Ancient and Modern Physics Part 4

"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 the ellipse in which the earth actually moves comes from varying attraction and repulsion. Kepler's second law covers that.

"If the orbital speed of the earth were a mile less per hour, or even a foot less, then the earth would wind up around the sun as a dog gets wound up with his chain around a tree. If this speed were a mile more per hour, then the earth would wind out, each year getting farther and farther away, until finally it would be lost. When the speed is exactly proportional to the pull--that is, when it is as 1.6 is to 2,--the result is a circular orbit, the eccentricity of which is caused by certain fluctuations in the attraction and repulsion.

"Suppose a planet were to be placed so that it would have a time of two years. Its distance from the sun would be 1.6 that of the earth. Why? Because to get the time doubled we would have to take the square root of 4; and to get the distance the cube root of the same number, 4. If you wish to be very exact the cube root is 1.5889, but 1.6 is near enough for all ordinary work.

"If you wanted to find out the distance of a planet revolving in six months you would divide the earth's distance by 1.6.

"In proportion you get any time or distance you may desire with absolute accuracy. The distance of any planet from the sun gives its time, or its time gives its distance--when that of any of the others is known. This law applies throughout the universe; in everything and everywhere. It is not a law of orbital revolution alone, but a law of all motion.

"Our moon has a time of 29 days and a speed of about 50,000 miles per day. If the speed were greater it would leave us, if less it would wind up, falling to the earth in the form of a spiral.

"At what distance would it have to be to have a time of fourteen days? Divide 240,000 miles by 1.6. A seven-day moon, would be 1.6 that distance. And the exact distance for a one-day moon, for a moon that would always be in the same place in the heavens, moving as the earth revolved on its axis, would be about 24,998 miles.

"This gives us the line of 24-hour axial rotation, the true surface of the earth, and the sheer-line of prakritic matter.

Beyond that line is the ether; within that line is prakriti.

"It is the line of no weight, where gravity and apergy exactly balance. Inside that line gravity exceeds apergy and everything revolving in less time, or that time, must fall to the centre.

It is the true surface of any 24-hour globe of this size and weight. A moon to revolve around the earth in less than one day must move faster than the earth to develop enough apergy to overcome the attraction. That phenomenon we see in the moons of Mars, which are within its atmosphere; within the planet itself.

"We of the East learned this true size of the earth over six thousand years ago, from observing the moons of Jupiter. The times of the first three are doubled. We asked ourselves what this meant and found that their distance was increased by the cube root of 4 when their times were increased by the square root of 4; that time was to distance as 1.6 was to 2. Then we applied the key, and found it unlocked many mysteries.

"The first lesson this taught us was that we did not live on the earth, but within the earth, at the line of liquid and gaseous changes, where the three forms of matter meet and mingle and interchange with each other. We lived at the bottom of a gaseous ocean 21,000 miles above us, and 4,000 miles from the centre of the globe. It gave us an entirely new conception of the earth, and of our place in it.

"We saw that we lived in a narrow belt, or skin, of the earth, not more than 100 miles thick, perhaps not more than ten miles.

Within this belt the prakritic elementary substances varied their condition, combined, and made forms by increasing or decreasing vibration. It was the creative and destructive zone, the evolutionary "mother"--the liquid level of the prakriti--the seat of all physical phenomena. Fifty miles above, the ma.s.ses of nitrogen and oxygen and argon were too cold to change their rate of vibration. Fifty miles below the surface of the earth all things were too hot for changes in vibration. In this kinetic belt, between two static ma.s.ses our bodies had been made, and also, in all probability, all combinations of the elementary substances. It was four thousand miles to the centre of the static prakritic ma.s.s beneath us; twenty-one thousand miles to the surface of the static prakritic ma.s.s above us, and the small kinetic belt between was only one hundred miles thick. But we had one consolation, the prakriti we had was all kinetic, and the best in the whole ma.s.s.

"The second lesson it taught us was that as the earth had been made in the etheric globe, in a corresponding skin or plane of kinetic etheric energy, with our ether the best of the solar output, that we ourselves were subject through our ether to the phenomena of that kinetic solar plane in precisely the same way we now are to the phenomena of the kinetic prakritic plane. Once rid of the fallacious notion that we were creatures of the surface of the earth, once clearly conscious that we were creatures of the interior, of the bottom of this gaseous ocean, then we could understand not only how the earth could be created in this etheric globe, but how we could be creatures of the solar globe living on it.

