THEOSOPHY – THE WORD

ETHER

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The Fifth element, now advocated quite freely by Science, is not the Ether hypothesized by sir Isaac Newton – although he calls it by that name, having associated it in his mind probably with the Aether, “Father-Mother” of antiquity.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p13]

Occult Science has been teaching for ages that Akasa – of which Ether is the grossest form – the fifth universal Cosmic Principle (to which corresponds and from which proceeds human Manas) is, cosmically, a radiant, cool, diathermanous plastic matter, creative in its physical nature, correlative in its grossest aspects and portions, immutable in its higher [principles. In the former condition it is called the Sub-Root; and in conjunction with radiant heat, it recalls “dead worlds to life”. In its higher aspect it is the Soul of the World; in its lower – the DESTROYER.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p13fn]

One of the symbolic figures for the Dual creative power in Nature (matter and force on the material plane) is Padma, the waterlily of India. The Lotus is the product of heat (fire) and water (vapour or Ether); fire standing in every philosophical and religious system as a representation of the Spirit of Deity, the active male, generative principle; and Ether, or the Soul of matter, the light of the fire, for the passive female principle from which everything in this Universe emanated. Hence, Ether or Water is the Mother and Fire is the Father.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p57]

Svabhavat, the “Plastic Essence” that fills the Universe, is the root of all things. Svabhavat is, so to say, the Buddhistic concrete aspect of the abstraction called in Hindu philosophy Mulaprakriti. It is the body of the Soul, and that which Ether would be to Akasa, the latter being the informing principle of the former.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p61]

Prakriti is ever called Maya, illusion, and is doomed to disappear with the rest, the gods included, at the hour of the Pralaya; for it is shown that Akasa is not even the Ether, least of all then, we imagine, can it be the Astral Light. Those unable to penetrate beyond the dead letter of the Puranas, have occasionally confused Akasa with Prakriti, with Ether, and even with the visible Sky! It is true also that those who have invariably translated the term Akâsa by “Ether” ... have ignorantly imagined it to be “material”, in the physical sense.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p255]

“A characteristic of Akasa will serve to show how inadequately it is represented by Ether,” writes the author of Rational Refutations, thus unconsciously helping Occultism. “In dimension it is infinite; it is not made up of parts; and colour, taste, smell, and tangibility do not appertain to it. So far forth it corresponds exactly to time, space, Isvara, (“The Lord,” but rather creative potency and soul – anima mundi). Its speciality, as compared therewith, consists in its being the material cause of sound. Except for its being so, one might take it to be one with vacuity” (p. 120). The relations of Ether to Akasa may be defined by applying to both Akasa and Ether the words said of the god in the Vedas, “So himself was indeed (his own) son,” one being the progeny of the other and yet itself. This may be a difficult riddle to the profane, but very easy to understand for any Hindu – though not even a mystic.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p296-7fn]

But, as a Columbus was born to re-discover, and to force the Old World to believe in Antipodal countries, so will there be born scientists who will discover the marvels now claimed by Occultists to exist in the regions of Ether, with their varied and multiform denizens and conscious Entities. Then, nolens volens, Science will have to accept the old “Superstition,” as it has several others.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p297]

They are “myths,” we are told. “No more so than Ether and the Atoms,” we answer. The two latter are absolute necessities of physical science; the “Builders” are as absolute a necessity of metaphysics. We are twitted with: “You never saw them.” We ask the materialists: “Have you ever seen Ether, or your Atoms, or, again, your FORCE?”

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p339]

Not only “through space,” but filling every point of our solar system, for it is the physical residue, so to say, of Ether, its lining on our plane; Ether having to serve other cosmic and terrestrial purposes besides being the “agent” for transmitting light. It is the astral fluid or “Light” of the Kabalists, and the “Seven rays” of Sun-Vishnu.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p524fn]

Yet it is not Ether, but only one of the principles of Ether, the latter being itself one of the principles of Akasa.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p526fn]

Thus we find that Ether and elastic atoms are, in the alleged mechanical conception of the Universe, the Spirit and Soul of Kosmos, and that the theory – put it any way and under whatever disguise – always leaves a more widely opened issue for men of Science to speculate beyond the line drawn by modern materialism – or call it agnosticism rather, to be more correct – than the majority avails itself of. Atoms, Ether, or both, modern speculation cannot get out of the circle of ancient thought; and the latter was soaked through with archaic occultism.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p527-8]

The whole range of physical phenomena proceeds from the Primary of Ether – Akasa, as dual-natured Akasa proceeds from undifferentiated Chaos, so called, the latter being the primary aspect of Mulaprakriti, the root-matter and the first abstract Idea one can form of Parabrahman.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p536]

Herein lies the nucleus of error leading to all the resultant mistaken views. This “Nervous Ether” is the lowest principle of the Primordial Essence which is Life. It is animal vitality diffused in all nature and acting according to the conditions it finds for its activity. It is not an “animal product”,...

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p537]

At any rate it exists in all those mortals whose inner selves are primordially connected, by reason of their direct descent, with that group of Dhyani-Chohans who are called “the first-born of Ether”.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p559]

Forinstance, the mystical signification, alchemical and transcendental, of the many imponderable substances that fill interplanetary space, and which, interpenetrating each, are the direct cause, at the lower end, of the production of natural phenomena manifesting through vibration (so-called). The knowledge of the real (not the hypothetical) nature of Ether, or rather of the Akâsa, and other mysteries, in short, can alone lead to the knowledge of Forces....

