s formed by the same amount of force is very much
greater still--probably the cube of 49 instead of the square, though they
have not been actually counted. Therefore one physical atom is not
_composed of_ forty-nine astral or 2401 mental atoms, but _corresponds_ to
them, in the sense that the force which manifests through it would show
itself on those higher planes by energising respectively those numbers of
atoms.

The dots, or beads, seem to be the constituents of all matter of which we,
at present, know anything; astral, mental and buddhic atoms are built of
them, so we may fairly regard them as fundamental units, the basis of
matter.

These units are all alike, spherical and absolutely simple in construction.
Though they are the basis of all matter, they are not themselves matter;
they are not blocks but bubbles. They do not resemble bubbles floating in
the air, which consist of a thin film of water separating the air within
them from the air outside, so that the film has both an outer and an inner
surface. Their analogy is rather with the bubbles that we see rising in
water, before they reach the surface, bubbles which may be said to have
only one surface--that of the water which is pushed back by the contained
air. Just as such bubbles are not water, but are precisely the spots from
which water is absent, so these units are not koilon, but the absence of
koilon--the only spots where it is not--specks of nothingness floating in
it, so to speak, for the interior of these space-bubbles is an absolute
void to the highest power of vision that we can turn upon them.

That is the startling, well-nigh incredible, fact. Matter is nothingness,
the space obtained by pressing back an infinitely dense substance; Fohat
"digs holes in space" of a verity, and the holes are the airy
nothingnesses, the bubbles, of which "solid" universes are built.

What are they, then, these bubbles, or rather, what is their content, the
force which can blow bubbles in a substance of infinite density? The
ancients called that force "the Breath," a graphic symbol, which seems to
imply that they who used it had seen the kosmic process, had seen the LOGOS
when He breathed into the "waters of space," and made the bubbles which
build universes. Scientists may call this "Force" by what names they
will--names are nothing; to us, Theosophists, it is the Breath of the
LOGOS, we know not whether of the LOGOS of this solar system or of a yet
mightier Bein