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The totality of the Seven Rays spread through the Solar system constitute, so to say, the physical Upadhi (basis) of the Ether of Science; in which Upadhi, light, heat, electricity, etc., etc., -- the forces of orthodox science -- correlate to produce their terrestrial effects. As psychic and spiritual effects, they emanate from, and have their origin in, the supra-solar Upadhi, in the ether of the Occultist -- or Akasa. ** To cite a most impartial critic, one whose authority no one can call in question, as a reminder to Western Dogmatists, that the question cannot be in any way considered as settled: "There is no fundamental difference between light and heat . . . each is merely a metamorphosis of the other. . . . Heat is light in complete repose. Light is heat in rapid motion. Directly light is combined with a body, it becomes heat; but when it is thrown off from that body it again becomes light." ( Leslie ' s Fluid Theory of Light and Heat. ) " Whether this is true or false we cannot tell , and many years, perhaps many generations, will have to elapse before we shall be able to tell." ( Buckle ' s History of Civilization , Vol. III., p. 384.) [[Vol. 1, Page]] 516 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. (1.) The production of heat by friction -- excitation of molecular motions. (2.) The conversion of heat into mechanical motion. The answer given is: There are fluids of various kinds. Electricity is called a fluid, and so was heat quite recently, but it was on the supposition that heat was some imponderable substance. This was during the supreme and autocratic reign of matter. When the latter was dethroned, and MOTION was proclaimed the sole sovereign ruler of the Universe, heat became "a mode of motion." We need not despair: it may become something else to-morrow. Like the Universe itself, Science is ever becoming , and can never say, "I am that I am." On the other hand, Occult Science has its changeless traditions from prehistoric times. It may err in particulars; it can never become guilty of a mistake in questions of Universal laws, simply because that Science, justly referred to by philosophy as the " divine ," was born on higher planes, and was brought on Earth by beings who were wiser than man will be, even in the seventh Race of his Seventh Round. And that Science maintains that Forces are not what modern learning would have them; e.g. , Magnetism is not a "mode of motion"; and, in this particular case, at least, exact "modern Science" is sure to come to grief some day. Nothing, at the first blush, can appear more ridiculous, more outrageously absurd than to say, for instance: "the Hindu initiated Yogi knows really ten times more than the greatest European physicist of the ultimate nature and constitution of light -- both solar and lunar." Yet why is the Sushumna ray believed to be that ray which furnishes the moon with its borrowed light? Why is it "the ray cherished by the initiated Yogi? " Why is the moon held as the deity of the mind , by those Yogis? We say, because light, or rather all its occult properties, every combination and correlation of it with other forces, mental, psychic, and spiritual, were perfectly known to the old adepts. Therefore, although, in its knowledge of the ultimate constitution of matter, or in the so-called ultimate analysis as opposed to the proximate in chemistry, occult science may be less well-informed as to the behaviour of compound elements in various cases of physical correlations: still, it is immeasurably higher in its knowledge of the ultimate occult states of matter, and of the true nature of matter, than all the physicists and chemists of our modern day put together. Now, if we state the truth openly and in full sincerity, namely, that the ancient Initiates had a far wider knowledge of physics -- as a Science of Nature -- than our Academies of Science, all taken together, possess, the statement will be characterized as an impertinence and an absurdity; for physical sciences are considered to have been carried in our age to the apex of perfection. Hence, the twitting query -- "Can [[Vol. 1, Page]] 517 THE CAUSES AND THE EFFECTS. the Occultists meet successfully the two points, namely ( a ) the production of heat by friction -- excitation of molecular motions; and ( b ) the conversion of heat into mechanical force, if they hold to the old "exploded" theory of heat being a substance or a fluid?" To answer the question, it must first be observed that the Occult Sciences do not regard either electricity or any of the forces supposed to be generated by it, as matter, in any of the states known to physical Science; to put it more clearly, none of these "forces," so-called, are either solids, gases, or fluids. If it did not look pedantic, an Occultist would even object to electricity being called a fluid -- as it is an effect and not a cause. But its noumenon , he would say, is a conscious cause. The same in the cases of "Force" and the "Atom." Let us see what an eminent Academician, Butlerof, the chemist, had to say about these two abstractions. -------------- "What is Force?" argues this great man of Science, "what is it from a strictly scientific stand-point, and as warranted by the law of conservation of energy? Conceptions of Force are resumed by our conceptions of this, that, or another mode of motion." Force is thus simply the passage of one state of motion into another state of the same: of electricity, into heat and light, of heat into sound or some mechanical function, and so on.* The first time electric fluid was produced by man on earth it must have been by friction; hence, as well-known, it is heat that produces it by disturbing its laya state,** and electricity exists no more on earth per se than heat or light, or any other force. They are all correlations, as science says. "When a given quantity of heat, assisted by a steam engine, is transformed into mechanical work, we speak of steam power (or force). When a falling body strikes an obstacle in its way, thereby generating heat and sound -- we call it the power of collision. When electricity decomposes water or heats a platinum wire, we speak of the force of the electric fluid. When the rays of the sun are intercepted by the thermometer bulb and its quicksilver expands, we speak of the calorific energy of the sun. In short, when one state of a determined quantity of motion ceases, another state of motion equivalent to the preceding takes its place, and the result of such a transformation or correlation is -- force. In all cases where such a transformation, or the passage of one state of motion into another, is entirely absent, there no force is possible.