Ancient and Modern Physics - Thomas E. Willson
"Professor Lodge failed to take into account this apergic force,
this tendency to fly off, when he gave such high revolutionary
speed to the etheric molecules, a speed in which apergy would
necessarily exceed gravity. The failure to take apergy into
consideration has been the undoing of many physicists.
"Today we know that the ether is matter, the same as our own,
only finer and rarer and in much more rapid vibration. We know
that this ether has its solids, liquids and gases formed from
molecules of its atoms, even as our own are formed. We know that
its atoms combine as ours do, and while we have but eighty
elementary combinations, it must have more than double the
number. We know that every form and shape and combination of
these elements from this plane flows from inherited tendencies
having their root in the etheric world.
"The two worlds are one world--as much at one with ours as the
world of gas about us is at one with our liquids and solids. It
is 'continuity, not impact.' They not only touch everywhere and
in everything, but they are one and the same in action and
reaction."
Thus spake a certain wise teacher of physics. To his wise
utterances, we can only add that such as we are today "we see
through a glass, darkly." Yet there will come a day when the
physical bandages will be removed from our eyes, and we shall see
face to face the beauty and grandeur and glory of this invisible
world, and that in truth it 'transmits by continuity and not
impact every action and reaction of which matter is capable,'
forming one continuous chain of cause and effect, without a link
missing. There are no gulfs to cross; no bridges to be made.
It is here; not there. It is at one with us. And we are at one
with it. One and the same law controls and guides the etheric
atom and the physical atom made from its molecules, whether the
latter are made in "whirls," as at first supposed, or by orderly
combination as now believed.
In fact, this visible world of ours is the perfect product of the
other invisible one, having in it its root and foundation, the
very sap of its life.
Chapter Five
The Four Manifested Planes
The oriental idea of the universe does not differ fundamentally
in its general conception, from that of modern science, but it
goes farther and explains more. The physics of the secret
doctrine are based upon a material universe of four planes of
vibration and a spiritual universe of three planes of vibration
beyond matter. This Something in vibration may be given the
English name, Consciousness--without entering upon its nature.
Spirit is consciousness in vibration and undifferentiated.
Matter is consciousness in vibration and differentiated.
As we divide the seven octaves of a piano into Treble and Bass
for clearness of thought and writing, so the Hidden Knowledge
divides the seven octaves of vibration, or planes, into Spirit
and Matter. In their ultimate analysis they are one and the same
thing, as ice and water are the same thing; but for study they
must be differentiated.
The material and physical universe consists of four planes of
matter, or four great octaves of vibration, each differentiated
from the other as in our physics prakriti is differentiated from
ether. The material universe, the ancient physics teach, was
originally pure thought, Manasa, the product of the spiritual
planes above. This manasic world was differentiated, a real
world. That is to say it was given elementary substances by the
union of its atoms in different sized molecules. Some of its
elements combined and formed Prana. The prana gathered and
formed other worlds, pranic worlds. Then in the pranic world
etheric worlds were formed; and finally in the etheric worlds,
prakritic globes like the earth were formed. The earth is the
centre of a prakritic globe, revolving in ether around the sun.
The sun is the centre of a solar globe of ether, revolving in
prana around Alcyone. Alcyone is the centre of a stellar globe
of prana revolving in manasa around the central and hidden sun of
the great manasic globe. These four conditions of matter
prakriti, ether, prana, and manasa are the earth, water, fire,
air of the Ancient Metaphysics, the four elements of matter, and
are present in every atom of prakriti. When the atom of prana
was formed, it had an envelope of manasa. When the atom of ether
was formed it had an envelope of pranic-manasic atoms. When the
prakritic atom was formed it had an envelope of etheric-pranic-
manasic atoms, each of its encircling etheric atoms being the
centre of a pranic molecule, and each pranic atom of that
molecule being the centre of a manasic molecule.
