The Western student of the ancient Eastern physics soon meets
serious stumbling-blocks; and one at the very threshold has in
the last half century turned many back. In beginning his study
of the solar system, the pupil is told:
The first three planets--Mercury, Venus, and the moon--are dead
and disintegrating. Evolution on them has ceased. The proof of
this is found in the fact, that they have no axial rotation,
Mercury and Venus always presenting the same surface to their
father, the sun, and the moon the same surface to its daughter,
the earth.
This is a concrete statement of physical fact at which the
Western student protests. If in the whole range of Western
astronomical science there is any one fact that he has accepted
as absolutely proved, it is that Mercury revolves once in 24h.,
5m., 30.5s., and Venus once in 23h., 21m., 22s. He would as soon
credit a statement that the earth has no axial rotation as that
Mercury or Venus has none; and if he continues his study of
Eastern physics it is with no confidence in its accuracy, and as
a matter of curiosity.
The statement that Mercury, Venus, and the moon "are dead
and disintegrating," the former two "always presenting the
same surface" to the sun, is the basis for an elaborate
superstructure, both in the physics and the metaphysics of the
East. It is used in physics to explain how the "evolutionary
wave" came to an end at the perfection of the mineral on Mercury
with the loss of its axial rotation; how the "wave" then passed
on to Venus with the seed of the vegetable kingdom, where the
vegetable evolution ended with the loss of axial rotation;
how from Venus it leaped to the moon, mother of animals and
controller of animal life, with the seed of animal life in the
vegetable; and how finally it came to the earth, when the moon
ceased to revolve, bringing in the animal the seed of man. Here
man will be evolved and perfected. Man has not yet been "born"
on this earth, they say. He is still in a prenatal or embryonic
condition within the animal.
The lunar Pitris, the men-seed, have a physical reason for being,
if this evolutionary theory be true; none if it is not. Axial
rotation is necessary in evolution, the ancient physics teaches,
which must cease with it. The reasons for this are too lengthy
to give here. Briefly, the rotation makes the electrical flow
and a thermopilic dynamo of each planet.
The ancient astronomical teaching is absolutely true. There will
not be a work on astronomy published in Europe or the United
States this year, or hereafter, that will not state that "Mercury
and Venus revolve on their axes in the same time that they
revolve around the sun," which is another way of saying that
"they have no axial rotation, always presenting the same face to
the sun," and an inaccurate way of presenting the truth. The
screw that holds the tire at the outer end of the spoke does not
revolve "once on its axis" each time the wheel revolves. Run a
cane through an orange and swing it around; the orange has not
revolved "once on its axis." Nor does the stone in a sling
revolve "once on its axis" for each revolution around the hand.
The motion of Mercury is identically that of the impaled orange
or the stone in the sling. It has no axis and no axial rotation.
The modern astronomers, detected in pretenses to knowledge they
never possessed, let themselves down easy.
This "discovery," of no axial rotation by the interior planets,
made by Schiaparelli and confirmed by Flammarion in 1894, has
since been fully verified by our Western astronomers. All the
new astronomies accept it. But the admission of astronomical
"error," to speak politely, comes too late for the student it
turned back from his study of Eastern physics. He cannot regain
his lost faith and lost ground.
Thirty years ago Proctor made it clear to Western students that
the orbit of the moon was a cycloidal curve (a drawn-out spring)
around the sun, the earth's orbit being coincident with its axis;
and that the moon was, astronomically and correctly, a satellite
of the sun, not a satellite of the earth. This has been the
Eastern view and teaching from time immemorial.
The Eastern distinction between father Sun and mother Moon, and
the classification of the latter as a planet, did not disturb the
Western student. He understood that. It was the "absolute
accuracy" of modern astronomers in regard to the length of the
day on Mercury or Venus, which the astronomers declared had
been corrected down to the fraction of a second, that made it
impossible for him to accept the Eastern physics when the latter
squarely contradicted his own.
This was but the first of many similar stumbling-blocks in the
path of the student of Eastern physics.
"Few were the followers, straggling far,
That reached the lake of Vennachar;"
and when they did, this was what they had to face:
"The planets absorb and use nearly all the solar energy--all
except the very small amount the minor specks of cosmic dust may
receive. There is not the least particle of the sun's light, or
heat, or any one of the seven conditions of the solar energy,
wasted. Except for the planets, it is not manifested; it is
not. There is no light, no heat, no form of solar energy, except
on the planets as it is transferred from the laya center of each
in the sun to them. The etheric globe is cold and dark, except
along the lines to them--the "Paths of Fohat" [solar energy].
Six laya centers are manifested in the sun; one is laid aside,
though the wheels [planets] around the One Eye be seven. [This
alludes to the moon, whose laya center in the sun is now also
that of the earth; but it is considered as a planet]. What each
receives, that it also gives back. There is nothing lost."
"That settles it," says one student; and the others agree. Of
the hundred who started,
"The foremost horseman rode alone,"
before the next step was won.
