ETHERIC VISION AND WHAT IT REVEALS
by
A Student
Click here to return to the previous HTML
page.
suffer less from color blindness. Their
etheric aura also shows a larger proportion of the golden Light Ether. The
positive energy of the Light Ether, however, is evident in the dynamic urge to
action which characterizes the masculine incarnation, and the masculine aura
often sparkles thickly with the energy-points belonging to this ether. The man
also shows more of the fiery egoic drive.
Since light is made up of photons, and the
photons consist of both waves and particles, both appear together throughout
space.
In trying to study the Light Ether, the
student should look out not at an object, or against a wall or ceiling, but
DIRECTLY INTO SPACE ITSELF.
The following quotation is of interest:
"Light Ether is a substance of a peculiar type which has no familiar
atom-mosaic that we usually call matter....We can call light ether a SUBSTANCE
but we can also call it SPACE....keeping in mind that....space may possess
certain morphological or structural features that make it a much more
complicated thing than in the conceptions of Euclidean geometry. In fact, in
modern physics the expression LIGHT ETHER (divested of its alleged mechanical
properties) and PHYSICAL SPACE are considered synonymous." (Gamow: ONE TWO
THREE....INFINITY).
It may help the student to observe this ether
for the first time if he will lie prone upon a bed and gaze into the corner of
the ceiling in a room full of light. His eye will not then come to rest upon a
surface, but will rest within space itself, and soon he will begin to see waves
and sparkles of the Light Ether. Eye strain should be avoided.
Before entering upon a discussion of the
Reflecting Ether, let us review the salient features of the three lower ethers
as known to physical and occult sciences. First: light belongs to what is called
the electromagnetic spectrum, of which only a small segment, or band, is visible
to human eyesight, for the reason that this band represents the radiation from
our Sun, in whose field our senses were evolved. Had our race evolved on a
planet belonging to a giant red sun, for example, we might have evolved eyesight
in the infrared range. It is a curious fact that when etheric sight begins to
unfold, it is the invisible aspect of light in our own solar spectrum that is
usually first seen: the actual waves of light themselves, and the nuclei of
energy sparkling in the waves. The waves of light ether are actually made up of
units, or packets, of energy, which are waves and particles at one and the same
time. Both are visible, simultaneously, to the etheric vision. The unit of
energy is called the "photon," and it is not merely the unit of solar
light, but it is the unit of all electromagnetic waves.
Photons are packets of energy, says the
physicist, which correspond to atoms and molecules, which are packets of matter.
Electrons, protons, and alpha particles are particles of electricity. All
radiant energy consists of photons. The photon is properly defined as "the
building block of the electromagnetic field." It travels with the speed of
light.
The photon is never at rest. The electron,
proton, and neutron can be at rest, but the photon cannot be. Hence the
electron, proton, and neutron are the units of matter, so-called, and in occult
terms, "packets" of the Chemical and Life Ethers, which Max Heindel
describes as "the stationary ethers." Radiant energy, however, the
unit of which is the photon, represents energy which is continuously escaping
from matter. Occultly it is the unit of the Light Ether. The photon itself has
no charge, but it carries electromagnetic energy. Subatomic particles and
photons have a spin, and when charged they are responsive to magnetic fields.
Astronomers say there are magnetic fields in interstellar space, in which new
galaxies tend to form; but the occult scientist also sees a rain of cosmic
force, electrical or magnetic in nature, which he calls "the colorless
solar ether." It is not IDENTICAL in nature with cosmic forces or with
solar and planetary magnetism, but there is a connection of some sort, which has
not yet been determined either by mundane or by occult science. The colorless
solar ether is subject to the call of the human mind and will.
Just as the magnetic fields of space are
known to impart spiral activity to certain subatomic particles (usually nuclei),
so also the "animal magnetism" of occult science seems to be
accompanied by spiral activity in the Life Ether, which forms and guides the
activities of the Chemical Ether. The two lower ethers are generally considered
together as a working unit, as it is almost impossible to study them
separately.*
Photons are not uniform in magnitude. The
amount of energy is in proportion to the frequency. "X-rays have
frequencies one thousandfold larger than
*Science speaks of
"bio-electrochemistry" and "bio-electromagnetism."
visible light, so when they give up their
energy to atoms, electrons, etc., their 'punch' is greater and more easily
observed," the physicist explains.
The body structure is formed in the two
lower ethers, and the Life Ether specializes the solar fluid which acts like
electricity in the living organism; the solar fluid is converted from
"inorganic" cosmic magnetism to the "living" magnetism known
to occult science and now being researched by physical science.
The electrical energy of the solar fluid
energizes the nervous systems of the human organism, both voluntary and
sympathetic. The "two complementary halves that make up every functioning
electric circuit" have been discovered by biologists. We mention in passing
here that the back of the head is found to carry a positive charge and the front
a negative charge; and this front portion is termed a "silent area,"
and is supposed to be associated with extrasensory perception. In occult science
the keynote of the vital body is heard humming in the medulla oblongata, and its
vibration is often felt in the back of the head.
The scientific investigators say that there
are three axes of magnetic force to which the human being is subject; and they
are testing various patients in hospitals to see if emissions of cosmic rays,
magnetic storms on the Sun, and other phenomena of the sort have an effect on
the nervous condition of human beings. Occult science has taught for centuries
that such cosmic conditions (the macrocosm) do have a reaction in the human
organism (the microcosm). Modern science now uses the terms
"macrocosm" and "microcosm" as freely as occult science has
done in previous ages, but the "microcosm" of modern physics tends to
be the interior of atoms and molecules and not merely the human organism as a
whole--the infinitely large being the macrocosm and the infinitely small the
microcosm.
An increased understanding of the Light
Ether will bring about an important new science in the matter of color healing
and the use of color in promoting growth in plants and animals. Color therapy is
already making great progress, not merely among occultists, but in the world of
physics, chemistry, and medicine. It is understandable now, when the nature of
light is seen as consisting of particles as well as waves, that color can have a
very clear and definite physical effect. Even very serious organic diseases have
yielded to color therapy in the hands of experts; not merely nervous and mental,
but actual physical disorders.
Color therapists believe that a ray of color
represents an actual substance, and that vitamins and other elements contain
these substances, so that in a very real sense the red ray, for example, may be
said to give needed iron to the blood, and so forth.
