volutionary
speed to the etheric molecules, a speed in which apergy would
necessarily exceed gravity. The failure to take apergy into
consideration has been the undoing of many physicists.

"Today we know that the ether is matter, the same as our own,
only finer and rarer and in much more rapid vibration. We know
that this ether has its solids, liquids and gases formed from
molecules of its atoms, even as our own are formed. We know that
its atoms combine as ours do, and while we have but eighty
elementary combinations, it must have more than double the
number. We know that every form and shape and combination of
these elements from this plane flows from inherited tendencies
having their root in the etheric world.

"The two worlds are one world--as much at one with ours as the
world of gas about us is at one with our liquids and solids. It
is 'continuity, not impact.' They not only touch everywhere and
in everything, but they are one and the same in action and
reaction."

Thus spake a certain wise teacher of physics. To his wise
utterances, we can only add that such as we are today "we see
through a glass, darkly." Yet there will come a day when the
physical bandages will be removed from our eyes, and we shall see
face to face the beauty and grandeur and glory of this invisible
world, and that in truth it 'transmits by continuity and not
impact every action and reaction of which matter is capable,'
forming one continuous chain of cause and effect, without a link
missing. There are no gulfs to cross; no bridges to be made.
It is here; not there. It is at one with us. And we are at one
with it. One and the same law controls and guides the etheric
atom and the physical atom made from its molecules, whether the
latter are made in "whirls," as at first supposed, or by orderly
combination as now believed.

In fact, this visible world of ours is the perfect product of the
other invisible one, having in it its root and foundation, the
very sap of its life.

Chapter Five

The Four Manifested Planes

The oriental idea of the universe does not differ fundamentally
in its general conception, from that of modern science, but it
goes farther and explains more. The physics of the secret
doctrine are based upon a material universe of four planes of
vibration and a spiritual universe of three planes of vibration
beyond matter. This Something in vibration may be given the
English name, Consciousness--wi