The ethers
Before moving too far along in the modern exoteric view, some thoughts anent the ethers in the esoteric understanding and the earlier exoteric scientific and philosophic though are in order. As we know, Einstein has proved that light can travel in a vacuum, and that a medium, such as the proposed ether or aether, was unnecessary to this function. However, this may not completely rule out the fact of its existence, and it certainly hasn’t changed esotericists to alter their view of a the 4 subplanes of the cosmic physical, the 4 cosmic ethers, or of the etheric body. (Which isn’t to imply that those of esoteric bent are adaptable to modern proofs, rightly or wrongly!) Nevertheless, let’s re-explore the possible other or deeper explanations – or placement – of the ethers and its relation to Light. Most efficiently, here are a few excerpts from the writings early in the 1900’s in Light on the Soul (from page 54 forward), with hope they may seed some further insight.
THE THEORY OF THE ETHERIC BODY
The Oriental psychologist starts with that which the Occidental regards as hypothetical. He lays the emphasis upon the spiritual nature of man, and believes that the physical nature itself is the result of spiritual activity. He asserts that all that is objectively seen is but the outward manifestation of inner subjective energies. He regards the entire mechanics of the cosmos and of man as effects, and believes the scientist is dealing only with effects. His position may be summed up as follows:
First: There is nothing but energy, and it functions through a substance which interpenetrates and actuates all forms, and which is analogous to the ether of the modern world. Matter is energy or spirit in its densest form, and spirit is matter in its most sublimated aspect.
Second: As all forms are interpenetrated by this ether, every form has an etheric form or etheric body.
Third: As the tiny atom has a positive nucleus, or positive nuclei, as well as negative aspects, so in every etheric body there are positive centres of force in the midst of negative substance. The human being too has an etheric body which is positive to the negative physical body, which galvanises it into activity, and which acts as its coherent force, holding it in being.
Fourth: The etheric body of man has seven main nuclei of energy through which various types of energy flow, producing his psychical activity …
Fifth: Only certain centres are now functioning …
There is a universal substance, the source of all, but so sublimated, so subtle that it is truly beyond the real grasp of human intelligence. In comparison with it, the most delicate fragrance, the dancing radiance of sunbeams, the crimson glory of the sunset, are gross and earthly. It is "a web of light," forever invisible to human eye.
One bridge that science must admit is that we can only determine the existence of observable, natural objects – those which we have instruments to perceive. Those instruments may be either mechanical, or psychical (i.e., 6th ‘sense’- type organs). If the orientalists here describing the ether may be presumed correct, it could be that there IS an ether, but that modern instrumentation does not allow us to perceive and thus prove it, scientifically. This is the crux of the assumption I hold in terms of any ‘unprovable’, but logical surmise. Therefore, the higher ethers may be those that are still unregisterable by common appliances. The 4th ether, however, as the Tibetan tells us, is what scientists were working with early last century. These include all the phenomenon of electricity, xrays, the cosmic rays, etc. Let’s continue …
Subtle and fugitive as this universal substance is, yet in another sense it is denser even than matter. If we could conceive of an agent outside of universal substance—an hypothesis contrary to all fact and possibility—and if such an external agent attempted to compress universal substance, or in some other way affect it from without, then substance would be found denser than any known material.
Inherent in substance, and a perpetual counterpart of it, is life, incessant life. Life and substance are one and the same, one and forever inseparable, but different aspects however, of the one reality. Life is as positive electricity, substance negative. Life is dynamic, substance static. Life is activity or spirit, and substance form or matter. Life is the father and begets, substance is the mother and conceives.
In addition to these two aspects of life and substance, there is still a third. Life is theoretical or potential activity, and needs a field of operation. Substance furnishes this and in the union of life and substance, there flames forth active energy.
Thus we have a single reality, universal substance—but at the same time a co-existent duality—life and substance; and at the same time, a coexistent trinity, life, substance, and the resultant interaction which we call consciousness or soul.
Matter is energy in its densest or lowest form; spirit is this same Energy in highest or most subtle form. So matter is spirit descending and debased; spirit, conversely, is matter ascending and glorified.
