Etheric double

“ It will thus be seen that in the successive stages of his progress from earth-life to the heaven-world, man casts off and leaves to slow disintegration no less than three corpses – the dense physical body, the etheric double, and the astral vehicle – all of which are by degrees resolved into their constituent elements and their matter utilized anew on their respective planes by the wonderful chemistry of Nature. ”

“ Today we know that the ether is matter, the same as our own, only finer and rarer and in much more rapid vibration. We know that this ether has its solids, liquids and gases formed from molecules of its atoms, even as our own are formed. We know that its atoms combine as ours do, and while we have but eighty elementary combinations, it must have more than double the number. We know that every form and shape and combination of these elements from this plane flows from inherited tendencies having their root in the etheric world. ”

“ The "man", using the word in the sense of personality, as it is used in the latter half of this sentence, is only [22] conditionally immortal; the true man, the evolving God, releases himself, and so much of the personality goes with him as has raised itself into union with the divine.
The body thus left to the rioting of the countless lives—previously held in constraint by Prâna, acting through its vehicle the etheric double—begins to decay, that is to break up, and with the disintegration of its cells and molecules, its particles pass away into other combinations. ”

“ This view of human life is an essential part of the Esoteric Philosophy. Man is primarily divine, a spark of the Divine Life. This living flame, passing out from the Central Fire, weaves for itself coverings within which it dwells, and thus becomes the Triad, the Atmâ-Buddhi-Manas, the reflection of the Immortal Self. This sends out its Ray, which becomes encased in grosser matter, in the desire body, or kâmic elements, the passional nature, and in the etheric double and the physical body. ”

“ In ordinary life we are as little conscious of one of these pressures as we are of the other, but nevertheless they both exist, and if science were able to exhaust the ether from a given space, as it can exhaust the air, the one could be proved as readily as the other. The difficulty of doing that lies in the fact that matter in the etheric condition freely interpenetrates matter in all states below it, so that there is as yet no means within the knowledge of our physicists by which any given body of ether can be isolated from the rest. ”

“ Therefore we have an unlimited field for our imagination to play about in. Then, if we further reflect that all forms are built up of denser or finer aggregations of ether, and that what determines the generic form of anything is its cosmic soul, or the generating principle of the class to which it belongs, it follows that this soul must have a corresponding form, however inconceivably fine may be the etheric condensation which thus differentiates it from other souls, and prevents it from all being mixed up together in an indistinguishable mass. ”

“ These particles of ether, therefore, when too closely impinged upon by their neighbours, resent the impact, and in doing so initiate etheric whirlwinds, from whose vast perturbances stupendous drifts set out. In their gigantic power these avalanches crush the particles which impede them, force the resisting medium out of its normal stage, destroy the homogeneity of its constituents, and mass them into individualistic communities whose vibrations play with greater freedom when they synchronise. ”

“ It appears to me, that such instances as those I have mentioned, point to ranges of etheric action beyond those ordinarily recognized by physical science, but the principle seems to be the same, and it is for this reason that I have taken the modern scientific theory of etheric vibration as our starting-point. The universe is one great whole, and the laws of one part cannot contradict those of another ”

“ All things on this etheric world were caused by the harmonic vibration between the etheric atoms and their surrounding envelopes, except that while all things in this etheric world must have life, not all need have mind. ”

“ When within this kinetic belt of the prana the etheric solar globes formed here and there, they were three fold, each atom of the new plane of matter having its surrounding envelope of prana- manasa—a specialization of the pranic world in which (what we call) force had been added to life and mind. The static ether, vibrating in each of its elements through one octave, divided into central core (our sun, and other suns) and outer covering, with a skin or belt of kinetic energy, "as above" which developed an etheric world. ”

“ The Etheric Theory of Matter.
§ 82. The analysis of matter has been carried a step further. A philosophical view of the Cosmos involves the assumption of an absolutely continuous and homogeneous medium filling all space, for an absolute vacuum is unthinkable, and if it were supposed that the stuff filling all space is of an atomic structure, the question arises, What occupies the interstices between its atoms? This ubiquitous medium is termed by the scientists of to-day “the Ether of Space.” Moreover, such a medium as the Ether is demanded by the phenomena of light. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I can only answer this question properly by entering into a progressive synthesis, starting on the rotating etheric centres that were fixed by the Creator with their attractive or accumulative power. If you ask what power it is that gives to each etheric atom its inconceivable velocity of rotation, or introductory impulse, I must answer that no finite mind will ever be able to conceive what it is. The philosophy of accumulation,” assimilation, Macvicar calls it, “is the only proof that such a power has been given. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Etheric Force.—Charley Edison hung to the gas-pipe with feet above the floor, and with a knife got a spark from the pipe he was hanging on. We now took the wire from the vibrator in one hand and stood on a block of paraffin eighteen inches square and six inches thick; holding a knife in the other hand, we drew sparks from the stove-pipe. We now tried the crucial test of passing the etheric current through the sciatic nerve of a frog just killed. Previous to trying, we tested its sensibility by the current from a single Bunsen cell. ”