But none of these color deposits could be
made in plants without the keynoting or pattern-making activity of the Life
Ether, as we have indicated. At the borderline of the Life and Light Ethers the
strange life-substances called enzymes do their work. It has been found that
"in plants as diverse as apple trees and lettuce there is a light-sensitive
enzyme which regulates plant growth at all stages from germination to the
ripening of fruit. The government experimental stations (e.g. U.S. Department of
Agriculture Research in Beltsville, Md.) have partially isolated the substance,
which is effective in minute quantities and have reproduced what is apparently
its critical reaction in a test tube. The enzyme exists in two forms, and
transforms reversibly from one to the other upon exposure to appropriate
wave-lengths of light. One form absorbs light in the orange to red range, the
other absorbs far-red light, near the limit of the visible spectrum. The first
form triggers such effects as the reddening of apples and the germination of
lettuce seed; the other form promotes flowering and regulates growth.
"The predominant form of the enzyme in
the plant depends upon the color of light to which the plant is exposed. Both
forms are present in about equal amounts after exposure to light in the middle
of the red range. At longer wave-lengths the reaction favors the orange-red
absorbing form, while shorter wave-lengths (toward the yellow) stimulate the
production of the far-red absorbing form. In the living plant the intensity as
well as the wave-length of the light influences the function of the enzyme. The
investigators found that soybean plants will flower after an extremely short
exposure at night to far-red light but will not flower if the intensity of the
light is increased 100 times. Exposure at low intensity to the same wave-lengths
stimulates germination in lettuce seed; exposure at high intensity reduces
germination to about zero."
Occult science divides the spectrum of light
into positive, negative, and neutral areas; with the colors below green called
"hot," or positive, and the colors above green being called
"cool" and electric, or negative. Green is neutral, but no color is
more important, for this is the color of chlorophyll. In color therapy the
positive or "hot" colors are thought of as streaming upward, as if
from the Earth; the negative or "cool" colors are thought of as
streaming downward from the heavens, while green, the neutral color, draws in
its forces horizontally. Green has been proved to be a primary color in the new
color science.
Whatever may be said of the effects of color
on human beings as purely psychological, the same cannot be said of the
influences of colored light on vegetation: some kinds of light promote growth of
roots; others of the stems, leaves, and flowers; others the germination of the
seed, and so on; while the light-sensitive enzyme in the plant tissue proves to
be an important link in the life process.
Science has gone down to the far-red limit
of the spectrum, but has not yet found the "peach-blossom" color known
to the occultist.
Wave-lengths of color will one day be used
to open up the spiritual faculties, for as we have shown, these also belong to
the Light Ether forces, supersensory perception as well as common sensory
perception being dependent upon this Ether, so far as consciousness in the body
is concerned.
PART IV--THE REFLECTING ETHER
As far back as there is any written record,
we find references to "reflection" and "images" as
illustrating the way in which God's creative Ideas become objectified in space
and time. Now when we look into a pool of clear water--man's first mirror--we
see that the sky which is farthest above us is the bottom-most part of the
reflected scene in the water; while other objects, including ourselves, occupy
intermediate positions BETWEEN TWO SKIES.
In our study of the reflecting Ether, let us
keep this image in mind, as neophytes in Mystery Schools have been doing for
many thousands of years.
In THE ROSICRUCIAN COSMO-CONCEPTION, pages
37 and 38, Max Heindel has written: "The Reflecting Ether deserves its name
for more than one reason, for the pictures in it are but REFLECTIONS of the
memory of nature. The real memory of nature is found in a much higher realm. In
this Reflecting Ether no thoroughly trained clairvoyant cares to read, as the
pictures are blurred and vague compared to those found in the higher realms.
Those who read in the Reflecting Ether are generally those who have no choice,
who, in fact, do not know in what they are reading. As a rule ordinary
psychometrists and mediums obtain their knowledge through the reflecting ether.
To some slight extent the pupil of the occult school in the first stages of his
training also reads in the Reflecting Ether, but he is warned by his teacher of
the insufficiencies of this ether as a means of acquiring accurate information,
so that he does not easily draw wrong conclusions.
"This ether is also the medium through
which thought makes an impression upon the human brain. It is most intimately
connected with the fourth subdivision of the World of thought. This is the
highest of the four subdivisions contained in the Region of Concrete Thought and
is the home world of the human mind. There is a much clearer version of the
memory of nature is found than in the Reflecting Ether."
He also states that the "memory"
aspect of this ether resides in the negative pole, while thought processes make
their impression on the brain by way of the positive pole. HE DOES NOT SAY THAT
THESE POLES ARE MAGNETIC POLES, HOWEVER. The Reflecting Ether is not electrical,
nor is it magnetic. Its "positive" pole is dominant in the front of
the brain, in the area where the "Silent Watcher" (Divine Spirit) has
its seat.
We are taught further that the Reflecting
Ether is the least dense of the four ethers; that in the growth cycle it ripens
at about the age of twenty- eight; that it is negative in men and positive in
women; that like the Light Ether it is volatile and migratory; that it is really
a hyper-ether, as much astral as etheric, and even mental, (since it is so
closely penetrated by desire and mind-stuff); and while it appears to be empty
at first glance, it hides within its translucent folds many secrets, in a
picture record which consists not only of reproductions of physical forms but
also of feelings and thoughts. Consequently, when the student-seer learns to
read in this ether he may be surprised to discover that he not only sees the
moving pictures of past events in his life, but may also sometimes see the auric
formations and thought forms which accompanied them, even though he had no
clairvoyance at the time the events occurred.
Another of the oddities of the Reflecting
Ether, which makes it difficult to assess the value of what is seen there, is
familiar to assess the value of what is seen there, is familiar to most
students, for Max Heindel has mentioned it often. This is the way in which the
time stream of the Reflecting Ether seems to move backward, so that if it is
desired to investigate an event, say, in the year 500, it would be necessary to
look first for the year 600, and then allow the record to roll back to the year
500. Yet it is not to be supposed that this reverse flow is comparable to the
backward unrolling of a moving picture film strip, in which for example the
chicken grows back into a chick and then enters into the eggshell which closes
around it. it is more in the nature of time pulsations which go back to a
certain point and then move forward, according to some as yet undefined law
governing the time- images. For it is common knowledge among occult students
that pictures of former incarnations seem to unfold in a perfectly regular and
normal way, at least so far as any one interval is concerned. The exercise of
Retrospection is recommended for development of time-stream vision, with power
to regulate the flow of images.
Again, the Reflecting Ether sometimes
reverses numbers, so that a number which seems to read 235 may be in fact 532.
However, no analogy can be pushed too far, and it would not be true to say that
numbers reflected in the Reflecting Ether are turned backward in the way that
mirror numbers are, and as handwriting is. Books and documents seen in the
"library" of the Reflecting Ether are usually read straight-forwardly
as in the physical world; but in many instances the reader then suddenly finds
that instead of reading a script, he has suddenly plunged into the midst of the
story or record, which he views as an omnipresent though invisible spectator.