Each atom of prakriti was the material universe in miniature. It
held the potentialities of mind, life, and phenomena. In every
aggregation of atoms, there were the four planes, each in touch
through the Cosmic Mind, its manasa, with other atoms in the
universe, with every other globe of whatever kind. "As above, so
below," was the secret Key-word. The unity of all the material
universe in its prakriti, ether, prana and manasa, was the corner
stone of this knowledge. The three planes above prakriti were
called Astral, and in common speech there was the ordinary
division into two planes, visible and invisible, or "Spirit," as
the invisible was called, and "Matter," as the visible was
called. Only in the hidden secret doctrine of physics, and in
the open metaphysics which were a "stumbling block" and
"foolishness" to those who had not the "inner light" of the
physics, were the three divisions of the "astral" made known, and
the true distinction between the spirit of the three higher
planes and the matter of the four lower was kept out of the
metaphysics, or only vaguely alluded to.
There is no "oriental science" because the oriental does not
attach the same value to merely physical knowledge that we do.
But that must not be understood to imply that there is no
oriental physics. In all the matters that interest us now, as
far as principles are concerned, the oriental knew all that we
know. He knew it thousands of years ago, when our ancestors were
sleeping with the cave bears.
"That is all the good it did him," the scientist says. No. That
is not true. It is perfectly true that the oriental, the
Babylonian who carved on the Black Stone now in the British
Museum the five moons of Jupiter, exposing himself to the
derision of our astronomers prior to their own discovery of the
fifth moon in 1898, did not care particularly whether there were
four moons or five, and had no sale for any telescopes he might
make, for no one else cared particularly. But it was not true
that he did not care for any and all knowledge that would improve
his spiritual condition by giving him correct ideas of the
universe and of his own part in it. To him life was more than
meat and the body more than raiment. He was more afraid of sin
than of ignorance. We are more afraid of ignorance than of sin.
He preferred to better men's moral condition; we prefer to
better their physical condition.
If one of the Sages of the East could be called up and put on the
stand to be questioned, he would say, substantially:
"You are right in regard to your ether, and to prakriti being
ether that has been dropped a great octave in vibration. Your
physical atom is surrounded by a molecule of ether, this molecule
containing many atoms of ether. The chording vibration does
produce all physical phenomena.
"But where did the ether atom come from? How can you explain how
and whence life comes, or what it is? This explains physical,
but how do you explain vital phenomena?
"You are wrong in assuming that all the matter of the universe
apart from the earth or planets is ether and only ether. The
etheric world in which you are interested ends with your solar
system. It ends with each solar system, to the people of that
system. Between each solar system and another there is another
form of matter that is not ether.
"This etheric solar world of ours is very large, many billions of
miles in diameter; but it is not the whole universe. You know
that the sun and all its planets are revolving around the star
Alcyone. Your astronomers told you that years ago, and they have
recently given you the rate of speed as 4,838 miles per hour.
"Did you not see and know that if they had this revolution around
a central sun it must be within a solar globe?
"Did you think that the sun and its planets, and other suns and
their planets, were tearing their way through the ether like so
many fish on a dipsy-hook from a Marblehead fishing smack running
before the wind?
"Did it never occur to you that the ether of this solar system
must be revolving around this central sun? The whole solar
system, ether and planets, are revolving around Alcyone, and the
reason why their minor revolution around the sun is not affected
by it is because the solar system is a vast globe of ether,
having a thinner and rarer medium to revolve in, the same as our
earth has. It is the motion of a fly in a moving car.
"Now fix your attention on this globe of ether, this solar globe.
You must do it to get the concept before you. You have known of
it all your life without once really apprehending it, for you
have never learned to think, or to utilize the knowledge that was
given you. The idea is as new and as strange as if you had never
known it.
"What lies beyond the surface of the solar globe? Something
must; something as much rarer and thinner than the ether as the
ether is rarer and thinner than prakriti. Can you not guess?
"It is Prana, the life force of the universe. As prakriti is
made from ether, so ether is made from prana. It is made in the
same way. Each atom of the ether is the centre of a molecule of
prana, surrounded by an atmosphere of pranic atoms, exactly as
your prakritic atom is surrounded by an atmosphere of etheric
atoms. You say that each atom of prakriti is the centre of a
molecule of ether. So it is. But each atom of that etheric
molecule is the centre of a pranic molecule. Each atom of your
physical matter is triple, not double.