This is a very obvious correlation to Einstein’s discoveries that energy and matter are really the same, matter just being very inert energy, which can be converted to energy by squaring. Energy being related to Spirit or Life, and Matter to form, we read E = mc2 . The factor of squaring is a fundamental in the three dimensional world, and correlates psychically with the creation of the quaternary, the personality that interacts worlds, by the soul, or the incarnating Light. Through Life squaring Light, it densifies it sufficiently so that it becomes form, the matter or mother within which the Light may incarnate into the form.
In taking on density, energy takes on, or descends into, seven degrees or planes. … Three subplanes of the physical are known to every school-boy—the solid, liquid and gaseous, for example, ice, water and steam. In addition there are four subtler planes, or rather four different types of ether. These four are co-existent with each of the three well known subplanes, and interpenetrate them.
Thus the possibility is that the 4th ether is that represented by the phenomenon of those wavelengths that travel at the speed of Light, those waves which are created by the combination of electricity and magnetism, meeting at the midway point, and permeating the lower levels.
The etheric counterpart, whether of man or of any physical thing, is of the universal substance, of universal life, and of universal energy. It partakes of all of these. But it is not self-sufficient or independently existing. It draws upon the reservoir of universal energy, and in it the etheric counterpart lives and moves and has its being. Energy is thus functioning through the etheric.
Sir Isaac Newton … "And now we might add something concerning a certain most subtle spirit which pervades and lies hid in all gross bodies; by the force and action of which spirit the particles of bodies mutually attract one another at near distances, and cohere if contiguous; and electric bodies operate to greater distances, as well repelling as attracting the neighbouring corpuscles; and light is emitted, reflected, refracted, inflected, and heats bodies; and all sensation is excited, and the members of animal bodies move at the command of the will, namely by the vibrations of this spirit, mutually propagated along the solid firmaments of the nerves, from the outward organs of sense to the brain, and from the brain into the muscles. But these are things that cannot be explained in few words, nor are we furnished with that sufficiency of experiments which is required to an accurate determination and demonstration of the laws by which this electric and elastic spirit operates."
Thus it can be argued from the above that Newton recognised the facts of the etheric body, underlying all forms, including the human. … edition (1926) of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The following discussion is given under the heading of "ether." "Whether space is a mere geometrical abstraction, or whether it has definite physical properties which can be investigated, is a question which in one form or another has often been debated. As to the parts which are occupied by matter, that is by a substance which appeals to the senses, there has never been any doubt; and the whole of science may be said to be an investigation of the properties of matter. But from time to time attention has been directed to the intervening portions of space from which sensible matter is absent; and this also has physical properties, of which the complete investigation has hardly begun. These physical properties do not appeal directly to the senses, and are therefore comparatively obscure; but there is now no doubt of their existence; even among those who still prefer to use the term space. But a space endowed with physical properties is more than a geometrical abstraction, and is most conveniently thought of as a substantial reality, to which therefore some other name is appropriate. The term used is unimportant, but long ago the term ETHER was invented; it was adopted by Isaac Newton, and is good enough for us. The term ether therefore connotes a genuine entity filling all space, without any break or cavity anywhere, the one omnipresent physical reality, of which there is a growing tendency to perceive that everything in the material universe consists; matter itself being in all probability one of its modifications.... Thus an ether is necessary for the purpose of transmitting what is called gravitational force between one piece of matter and another, and for the still more important and universal purpose of transmitting waves of radiation between one piece of matter and another however small and distant they be.... The properties of the ether are not likely to be expressible in terms of matter; but, as we have no better clue, we must proceed by analogy, and we may apologetically speak of the elasticity and density of the ether as representing things which, if it were matter, would be called by those names. What these terms really express we have not yet fathomed; but if, as is now regarded as very probable, atomic matter is a structure in ether, there is every reason for saying that the ether must in some sense be far denser than any known material substance.... Matter therefore is comparatively a gossamer structure, subsisting in a very substantial medium...."
