e all the planets--the
"gaseous" atmosphere of the etheric globe stretching millions of
miles beyond the outermost planetary orbit. The earth is in this
skin or belt of etheric phenomena, and its ether is in touch with
the ether "in manifestation" on the etheric globe. The sun and
other etheric globes are within the corresponding "skin" of
phenomena of the pranic globes. The prana, manifesting as solid,
liquid, and gas, or in combination and in forms, is in perfect
touch with that of the etheric globe, and through that with the
prana of the earth. That our prana is in touch with that on the
pranic globe in all its manifestations means much in metaphysics.
The same is true of the manasic globe, and of our manasa.

The great lesson the Eastern physics burns into the pupil is that
we are living not only within the prakritic earth, but within
each of the other globes as well in identically the same way and
subject to the same laws. Our lives are not passed on one globe,
but in four globes. It is as if one said he lived in Buffalo,
Erie county, New York, United States; that he was a citizen of
each and subject to the laws of each.

This question of the four globes, of the four planes of matter,
of the four skins, and of the four conditions or states of all
matter and necessarily of all persons, from the purely material
standpoint, is not only the foundation of Oriental physics, but
the very essence of Oriental metaphysics--its starting-point and
corner-stone. To one who carries with him, consciously or
unconsciously, the concrete knowledge of the physics, the
abstract teaching of the metaphysics presents no difficulty; it
is as clear as crystal. But without the physical teaching the
metaphysical is not translatable.

Our Western physics teaches that physical matter is divided into
two kinds prakriti (commonly called "physical matter") and ether;
that the differences of each of the elementary prakritic
substances (iron, copper, sulphur, oxygen) are in their
molecules, the fundamental atom being the same; that each of
these elementary substances vibrates only through one octave,
though on different keys; that it changes from solid to liquid
and gas as the rate of vibration is increased and from gas to
liquid and solid as its vibration is decreased within its octave;
that the ether obeys identical laws; that it has elementary
substances vibrating through one octave only, and that these are
solids, liquids, or