It is the perfected differentiation of the Buddhi in manasa that causes the formation of the pranic globes, which have chains of four and strings of five, and the full and perfect differentiation of the Atma in manasa-prana that causes the formation of the etheric globes, which have chains of six and strings of six. Consciousness, Buddhi and Atma are practically the same as the manasa, prana, and ether, each to each, only the latter are differentiated and the former are not.
Each of the three astral globes is the reflection in matter of the three spiritual globes beyond, each to each, and all to all.
The difference between matter and spirit is a difference in Motion only. Both are vibrating, so that both are in mechanical motion, from force without, like the waves of the ocean, but only the matter has what we may properly call motion of its own, or that produced from within--from the atom and each organism of it up to the ALL, as the vibration is from the ALL down to the atom.
It is this centre of force in an atom, this motion outside of vibration, or rather beside it, which we call "differentiation."
Brinton"s "daring psychological speculation" that "mind was coextensive with motion" (from organization) was but a repet.i.tion of one of the most ancient axioms.
Take our solar etheric globe. It has two other globes of matter, consubstantial; a globe of prana and a globe of manasa. They are not beyond it, or beside it, but one with it, atom for atom.
But what are they in reality? Globes of Atma, Buddhi, and Consciousness in which the atoms, having organized, are in motion, are they not?
Let this motion in this material universe cease, and matter would melt away and resolve into spirit. From spirit it came, to spirit it belongs, and to spirit it returns.
Behind each and every astral globe, whether the globe be but an astral atom, or an astral planet, or an astral world; beyond its physics there is a meta-physical globe, its cause, and that is the real globe, of which the astral is but a temporary phenomenon. Take a spiritual globe and differentiate it. The Motion resulting produces a material astral globe. Stop the motion; bring it to a state of rest. The astral shadow disappears. It was merely spiritual phenomena.
Each and every astral atom is a model in miniature of the material and spiritual universe. Each and every prakritic atom is the joint result of spirit and matter united and working together--of physics and metaphysics; and in its last a.n.a.lysis pure spirit; pure metaphysics.
Behind each and every prakritic atom of our earth there are six other atoms (or globes), three material shadows and three spiritual realities, so that it is a string of seven--the whole universe in miniature--material and spiritual. And all things combined and formed on a prakritic base are a chain of seven --whether a peach or a planet.
The "chain" belongs to the prakritic plane. The lines of descent from the Light through the star and sun to planet are "strings."
The "chains" are beads of the same size strung on a thread. The strings are beads of different sizes strung on a thread. The beads of the chain are in coadunition--in the same s.p.a.ce, as gas in water and the water in a sponge.
In metaphysics this earth can only be regarded as a chain of seven globes, its three astral globes in coadunition having their three spiritual doubles. Of course no one of the higher globes can be seen by the prakritic eye, but that is not to say the astral world cannot be seen by the astral eye in sleep, or by the person who qualifies himself for the astral world, through the development of his astral body. "No upper globes of any chain in the solar system can be seen," says H.P. Blavatsky in the Secret Doctrine (vol. I, p. 187), yet she means by astronomers, not by sages. And she does not mean the upper globes in the stellar system of Alcyone and its companions.
In pure physics the earth can only be regarded as a chain of four globes consubstantial and in coadunition--four in and three out.
This makes seven, and the metaphysician when talking physics uses the metaphysical terms interchangeably and speaks of "the chain of seven globes" meaning in one sentence the four material globes making this earth; in another meaning the line of descent or string of beads of different sizes reaching down from the Divine Consciousness; and in still another the seven beads or globes of the same size in coadunition to form this earth chain. To the student who is thoroughly grounded in the eastern physics this interweaving of the physical and metaphysical presents no difficulties; but to the western mind just beginning the study it is a tangle.
We can now see what is meant by illusion, or Maya, and understand why such stress is laid upon it by every teacher.
Take the physical side first. The motion of a top gives it bands of color to our eyes that it does not have at rest. They are temporary and not permanent, a result of motion merely; illusion and not reality.
The motion of the material atoms of the four planes, in harmony with their vibration, a motion the spiritual world does not have, produces all material phenomena. This is of course within the kinetic belts, for above or below them there is no change, and its phenomena are the mere change in relation of one atom to another caused by motion. The changes are not real. They disappear when the motion stops. They have no existence in matter above or below the belt.
All phenomena of every kind are as much an illusion as the supposed bands of colour around the top. The illusion is the result of changes of relation in differentiated atoms caused by their motion. Without this motion the four material globes would dissolve into the atomic dust of the manasic world, with all that is within them. The whole material universe is all illusion; a mere temporary relation of its atoms through motion, without Reality or permanence.
What then is real? What is not illusion? That which is beyond the physical, that which is its cause and root; broadly, the metaphysical, which is not the result of differentiated atoms through relation. What was real in the top is real here. What was illusion in the top is illusion here.
The meta-physical or spiritual (the terms are interchangeable) does not have to pa.s.s beyond the manasic globe to get on the solid ground of reality. The spiritual world is here in every physical atom and in every aggregation of them; in every planet, sun, and star; for they are seven, each and every one, not four.
Behind the illusion of one atom or many, whether here or on Alcyone, there is reality and permanency in the undifferentiated cause, the spiritual archetype, the three higher beads on the string which are the proper study of metaphysics.
Chapter Eleven
Stumbling Blocks in Eastern Physics
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 pa.s.sed 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...o...b..t 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 cla.s.sification 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 pa.s.sed 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 ill.u.s.tration 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.