Take note, however, that the supersensory
powers vary greatly, according to individual bias and temperament, for just as
the physical eye cannot see an object if the eyelid covers the eye, so
clairvoyance cannot show anything to the seer unless he definitely and
consciously turns his attention in a given direction. Saints of the Church have
in many instances achieved clairvoyance, yet saw nothing in the astral world
except the thought-forms of heaven and hell built up by their own community of
faith.
Occult students have developed the power to
see disembodied spirits, Nature forces, and the celestial Hierarchies, without
ever discovering the nuclear forces known to modern physics, BECAUSE THEY DID
NOT THINK TO LOOK FOR THEM.
The pictures in the Reflecting Ether
generally fade away in a few thousand years, leaving "holes" where the
seer can find nothing. In the charged areas of the Mystery Temples, however, the
Elder Brothers and their Initiates read a clearer version of the Memory of
Nature, which in the fourth or archetypal region of the World of Thought,
carries all of the records pertaining to our current Earth Period; and as these
records are reviewed and vivified in the mind of each Initiate the corresponding
record in the Reflecting Ether is, so to speak, reinforced and continues to be
available even to the relatively weak vision of the ordinary clairvoyant or
beginning student in the occult school. Again, the Teachers on the inner planes
will sometimes themselves project into the Reflecting Ether the pictures they
want the neophyte to see and remember; and thus the neophyte sees records which
would not otherwise then be available to him.
Max Heindel has shown that the Light and
reflecting Ethers are very intimately associated not only in the Golden Wedding
Garment, but also in particular functions of the bodily organism. The student
may find this closeness of function between these two ethers a source of
confusion when first observing them.
When once the student-seer has begun to see
the agitation of the Light Ether with its wing-like movement and its dashing
comets of energy in their filmy packets, he begins to recognize that space is
pulsing like the swells of the ocean, in great slow waves. As he looks into
these bluish space-waves he begins to see what may at first appear to be
colorless transparent forms, sometimes geometrical, but often resembling leaf
forms which move in the sea of ether like underwater plants. Then, as the
attention continues to focus in these deep tides of light, the student may
suddenly realize that he is in fact gazing into the Reflecting Ether, for behind
the moving waves of light his gaze comes to rest upon what seems to be a mirror
world, a world with pictures as bright and clear as images in a mirror. There is
no movement her, no ripples.
The records in the Reflecting Ether are not
easy to read at first sight for the reason that the ether seems so full of them,
all of which can be SEEN THROUGH; so it necessitates practice in separating them
before each can be read. This is done by the power of the will in holding the
attention focused upon one image, not allowing side-images to distract the
attention. There is a tendency in all undeveloped seers simply to relax and
allow these pictures to stream or move past the mental vision, with no attempt
to control or analyze them. The ordinary person may indeed never realize that it
is at all possible to control the stream of images, and he may even boast of the
fact that he cannot "turn-off" the pictures which rush past his eyes.
This is the secret of the negative development which may lead to obsession; or
if not to actual obsession, then at least to mediumship, and perhaps to a lack
of mental and emotional control which medical science would define as
"unbalanced" or "disturbed."
The student must therefore exercise
discrimination as regards the stream of images he sees. It may seem to him that
the images are irresistibly self- impelled, but this is not so; they do respond
to his will, as he soon discovers when he makes the effort to control them.
Note that not all of these images are
"records." They include, sometimes, actual scenes and real people
living on earth; and again they may include faces and forms of those who have
passed on, and scenes of the inner worlds. For this Ether may be likened to a
two-way mirror, as Max Heindel says, reflecting the outer universe on the one
hand and the inner, spiritual worlds on the other.
It is often said that every observer colors
(by his own mental bias) his observations of the world as it exists both without
and within himself. There can be no argument about this. Of course we see the
world, we experience the world, through what we are. It cannot be otherwise. But
the philosopher of modern science goes beyond this in saying that it is not only
that impressions of the outside world depend on his mental bias as well as on
the individual sensorium seated in the brain, but that the OUTSIDE OR OBJECTIVE
WORLD ITSELF IS REALLY AND LITERALLY CHANGED BY THE ACT OF OBSERVATION AND
EXPERIMENTATION, through the interaction of physical forces, and the pressure of
mentally generated forces as in telekinesis. How can this be?
The answer lies, for the occultist, in the
Reflecting Ether, with its strange mirror-like qualities.
It is the Archetypal Force of the Ego,
"reflecting" or "projecting" into the great root substance
of Nature, the subconscious mind of the cosmos, which thus affects its world.
The Reflecting Ether, as Max Heindel has shown, extends all through the First
Heaven, and even through the Second Heaven, for it contains the principle of
memory and it has a special connection with the Region of Archetypal Forces. We
may call it the "floor" of the two lower heavens. When the philosopher
of science observes that it may not be necessary any longer to separate subject
from object, the observer from the observed, he is expressing the spiritual
reality of the Archetypal Force as known to occult science. Space and time
"collapse" in the realm of the Reflecting Ether, but the Virgin
Spirit-as-Ego Consciousness, remains.
For the physical scientist, the outward
attributes of the Reflecting Ether are of primary concern. He thinks of worlds
and universes of matter which are explained by laws inhering (or reflected) in
this subtle plane. But for the occultist, it is the INNER UNIVERSE, reflecting
into the Reflecting Ether, which is of primary importance. And what collapses
here is the "sense of barrier," the sense of separation, between
mankind and the Living Universe with its innumerable Hierarchies, from elemental
forces to the One Supreme Being in whom all creation lives, and moves, and has
its continuing existence.
Thus Max Heindel's statement that this
hyper-ether is a mirror which reflects a twofold reflection, the upper or inner
universe and also the downward or outer universe, receives a new application in
modern science.
We recall further that Mr. Heindel called
both Light and Reflecting Ethers "migratory" and "volatile."
The Reflecting Ether, like the Light Ether, is luminous, and it flows, which is
the reason that at a certain point the seer finds it difficult to tell where the
one leaves off and the other begins.
