How does the Universe move in this case, and how do its forces correlate? A world built on absolutely non-elastic atoms, is like an engine without steam, it is doomed to eternal inertia.[887]
Accept the explanations and teachings of Occultism, and—the blind inertia of Physical Science being replaced by the intelligent active Powers behind the veil of Matter—motion and inertia become subservient to those Powers. It is on the doctrine of the illusive nature of Matter, and the infinite divisibility of the Atom, that the whole Science of Occultism is built. It opens limitless horizons to Substance, informed by the divine breath of its Soul in every possible state of tenuity, states still undreamed of by the most spiritually disposed Chemists and Physicists.
The above views were enunciated by an Academician, the greatest Chemist in Russia, and a recognized authority even in Europe, the late Professor Butlerof. True, he was defending the phenomena of the Spiritualists, the materializations, so-called, in which he believed, as Professors Zöllner and Hare did, as Mr. A. Russel Wallace, Mr. W. Crookes, and many another Fellow of the Royal Society, do still, whether openly or secretly. But his argument with regard to the nature of the Essence that acts behind the physical phenomena of light, heat, electricity, etc., is no less scientific and authoritative for all that, and applies admirably to the case in hand. Science has no right to deny to the Occultists their claim to a more profound knowledge of the so-called Forces, which, they say, are only the effects of causes generated by Powers, substantial, yet supersensuous, and beyond any kind of Matter with which Scientists have hitherto become acquainted. The most Science can do is to assume and to maintain the attitude of Agnosticism. Then it can say: Your case is no more proven than is ours; but we confess to knowing nothing in reality either about [pg 567] Force or Matter, or about that which lies at the bottom of the so-called correlation of Forces. Therefore, time alone can prove who is right and who is wrong. Let us wait patiently, and meanwhile show mutual courtesy, instead of scoffing at each other.
But to do this requires a boundless love of truth and the surrender of that prestige—however false—of infallibility, which the men of Science have acquired among the ignorant and flippant, though cultured, masses of the profane. The blending of the two Sciences, the Archaic and the Modern, requires first of all the abandonment of the actual Materialistic lines. It necessitates a kind of religious Mysticism and even the study of old Magic, which our Academicians will never take up. The necessity is easily explained. Just as in old Alchemical works the real meaning of the Substances and Elements mentioned is concealed under the most ridiculous metaphors, so are the physical, psychic, and spiritual natures of the Elements (say of Fire) concealed in the Vedas;, and especially in the Purânas, under allegories comprehensible only to the Initiates. Had they no meaning, then indeed all these long legends and allegories about the sacredness of the three types of Fire, and the Forty-Nine original Fires—personified by the Sons of Daksha's Daughters and the Rishis, their Husbands, “who with the first Son of Brahmâ and his three descendants constitute the Forty-nine Fires”—would be idiotic verbiage and no more. But it is not so. Every Fire has a distinct function and meaning in the worlds of the physical and the spiritual. It has, moreover, in its essential nature a corresponding relation to one of the human psychic faculties, besides its well determined chemical and physical potencies when coming in contact with terrestrially differentiated Matter. Science has no speculations to offer upon Fire per se; Occultism and ancient religious Science have. This is shown even in the meagre and purposely veiled phraseology of the Purânas, where, as in the Vâyu Purâna, many of the qualities of the personified Fires are explained. Thus, Pâvaka is Electric Fire, or Vaidyuta; Pavamâna, the Fire produced by Friction, or Nirmathya: and Shuchi is Solar Fire, or Saura[888]—all these three being the sons of Abhimânin, the Agni (Fire), eldest son of Brahmâ and of Svâhâ. Pâvaka, moreover, is made parent to Kavyavâhana, the Fire of the Pitris: Shuchi to Havyaváhana, the Fire of the Gods; and Pavamâna to Saharaksha, the Fire of the Asuras. Now all this shows that the writers of the Purânas were perfectly conversant [pg 568] with the Forces of Science and their correlations, as well as with the various qualities of the latter in their bearing upon those psychic and physical phenomena which receive no credit and are now unknown to Physical Science. Very naturally, when an Orientalist, especially one with materialistic tendencies, reads that these are only appellations of Fire employed in the invocations and rituals, he calls this “Tântrika superstition and mystification”; and he becomes more careful to avoid errors in spelling than to give attention to the secret meaning attached to the personifications, or to seek their explanation in the physical correlations of Forces, so far as these are known. So little credit, indeed, is given to the ancient Âryans for knowledge, that even such glaring passages as that in Vishnu Purâna, are left without any notice. Nevertheless, what can this sentence mean?
