sphere, and its lowest; and the highest plane of any one such Hierarchy grades off into the lowest of the next succeeding and superior Hierarchy; while its lowest plane, again, grades off into the highest or summit of the next succeeding Hierarchy on the downward arc of descent, and endlessly in all directions; therefore, says the Esoteric Tradition, extending inwardly as well as outwardly. Just as there are worlds within worlds, thus by the same token are there worlds outwards of worlds. Each such Hierarchy is thus inseparably interlocked and interpenetrated by forces and vibrations with every other similarly connected Hierarchy.
Every point of Space, therefore, is the abode of life and of lives, and on many planes to boot; for these Hierarchies are densely populated with all-various kinds and classes of living entities in all grades of evolution, from the Divine, through the most spiritual, down to the lowest or most material, of any such Hierarchy; and every unit of these countless Hosts of lives is a learning and evolving being or entity on its upward way towards ever larger degrees of evolutionary perfection.
We know ourselves more or less as a human host; but how many of us pause to think that other still greater hosts, higher than we are, and lower than we, surround us on every side and form respective parts of the structure of the same Universe in which we, even as they, move and live and have our being! Every point in space represents an evolving entity -- essentially a Monad. Intelligent beings -- on earth we call them humans -- live and exist throughout the boundless realms of the fields of endless Space. Some of them are high in development, some intermediate, some low; but they all work together and their combined actions and substances are the diversified and marvelous gradations of energy and substance of which the Universe is composed.
H. P. Blavatsky wrote:
From Gods to men, from Worlds to atoms, from a star to a rush-light, from the Sun to the vital heat of the meanest organic being -- the world of Form and Existence is an immense chain, whose links are all connected. The law of Analogy is the first key to the world-problem, and these links have to be studied co-ordinately in their occult relations to each other. (76)
Imbodied consciousnesses, and please to note the plural, exist in a practically infinite gradation of varying degrees of evolution -- a real Ladder of Life, or Stair of Life, stretching endlessly in either direction, and thus running through the vast hierarchical system of the Galaxy, and indeed of virtually limitless Space. There are, therefore, no limits except a hierarchical one, and such hierarchical limitation is but spacial and not actual. But this Ladder of Life is marked at certain intervals by landing-places, stages, the so-called different 'planes of being,' which are otherwise the different spheres of cosmic consciousness which expresses itself in the multi-myriad degrees of consciousnesses.
It is not our Earth, this speck of cosmic dust, which populates with its dead the invisible worlds and spheres of the spaces of illimitable Space. We humans are not exceptions nor favorites in Eternity and in the Boundless Fields of Infinitude. The populations, or inhabitants or denizens, of these other worlds and spheres, invisible and therefore unknown to us humans, belong to those other higher (or lower) worlds or spheres, as the case may be; just as we belong to our present physical world because for the time being we live in bodies arising out of it -- out of the substances and matters and energies of this physical world.
Our essential Self, the Monad, however, does not belong to this earth. It takes up bodies various and many, and uses these for a while; then casts them aside and then passes on; but itself tastes never of death; for its very nature is life, being an integral part of the Kosmic Life as much as an atom is an integral part of dense matter; and the dead bodies that the Monad leaves behind are merely composite entities, not integral entities, or unitary integrals; and these bodies, being but composite things, of necessity must wear out, fall to pieces and disintegrate into their respective elements. The body lives because of and on account of the monadic life which fills it, and when that life is withdrawn, because the force which brought about the cohesion of its particles is withdrawn, then the body of necessity decays. Bodies are dreams, so to say, illusions -- mayavi or illusory forms, because temporary, transient, and in themselves, as already stated, are merely fluid composites held together during any incarnated life of the Monad by that Monad's psycho-magnetic energy.
But Life per se is continuous and flows forth from within: from these inner and invisible and intangible worlds as a compound stream of vital force. Life is as continuous inwardly, interiorly, as it is over the fields of the space of our own physical universe. Life is infinitely various in its manifestations. Too bold indeed and too shortsighted is the man who says: 'Life goes so far and no farther. It has limits.' How does he know? Life is limitless, because life is force, or rather, force is life; and life, in one sense, is but another name for the intrinsic movements of Kosmic Intelligence.
Some of the populations of the superior Spheres are far ahead of men of Earth in evolutionary growth; and the substances and matters of their various worlds being so much finer and more ethereal than are ours, their inhabitants would de facto seem to us like luminous gods; even the state corresponding to that held by our animals here, on certain such inner Spheres is higher than our own human state is here on Earth. Imagine then, what must be the state of their great 'humans'! On the other hand, the inhabitants of worlds inferior to our own, are of much coarser and more material fiber in all respects than we men of Earth are.