It has been pointed out that when once the
student has learned to see the waves of the Light Ether, and practices sighting
into these waves in near- darkness when the air seems filled with the pulsing
tides of bluish light or mist, his sight comes to rest upon leaf-like forms
which float and drift in the watery ether like underwater plants. Here he may
see the familiar frost pattern of the winter's windowpane, its branches waving
in the steady pulsing flow; and after a time he may become aware of the presence
of color, and of life moving among the forms. It may be that he sees a little
tree, which has the appearance of crystal, moving softly in waves of light; and
small transparent winged shapes cluster, like crystal butterflies, upon its
twigs. He discovers that when he fixes his attention upon this, it seems
suddenly to move in toward him, thus seeming to grow larger, and its colors and
details of structure may be studied as if under magnification. But if the
attention wanders, all disappears.
Although called "volatile" and
"migratory," the Reflecting Ether does present pictures as vivid and
clear as those seen in a mirror, so that the student may feel as if he had
indeed stepped "through the looking glass" when he has his first
experience with this ether.
Looking into the space-waves moving in near
darkness, he seems to himself to be at the bottom of an ocean of dim bluish
light, and the great swells pulsing around him continuously reveal new forms,
all of them moving slowly along like objects carries by sea tides.
Sometimes he may feel convinced that he can
really see, with his physical sight, in this bluish light, and he may fix his
eyes upon something in the room, say a picture which he knows hangs in a certain
spot. For a moment indeed it seems that he is really seeing the picture; and
then he realizes that instead he is seeing the same omnipresent plant forms,
glowing, translucent, and crystalline in the ether. Space is full of patterns:
"God geometrizes." At this point, gazing into the negative pole of the
Light Ether, the student-seer passes insensibly into the vision of the negative
pole of the Reflecting Ether. It is virtually impossible to say when or at what
place the boundary has been crossed.
Note that these "patterns" which
swim in the Light Ether shows every indication of being the guide-patterns for
the elemental forces which construct earth forms. Geometric patterns and also
intricate plant patterns of every sort, together with the life-forms that work
through and with them as beheld here, pertain not merely to records of the past,
but directly to the present-day world.
It is at the boundary between these two
ethers that the Archetypal Forces mysteriously cross over into the space-time
continuum. Here is the point where subjectivity, so-called, becomes objective,
and the thought-form hovers on the verge of chemicalization.
The record inscribed on the seed atom of the
heart and in the negative pole of the Reflecting Ether is only one manifestation
of the powers resident in the Reflecting Ether; it is the SPECIALIZED record
belonging to ONE individual. The Reflecting Ether of the planet is the
"memory" of the entire globe, receiving reflections from the planet's
own mental envelope where the records--memories of the living Earth Spirit--are
held inviolate and unchanging.
Some pictures in the Reflecting Ether do
belong wholly to what we call the past, whether in the subconscious mind of our
present embodiment, or in the race sub-conscious recorded in the seed atom in
the apex of the heart, which we carry with us from life to life. All of the past
resides in that part of the reflecting Ether, which we call the
"sub-conscious," both in man and Nature, and which can be probed with
the right technique.
Apropos of which Max Heindel says:
"George du Maurier haw written a story called PETER IBBETSON, wherein this
theory of the sub-conscious memory is very clearly drawn. Peter Ibbetson, a
prisoner in an English penitentiary, learned how to 'dream true;' that is to
say, by putting his body in a certain position he LEARNED HOW TO LOCK THE
CURRENTS OF ETHER WITHIN HIMSELF so that at night he was able at will to keep in
touch with any scene in his past life that he desired to; there he could see
himself as a spectator (grown man that was) and he could see himself among his
parents and playmates, and in the environment he was in at the time that scene
was enacted. he could see the whole scene with many more details than he had
been able to observe at the time when the events took place in this material
world....He would have been unable to gain any information concerning the
future, but the past had been inscribed upon the tablet of his heart and was,
therefore, accessible under the proper condition." (Vol. I, Q & A, p.
114).
Note that the seer does not have to
"go" to the Etheric Region in order to read the records in the
Reflecting Ether. He does not leave his body or "go" anywhere. He
simply reads from the Reflecting Ether which permeates the air he breathes,
which has a special connection with the blood stream and the seed- atom in the
heart. Max Heindel has said, however, that in his opinion it is necessary to be
able to leave the body consciously in order to read in the Memory of Nature in
the fourth Region of the World of Thought, for this record exists high up in the
mental atmosphere of the planet.
Although the Reflecting Ether is largely
confined to the past and the immediate present, yet it is also true that
"coming events cast their shadows before;" but by the time these
"shadows" are being cast into the Reflecting Ether they are on the
very threshold of materialization. Clairvoyants often see these reflected
shadows of the future in the Reflecting Ether, their own and others', but they
do not see the archetypal forces belonging to the higher level in the World of
Thought, and which may change these "shadows" without so much as a
moment's notice. The student-seer should take note, therefore, that he himself,
the Ego, active as a thinking, willing Being in the mental world, can alter or
cancel out any picture seen in the Reflecting Ether; but he does this, not by
attacking the matter-environment, but by treating through spiritual force and
understanding the Creative Idea BEHIND the picture, which is a property of the
World of (Abstract) Thought, home world of the human Spirit.
There are many interesting stories of people
who have had flash-dreams of pictures of future events, usually those about to
happen. Sometimes these have been in the nature of warnings of danger, and
acting upon them has saved the seer's life. But in a great number of cases the
pictures are not clear enough or complete enough for the seer to be able to plot
a course of action; and sometimes they show circumstances over which he has no
control. In such cases it is well to remember that THE REAL SEAT OF CONTROL IS
IN THE ARCHETYPAL WORLD OF THOUGHT, from which point the Ego works with the
subtle forces of Nature and controls every situation in harmony with cosmic law.
The Ego can and does control events which
are at the point of materialization and which are, therefore visible as pictures
in the Reflecting Ether, since it is through the positive pole of this ether
that thought makes its impression upon the brain. But let no one become
disturbed by the prophecies of fortune tellers or by his own flash-pictures and
flash-dreams, because these pertain to the Reflecting Ether only, and can be
referred back to spiritual forces in the home-world of the Ego itself, where IT
HOLDS THE REINS OF POWER.
Now how is the record made in the first
place? Max Heindel says (Vol. I, Q & A, pages 113-114): "Memory is of
three kinds. There is in the first place the record which is made by our
senses....these impressions are engraven upon the cells of the brain and we are
able to consciously to call them back--yet not always,....for this memory is
exceedingly unreliable and capricious, and were this the only method of gaining
a record of our lives the law of cause and effect would be invalidated--our life
would not be a sequence of what we have done or left undone in the past.
