Alchemist Sample No.5 Painting

To astral vision ether is a visible thing, and is seen permeating all substances and encircling every particle. A “solid” body is a body composed of a vast number of particles suspended in ether, each vibrating backwards and forwards in a particular field at a high rate of velocity; the particles are attracted towards each other more strongly than they are attracted by external influences, and they “cohere,” or maintain towards each other a definite relation in space. Closer examination shows that the ether is not homogeneous but consists of particles of numerous kinds, differing in the aggregations of the minute bodies composing them; and a careful and more detailed method of analysis reveals that it has four distinct degrees, giving us, with the solid, liquid and gaseous, seven instead of four substates of matter in the physical world. These four etheric substates will be best understood if the method be explained by which they were studied. This method consisted of taking what is called an atom of gas, and breaking it up time after time, until what proved to be the ultimate physical atom was reached, the breaking up of this last resulting in the production of astral, and no longer physical matter. A partial analogy may be found in the position of the astronomer with regard to the stellar universe, or let us say the Milky Way. He can observe its constituent parts and learn a good deal about them along various lines, but it is absolutely impossible for him to see it as a whole from outside, or to form any certain conception of its true shape, and to know what it really is. Suppose that the universe is, as many of the ancients thought, some inconceivably vast Being, it is utterly impossible for us, here in the midst of it, to know what that Being is or is doing, for that would mean raising ourselves to a height comparable with His; but we may make extensive and detailed examination of such particles of His body as happen to be within our reach, for that means only the patient use of powers and machinery already at our command. Let it not be supposed that, in thus unfolding a little more of the wonders of Divine Truth by pushing our investigations to the very farthest point at present possible to us, we in any way alter or modify all that has been written in theosophical books of the shape and constitution of the physical atom, and of the wonderful and orderly arrangements by which it is grouped into the various chemical molecules; all this remains entirely unaffected. Nor is any change introduced as regards the three outpourings from the Logos, and the marvellous facility with which the matter of the various planes is by them moulded into forms for the service of the evolving life. But if we wish to have a right view of the realities underlying manifestation in this universe, we must to a considerable extent reverse the ordinary conception as to what this matter essentially is. Instead of thinking of its ultimate constituents as solid specks floating in a void, we must realise that it is the apparent void itself which is solid, and that the specks are but bubbles on it. That fact once grasped, all the rest remains as before. The relative position of what we have hitherto called matter and force is still for us the same as ever; it is only that, on closer examination, both of these conceptions prove to be variants of force, the one ensouling combinations of the other, and the real “matter,” koilon, is seen to be something which has hitherto been altogether outside our scheme of thought. In view of this marvellous distribution of Himself in “space,” the familiar concept of the “sacrifice of the Logos” takes on a new depth and splendour; this is His “dying in matter,” His “perpetual sacrifice,” and it may be the very glory of the Logos that He can sacrifice Himself to the uttermost by thus permeating and making Himself one with that portion of koilon which He chooses as the field of His universe. What koilon is, what its origin, whether it is itself changed by the Divine Breath which is poured into it—does “Dark Space” thus become “Bright Space” at the beginning of a manifestation?—these are questions to which we cannot at present even indicate answers. Perchance an intelligent study of the great Scriptures of the world may yield replies.