These views are amplified by other early scientists of note. "Whence, I ask if it be unworthy of a philosopher to inquire of a philosopher if there be not in nature an incorporeal substance, which, while it can impress on any body all the qualities of body, or at least most of them, such as motion, figure, position of parts, etc., ... would be further able, since it is almost certain that this substance removes and stops bodies, to add whatever is involved in such motion, that is, it can unite, divide, scatter, bind, form the small parts, order the forms, set in circular motion those which are disposed for it, or move them in any way whatever, arrest their circular motion, and do such similar further things with them as are necessary to produce according to your principles light, colours, and the other objects of the senses.... Finally, incorporeal substance having the marvellous power of cohering and dissipating matter, of combining it, dividing it, thrusting it forth and at the same time retaining control of it, by mere application of itself without bonds, without hooks, without projections or other instruments; does it not appear probable that it can enter once more in itself, since there is no impenetrability to frustrate it, and expand itself again, and the like."
Also writing in the 17th century, "That there may be such a substance in the universe, the asserters of it will probably bring for proofs several of the phenomena I am about to relate; but whether there be or be not in the world any matter that exactly answers to the descriptions they make of their first and second elements I shall not here discuss, though divers experiments seem to argue that there is an ethereal substance, very subtle and not a little diffused."
Sir William Barrett said: "The universe presents us with an assemblage of phenomena—physical, vital, and intellectual—the connecting link between the worlds of intellect and matter being that of organized vitality, occupying the whole domain of animal and vegetable life, throughout which, in some way inscrutable to us, movements among the molecules of matter are originated of such a character as apparently to bring them under the control of an agency other than physical, superseding the ordinary laws which regulate the movements of inanimate matter, or in other words, giving rise to movements which would not result from the action of those laws uninterfered with; and therefore implying, on the very same principle, the origination of force." …
"We do not usually attend to the ether aspect of a body; we have no sense organ for its appreciation, we only directly apprehend matter. … We know that a body of characteristic shape, or indeed of any definite shape, cannot exist without the forces of cohesion—cannot exist therefore without the Ether—meaning … the unmaterialized part of it, the part which is the region of strain, the receptacle of potential energy, the substance in which the atoms of matter are embedded. Not only is there a matter body, there is also an ether body: the two are coexistent."
… Light is an affection of the ether. Light is to ether as sound is to matter ... Subject to all the laws of time and space, fully amenable to the laws of energy, largely the source of terrestrial energy, governing all the manifestations of physical forces, at the root of elasticity and tenacity and every other static property of matter … Electric charges, composed of modified ether, are likely to prove to be the cosmic building material.... There is the great bulk of undifferentiated ether, the entity which fills all space and in which everything material occurs. A duality runs through the scheme of physics—matter and ether.
All kinetic energy belongs to what we call matter, whether in the atomic or the corpuscular form; movement or locomotion is its characteristic. All static energy belongs to the ether, the unmodified and universal ether; its characteristics are strain and stress. Energy is always passing to and fro from one to the other—from ether to matter or vice versa—and in this passage is all work done.
Now, the probability is that every sensible object has both a material and an etherial counterpart. One side only are we sensibly aware of, the other we have to infer. But the difficulty of perceiving this other side—the necessity for indirect inference—depends essentially and entirely on the nature of our sense organs, which tell us of matter and do not tell us of ether. Yet one is as real and substantial as the other, and their fundamental joint quality is coexistence and interaction. Not interaction everywhere and always, for there are plenty of regions without matter—though there is no region without ether; but the potentiality of interaction, and often the conspicuous reality of it, everywhere prevails and constitutes the whole of our purely mundane experience. …
Ether belongs to the physical frame of things, no one supposes it be a psychic entity; but it probably subserves psychical purposes, just as matter does. …
The ether, as interpreted by scientists, meets all these conditions and is the only medium known to science that is capable of doing so. It is invisible, permeates all matter and pervades all space by wave motion, without limit in the universe. It offers practically no resistance to radiant energy, even to light from the sun and the most distant stars discovered. It is the medium which transmits `radio' waves, wireless telegraphy waves, Becquerel rays, X- or Roentgen rays, etc.
The ether is endowed with creative power in space and on earth.... The ether of space, therefore, builds solar systems as it does matter, with co-ordination and intelligence, and endows all chemical elements it forms with the properties they are known to possess ...