"There must be another memory, and this
is what scientists have called the subconscious mind. Just as ether carries to
the camera of the photographer a record of the surrounding landscape and
imprints it upon the sensitive plate to the minutest detail, SO THE SAME ETHER
WHICH CARRIES A PICTURE TO OUR EYE AND IMPRINTS IT UPON THE RETINA carries into
our lungs a similar picture which then is absorbed by the blood, and as the
blood passes through the heart this record is indelibly inscribed upon the
sensitive seed atom which is located in the left ventricle of the heart near the
apex. The FORCES ("soul") of that seed atom are taken out by the
Spirit at death and contains the record of the whole life to the minutest
detail, so that, regardless of whether we have observed the facts in a certain
scene or not, they are, nevertheless there."
(We may add that the third kind of memory is
the super conscious memory found in the World of Life Spirit, which is the
Christ Consciousness. COSMO, page 92).
As Max Heindel has said that each atom of
the body has a film of Light and Reflecting Ether, one sees that this must form,
collectively, a sheath or aura. As the Ego evolves greater spirituality, it
draws more heavily upon the cosmic Light and Reflecting Ethers, and the film
surrounding the atoms grows and expands until they enclose the entire body in an
extensive aura having very special properties and powers: the "Golden
Wedding Garment" of the Initiate.
The PERMANENT record of the seed atom goes
with the Ego from life to life; but the film of Reflecting Ether on each atom
carries a record pertaining to the present life in the body, moment by moment,
until death, all of which is focused in the permanent record of the seed atom
and carried from life to life.
There is but a small amount of the two
higher ethers in the average human organism, and this is found chiefly in blood,
brain, and nervous system; and it is precisely the enlargement of the Light and
Reflecting Ether aura which brings about a stronger and more extensive memory,
and one which is better able to focus the pictures from the planetary Memory of
Nature, as well as from the seed atom of the heart.
Medieval philosophers made the surprising
deduction that memory was not a part of the mind; just as we now say that it
belongs to the subconscious, whence it may be called up, voluntarily or
involuntarily.
Or as Max Heindel puts it in his camera
analogy, the Light Ether pictures are focused on the film, which is the
Reflecting Ether and permanent record of the seed atom.
Since Light Ether and Space are "almost
synonymous" we see that the "pictures" in "space"
imprint their images upon the film of the Reflecting Ether, flowing in two
directions, one toward the past, the other toward the future.
Not only does the reflecting Ether contain
the records pertaining to daily life, it also contains the records of the hours
that are spent in sleep, which in the case of the occultist are hours of great
activity. Few students remember the activities of the night hours when as
Invisible Helpers they are working, or studying, in the spiritual worlds. The
Invisible Helpers have a choice of action, and while all of them show an
interest in the healing work, some have other fields of activity as well. They
attend classes, and also are given the opportunity of visiting the regions of
Purgatory and First Heaven, to observe conditions there. Even after the First
Initiation, Max Heindel said, his memory was not yet perfect, and required
further training.
Psychologists used to speak of people as
being "eye-minded," or "ear- minded," or
"abstractionists" (as we may designate the third group), who could
recall with no images whatever, of any sort. Incredible as it may seem to most
people, there are some who can tell you exactly what they had for breakfast,
describe everything that was on the table, and yet insist they do not
"see" any image at all. Possibly this type of recollection without
images belongs to the mathematical mind, accustomed to thinking without imagery
except mathematical formulas. The occult student who is beginning to awaken upon
the inner planes shows similar differences of memory and recall, which are
undoubtedly due to just such differences of mental habit and temperament. Some
will say to themselves, "I was at such and such a place last night and
talked with so and so." Yet asked to describe the scene or the person he
cannot do so, having no image at all in his mind relative to the situation.
Perhaps in daily life he has the same sort of imageless recollection. To improve
memory it may then be necessary to practice building images in the mind, which
the student is to perform every morning upon awakening.
If the student is "ear-minded," if
his auditory responses are acute, he will be likely to recall words and speeches
more vividly than images; and if he is "eye-minded," and his visual
responsiveness is the outstanding quality, he will bring back a memory of
scenery, objects, and people. Obviously, artistic people are largely
"eye-minded," musicians and speakers "ear-minded." But those
who say they recall experiences without images either visual or auditory are
nevertheless also placing on record a true recollection.
Recent psychological experiments at various
universities have brought up the suggestion that forgetting occurs as the result
of interference of several memory-systems of which the images or items are
closely similar. This the contrary of popular belief, which would have it that
one remembers more easily things that are similar. In the case of inner-plane
memories, the unusual events are the most easily recalled; but the continuous
life of study and work, night after night, is forgotten, largely, because it
resembles our daily activities in many ways.
Along with the ability to recall the
experiences of the inner planes where the Spirit functions during the sleep of
the body (provided, of course, that it has any higher interests than those of
the body), comes the ability to see the pictures in the negative pole of the
reflecting Ether, which relate to past incarnations. We are told that these
records, in a way not yet definable in scientific terms, are impressed upon the
seed-atom of the heart and carried from life to life; and these seed-atom
records are among those which, reflected into the negative pole of the
Reflecting Ether, the student often sees before sinking to sleep and before
awakening in the morning. Psychologists call them "hypnogogic"
visions, visions thrown out of the subconscious, in sleep or near-sleep. Since
they come during sleep, like dreams, the student is not able to exert any real
control over them, but as the soul-awareness increases he does acquire control.
Most "trance" vision belongs to the area of hypnogogic vision. In the
higher order of clear-seeing, however, the person is wide awake, but relaxes
into complete stillness by an act of will, and then sees these so-called
"hypnogogic" visions in full waking consciousness, and learns to
control and direct them.
It is because of the need of complete
relaxation that most occult schools in the past were situated in out-of-the-way
places, on mountain-tops and deep in forests or desert places where the air was
clear and pure, and there were only the sounds of Nature. Obviously, when
students trained in such quiet places went out into the noisy thoroughfares of
the towns and cities, they tended to lose their hard-won powers, and had to
learn to concentrate in the midst of noise and confusion.
The Western Mystery School of the Rose Cross
has seen and met this problem. Its training id designed for the use of the
city-dweller, and while it may seem to the student that his progress is slow, he
would find, if he were to make a retreat to some quiet spiritual haven in the
country, that he had actually acquired more power than he had realized, and
would compare favorably with the students resident there who had been trained in
solitude.
It is not to be thought that the
"sleeping" vision carries over into the waking state. The point we are
making is that the sleeping state gradually clarifies, or becomes permeated with
waking consciousness; and this waking consciousness then covers both the hours
of sleep and the hours of waking, and also the intermediate zones where the
"hypnogogic" visions occur.
In this clarified, or "clear,"
state the student-seer reads in the negative pole of the Reflecting Ether, and
sometimes within that ether he will see pictures from past incarnations, his own
and others'.
