Ancient and Modern Physics by Thomas E. Willson (the giving tree read aloud TXT) 📖

"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.

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