In the light of the tardy but perfect justification of the first
stumbling-block, this statement may be worth following out, "to
see what it means," and how "absurd" it can be. An etheric
globe; cold as absolute zero, dark as Erebus, with here and
there small pencils of light and heat from the sun to the planets
--just rays, and nothing more--is a very different one from the
fiery furnace at absolute zero of the modern physicist.
On a line drawn from the center of the earth to the center of the
moon there is a point where the "weights" of the two bodies are
said in our physics exactly to balance, and it lies, says our
physics, "2,900 miles from the center of the earth, and 1,100
miles from the surface." This is the earth's "laya center" of
the Eastern physics. It is of great importance in problems of
life; but it may be passed over for the present.
Between the earth and the sun--precisely speaking, between this
laya center and the sun--there is a "point of balance," which
falls within the photosphere of the sun. This point in the sun
is the earth's solar laya, the occult or hidden earth of the
metaphysics.
A diagram will make this clearer. Draw a line from the laya
center in the sun to that in the earth. Draw a narrow ellipse,
with this line as its major axis, and shade it. At each end of
the axis strike the beginning of an ellipse that will be tangent.
If positive energy is along the shaded ellipse, negative energy
is in each field beyond--earth and sun. This is a very crude
illustration of a fundamental statement elaborated to the most
minute detail in explanation of all astronomical phenomena; but
for the moment it will do.
The point is that along this axial line connecting the
laya centers play all the seven solar forces--light, heat,
electricity, etc.--that affect the earth, and on every side of
this line is the "electric field" of these forces. To this line
any escaping solar energy is drawn, as the electricity of the air
is drawn to a live wire or magnet. But there is little or none
to escape. From the laya point in the sun to the laya point in
the earth, the solar energy is transferred as sound is carried
along a beam of light (photophone), or electricity from one point
to another without a wire.
To the advanced student of electricity the ancient teaching is
easily apprehended; to others it is difficult to make clear.
These laya centers, it says, are "the transforming points of
energy." From the earth laya to the solar laya centre, the
energy, we may say, is positive; beyond both the solar and the
earth laya centre, in the fields touching at them, it is negative
--or vice versa. The line connecting the layas is the "Path of
Fohat"--the personification of solar energy.
This is a very crude and brief way of putting many pages of
teaching, but the important point is that this line between the
layas is one of solar energy, with a dynamic "field" of solar
energy, elliptical in shape, connecting with the reverse fields
at the laya points. These "dead points" are the limits of each
electric field, which "create", we say in electrical work,
opposing fields beyond them.
Each one of these planets has its laya centre inside the sun's
photosphere. Each planet has a line of solar energy with its
"field" of solar energy--not only a wireless telegraph, but a
wireless lighting, heating, and life-giving system. These six
solar laya points are the six "hidden planets," the earth and
moon being one, of the ancient metaphysics. The moon is the one
"laid aside." In their reception of energy from the sun, it is
as if the planet were at the solar laya point, or connected with
it by a special pipe-line. The position of these six planetary
laya points in the sun is indicated by the position of the
planets in the heavens, and they may often influence or modify
one another. If Mars, Jupiter, or Saturn is anywhere near
conjunction with the earth, not only will a part of their
"fields" be joined, but their laya points in the sun will be
modified.
The physical basis of the old astrology was the physical
interferences of these fields of solar energy; and what it
depended on mainly in its work was the position of the six hidden
planets, or laya centers, which was shown by the position of the
planet with reference to the earth. That the planets themselves
affected any one or anything on this earth, no real astrologer
ever believed; that their position in the heavens indicated
certain changes and modifications of the flow of solar energy to
the earth, they knew from their knowledge of physics. "The
twelve houses are in the sun," says Hermes, "six in the north and
six in the south." Connect them with the zodiac, and the
position of the planets shows the interferences of the solar
currents.
The one objection to this ancient theory is that it does not
present enough difficulties. The present value to science of the
many theories in relation to the sun is the impossibility of
reconciling any two of them, and the fact that no two theorists
can unite to pummel a third. This ancient theory does not call
for any great amount of heat, light, or energy in any condition
to keep the Cosmos in order--not even enough for two persons to
quarrel over. It merely turns the sun into a large dynamo
connected with smaller dynamos, and these with one another with
return currents by which "there is nothing lost." In its
details, it accounts for all facts--neatly, simply, and without
exclamation points. It is so simple and homespun, so lacking in
the gaudiness that makes (for example) our light and heat less
than the billionth part wasted on space always at absolute zero,
that we may have to wait many centuries to have it "verified" and
"confirmed" by our Western Science. That it will be "verified"
in time, even as the first stumbling-block has been removed at
the end of the nineteenth century, its students may at least
hope.
The lesson, if there is one, is that the Western student of
Eastern physics does not ride an auto along asphalted roads.
He must own himself and not be owned by another man, or even
by "Modern Science."