Then ether, air, light, water, and earth, severally united with the properties of sound and the rest, existed as distinguishable according to their qualities, ... but, possessing many and various energies and being unconnected, they could not, without combination, create living beings, not having blended with each other. Having combined therefore with one another, they assumed through their mutual association, the character of one mass of entire unity; and, from the direction of Spirit, etc.[889]
This means, of course, that the writers were perfectly acquainted with correlation, and were well posted about the origin of Kosmos from the “Indiscrete Principle,” Avyaktânugrahena, as applied to Parabrahman and Mûlaprakriti conjointly, and not to “Avyakta, either First Cause, or Matter,” as Wilson gives it. The old Initiates knew of no “miraculous creation,” but taught the evolution of Atoms, on our physical plane, and their first differentiation from Laya into Protyle, as Mr. Crookes has suggestively named Matter, or primordial substance, beyond the zero-line—there where we place Mûlaprakriti, the Root-Principle of the World-Stuff and of all in the World.
This can be easily demonstrated. Take, for instance, the newly-published catechism of the Vishishthâdvaita Vedântins, an orthodox and exoteric system, yet fully enunciated and taught in the XIth century[890] at a time when European “Science” still believed in the squareness and flatness of the Earth of Cosmas Indicopleustes of the VIth century. It teaches that before Evolution began, Prakriti, Nature, was in a condition of Laya, or of absolute homogeneity, as “Matter exists in two conditions, the Sûkshma, or latent and undifferentiated, and the Sthûla, or differentiated, condition.” Then it became Anu, [pg 569] atomic. It teaches of Suddasattva—“a substance not subject to the qualities of Matter, from which it is quite different,” and adds that out of that Substance the bodies of the Gods, the inhabitants of Vaikunthaloka, the Heaven of Vishnu, are formed. That every particle or atom of Prakriti contains Jîva (divine life), and is the Sharîra (body) of that Jîva which it contains, while every Jîva is in its turn the Sharîra of the Supreme Spirit, as “Parabrahman pervades every Jîva, as well as every particle of Matter.” Dualistic and anthropomorphic as may be the philosophy of the Vishishthâdvaita, when compared with that of the Advaita—the non-dualists—it is yet supremely higher in logic and philosophy than the Cosmogony accepted either by Christianity or by its great opponent, Modern Science. The followers of one of the greatest minds that ever appeared on Earth, the Advaita Vedântins are called Atheists, because they regard all save Parabrahman, the Secondless, or the Absolute Reality as an illusion. Yet the wisest Initiates came from their ranks, as also the greatest Yogîs. The Upanishads show that they most assuredly knew not only what is the causal substance in the effects of friction, and that their forefathers were acquainted with the conversion of heat into mechanical force, but that they were also acquainted with the Noumenon of every spiritual as well as of every cosmic phenomenon.
Truly the young Brâhman who graduates in the Universities and Colleges of India with the highest honours; who starts in life as an M.A. and an LL.B., with a tail initialed from Alpha to Omega after his name, and a contempt for his national Gods proportioned to the honours received in his education in Physical Science; truly he has but to read in the light of the latter, and with an eye to the correlation of physical Forces, certain passages in his Purânas, if he would learn how much more his ancestors knew than he will ever know—unless he becomes an Occultist. Let him turn to the allegory of Purûravas and the celestial Gandharva,[891] who furnished the former with a vessel full [pg 570] of heavenly fire. The primeval mode of obtaining fire by friction has its scientific explanation in the Vedas, and is pregnant with meaning for him who reads between the lines. The Tretâgni (sacred triad of fires) obtained by the attrition of sticks made of the wood of the Ashvattha tree, the Bo-tree of Wisdom and Knowledge, sticks “as many finger-breadths long as there are syllables in the Gâyatrî,” must have a secret meaning, or else the writers of the Vedas and Purânas were no sacred writers but mystificators. That it has such a meaning, the Hindu Occultists are a proof, and they alone are able to enlighten Science, as to why and how the Fire, that was primevally One, was made three-fold (tretâ) in our present Manvantara, by the Son of Ilâ (Vâch), the Primeval Woman after the Deluge, the wife and daughter of Vaivasvata Manu. The allegory is suggestive, in whatever Purâna it may be read and studied.