"When we learned that lesson, and learned it well, it dawned upon us that we were living in the pranic globe at the same kinetic level or plane of that globe, the line where its solids and liquids and gases mingled and pa.s.sed from one state to another, the kinetic belt in which our solar globe has been made, and that we were living as truly on that globe as we were on this prakritic globe. Our position on each globe was the same.

"And then the great truth came that we lived in the manasic globe, at the same kinetic level; and that we lived our lives on the four globes simultaneously. Our bodies are fourfold. Every atom is fourfold, ready to respond in our minds to the vibrations of the Manasic world, in our vitality to the pranic vibrations of the pranic world, in our nerves to the etheric vibrations of the etheric world, and in our prakriti to vibrations of the prakritic world. Each one of our bodies lived on its own earth globe, for there were four globes of this earth--in coadunition--in its corresponding kind of globe.

"The four earth globes became one globe, as our four bodies were one body; and the chain of four kinds of globes in matter became one globe, as the manasic with the others on it.

"These four kinds of globes were the beginning and the end of matter, as we distinguish and know matter. They were not the end of vibration; or of planes of vibration; or of realms beyond this material universe; but they were the limits of all that is common to each and every atom of this lower plane of vibration.

"It is upon this solid and perfect foundation of physics, that accounts for and explains every kind of phenomena, we have constructed our metaphysics. All that belongs to these four lower planes we consider and treat as physics. All that relates to the planes beyond we consider metaphysics. Can you teach a child equation of payments before he knows the first four rules?

You would not attempt such a task. The first four rules are the physics of arithmetic; all beyond is the metaphysics of arithmetic. It flows out of them. Can you comprehend our system of metaphysics until you have clearly and completely mastered our physics? Would you not get into a fog at the very start?

"There can be no system of metaphysics without a solid foundation of physics. The idea is unthinkable. The one grows out of the other. It is its life; its fruit, its flower.

"You have no western system of physics. Your physics are without form and void; patchwork, constantly changing. There is no substantial foundation for any system of metaphysics. What you say or do in physics is fragmentary or chaotic.

"It is perfectly true, so far as you have gone through the first invisible world of ether, you are much more masters of detail than we are.

"We have not cared particularly for the minor details by which explosives are made, or metals obtained from oxides. We have preferred to push on into realms beyond as fast as we could, seeking first the Kingdom of Heaven and its Righteousness, knowing that when it was found all these things would be added unto us."

Chapter Seven

The Four Globes

That we live in the earth, not on the earth, is one of the most important of the facts of eastern physics in the study of its metaphysics. The mathematical and physical proof that the physical earth is 50,000 miles in diameter should not be pa.s.sed over lightly in our haste to get on, for the perfect understanding of all this fact implies makes easy the comprehension of how we live etherically in the solar etheric globe, of how we live pranically in the stellar pranic globe, and how we live manasically in the manasic globe.

As we live within the narrow "skin" of phenomena, not more than 100 miles thick, of this prakritic globe, with the whole earth within the corresponding skin of phenomena of the solar etheric globe, within the kinetic belt in which it was made, the ether which surrounds each prakritic molecule is not merely any and every kind of ether, but that particular kind of kinetic ether, which, by changing its rate of vibration through an octave, creates phenomena. The ether of all prakritic matter belongs to the kinetic or creative belt of the solar etheric globe. It is not static ether. The ether in our prakriti is in touch with all the prakritic kinetic ether of the solar globe, subject to all solar laws of change; and all our prak-solar laws of change; and all our prakritic matter, a mere detail of it, is a part of the solar phenomena. "Our father, the sun," or "Dyaus pitar"

("heavenly father"--Latin, Jupiter) meant more once than it does now. Then the solar globe was the first heaven, and to live under its laws, puttings off the coat of skin, was an object which men believed to be worth striving for. They recognized, as we do not, that our prakritic laws were not all they had to obey; that the higher law of the solar globe on which they lived, of which the lower prakritic laws were merely an outcome and detail, was worthy of the closest study. And they recognized that these higher laws of the etheric globe were metaphysical as well as physical; that our moral law flows out of the moral law of the solar etheric world, as our physics flow from and out of solar physics. Religion is correct in its a.s.sumption of this higher law of morals; incorrect only in its grasp and explanation.