There are certain important points to be
observed in connection with these visions in the Reflecting Ether. First, the
known characteristics of this ether to transpose some of the images, as in the
case of Mme. Blavatsky who read a page number backward. The mirror-analogy
should not be pushed too far, because, after all, the Reflecting Ether is not a
physical looking-glass; IT IS A FOUR-DIMENSIONAL MIRROR IN WHICH THE THREE
DIMENSIONS OF SPACE ARE EXPERIENCED BY CONSCIOUSNESS AS A REFLECTION.
This means that unlike the mirror-image,
which is never mixed up with our physical selves but remains apart, we ourselves
seem to be taken into the stream of the Reflecting Ether, so that we stand in
the very midst of the events shown taking place there. It is only at first that
the pictures rush past like the moving pictures familiar to us on the theater
screen; the student at some point will find that he has, himself, entered the
scene shown him, and he is likely to assume that he is seeing a picture of his
own past incarnation. And this is usually true. The first pictures seen are
generally those which pertain to our own past incarnations. However, we may not
recognize ourselves, in a scene where many people are shown, and where our
sympathies go out to some one character. Inevitably the student-seer will assume
identity with the character with whom he feels the strongest sympathy, because
he has, through the "reflecting" power of the ether, actually entered
into the emotion-pattern of the character he sees. Thus several women wrote to
Arthur Weigall, the Egyptologist, thanking him for his kind treatment of the
history of Cleopatra--who, they said, they were in their former incarnations!
Now how could these several women all believe that had been Cleopatra? Obviously
they has seen visions of Egypt with Cleopatra central to them all; and they had
felt a powerful emotional identity with the unfortunate queen.
We may assume that the seers were people who
had, in very truth, lived in Egypt and who had known Cleopatra. They may have
been servants at court, or court ladies, friends of the queen. They may even
have been her sincerest enemies, who worked to bring about her downfall and
death, and who in Purgatory between incarnations, had entered into her suffering
and learned to repent their evil. Now, in the incarnation when they at last
entered upon the Way of Initiation, the past opened its doors and showed them
the place in which they had made much karma. They were not only in the midst of
the scenes of Cleopatra's time, they were also in the midst of the waves of
emotion which surged through her court, of which she was the pivot and the
center. Each of the women seers, obviously because of personal vanity and
perhaps also because she was starved for excitement, promptly decided that she
herself was Cleopatra reborn.
Thus we see that there is a MEMORY OF
EMOTION as well as a memory of thought and action, and this also is touched upon
in the Reflecting Ether clairvoyance; though this emotion-memory is for most
people more rarely experienced than the other. However, when the image of the
past is not merely viewed, but entered into in the way described, the
emotion-memory comes into play. Now since most of us identify ourselves with our
emotions and feelings to an even greater degree than with body-sensations and
thought, it is natural that, feeling a strong emotion emanating from a pictured
character, we assume an identity which is not really ours, and thus ridiculous
situations arise such as that of the several women who thought they were
Cleopatra.
Note that every object in the outer universe
has its clear and unmistakable replica in the Reflecting Ether. It is not only
the Soul Body or Golden Wedding Garment that is found there. Everything in the
universe has its reflection in this ether. The laws of reflection in the
hyper-ether, however, are not a simple mirror-type image, although this is the
analogy upon which teachers base their explanations. We suggest that science's
newest theories about matter and anti-matter pivot about this ether; and that as
anti-matter has anti-gravity one may read here a possible explanation of the old
saying that levitation is accomplished by means of the astral light. A current
theory has it that in the beginning matter and anti-matter existed together in a
sort of "cosmic egg," and were separated by some kind of repulsive
force as yet unknown. Max Heindel has said that levitation is accomplished by
the reversal of the polarity of atoms.
The proposition that the negative pole of
the reflecting Ether may constitute the "great negative mass" which
underlies the Space-Time continuum of which modern science begins to be aware
may come as a shock to students who have not realized how close physics has come
to metaphysics.
Max Heindel speaks often of
"interplanetary ethers," chief of which are the Light and Reflecting
Ethers. The interplanetary Light Ether, in particular, he associates with the
Cosmic Christ or Solar Logos. But just as matter actually extends throughout the
universe in interplanetary and interstellar space-- there are atoms of matter in
every cubic foot of cosmic space; space is not empty--so also do the ethers; and
each planet specializes its own field in which evolution proceeds for the
life-wave belonging to that planet.
Many of the so-called illusions of matter
are due, indirectly, to the properties of the Reflecting Ether, which has been
called the Mirror of the Gods.
All three of the lower ethers are active
WITHIN the confines of the Reflecting Ether. We may, indeed, think of each
ether, starting from the top, as enclosing or enfolding (and interpenetrating)
those below it. Thus the Reflecting Ether "contains," as it were, the
Light, Life, and Chemical Ethers. The Light Ether "contains" the Life
and Chemical Ethers; and the Life Ether "contains" the Chemical Ether,
which we may add, in its turn may be said to "contain" the physical
organism.
For example: the Ego impresses thought upon
the brain by way of the positive pole of the Reflecting Ether. Now we know that
the thinking and memory processes of the embodied Ego have not only the
electromagnetic correlations of the Light and Life Ethers, but also the purely
chemical correlations of the Chemical Ether. There is a chemistry of memory and
a chemistry of thought, as well as an electromagnetic pattern and forces in
brain and nerves which transmit thought impulses to the body and which carry
sensory impressions from the body to the brain.
Certain forces in the Light Ether flow in
response to the thought-impulse focused by the Ego in the positive pole of the
Reflecting Ether, where the thought form moves out toward chemicalization,
passing downward (which is outward) by way of the electromagnetic spectrum and
Light Ether. Some biologists have already formulated the theory that the
electrical currents in the voluntary nervous system actually pour out from the
brain, where they are generated. The occultist points out that the Ego has its
seat in the brain. Max Heindel speaks of the great waves of energy that push out
from the brain when the Ego wills action in the body.
Therefore, says the biologist, there is
"an intricate chemical basis for how people remember and why they
forget." Experiments have shown that learning is reflected by changes in
the cell's production of RNA (ribonucleic acid), but how the RNA is changed
remains as yet unknown. It is known, however, that the learning process is
accompanied by basic changes in the composition of this complex chemical. Since
RNA molecules tell cells what proteins to make, changes in RNA structures would
result in changes in the production of proteins. These proteins apparently
"form the chemical basis for thoughts."