"You say that all physical phenomena come from the chording
vibration of the etheric and prakritic atoms of the two planes of
matter. Yes. But do you not see that all vital phenomena come
from the chording vibration of the pranic, etheric, and prakritic
atom of the three planes of matter which are in each atom?
"In the living leaf the three planes are sounding in chord in each
atom of it. In the dead leaf, drying up and falling to pieces,
only the lower two are sounding in chord. The silver chord has
been broken.
"Each atom of prakriti you say has the potentiality of some kind
of phenomenon. We add 'and of life also.' The potentialities of
life are in every atom of prakriti. Even the atom of iron may
live in the blood. It cannot become a part of any living
organism until its prana is sounding the chord of life in unison
with the ether and prakriti--the threefold silver chord.
"What is the centre of this prana? It is Alcyone. There are
other solar globes beside ours circling around Alcyone, and we
have been considering only our own solar globe of ether. Alcyone
is the centre of the prana in which they revolve as the sun is
the centre of our ether in which the planets revolve. As this
prana has a centre around which we revolve with other solar
systems, then it must have a center of gravity.
"Then this prana is a globe.
"The prana does not then fill this material universe. There must
be yet another form of matter rarer and finer than prana, from
which prana is made, as ether is made from prana and prakriti
from ether. Have we any other class of phenomena to explain,
except vital and physical? Yes, there is a very important class,
mental. And here we have the explanation, if we exercise our
reason.
"These pranic globes are floating in an ocean of manasa, matter
in its rarest form.
"Each atom of prana is formed from manasa, exactly as ether was
formed from prana, and each pranic atom in the universe is the
centre of a manasic molecule, having an atmosphere of manasic
atoms.
"So we are not exact in giving the prakritic atom three planes or
octaves of vibration. It has four. You merely surround it with
etheric atoms, and this is correct so far as it goes. You only
wish to explain physical problems. But there are other problems
to be explained, problems of life and mind, and the same
knowledge you have explains them as well as the others, if you
simply avail yourself of it. That you do not consider the atom
as four-fold instead of two-fold is your own fault. I have not
told you anything you did not already know. I have only asked
you to apply your present knowledge of physics to these problems
of life and mind, and apply your reasoning powers.
"The chording vibration in an atom of matter of
"The two planes produces Force, or phenomena
"The three planes produces Life--the silver chord
"The four planes produces Mind--the golden chord.
"You say there is no gulf between the prakritic and etheric
worlds; that it is one continuous world; and all its phenomena
are by continuity and not impact. That is true, but it is not
the whole truth.
"There is no gulf to cross between the prakritic and etheric
worlds; none to cross between that and the manasic. The four
worlds are one great world, continuous, interchangeable. Through
the four as well as through the two, there is continuity and not
impact. Whether it is an atom or a world, the four are there.
Nothing, no combination of atoms, no matter of any kind, however
small or large, can exist in this prakritic world unless it has
the four elements, which from time immemorial our philosophers
have called Earth, Water, Fire, Air, meaning the four globes or
forms of matter in the universe. We do not have to leave the
earth to live in the etheric globe. It is here. Nor do we have
to go millions of miles to reach the pranic globe. It is here.
The problems of light and heat are no easier than the problems of
birth and death. The pranic globe is within us; within
everything. So is the manasic.
"It is here on these higher planes that the chances for worthy
study are greatest. At least we think so, though you may not.
We live on the manasic--pranic--etheric globe on precisely the
same terms that we live on this of prakriti, and the problems of
the three are equally open to us.
"If there are any who care to follow up the line of thought I
have opened, who care for the questions that interest us of the
East, I will talk as long as they care to listen, provided they
will not ask for knowledge that will give them power over others,
which cannot fail to be used for evil."
This is but a glimpse of Hindu physics, yet it has helped us in
the metaphysics. We now understand the chain of globes--in
part. The earth is fourfold. As each atom of the earth is
fourfold, so their aggregations give us prakritic earth, an
etheric earth, a pranic earth, and a manasic earth--in
coadunition and not like the skin of an onion. They are separate
and distinct globes, each on its own plane. It is four down and
three up for the Angel entering matter, whether from the outmost
boundary of manasic matter, or the surface of the earth, or the
cover of a baseball. The "chain of globes" in the Secret
Doctrine represents the unity of the material universe.