Slowly through the ages, as these populations of the hosts of worlds grow through evolution, as the faculties and senses of these populations thereby unfold and develop; and because these worlds both inner and outer are all of them permeated and infilled by the kosmic vitality; and because all these worlds on the endless Ladder of Life interpenetrate each other: therefore the populations of any one world or plane or sphere will, in the course of time, pass into other realms and spheres and worlds, and thus know these latter, because these populations will become a part of these latter worlds; for these evolving populations shall have bodies and sense-organs and sense-apparatus fit, builded, prepared through evolutionary unfolding, to sense and to report to the perceiving consciousness the nature of, and experiences gained in, these inner worlds.
Indeed, we inhabitants of this our Earth have come here after the manner outlined in the preceding paragraph, ages and ages and aeons and aeons agone; and in the aeons of the far distant future, we shall pass out of this physical world again into these inner realms, doing so collectively as the entire evolving human host: and when that time comes in the distant future, we shall then be as gods, because the divine part of us will have begun to be conscious, and therefore to act and to function, on the planes relatively lower than itself; and in consequence we shall then know and feel and therefore act and function as truly divine beings.
Or, to put the idea in another way: man, and equivalently, beings holding the human stage in all other worlds and on all other planets, visible or invisible, is in his essence a spark of the Central Intelligence-Consciousness-Fire of the Universe. Being a spark of that Central Fire, man is in inseparable alliance with all that the Universe contains, because this Central Fire is all-permeant; and therefore this unity with the Central Fire of the Universe is in all of man's inner constitution -- his inner nature; it is written there, so to speak, in bonds of flaming energy; and by following the terms of this his inseparable alliance with Nature, this union of essences, these bonds of being with that Central Fire: by following these bonds of flaming consciousness ever inwards, and ever more withinwards of himself, man can and will in due course of distant time reach highths of wisdom and knowledge utterly beyond present human understanding.
FOOTNOTES:
61. For a further elaboration of this matter of the invisible globes of the Earth-chain, and the doctrines deduced therefrom, see infra in the succeeding chapter. (return to text)
62. The human eye: "A living optical instrument . . . as superior to one of glass as the works of the Creator are to those of man." -- Darwin: On the Origin of Species, ch. vi, p. 146.
One is strongly inclined to believe that, whatever the imperfections of the human eye may be, Darwin was nearer the truth than was Helmholtz. (return to text)
63. The statements relative to mensuration of various kinds contained in this sentence would doubtless have to be considerably modified or changed in view of still more recent scientific speculations. Eppur si muove! (return to text)
64. Astronomy and Cosmogony, p. 352. By permission of the Macmillan Company, publishers. (return to text)
65. Consult as instances: The Universe Around Us (1929), Sir James Jeans; The Mysterious Universe (1930), Sir James Jeans; The Expanding Universe (1933), Sir Arthur Eddington; My Philosophy (1933), Sir Oliver Lodge.
Consult also The Architecture of the Universe by Professor W. F. G. Swann, Director, Bartol Research Foundation of the Franklin Institute. This is an interesting and suggestive work printed in 1934.
One could call attention with equal emphasis to the admirable and amazingly fine scientific work both in research and in philosophical deductions made by other eminent European and American scientific men, such as Einstein, Bohr, Planck, Millikan, and others, all of which tends to run, when all is said, towards the same speculative objective as that to which the English and American scientists hereinbefore mentioned likewise tends. As Galileo said: Eppur si muove! (return to text)
66. De principiis (First Principles), Bk. I, ch. vii, section 2. (return to text)
67. Op. cit., Bk. I, ch. vii, section 3. (return to text)
68. Contra Celsum, Bk. V, ch. xi. (return to text)
69. Op. cit., Bk. VIII, ch. lxvii. (return to text)
70. Epistles, 'Letter to Avitus.' (return to text)
71. This is but a brief and imperfect statement of the Planetesimal Hypothesis, but it may suffice to give to those who are unacquainted with it some idea of the theory. It is not the teaching of the Esoteric Philosophy. (return to text)
72. Radiation, by James Arnold Crowther, M. A., SC. D., F. INST. P., Professor of Physics, University of Reading. This is the second article of the series published under the title The Great Design, ed. by Frances Mason (Macmillan, 1934). (return to text)
73. The Secret Doctrine, I, 605-7. (return to text)
74. Foundations of the Universe, p. 71. (return to text)
75. The Architecture of the Universe, pp. 414-5 (Macmillan, 1934). (return to text)
76. The Secret Doctrine, I, 604. (return to text)