Again a scientific writer comments:
"The enormity of the task of mechanizing and electrifying brain power is
illustrated by the fact that the human brain contains about 10,000,000,000 nerve
cells. We do not know how it translates nerve impulses into sight, sound, or
touch, or how it stores and retrieves vast amounts of knowledge." The
occultist classifies the "brain power" and nerve impulses in the Light
Ether; the storing and retrieving of knowledge in the reflecting Ether. The Life
Ether supplies the life force which keeps tissues and cells alive and growing,
and the Chemical Ether is the field in which atoms and molecules are cemented
magnetically into the patterns of evolution. Again, Max Heindel comments (THE
WEB OF DESTINY, p. 99) that the vital fluid from the Sun "charges" the
Chemical and Life Ethers, and that "thus charged (they) are the avenues of
assimilation which preserve the individual and of fecundation which perpetuates
the race."
Since Reflecting Ether vision is not
dependent upon the optic nerve, the physically blind can learn to see in this
ether, and see not only inner-plane images but physical-plane images as well. If
this seems a poor substitute for physical sight, let us consider that normally
no one ever does look out directly upon the physical world. Ordinarily one sees
only the image which has reached the retina of the eye, which is translated into
nerve impulses, these in turn passing inward to the optical center of the brain,
where somehow, the nerve impulses are translated back into the image and
interpreted by the Ego. And where does this translation take place? Where but in
the Reflecting Ether interpenetrating the brain?
"Within each individual there is a
built-in mechanism, not yet discovered, that allows man to evolve. The DNA
(deoxyribonucleic acid) that embodies this mechanism, the genetic code of all
living organisms (except the blood and several viruses) is made up of four
chemical bases; adenin, guanine, cytosine, and thymine, and it is the different
combinations of these four chemicals that provide the specific information used
by the cells in the construction of proteins. It is this DNA which is shaped by
evolution. There is constant competition for survival among these combinations,
and in this way organisms slowly become enriched with experiences that
facilitate this survival. No one yet has discovered the complete base sequence
of these different combinations fro a single genes. Now we are out of the field
of generalities of epigenesis and philosophy and into the alchemist's
laboratory, where our alchemists of old with their four basic elements would
feel right at home." (RAYS FROM THE ROSE CROSS, Nov., 1963, page 516.)
Without the Reflecting Ether, the Ego could
not express consciousness in the physical body; that is, it could not be
conscious in the physical world. Consciousness, suggests a philosopher of modern
science (Erwin Schrodinger) appears in the role of a tutor. It "supervises
our education," introduces us to new experiences, but leaves us to carry on
our old routines in the form of "habit"--which we relate to the
negative pole of the Reflecting Ether. Consciousness is concerned with the
learning process and is intimately associated with all that is new. That is,
with new experiences and with creativity, epigenesis, the forces of the positive
pole--in a word, the future.
Occultists have long recognized phosphorus
as important to the thinking process. Max Heindel says: "Phosphorus is the
particular element by means of which the Ego is able to express thought and
influence the dense body....The degree of consciousness and intelligence is in
proportion to the amount of phosphorus contained in the brain." "Soul
growth enables the brain to assimilate an increasing amount of phosphorus"
(which is a chemical poison).
The term "Astral Light" is not
(as is well known) an orientalism, but was anciently used by Western teachers in
reference to the star-like Soul Body and its aura. Paracelsus refers to it as
"the sidereal light." The words of the great Paracelsus are most
significant: "Hidden things of the soul which cannot be perceived by the
physical senses may be found through the sidereal body, through whose organism
we may look into Nature in the same way that the Sun shines through glass. The
inner nature of everything may therefore be known, through magic in general, and
through the powers of the inner or second sight." In the Rosicrucian
Philosophy the descriptive term "Reflecting Ether" is used instead of
"Astral Light," the latter term including the Light Ether as well as
the Reflecting Ether.
We deem it important that oriental and
medieval European occultists have claimed that heavy bodies can be levitated by
means of the Astral Light, besides noting its function in promoting the other
supersensory powers. We may study the various chemical and electromagnetic
properties and processes of the body singly or collectively; but the root of the
mystery is found nowhere else than in the Reflecting Ether; in the negative
pole, which is the Cosmic Reflector, and in the positive pole which projects the
creatively working archetypal image that represents the future.
In this final chapter on the Reflecting
Ether we turn again to Max Heindel's statement that "this ether is the
medium through which thought makes an impression upon the human brain. IT IS
MOST INTIMATELY CONNECTED WITH THE FOURTH SUBDIVISION OF THE WORLD OF THOUGHT.
This is the highest of the four subdivisions contained in the Region of Concrete
Thought and is the home world of the human mind. There a much clearer version of
the Memory of nature is found."
The fourth subdivision of the Region of
Concrete Thought is termed the Region of Archetypal Forces. (COSMO, pages
50-63). Let us look farther into what we are taught concerning this region, in
order to gain a clearer understanding of the Reflecting Ether, for it is the
record in this Region which is reflected "down" into the Reflecting
Ether, and the cosmic relationship existing between the World of Thought and the
Reflecting Ether has its microcosmic replica within the aura of the embodied
human being.
The records of the Memory of Nature are
contained in the negative pole of the Reflecting Ether, and so is the individual
memory. But the Ego directs its positive thought force into the brain by way of
the positive pole of the Reflecting Ether. This positive thought force, which
works through the positive pole of the Reflecting Ether in the brain and nervous
system (the mind really works everywhere that the "gray matter" is
present, throughout the body) is CREATIVE; it is not passively receptive. The
negative pole is the receptor, and therefore contains the memory, being the
storehouse of all images, as hitherto described.
Of the Region of Archetypal Forces, Max
Heindel writes: "It is the central and most important Region in the five
worlds wherein man's entire evolution is carried on. On the one side of this
Region are the three higher Regions of the World of Thought, the World of Life
Spirit, and the World of Divine Spirit. On the other side of the Region of
Archetypal Forces are the three lower Regions of the World of Thought, the
Desire and the Physical Worlds. Thus this Region becomes a sort of 'crux,'
bounded on the one side by the Realms of Spirit, on the other by the worlds of
form. IT IS A FOCUSING POINT, WHERE SPIRIT REFLECTS ITSELF IN MATTER."
(COSMO-CONCEPTION, pages 50-51.)