“ CHAPTER IX STRENGTH OF THE ETHER To show that the ether cannot be the slight and rarefied substance which at one time, and indeed until quite lately, it was thought to be, it is useful to remember that not only has it to be the vehicle of light and the medium of all electric and magnetic influence, but also that it has to transmit the tremendous forces of gravitation. ”

“ This strange substance, ether, which pervades everything, surrounds everything, and penetrates all things, is mysterious, since it cannot be seen nor felt, nor made known to the human senses in any way; colourless, odourless, and intangible in every way, its properties are only known through the things that it accomplishes that are beyond the powers of the known elements. Ether has been compared by one writer to jelly which, filling all space, serves as a setting for the planets, moons, and stars, and, in fact, all solid substances ”

“ The particles embedded in the ether are not independent of it, they are closely connected with it, it is probable that they are formed out of it : they are not like grains of sand suspended in water; they seem more like minute crystals in a mother liquor. ”

“ This measurable speed, says Sir Oliver Lodge, gives the ether away, and shows its finite character.
It seems as if the theory of the ether must be true, because it fits in so well with the enigmatic, contradictory, incomprehensible character of the universe as revealed to our minds. We can affirm and deny almost anything of the ether—that it is immaterial, and yet the source of all material; that it is absolutely motionless, yet the cause of all motion; that it is the densest body in nature, and yet the most rarified; that it is everywhere, but defies detection ”

“ But when we [251] seek the cause of this pressure, it forever eludes us. Here then the system stands self-convicted of impotence to exercise its prime prerogative. At whatever point in the infinite series of descending orders of aether we stop, the secret of its power is ever one step backward. We must still "conceive of the existence of another order of aether having the same relation to it" that it had to the preceding. And that no possible, element of embarrassment may be wanting to our conception, the first tether is absolutely "continuous," without atoms and without interstices ! ”

“ Wherefore? what win I from the gods by prayer?
Orestes:
This, that thine eyes behold thy heart's desire.
Electra:
On whom of mortals know'st thou that I call?
Orestes:
I know thy yearning for Orestes deep.
Electra:
Say then, wherein event hath crowned my prayer?
Orestes:
I, I am he; seek not one more akin.
Electra:
Some fraud, O stranger, weavest thou for me?
Orestes:
Against myself I weave it, if I weave.
Electra:
Ah, thou hast mind to mock me in my woel
Orestes:
'Tis at mine own I mock then, mocking thine.
Electra:
Speak I with thee then as Orestes' self? ”

“ With the ether such a scheme is quite impossible, for the very evident reason that there are no different things to have relation with each other. Every part is just like every other part. Where there are no differences and no distinctions there can be no relations. The ether is quite harmonic without relations. ”

“ The mode of connection between the particles and the ether is not known: it is earnestly being sought: but the fact that therein a connection has been known a long time. We know it, because a particle cannot quiver, or inner, without disturbing the medium in which it is. A boat cannot oscillate on the surface of water without sending off waves; a bell cannot vibrate in air without sending out waves of sound; a particle cannot vibrate in ether without sending out waves of light.
So the second thing to learn about the ether is its property of conveying light. ”

“ It will be remembered that I have myself assumed what we may term an ether. I have spoken of a subtle influence which we know to be ever in attendance upon matter, although becoming manifest only through matter's heterogeneity. To this influence—without daring to touch it at all in any effort at explaining its awful nature—I have referred the various phænomena of electricity, heat, light, magnetism; and more—of vitality, consciousness, and thought—in a word, of spirituality. It will be seen, at once, then, that the ether thus conceived is radically distinct from the ether of the astronomers ”

“ To say that the ether fills all space, penetrates the densest matter, and gives rise by emanation to the whole phenomenal universe, and yet that it is nothing is nonsense, but that it is no-thing is perfectly true. The ether is to the phenomenal universe what the 0 is to the mathematician, nothing in itself and yet from association, implication or involution, it enters into every form and quantity. Oken has shown84 that there are really two zeros, or that zero exists as 0+ and 0-, and even here begins the science of symbolism in the ancient Mathesis. ”

“ The evidence certainly points to the conclusion that matter is some sort of singularity in the ether, probably a stress centre. We have been too much accustomed to think of the ether as something excessively light and quite the reverse of massive or dense, in which it appears we have been wrong. Sir Oliver Lodge calculates that the density of the ether is far greater than that of the most dense forms of matter; not that matter is to be thought of as a rarefaction of the ether, for the ether within matter is as dense as that without. ”

“ The door bursts open, and Orestes and Electra come forth in disorder. Attendants bring out the bodies of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus.
Leader.
Lo, yonder, in their mother's new-spilt gore
Red-garmented and ghastly, from the door
They reel. . . . O horrible! Was it agony
Like this, she boded in her last wild cry?
There lives no seed of man calamitous,
Nor hath lived, like this seed of Tantalus.
Orestes.
O Dark of the Earth, O God,
⁠Thou to whom all is plain;
Look on my sin, my blood,
⁠This horror of dead things twain:
Gathered as one they lie
Slain ”