Science is correct in holding only in its a.s.sumption that it is physical science; incorrect only in its a.s.sumption that it is physical science of this plane and globe only. There is no quarrel between science and religion when the full knowledge of one stands beside the full knowledge of the other. They are twin-sisters.

This solar-etheric globe in which we are interested revolves around Alcyone within that kinetic belt or skin of prana which is subject to phenomena or vibration through one octave--else it would never have been formed. All prana in the solar-etheric globe is of this particular kind of kinetic prana, which creates life of all kinds--which is subject to vibration through one octave. The solar globe is a detail of kinetic prana only, one of its phenomena. Necessarily, all our prana is of this kinetic kind, and our earth a minor detail of it in the Alcyone globe.

All the changes and combinations possible in kinetic prana on the pranic globe are possible here, in our kinetic prana, as all the phenomena of the etheric world are possible here in our kinetic ether.

As our earth is a globe of ether and a globe of prana as well as a globe of prakriti; we are actually living on a small "cabbage"

of that pranic globe, and subject to all its laws.

In the vast manasic globe that includes this whole material universe there is the same kinetic belt or skin of "phenomena" or vibration similar to that kinetic belt in which we live on the earth, and the manasa which permeates the Alcyonic globe, the solar globe, and the earth is that kinetic manasa which is involving and evolving. This involving and evolving kinetic manasa of the Alcyonic globe is that which surrounds every atom of ether of the solar globe and every atom of prakriti of this earth globe. In the great manasic globe this earth of ours is a minute village of Helios (sun) county, in the state of Alcyone.

We are actually and literally living in this manasic globe precisely as we live in this earth, and as in the village we are subject to all the laws of the manasic world, we can study them here in this village as well as we could elsewhere. We can study them as easily as we study our prakritic village laws, or our etheric county laws, for all the forms of manasa subject to them anywhere are here with us. We are not limited to a study of the prakritic laws of the village fathers, nor yet to the etheric laws of the supervisors of Helios county, as scientists say, nor even to the state laws of Alcyone; only the manasic laws of the Universe limit our material studies in that direction. As some men on this earth never leave their native village and never know or care for any matters outside of it, so in this little earth village, in the kinetic belt of the manasic globe, there are men who do not care to know anything which relate to matters outside its boundaries. As some men may pa.s.s the boundaries of their village, but not of their county, caring only for the matters concerning it, so the western scientists of this earth village on the manasic globe do not pa.s.s the boundaries of Helios county, caring only for etheric matters. The philosophers and wise men of the East are broader minded and from time immemorial have taken greater interest in the pranic affairs of Alcyone and the manasic condition of the universe in which Alcyone is a state than in the rustic murmur of their village or the gossip of their county.

There is nothing lacking in our manasic earth-village, nothing that is in more abundant measure in our county, state, and nation. We are of the best.

We of this village may imagine, if we like, that there is nothing beyond the village limits, and nothing in it but that which relates to the village. We have the right to be silly, if we wish to be. And it is no sign of wisdom to say that there is a county beyond, but that the county boundaries end all, and only village and county politics may be studied. The European who believed--no Asiatic or African or American could have believed --that the earth rested on an elephant and the elephant on a turtle was wise, in comparison. Nor is it any sign of intelligence to say that we may learn something of the village and county while we live, but that to learn anything about the state and nation we must wait until we are dead. There are too many in the village who are familiar with both state and nation, and who have studied their laws, for this to be anything but idiotic.

Chapter Eight

The Battle Ground

Each and every one of our eighty-odd elementary substances owe their condition--whether solid, liquid, or gas--to their rate of vibration. We have reduced all gases to a liquid and nearly all to a solid form. Conversely, we have raised all solids to a liquid and nearly all to a gaseous condition. This has been done by reducing or raising the vibration of each within one octave --each one of the eighty odd having a special octave, a tone or half-tone different from any other. Normally, the solids, vibrating in the lower notes, gather together under Attraction; while the gases, vibrating in the higher notes, diffuse under Repulsion. Between them, created by the interchange of these two forces, is our "skin" of phenomena, or kinetics.

Broadly, the attraction of the universe comes from its vibration at certain centres in the three higher notes; the repulsion comes from its vibration everywhere else in the three higher notes. The central note, D of the scale, represents the battle ground between the field of kinetics. This in simple ill.u.s.tration is water turning into gas.