The three-fold nature of the astral model is revealed, and the
unity of all prakritic things. But more than that, to many
minds, will be the explanation it gives of why there are but four
planes of vibration in matter; that the highest form of
development in prakriti shows only four elements, prakriti or
body, sensation or force, life, and mind, and that these last
three, present in all things in esse, become present in posse
when they work together harmonically.
Chapter Six
Our Place on Earth
The next time our wise man from the east was asked to "say a few
words and make his own topic," he spoke, perhaps, as follows:
"How large do you think the earth is? You answer promptly, 7,912
miles in diameter. You are as far out of the way as you were in
supposing that our sun could be a centre of gravity of a lot of
planets revolving around it and around Alcyone without being a
globe of ether. Now that it has been mentioned, you see very
clearly for yourself that it must be a solar globe of ether. It
follows from one of your physical axioms. When I tell you why
the earth is and must be about fifty thousand miles in diameter,
you will see that it must be so, and that you knew it all the
time, but never stopped to formulate your knowledge. You have
had the knowledge for three centuries without applying it.
"It was in 1609 that your greatest astronomer, John Kepler,
announced as one of three harmonic laws by which the universe was
governed, that the squares of the times of the planets were
proportional to the cubes of their distances from the sun; and
that this law was true in physics and everywhere. No one of your
scientists has had the wisdom to study out what it meant, and for
three centuries, for 291 years, you have repeated his words like
so many parrots, instead of using the key he gave you to unlock
the mysteries of the universe. A corollary of his law is that
the planets move in their orbits because they are impelled
thereto between the two forces, and move in a mean curve between
them; but it was not until 1896 that you discovered that the
mean between two forces is always a curve and never a straight
line. You have not a text book in a school today that does not
repeat this fundamental and absurd error--which you have known
for three centuries to be an error--that the motion resulting
from a mean between forces is "in a straight line." The curves
resulting here are not to be measured easily, and are so large
that small segments appear straight lines; and it was not until
Carpenter demonstrated it mathematically that any one could
believe it true.
"There are two great forces in this universe. Your grandfathers
called them Centripetal and Centrifugal forces; your fathers
called them Gravity and Apergy, names which still cling to them;
and you call them Attraction and Repulsion.
"It was Kepler, not Newton, who discovered that Attraction or
Gravity was in inverse proportion to the square of the distance.
"You know the meaning of this mystic phrase, 'as the squares of
the distance.' You understand that it means the attraction at
two feet is only one-fourth the attraction at one foot; at four
feet only one-sixteenth; at eight feet, only one sixty-fourth.
"But who knows or cares for Kepler's great law of Repulsion, or
Apergy? That was that the 'square of the times are as the cubes
of the distance.' It has lain fallow for centuries. No one of
your western physicists has ever studied it, or tried to explain
it. It remains just where Kepler left it, as the mere law of
orbital revolution of the planets only.
"It is the key to the proper understanding of the universe.
"'The squares of the times are as the cubes of the distance'
means that all motion is the result of two forces acting upon
prakriti, and that where the two forces are balanced, or equal,
the result in motion is a circle or ellipse, the square of the
Repulsion being equal to the cube of the Attraction to make them
equal and produce a circle. In other cases they produce
hyperbola and parabola.
"This is a little dry--nearly all fundamental knowledge is--but
the reward of patience is great.
"The orbital speed of the earth is about 60,000 miles per hour.
The attraction of the sun exactly equals the repulsion created by
the motion; more accurately, the speed created by the repulsion.
The result of the two forces working together at exact balance is
a circle. An ellipse is a circle bent a little, and the ellipse
in which the earth actually moves comes from varying attraction
and repulsion. Kepler's second law covers that.
"If the orbital speed of the earth were a mile less per hour, or
even a foot less, then the earth would wind up around the sun as
a dog gets wound up with his chain around a tree. If this speed
were a mile more per hour, then the earth would wind out, each
year getting farther and farther away, until finally it would be
lost. When the speed is exactly proportional to the pull--that
is, when it is as 1.6 is to 2,--the result is a circular orbit,
the eccentricity of which is caused by certain fluctuations in
the attraction and repulsion.