The theories built upon the rejection of Force outside and independent of Matter pure and simple, have been all shown fallacious. They do not, and cannot, cover the ground, and many of the scientific data are thus proved unscientific. “Ether produced Sound” is said in the Puranas, and the statement is laughed at. It is the vibrations in the air, we are corrected. And what is air? Could it exist if there were no etheric medium in Space to buoy up its molecules? The case stands simply thus. Materialism cannot admit the existence of anything outside matter, because with the acceptance of an imponderable Force – the source and head of all the physical physical Forces – other intelligent Forces would have to be admitted virtually, and that would lead Science very far. For it would have to accept as a sequel the presence in Man of a still more spiritual power – entirely independent, for once, of any kind of matter physicists know anything about. Hence, apart from an hypothetical ether of Space and gross physical bodies, the whole Sidereal and unseen Space is, in the sight of the materialists, one boundless void in nature – blind, unintelligent, useless.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p587]

And now Science tells us that “the first-born element ... most nearly allied to protyle” ... would be “hydrogen ... which for some time would be the only existing form of matter” in the Universe. What says Old Science? It answers: Just so; but we would call hydrogen and oxygen (which instils the fire of life into the “Mother” by incubation) in the pregenetic and even pre-geological ages – the Spirit, the noumenon of that which becomes in its grossest form oxygen and hydrogen and nitrogen on Earth – nitrogen being of no divine origin, but merely an earth-born cement to unite other gases and fluids, and serve as a sponge to carry in itself the breath of LIFE – pure air. Before these gases and fluids become what they are in our atmosphere) they are interstellar Ether; still earlier and on a deeper plane – something else, and so on in infinitum.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p626]

The seven planets, or wandering spheres, have for supreme spirits Fortune and Destiny, who uphold the eternal stability of the laws of Nature throughout incessant transformation and perpetual agitation. The ether is the instrument or medium by which all is produced.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p672]

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The “Father” of primitive physical man, or of his body, is the vital electric principle residing in the Sun. The Moon is its Mother, because of that mysterious power in the Moon which has as decided an influence upon human gestation and generation, which it regulates, as it has on the growth of plants and animals. The “Wind” or Ether, standing in this case for the agent of transmission by which those influences are carried down from the two luminaries and diffused upon Earth, is referred to as the “nurse”; while “Spiritual Fire” alone makes of man a divine and perfect entity.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.II, p105]

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And we (the Occultists) say, that they [spirit pictures] are objective copies from subjective photographs impressed upon the ether of space, and constantly thrown out by our thoughts, words, and deeds... .

[C.W.IV, p65]

Thus “water,” the “hot and moyst principle” of the philosophers, is used to denote that which is not yet solid matter, or rather that which does not yet possess the solidity of matter, as we understand it. It is rendered rather more difficult by the use of the term “water” as a subsequent “element” in the series of ether, fire and air. But ether contains in itself all the others and their properties, and it is this ether which is the hypothetical agent of physical science: moreover it is the lowest form of Akasa, the one agent and universal element. Thus water is used here to denote matter in its precosmic state.

[C.W.X, p366]

Q. Is the Radiant Essence, Milky Way, or world-stuff, resolvable into atoms or is it non-atomic?
A. In its precosmic state it is of course non-atomic if by atoms you mean molecules; for the hypothetical atom, a mere mathematical point, is not material or application to matter, nor even to substance. The real atom does not exist on the material plane. The definition of a point as having position, must not, in Occultism, be taken in the ordinary sense of location; as the real atom is beyond space and time. The word molecular is really applicable to our globe and its plane, only: once inside of it, even on the other globes of our planetary chain, matter is in quite another condition, and non-molecular. The atom is in its eternal state invisible even to the eye of an Archangel; and becomes visible to the latter only periodically, during the life cycle. The particle, or molecule, is not, but exists periodically, and is therefore regarded as an illusion....

But the ether of which science has a suspicion, is the grossest manifestation of AkAsa, though on our plane, for us mortals, it is the seventh principle of the astral light, and three degrees higher than “radiant matter.” When it penetrates, or informs something, it may be molecular because it takes on the form of the latter, and its atoms inform the particles of that “something.” We may perhaps call matter “crystallised ether.”

Q. But what is an atom, in fact?
A. An atom may be compared to (and is for the Occultist) the seventh principle of a body or rather of a molecule. The physical or chemical molecule is composed of an infinity of finer molecules and these in their turn of innumerable and still finer molecules. Take for instance a molecule of iron and so resolve it that it becomes non-molecular; it is then, at once transformed into one of its seven principles, viz., its astral body; the seventh of these is the atom. The analogy between a molecule of iron, before it is broken up, and this same molecule after resolution, is the same as that between a physical body before and after death. The principles remain minus the body. Of course this is occult alchemy, not modern chemistry.

[C.W.X, p370-1]

If we understand correctly this “something permeable and interprenetrating” all and everywhere, it is Akasa, whose lowest form is the Ether of Space, the latter, however, being considerably different from the “hypothetical agent” or medium of Science.

[C.W.XII, p408]

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