In another place Mr. Heindel points out
that from another viewpoint the world of Spirit proper really begins only with
the World of Life Spirit, which he calls the first universal world, and that in
the broad sense, the material universe begins with the Region of Abstract
Thought, and that above this all is "pure" Spirit. The World of
Abstract Thought is "chaos, the seed-ground of cosmos," in which the
"germinal ideas"--the germs of all causation, and therefore of
evolution, are created by spiritual intelligences in that world. In the
COSMO-CONCEPTION, Diagram 1 page 52, we are shown a schematic drawing by which
to understand the "relative permanency of the visible and invisible
worlds," on the analogy of the stereopticon with its projected images. THE
DIAGRAM IS DRAWN FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF THE VIRGIN SPIRIT, whose Will
corresponds to the operator of the stereopticon machine; which conceives, in the
World of Life Spirit, by means of the divine creative imagination, A CONCEPT;
this concept takes the form of an Idea in the Region of Abstract Thought, and
the Idea is posited before the Lens of the Mind, in the fourth subdivision of
the World of Thought. THIS FOURTH DIVISION ALONE IS PROPERLY AND SCIENTIFICALLY
DESIGNATED "THE MIND." The mind is the lens, but the light emanates
from the Life Spirit, while the slide represents the permanent Idea created by
the Virgin Spirit in the Region of Abstract Thought. That is, this Permanent
Idea is the "Germinal Idea;" so called because it is the
"seed" from which the exterior world-objects spring. The light of the
Life Spirit projects the living, permanent Idea through the Mind, which lies
specifically in the Region of Archetypal Forces, and, therefore, it is these
Archetypal Forces which from this point on are represented by the beams of light
which emanate from the World of Life Spirit. The Archetypal Forces ray downward
through the Region of Concrete Thought and the Desire World, awakening the
driving power of desire, and the image, corresponding to the image cast on the
screen by the stereopticon projector. What are the Archetypal Forces? They are
all the living beings who work on the Archetypes in the Second Heaven, which
Archetypes are THOUGHT FORMS. They include human beings between incarnations,
Nature Forces, and the celestial Hierarchies, such as Lords of Mind, Archangels,
Angels, advanced members of our own life wave (Mercurians, Venusians), etc., and
Adepts of our own humanity.
Now when we come to the Physical World,
where the image is objectified, we are shown seven subdivisions, of which the
four upper are the ethers which are the subject of these chapters; and of these
four ethers, the Reflecting Ether is the uppermost. It is, Max Heindel says, an
Hyper-ether. THIS ETHER IS THE SCREEN UPON WHICH THE IMAGE IS PROJECTED FROM THE
MIND. But the forces of the Desire World are present with the image, just as the
heat, light, and electricity of the stereopticon machine are involved in
projecting the image inscribed on the glass slide on to the screen--or, in
another analogy, the moving picture projected from the film strip.
But the projected image of the stereopticon
or moving picture is flat and two-dimensional. The projected image contained
WITHIN (not on) the Reflecting Ether, is three-dimensional. It is projected in
depth, and with life and force. THE MEMORY OF NATURE AND OF THE HUMAN MIND is
comparable, on this analogy, to art galleries and newspapers which carry
pictures and symbols, but these are only a portion of THE ENTIRE PHYSICAL WORLD
ITSELF, the so-called time-space continuum of modern physical science.
The time-space continuum as a whole
correlates with the Reflecting Ether, and therefore modern scientists speak of
"traveling in time," or "the annihilation or collapse of
space," and "the collapse of time." Where the occultist says that
he "reads in the Memory of Nature"--particularly the Reflecting
Ether--the scientists says that he "travels in time." And many
scientific fantasies show this traveling in time as if it were possible for a
person living in the 20th century to return, in actual fact, to a former time
and way of life, retaining as he does his present-day personality and knowledge.
The occultist questions such a reversal of the time stream. He does, indeed,
travel backward in consciousness in the course of his Initiations, where he
reviews, and remembers, his previous existences--not only his embodiments as a
human being in the Earth Period but his former existences as animal-like,
planet-like or even mineral-like beings of earlier periods of evolution.
But whereas those periods were experienced
with no self-awareness, the Initiate now views them and enters into them
sympathetically (or with empathy, empathically), in full waking
self-consciousness, and in so doing becomes able to use the forces voluntarily
which he then used involuntarily--negatively or passively--under the guidance of
higher spiritual beings.
Now just as the physical body of man is
surrounded by and derived from the world around him, so that Divine Spirit and
Life Spirit are surrounded by and derived from their corresponding macrocosmic
worlds of Spirit; so also the Human Spirit is differentiated within the World of
Abstract Thought, and the Mind and Desire Body from their corresponding worlds;
while the vital body consists of the ethers which surround it on all sides, and
the physical body is made up of physical substances as said.
But from another point of view we may say
that the universe consists solely of Spirit: the Divine Spirit which is
"reflected" or condensed into the physical body as its representative;
the Life Spirit, which is "reflected" or condensed into the Vital
Body, as its representative; the Human Spirit which is "reflected" or
condensed into the Desire Body AND Concrete Mind, as its twofold representative.
BUT--as we see from a process of elimination--IT IS THE MIND ITSELF WHICH IS THE
FOCUS, CONDENSATION, OR REFLECTION, OF PURE VIRGIN SPIRIT. AND THE REFLECTING
ETHER IS, AS IT WERE, A KIND OF LOWER POLARITY OR OCTAVE OF THE MIND; THE
SUBCONSCIOUS MIND, IN THE SENSE THAT IT OCCUPIES A PLANE BELOW THE TRUE MIND.
To call the Reflecting Ether the
"lower octave" of the mind is of course a musical analogy, but such an
analogy bears a high degree of accuracy as regards the World of Thought, for
that world is the great cosmic world of tone, or sound; each cosmic sound
pattern created in Cosmic Root Substance by a Creative Idea sent forth by the
Three-fold Spirit in the way shown in Diagram 1 of the COSMO-CONCEPTION. The
World Archetype sings a song emanating from the Solar Logos and the Great
Spirits before His Throne who are the Planetary Logoi; and Man, as Virgin
Spirit, is part of this Song, and he also sings along with the innumerable
spirits of the celestial Hierarchies.
It is known to musicians--and to physicists
who have drawn up a science of sound--that when a certain note is struck, say on
a piano, other keys harmonious to it will vibrate in sympathy, creating
overtones, undertones, chords, and octaves, as the case may be. (See
COSMO-CONCEPTION, pages 122- 123.) So the harmony of the threefold Spirit
sounds, and by sounding creates tone-patterns in the World of Concrete Thought,
which are translated into form and substance in the Physical World. This is why
it is said that the reflecting Ether is the "lower octave" of the
fourth or Archetypal Region of the World of Thought, and therefore reflects, or
RESOUNDS WITH the pictures of the Memory of Nature, AND WITH ALL OTHER FORCES
WHICH BELONG TO THAT HIGH REALM.
