Chapter Three
Matter and Ether
It is not worthwhile translating Homer into English unless the readers of the translation understand English.
It is not worthwhile attempting to translate the occult Eastern physics into the language of our Western and modern physics, unless those who are to read the translation understand generally and broadly what our own modern physics teach. It is not necessary that they should know all branches of our modern physics in all their minute ramifications; but it is necessary that they should understand clearly the fundamental principles upon which our scientific and technical knowledge of today rests.
These fundamental principles have been discovered and applied in the past fifty years—in the memory of the living. They have revolutionized science in all its departments. Our textbooks on Chemistry, Light, Heat, Electricity and Sound have had to be entirely re-written; and in many other departments, notably in medicine and psychology, they have yet to be re-written. Our textbooks are in a transition state, each new one going a step farther, to make the change gradual from the old forms of belief to the new, so that even Tyndall's textbook on "Sound" is now so antedated, or antiquated, that it might have been written in darkest Africa before the pyramids were built, instead of twenty years ago.
All this change has flowed from the discovery of Faraday that there are two states or conditions of matter. In one it is revealed by one of our five senses, visible, tangible, smellable, tastable, or ponderable matter. This is matter as we know it. It may be a lump of metal or a flask of gas.
The second condition or state of matter is not revealed by either of our five senses, but by the sixth sense, or intuition of man. This is the ether—supposed to be "matter in a very rarefied form, which permeates all space." So rare and fine is this matter that it interpenetrates carbon or steel as water interpenetrates a sponge, or ink a blotting pad. In fact, each atom of "physical" matter—by which is meant matter in the first condition—floats in an atmosphere of ether as the solid earth floats in its atmosphere of air.
"No two physical atoms touch," said Faraday. "Each physical atom is the centre of an etheric molecule, and as far apart from every other atom as the stars in heaven from one another." This is true of every form of physical matter, whether it is a lump of metal, a cup of liquid, or a flask of gas; whether it is a bronze statue or a living man; a leaf, a cloud, or the earth itself. 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. Paul said, a visible physical and an invisible etheric body; the latter in actual touch with the whole universe.
Faraday went one step further. He demonstrated that all physical phenomena come from the chording vibration of the physical atom with the surrounding etheric atoms, and that the latter exercise the impelling force on the former. Step into the sunshine. The line of ether from the sun is vibrating faster than the ether in the body, but the higher impels the lower, the greater controls the lesser, and soon both ethers are in unison. The physical atoms must coincide in vibration with their etheric envelopes, and the "note" is "heat." Step into the shade, where the ocean of ether is vibrating more slowly, and the ether of the body reduces its vibration. "The ether is the origin of all force and of all phenomena."