It is not worthwhile translating Homer into English unless the
readers of the translation understand English.
It is not worthwhile attempting to translate the occult Eastern
physics into the language of our Western and modern physics,
unless those who are to read the translation understand generally
and broadly what our own modern physics teach. It is not
necessary that they should know all branches of our modern
physics in all their minute ramifications; but it is necessary
that they should understand clearly the fundamental principles
upon which our scientific and technical knowledge of today rests.
These fundamental principles have been discovered and applied in
the past fifty years--in the memory of the living. They have
revolutionized science in all its departments. Our textbooks on
Chemistry, Light, Heat, Electricity and Sound have had to be
entirely re-written; and in many other departments, notably in
medicine and psychology, they have yet to be re-written. Our
textbooks are in a transition state, each new one going a step
farther, to make the change gradual from the old forms of belief
to the new, so that even Tyndall's textbook on "Sound" is now so
antedated, or antiquated, that it might have been written in
darkest Africa before the pyramids were built, instead of twenty
years ago.
All this change has flowed from the discovery of Faraday that
there are two states or conditions of matter. In one it is
revealed by one of our five senses, visible, tangible, smellable,
tastable, or ponderable matter. This is matter as we know it.
It may be a lump of metal or a flask of gas.
The second condition or state of matter is not revealed by either
of our five senses, but by the sixth sense, or intuition of man.
This is the ether--supposed to be "matter in a very rarefied
form, which permeates all space." So rare and fine is this
matter that it interpenetrates carbon or steel as water
interpenetrates a sponge, or ink a blotting pad. In fact, each
atom of "physical" matter--by which is meant matter in the first
condition--floats in an atmosphere of ether as the solid earth
floats in its atmosphere of air.
"No two physical atoms touch," said Faraday. "Each physical atom
is the centre of an etheric molecule, and as far apart from every
other atom as the stars in heaven from one another." This is
true of every form of physical matter, whether it is a lump of
metal, a cup of liquid, or a flask of gas; whether it is a
bronze statue or a living man; a leaf, a cloud, or the earth
itself. Each and every physical atom is the centre of an etheric
molecule made up of many atoms of the ether.
This duality of matter was a wonderful discovery, revolutionizing
every department of science. It placed man in actual touch with
the whole visible universe. The ether in a man's eye (and in his
whole body) reaches in one unbroken line--like a telegraph wire
--from him to the sun, or the outermost planet. He is not
separate and apart from "space," but a part of it. Each physical
atom of his physical body is the centre of an etheric molecule,
and he has two bodies, as St. Paul said, a visible physical and
an invisible etheric body; the latter in actual touch with the
whole universe.
Faraday went one step further. He demonstrated that all
physical phenomena come from the chording vibration of the
physical atom with the surrounding etheric atoms, and that the
latter exercise the impelling force on the former. Step into the
sunshine. The line of ether from the sun is vibrating faster
than the ether in the body, but the higher impels the lower, the
greater controls the lesser, and soon both ethers are in unison.
The physical atoms must coincide in vibration with their etheric
envelopes, and the "note" is "heat." Step into the shade, where
the ocean of ether is vibrating more slowly, and the ether of the
body reduces its vibration. "The ether is the origin of all
force and of all phenomena."
This etheric matter follows identical laws with prakritic matter,
or, accurately, the laws of our matter flow from the etheric
matter from which it is made. The ether has two hundred or more
elementary substances, each atom of our eighty or ninety
"elements" being the chemical union of great masses of two or
more of the etheric elements or their combinations. These
etheric elementary substances combine and unite; our elementary
substances simply following in their combinations the law which
they inherit from their parents. They take form and shape. They
vibrate through one octave, and take solid liquid or gaseous form
in ether, as their types here in our world take it in prakriti,
as their vibrations are increased or diminished. In short, the
ether is the prototype of our physical or prakritic world, out of
which it is made and a product of which it is.
As this ether is "physical" matter, the same as prakriti, one
harmonic law covering both, and as this ether fills all space,
Modern Science divides physical matter into two kinds, which, for
convenience in differentiation, are here called prakritic and
etheric.
Matter is something--science does not know or care to know what
--in vibration. A very low octave of vibration produces
prakriti; a very high octave of vibration produces ether. The
vibration of prakriti ends in thousands; that of ether begins in
billions. Between them there is a gulf of vibrations that has
not yet been bridged. For that reason science divides matter
into two "planes," or octaves, of vibration--the matter of this
visible and tangible plane being called prakriti and that of the
invisible and intangible plane being called etheric. Across this
gulf the two planes respond to each other, note for note, the
note in trillions chording when the note in thousands is struck.
Note for note, chord for chord, they answer one another, and the
minutest and the most complex phenomena are alike the result of
this harmonic vibration, that of the ether supplying Force and
that of the prakriti a Medium in which it can manifest.
This knowledge of ether is not guesswork or fancy, and, while it
is as impossible of proof as the axioms of geometry, it is worthy
the same credence and honor. We are working on physical axioms
exactly as we work on geometrical axioms.
Modern science represents each and every prakritic atom as a
globe like the earth, floating in space and surrounded by an
atmosphere of ether. "The subdivision of prakritic matter until
we reach etheric atoms chemically united to make the physical
unit" is the correct definition of an atom. The prakritic
physical atom has length, breadth and thickness. And it has an
atmosphere of ether which not only interpenetrates the atom as
oxygen and hydrogen interpenetrate the drop of water, but
furnishes it with an envelope as the oxygen and hydrogen furnish
the drop of water with one.
Each physical atom is the centre of an etheric molecule composed
of many etheric atoms vibrating at a greater or lesser speed and
interpenetrating the atom. Each may be considered a miniature
earth, with its aerial envelope, the air, penetrating all parts
of it.
The etheric plane of matter not only unites with this prakritic
plane through the atom but it interpenetrates all combinations of
it; beside the atom as well as through the atom. The grain of
sand composed of many prakritic atoms is also composed of many
times that number of etheric atoms. The grain of sand is etheric
matter as well as prakritic matter. It exists on the etheric
plane exactly the same as it exists on the prakritic, and it has
etheric form as well as prakritic form.
As each atom of this physical world of ours--whether of land, or
water, or air; whether of solid, liquid or gas--is the centre
of an etheric molecule, we have two worlds, not one: a physical
world and an etheric one; a visible world and an invisible
world; a tangible world and an intangible world; a world of
effect and a world of cause.
And each animal, including man, is made in the same way. He has
a prakritic body and an etheric body; a visible body and an
invisible body; an earthly body and one "not made with hands,"
in common touch with the whole universe.