In the third part of "Cosmogenesis," H.P. Blavatsky turned her attention to science.
(Chapter I). REASONS FOR THESE ADDENDA: Light is both "Spirit and Matter," per The Secret Doctrine 1:481. The "Sons of Light"--in whatever sense--emanate "from, and are self-generated in, that infinite Ocean of light, whose one pole is pure Spirit lost in the absoluteness of Non-Being, and the other, the matter in which it condenses, crystallizing into a more and more gross type as it descends into manifestation." The pole of pure Spirit is the immaculate white disk since it dwells on the boundary of the upper Kosmos; the pole of crystallizing matter is our Earth globe since it resides on the boundary of a lower Kosmos.
(Chapter II). MODERN PHYSICISTS ARE PLAYING AT BLIND MAN'S BLUFF: Therefore, light is a "body" or is not a "body" depending on how one views it.
(Chapter III). "AN LUMEN SIT CORPUS, NEC NON?": In The Secret Doctrine Index on page 425, John P. Van Mater translated this Latin phrase: "Is light a body or is it not?" H.P. Blavatsky answered by stating that light is not a "motion of material particles." She qualified this pronouncement with the assertion in The Secret Doctrine 1:487 that "Official Science knows nothing to this day of the constitution of ether." To understand light, one must understand Ether. The entire text of The Secret Doctrine is built on themes of light emanating from darkness. Our material world is no different. In The Secret Doctrine 1:489, H.P. Blavatsky wrote on the ability of the "adept" to follow the "point" of light, though "invisible on our plane of perception and matter," to its source of origin. It makes no difference if the original source is Mulaprakriti, Prakriti, Aditi, or Ether. The design is the same.
(Chapter IV). IS GRAVITATION A LAW?: In The Secret Doctrine 1:499, H.P. Blavatsky maintained that the "Solar substance is immaterial." This accounts for her reticence in allowing light to be "material particles." She added, "In the sense, of course, of matter existing in states unknown to Science." Matter allows light (from an unknown state) to happen in our material realm. She wrote in The Secret Doctrine 1:493 that light, heat, and electricity are "affections (not properties or qualities) of matter." That is, Ether is attracted to matter. Since the Solar Sun is a giant magnet, this attraction to matter results in a ray of light being drawn out of the invisible etheric substance into the material world. In a letter to fellow theosophist C.J. Ryan in the February 1939 edition of The Theosophical Forum on pages 135-137, G. de Purucker taught the existence of an "immaterial Ether, immaterial here meaning something which is not matter in the physical sense, but nevertheless distinctly substance in our theosophical and philosophical sense; and yet not spirit, for spirit is infinitely more tenuous." G. de Purucker viewed Ether in terms of the "physical prakriti" on our cosmic plane as "matter in its first or second or even third or possibly fourth states, counting downwards from the highest." This indicates that Ether stretches from the 7th state to the 4th state of our physical realm. Due to attraction, the ray of light as immaterial solar substance emerges from Ether and becomes visible to the human eye.
(Chapter V). THE THEORIES OF ROTATION IN SCIENCE: In The Republic 1:21-23, Marcus Tullius Cicero recounted the construction of a mechanical "globe" that displayed the "movements of the sun and moon and of the five stars" in relation to one another. Cicero expressed amazement at how "a single rotation could reproduce the diverse paths of the various bodies with their different speeds." An object rotates or moves based on its own inner propulsion as well as based on its outer relation to other objects. In The Secret Doctrine 1:633, H.P. Blavatsky described the inner propulsion of an object as "atoms propelling their molecules into activity from within." The "inner vibration" of an atom produces the motion that results in "the natural phenomena" that establishes the perfect "correlation of Forces" in Cicero's globe. But the outer relation between "light Forces," "Reflected Lights," and the "simple phenomenal exteriority of their spiritual types" as described in The Secret Doctrine 1:506 is just as important. The light Forces, drawn by attraction, emerge from Ether to engage in an exchange with the Reflected Lights; the exterior material body is the vehicle in which this exchange takes place. The light Forces as solar substance are Kamic; the Reflected Lights are Astral; the phenomenal exteriority carries their influence in the physical organism. Stated another way, the light Forces correspond to photons, the Reflected Lights correspond to atoms, and the phenomenal exteriority corresponds to molecules. H. Groot intuited, in his August 1939 article "Modern Science and the Message of H.P. Blavatsky" in The Theosophical Forum on page 87, that photons are the "Kama-rupa" of matter. Photons are massless packets of light (an unknown state to science in the 19th century) that carry electromagnetic forces from the Solar Sun. If these packets cannot be broken down any further, it is because they are on the border of heterogeneity and homogeneity. In theosophical literature, the 5th state of any series is generally considered homogeneous (relatively speaking). In modern science, these packets can even be frozen, a condition perhaps not entirely unlike a theosophical Pralaya when they are abandoned in an icy deadlock in Space. Generating patterns of light and dark in their movement, the photons meet up with atoms and even transfer their energy to them. In fact, the creation of photons is dependent on atoms as an affection of matter. Photons produce shock waves, like soundless sonic booms (the Voice of the Silence is a wave in Space that speaks to us) in the atmosphere, which cause atoms to produce more photons. In The Secret Doctrine 1:633-634, H.P. Blavatsky related the theosophical visions of "Seers" who could see "the motion of the interstellar shoals" in their "dazzling" array, like "specks of virgin snow in radiant sunlight." She continued, "The sight is so marvellous, that, as the Seer gazes into this inner world, and feels the scintillating points shoot past him, he is filled with awe at the thought of other, still greater mysteries, that lie beyond, and within, this radiant ocean."
Sources:
H..P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine (Pasadena: Theosophical University Press, 2019).
Cicero, The Republic and The Laws, trans. Niall Rudd (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
H. Groot, "Modern Science and the Message of H.P. Blavatsky," The Theosophical Forum (August 1939).
John P. Van Mater, ed., The Secret Doctrine Index (Pasadena: Theosophical University Press, 1997).
G. de Purucker, ed., "Is Aether Spirit or Matter?", The Theosophical Forum (February 1939).
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