The outbreathing which makes these bubbles is quite distinct from, and long antecedent to, the three outpourings, or Life-Waves, so familiar to the theosophical student. The first Life-Wave catches up these bubbles, and whirls them into the various arrangements which we call the atoms of the several planes, and aggregates them into the molecules, and on the physical plane into the chemical elements. The worlds are built out of these voids, these emptinesses, which seem to us "nothing" but are divine force. It is matter made from the privation of matter. How true were H.P.B.'s statements in "The Secret Doctrine": "Matter is nothing but an aggregation of atomic forces" (iii, 398); "Buddha taught that the primitive substance is eternal and unchangeable. Its vehicle is the pure luminous æther, the boundless infinite space, not a void, resulting from the absence of all forms, but on the contrary, the foundation of all forms" (iii, 402).
How vividly, how unmistakably this knowledge brings home to us the great doctrine of Mâyâ, the transitoriness and unreality of earthly things, the utterly deceptive nature of appearances! When the candidate for initiation sees (not merely believes, remember, but actually sees) that what has always before seemed to him empty space is in reality a solid mass of inconceivable density, and that the matter which has appeared to be the one tangible and certain basis of things is not only by comparison tenuous as gossamer (the "web" spun by "Father-Mother"), but is actually composed of emptiness and nothingness—is itself the very negation of matter—then for the first time he thoroughly appreciates the valuelessness of the physical senses as guides to the truth. Yet even more clearly still stands out the glorious certainty of the immanence of the Divine; not only is everything ensouled by the Logos, but even its visible manifestation is literally part of Him, is built of His very substance, so that Matter as well as Spirit becomes sacred to the student who really understands.
The koilon in which all these bubbles are formed undoubtedly represents a part, and perhaps the principal part, of what science describes as the luminiferous æther. Whether it is actually the bearer of the vibrations of light and heat through interplanetary space is as yet undetermined. It is certain that these vibrations impinge upon and are perceptible to our bodily senses only through the etheric matter of the physical plane. But this by no means proves that they are conveyed through space in the same manner, for we know very little of the extent to which the physical etheric matter exists in interplanetary and interstellar space, though the examination of meteoric matter and kosmic dust shows that at least some of it is scattered there.
The scientific theory is that the æther has some quality which enables it to transmit at a certain definite velocity transverse waves of all lengths and intensities—that velocity being what is commonly called the speed of light, 190,000 miles per second. Quite probably this may be true of koilon, and if so it must also be capable of communicating those waves to bubbles or aggregations of bubbles, and before the light can reach our eyes there must be a downward transference from plane to plane similar to that taking place when a thought awakens emotion or causes action.
In a recent pamphlet on "The Density of Æther," Sir Oliver Lodge remarks:—
"Just as the ratio of mass to volume is small in the case of a solar system or a nebula or a cobweb, I have been driven to think that the observed mechanical density of matter is probably an excessively small fraction of the total density of the substance or æther contained in the space which it thus partially occupies—the substance of which it may hypothetically be held to be composed.
"Thus, for instance, consider a mass of platinum, and assume that its atoms are composed of electrons, or of some structures not wholly dissimilar: the space which these bodies actually fill, as compared with the whole space which in a sense they 'occupy,' is comparable to one ten-millionth of the whole, even inside each atom; and the fraction is still smaller if it refers to the visible mass. So that a kind of minimum estimate of ætherial density, on this basis, would be something like ten thousand million times that of platinum."
And further on he adds that this density may well turn out to be fifty thousand million times that of platinum. "The densest matter known," he says, "is trivial and gossamer-like compared with the unmodified æther in the same space."
Incredible as this seems to our ordinary ideas, it is undoubtedly an understatement rather than an exaggeration of the true proportion as observed in the case of koilon. We shall understand how this can be so if we remember that koilon seems absolutely homogeneous and solid even when examined by a power of magnification which makes physical atoms appear in size and arrangement like cottages scattered over a lonely moor, and when we further add to this the recollection that the bubbles of which these atoms in turn are composed are themselves what may be not inaptly called fragments of nothingness.
In the same pamphlet Sir Oliver Lodge makes a very striking estimate of the intrinsic energy of the æther. He says: "The total output of a million-kilowatt power station for thirty million years exists permanently, and at present inaccessibly in every cubic millimetre of space." Here again he is probably underestimating the stupendous truth.