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Page 2
We little realized at the moment the enormous significance of this
discovery, made in the year 1895, long before the discovery of radium
enabled physicists of the ordinary type to improve their acquaintance with
the "electron." Whatever name is given to that minute body it is recognised
now by ordinary science as well as by occult observation, as the
fundamental unit of physical matter. To that extent ordinary science has
overtaken the occult research I am dealing with, but that research rapidly
carried the occult student into regions of knowledge whither, it is
perfectly certain, the ordinary physicist must follow him at no distant
date.
The research once started in the way I have described was seen to be
intensely interesting. Mrs. Besant almost immediately co-operated with Mr.
Leadbeater in its further progress. Encouraged by the success with
hydrogen, the two important gases, oxygen and nitrogen, were examined. They
proved to be rather more difficult to deal with than hydrogen but were
manageable. Oxygen was found to consist of 290 minor atoms and nitrogen of
261. Their grouping will be described later on. The interest and importance
of the whole subject will best be appreciated by a rough indication of the
results first attained. The reader will then have more patience in
following the intricacies of the later discoveries.
The figures just quoted were soon perceived to have a possible
significance. The atomic weight of oxygen is commonly taken as 16. That is
to say, an atom of oxygen is sixteen times heavier than an atom of
hydrogen. In this way, all through the table of atomic weights, hydrogen is
taken as unity, without any attempt being made to estimate its absolute
weight. But now with the atom of hydrogen dissected, so to speak, and found
to consist of 18 somethings, while the atom of oxygen consisted of 290 of
the same things, the sixteen to one relationship reappears: 290 divided by
18 gives us 16 and a minute decimal fraction. Again the nitrogen number
divided by 18 gives us 14 and a minute fraction as the result, and that is
the accepted atomic weight of nitrogen. This gave us a glimpse of a
principle that might run all through the table of atomic weights. For
reasons having to do with other work, it was impossible for the authors of
this book to carry on the research further at the time it was begun. The
results already sketched were published as an article in the magazine then
called _Lucifer_, in November, 1895, and reprinted as a separate pamphlet
bearing the title "Occult Chemistry," a pamphlet the surviving copies of
which will one day be a recognised vindication of the method that will at
some time in the future be generally applied to the investigation of
Nature's mysteries. For the later research which this volume deals with
does establish the principle with a force that can hardly be resisted by
any fair-minded reader. With patience and industry--the authors being
assisted in the counting in a way that will be described (and the method
adopted involved a check upon the accuracy of the counting)--the minor
atoms of almost all the known chemical elements, as they are commonly
called, were counted and found to bear the same relation to their atomic
weights as had been suggested by the cases of oxygen and nitrogen. This
result throws back complete proof on the original estimate of the number of
minor atoms in hydrogen, a figure which ordinary research has so far
entirely failed to determine. The guesses have been widely various, from
unity to many hundreds, but, unacquainted with the clairvoyant method, the
ordinary physicist has no means of reaching the actual state of the facts.
Before going on with the details of the later research some very important
discoveries arising from the early work must first be explained. As I have
already said clairvoyant faculty of the appropriate order directed to the
minute phenomena of Nature is practically infinite in its range. Not
content with estimating the number of minor atoms in physical molecules,
the authors proceeded to examine the minor atoms individually. They were
found to be themselves elaborately complicated structures which, in this
preliminary survey of the whole subject, I will not stop to explain (full
explanation will be found later on) and they are composed of atoms
belonging to an ultra-physical realm of Nature with which the occultist has
long been familiar and describes as "the Astral Plane." Some rather
pedantic critics have found fault with the term, as the "plane" in question
is of course really a sphere entirely surrounding the physical globe, but
as all occultists understand the word, "plane" simply signifies a condition
of nature. Each condition, and there are many more than the two under
consideration, blends with its neighbour, _via_ atomic structure. Thus the
atoms of the Astral plane in combination give rise to the finest variety of
physical matter, the ether of space, which is not homogeneous but really
atomic in its character, and the minute atoms of which physical molecules
are composed are atoms of ether, "etheric atoms," as we have now learned to
call them.
Many physicists, though not all, will resent the idea of treating the ether
of space as atomic. But at all events the occultist has the satisfaction of
knowing that the great Russian chemist, Mendeleef, preferred the atomic
theory. In Sir William Tilden's recent book entitled "Chemical Discovery
and Invention in the Twentieth Century," I read that Mendeleef,
"disregarding conventional views," supposed the ether to have a molecular
or atomic structure, and in time all physicists must come to recognise that
the Electron is not, as so many suppose at present, an atom of electricity,
but an atom of ether carrying a definite unit charge of electricity.
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