Occult Chemistry: Clairvoyant Observations on the Chemical Elements

by Annie Besant; C. W. Leadbeater

In an ancient occult treatise, however, we read of a "colorless spiritual fluid" "which exists everywhere and forms the first foundation on which our solar system is built. Outside the latter, it is found in its pristine purity only between the stars [suns] of the universe.... As its substance is of a different kind from that known on earth, the inhabitants of the latter, seeing through it, believe, in their illusion and ignorance, that it is empty space. There is not one finger's breadth of void space in the whole boundless universe."[^[21]] "The mother-substance" is said, in this treatise, to produce this æther of space as its seventh grade of density, and all objective suns are said to have this for their "substance."

To any power of sight which we can bring to bear upon it, this koilon appears to be homogeneous, though it is probably nothing of the kind, since homogeneity can belong to the mother-substance alone. It is out of all proportion denser than any other substance known to us, infinitely denser—if we may be pardoned the expression; so much denser that it seems to belong to another type, or order, of density. But now comes the startling part of the investigation: we might expect matter to be a densification of this koilon; it is nothing of the kind. Matter is not koilon, but the absence of koilon, and at first sight, matter and space appear to have changed places, and emptiness has become solidity, solidity has become emptiness.

To help us to understand this clearly let us examine the ultimate atom of the physical plane (see [pp. 21]-23). It is composed of ten rings or wires, which lie side by side, but never touch one another. If one of these wires be taken away from the atom, and be, as it were, untwisted from its peculiar spiral shape and laid out on a flat surface, it will be seen that it is a complete circle—a tightly twisted endless coil. This coil is itself a spiral containing 1680 turns; it can be unwound, and it will then make a much larger circle. This process of unwinding may be again performed, and a still bigger circle obtained, and this can be repeated till the seven sets of spirillæ are all unwound, and we have a huge circle of the tiniest imaginable dots, like pearls threaded on an invisible string. These dots are so inconceivably small that many millions of them are needed to make one ultimate physical atom, and while the exact number is not readily ascertainable, several different lines of calculation agree in indicating it as closely approximate to the almost inconceivable total of fourteen thousand millions. Where figures are so huge, direct counting is obviously impossible, but fortunately the different parts of the atom are sufficiently alike to enable us to make an estimate in which the margin of error is not likely to be very great. The atom consists of ten wires, which divide themselves naturally into two groups—the three which are thicker and more prominent, and the seven thinner ones which correspond to the colors and planets. These latter appear to be identical in constitution though the forces flowing through them must differ, since each responds most readily to its own special set of vibrations. By actual counting it has been discovered that the numbers of coils or spirillæ of the first order in each wire is 1680; and the proportion of the different orders of spirillæ to one another is equal in all cases that have been examined, and correspond with the number of dots in the ultimate spirillæ of the lowest order. The ordinary sevenfold rule works quite accurately with the thinner coils, but there is a very curious variation with regard to the set of three. As may be seen from the drawings, these are obviously thicker and more prominent, and this increase of size is produced by an augmentation (so slight as to be barely perceptible) in the proportion to one another of the different orders of spirillæ and in the number of dots in the lowest. This augmentation, amounting at present to not more than .00571428 of the whole of each case, suggests the unexpected possibility that this portion of the atom may be somehow actually undergoing a change—may in fact be in process of growth, as there is reason to suppose that these three thicker spirals originally resembled the others.

Since observation shows us that each physical atom is represented by forty-nine astral atoms, each astral atom by forty-nine mental atoms, and each mental atom by forty-nine of those on the buddhic plane, we have here evidently several terms of a regular progressive series, and the natural presumption is that the series continues where we are no longer able to observe it. Further probability is lent to this assumption by the remarkable fact that—if we assume one dot to be what corresponds to an atom on the seventh or highest of our planes (as is suggested in The Ancient Wisdom, p. 42) and then suppose the law of multiplication to begin its operation, so that 49 dots shall form the atom of the next or sixth plane, 2401 that of the fifth, and so on—we find that the number indicated for the physical atom (49⁶) corresponds almost exactly with the calculation based upon the actual counting of the coils. Indeed, it seems probable that but for the slight growth of the three thicker wires of the atom the correspondence would have been perfect.

It must be noted that a physical atom cannot be directly broken up into astral atoms. If the unit of force which whirls those millions of dots into the complicated shape of a physical atom be pressed back by an effort of will over the threshold of the astral plane, the atom disappears instantly, for the dots are released. But the same unit of force, working now upon a higher level, expresses itself not through one astral atom, but through a group of 49. If the process of pressing back the unit of force is repeated, so that it energises upon the mental plane, we find the group there enlarged to the number of 2401 of those higher atoms. Upon the buddhic plane the number of atoms formed by the same amount of force is very much greater still—probably the cube of 49 instead of the square, though they have not been actually counted. Therefore one physical atom is not composed of forty-nine astral or 2401 mental atoms, but corresponds to them, in the sense that the force which manifests through it would show itself on those higher planes by energising respectively those numbers of atoms.

The dots, or beads, seem to be the constituents of all matter of which we, at present, know anything; astral, mental and buddhic atoms are built of them, so we may fairly regard them as fundamental units, the basis of matter.

These units are all alike, spherical and absolutely simple in construction. Though they are the basis of all matter, they are not themselves matter; they are not blocks but bubbles. They do not resemble bubbles floating in the air, which consist of a thin film of water separating the air within them from the air outside, so that the film has both an outer and an inner surface. Their analogy is rather with the bubbles that we see rising in water, before they reach the surface, bubbles which may be said to have only one surface—that of the water which is pushed back by the contained air. Just as such bubbles are not water, but are precisely the spots from which water is absent, so these units are not koilon, but the absence of koilon—the only spots where it is not—specks of nothingness floating in it, so to speak, for the interior of these space-bubbles is an absolute void to the highest power of vision that we can turn upon them.

That is the startling, well-nigh incredible, fact. Matter is nothingness, the space obtained by pressing back an infinitely dense substance; Fohat "digs holes in space" of a verity, and the holes are the airy nothingnesses, the bubbles, of which "solid" universes are built.

What are they, then, these bubbles, or rather, what is their content, the force which can blow bubbles in a substance of infinite density? The ancients called that force "the Breath," a graphic symbol, which seems to imply that they who used it had seen the kosmic process, had seen the Logos when He breathed into the "waters of space," and made the bubbles which build universes. Scientists may call this "Force" by what names they will—names are nothing; to us, Theosophists, it is the Breath of the Logos, we know not whether of the Logos of this solar system or of a yet mightier Being; the latter would seem the more likely, since in the above-quoted occult treatise all visible suns are said to have this as their substance.

The Breath of the Logos, then, is the force which fills these spaces; His the force which holds them open against the tremendous pressure of the koilon; they are full of His Life, of Himself, and everything we call matter, on however high or low a plane, is instinct with divinity; these units of force, of life, the bricks with which He builds His universe, are His very life scattered through space; truly is it written: "I established this universe with a portion of myself." And when He draws in His breath, the waters of space will close in again, and the universe will have disappeared. It is only a breath.