Matter and Ether

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.