and not exposed to thought of inner meanings,
another cult took shape. Here concern was solely with the outer shape
and size and weight and measurement of things, and how the size and
shape and weight of one interacted with another. The Dravidian culture,
which grasped only the idea but not the method of how the inner
vibration could change the outer shape receded and became submerged in
the Western cult that found a method in the measurement of shape and
weight of things to make them change.

It was Rabindranath, centuries later, who described the essential
difference between the Indian and the Grecian civilization as that
between a forest culture which had known no walls, and a city culture
where everything has limit and every inch must be mapped.

But perhaps, also, the Greeks had never seen this tree changed into
bird, this cloud changed into flower. Not trapped by memories grown into
tradition that must not die, they hit upon an approach that man could
master. For it was the Greek beginnings which led to the Oxford
definition of how to make scientific inquiry into the properties of
things.

Inquiry into the properties, at first the outer shapes and weights, led
inevitably straight back to vibrations. All matter is merely a specific
vibration of energy, a range of vibrations feeling solid to the senses,
as a range of light vibrations translate into color through the eyes.

E = MC^2!

It took man far. He too began an exploration of the stars!

Failure in their first attempt had brought a wisdom to the sentient
fields of force. This time they did not rush in with pyrotechnic
displays to show the wondrous power they knew. Observing patiently
through the centuries, by now they knew man well. They knew his
weakness, yet by making thing react with thing, he'd proved his
strength. For here he was among the stars.

Perhaps by now he might communicate? Perhaps, by now, he would not
prostrate himself and grovel in the dust, if someone said, "Hello!"

But careful, perhaps he would.

There had been a man by name of Galileo, with the first crude telescope
he'd made, who first saw the rings of Saturn. But not as rings, but
rather in the planet's tilting, he had seen a spot of light on either
side. And sometime later, when he looked again, the tilting of the
planet back had made the rings edge on, and so they disappeared. He
never looked again, nor told of what he'd seen; for legend had it that
the god Saturn periodica