"Suppose a planet were to be placed so that it would have a time
of two years. Its distance from the sun would be 1.6 that of the
earth. Why? Because to get the time doubled we would have to
take the square root of 4; and to get the distance the cube root
of the same number, 4. If you wish to be very exact the cube
root is 1.5889, but 1.6 is near enough for all ordinary work.
"If you wanted to find out the distance of a planet revolving in
six months you would divide the earth's distance by 1.6.
"In proportion you get any time or distance you may desire with
absolute accuracy. The distance of any planet from the sun gives
its time, or its time gives its distance--when that of any of
the others is known. This law applies throughout the universe;
in everything and everywhere. It is not a law of orbital
revolution alone, but a law of all motion.
"Our moon has a time of 29 days and a speed of about 50,000 miles
per day. If the speed were greater it would leave us, if less it
would wind up, falling to the earth in the form of a spiral.
"At what distance would it have to be to have a time of fourteen
days? Divide 240,000 miles by 1.6. A seven-day moon, would be
1.6 that distance. And the exact distance for a one-day moon,
for a moon that would always be in the same place in the heavens,
moving as the earth revolved on its axis, would be about 24,998
miles.
"This gives us the line of 24-hour axial rotation, the true
surface of the earth, and the sheer-line of prakritic matter.
Beyond that line is the ether; within that line is prakriti.
"It is the line of no weight, where gravity and apergy exactly
balance. Inside that line gravity exceeds apergy and everything
revolving in less time, or that time, must fall to the centre.
It is the true surface of any 24-hour globe of this size and
weight. A moon to revolve around the earth in less than one day
must move faster than the earth to develop enough apergy to
overcome the attraction. That phenomenon we see in the moons of
Mars, which are within its atmosphere; within the planet itself.
"We of the East learned this true size of the earth over six
thousand years ago, from observing the moons of Jupiter. The
times of the first three are doubled. We asked ourselves what
this meant and found that their distance was increased by the
cube root of 4 when their times were increased by the square root
of 4; that time was to distance as 1.6 was to 2. Then we
applied the key, and found it unlocked many mysteries.
"The first lesson this taught us was that we did not live on the
earth, but within the earth, at the line of liquid and gaseous
changes, where the three forms of matter meet and mingle and
interchange with each other. We lived at the bottom of a gaseous
ocean 21,000 miles above us, and 4,000 miles from the centre of
the globe. It gave us an entirely new conception of the earth,
and of our place in it.
"We saw that we lived in a narrow belt, or skin, of the earth,
not more than 100 miles thick, perhaps not more than ten miles.
Within this belt the prakritic elementary substances varied their
condition, combined, and made forms by increasing or decreasing
vibration. It was the creative and destructive zone, the
evolutionary "mother"--the liquid level of the prakriti--the
seat of all physical phenomena. Fifty miles above, the masses of
nitrogen and oxygen and argon were too cold to change their rate
of vibration. Fifty miles below the surface of the earth all
things were too hot for changes in vibration. In this kinetic
belt, between two static masses our bodies had been made, and
also, in all probability, all combinations of the elementary
substances. It was four thousand miles to the centre of the
static prakritic mass beneath us; twenty-one thousand miles to
the surface of the static prakritic mass above us, and the small
kinetic belt between was only one hundred miles thick. But we
had one consolation, the prakriti we had was all kinetic, and the
best in the whole mass.
"The second lesson it taught us was that as the earth had been
made in the etheric globe, in a corresponding skin or plane of
kinetic etheric energy, with our ether the best of the solar
output, that we ourselves were subject through our ether to the
phenomena of that kinetic solar plane in precisely the same way
we now are to the phenomena of the kinetic prakritic plane. Once
rid of the fallacious notion that we were creatures of the
surface of the earth, once clearly conscious that we were
creatures of the interior, of the bottom of this gaseous ocean,
then we could understand not only how the earth could be created
in this etheric globe, but how we could be creatures of the solar
globe living on it.