Charles Webster Leadbeater

“ I do not know whether in such cases the disintegrated physical atoms re-form themselves; but in our experiments, when by an effort of the will the physical atom is broken up into astral or mental atoms, it means only that for a moment the human will is set against the divine will which formed that atom. It requires a distinct effort to hold the atom temporarily in a different form, and the moment that the human will is withdrawn the divine will re-asserts itself and the physical atom is there once more. This, however, seems to apply only to the breaking up of the ultimate atoms of the plane ”

“ Astronomy tells us that the distance between solar systems is so enormous as to be out of all proportion to the systems themselves. It is nevertheless probable that the LOGOI of those systems are actually in touch with one another, and that the solar system existing in the centre of each of these inconceivably vast spheres represents the condensation of matter which was originally scattered throughout the whole of that prodigious area, in a condition of the minutest possible subdivision — perhaps in the condition of the ultimate bubbles which are atoms of our highest plane. ”

“ A man has a causal body on the atomic mental plane, but the mental atoms composing it will be crushed together by attraction into a very definite and quite dense shape, even though they are in no way altered in themselves, and are not grouped into molecules. Such a body could exist comfortably on its own atomic plane in the neighbourhood of a planet, where the atomic matter is in the compressed condition ”

“ You have seen how on a sandy shore a little wave comes quietly in, runs up on the sand and retires. But it has left behind it a tiny ridge to mark its limit. If the tide is rising, the next wave which comes in goes a little further up the beach, makes its mark in turn and then retires. ”

“ A force from outside — a ray of light for example — will set the atom as a whole moving violently up and down, the phase of this movement being proportional to the intensity of the light, and its wave-length being determined by the colour of the light. ”

“ Though the atoms of the various planes as we descend are thus not made directly from one another it is nevertheless true that the atoms of the lower planes could not be made as they are unless the bubbles of which they are composed had already had the experience of passing through all the others above. The atom of the second plane already consists of forty-nine of these bubbles, and the atom of the third or nirvanic plane of two thousand four hundred and one. ”

“ At a certain stage in that condensation or compressed — a stage when the radius of His globe still extent far beyond the orbit of the outermost planet of our system as it is to-day — He sets up within it a whirling motion accompanied by intense electrical action, thus making a kind of colossal vortex in many dimensions. The compression of the whirling mass is continued through what to us would be untold ages, in the course of which He breathes the seven breaths of which we have previously spoken, and thereby groups the bubbles into the atomic matter of the various planes. ”

“ No two of these bubbles ever under any circumstances touch each other.
The drawing of the physical atom which is given in the frontispiece to The Ancient Wisdom is not quite accurate; it is far too flat — too much like a locket in appearance. The drawing given in Occult Chemistry is far better. The atom in reality is nearly globular, and its projecting points lie almost on the surface of a sphere. ”

“ There is some reason to believe that what the scientific people call electrons may be what we call astral atoms, for they have said that in a chemical atom of hydrogen there are probably somewhere between seven hundred and a thousand of these electrons. ”