Theos-Talk Archives (June 2004 Message tt00230)

See below H.P.B.'s editorial note & a chela's article 
on "passage of matter through matter." This is in
answer to some questions by Prof. John Smith who
visited H.P.B. in Bombay in 1882.

Daniel

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SOME SCIENTIFIC QUESTIONS ANSWERED

[The Theosophist, Vol. V, October, 1883, p. 22]

[A letter was recently received by the Editor from one of our most 
eminent Australasian Fellows, asking some questions in science of 
such importance that the replies are, with permission, copied for the 
edification of our readers. The writer is a Chela who has a certain 
familiarity with the terminology of Western science. If we mistake 
not, this is the first time that the rationale of the control 
exercised by an Adept Occultist over the relations of atoms, and of 
the phenomena of the "passage of matter through matter," has been so 
succinctly and yet clearly explained.—Editor, The Theosophist.] 

REPLIES TO PROF.— 'S QUESTIONS.
(1)The phenomenon of "osmosing" [extracting.—Ed.] your
note from the sealed envelope in which it was sewn with thread, and 
substituting for it his own reply, without breaking either seal or 
thread, is to be considered first.
  
It is one of those complete proofs of the superior familiarity with 
and control over atomic relations among our Eastern Adepts as 
compared with modern Western men of science, to which custom has made 
me familiar. It was the same power as that employed in the formation 
of the letter in the air of your room at——; in the case of many
other 
air-born letters; of showers of roses; of the gold ring which leaped 
from the heart of a moss-rose while held in _____________'s hand; of 
a sapphire ring doubled for a lady of high position here, a short 
time ago, and of other examples. The solution is found in the fact 
that the "attraction of cohesion" is a manifestation of the Universal 
Divine Force, and can be interrupted and again set up as regards any 
given group of atoms in the relation of substance by the same Divine 
power as that localised in the human monad. Atma, the eternal 
spiritual principle in man, has the same quality of power over brute 
force as has the Universal Principle of which it is a part. Adeptship 
is but the crown of spiritual self-evolution, and the powers of 
spirit develope themselves successively in the ratio of the 
aspirant's progress upward, morally and spiritually. This you see
is to place our modern Evolution Theory upon a truly noble basis, and 
to give it the character of a lofty spiritual, instead of a debasing 
materialistic, philosophy. . . .

Note that no Adept even can disintegrate and reform any organism 
above the stage of vegetable: the Universal Manas has in the animal 
begun and in man completed its differentiation into individual 
entities: in the vegetable it is still an undifferentiated universal 
spirit, informing the whole mass of atoms which have progressed 
beyond the inert mineral stage, and preparing to differentiate. There 
is movement even in the mineral, but it is rather the imperceptible 
quiver of that Life of life, than its active manifestation in the 
production of form—a ramification which attains its maximum not,
as 
you may suppose, in the stage of physical man, but in the higher one 
of the Dhyan Chohans, or Planetary Spirits, i.e., once human beings 
who have run through the scale of evolution, but are not yet re-
united, or coalesced with Parabrahma, the Universal Principle. 
Before closing, a word more about the "passage of matter through 
matter." Matter may be defined as condensed Akasa (Ether); and in 
atomizing, differentiates, as the watery particles differentiate from 
super-heated steam when condensed. Restore the differentiated matter 
to the state ante of undifferentiated matter, and there is no 
difficulty in seeing how it can pass through the interstices of a 
substance in the differentiated state, as we easily conceive of the 
travel of electricity and other forces through their conductors. The 
profound art is to be able to interrupt at will and again restore the 
atomic relations in a given substance: to pull the atoms so far apart 
as to make them invisible, and yet hold them in polaric suspense, or 
within the attractive radius, so as to make them rush back into their 
former cohesive affinities, and re-compose the substance. And since 
we have had a thousand proofs that this knowledge and power is 
possessed by our Adept-Occultists, who can blame us for regarding as 
we do those Adepts as the proper masters in science of the cleverest 
of our modern authorities? And then, as I above remarked, the outcome 
of this Philosophy of the Aryan Sages is to enable humanity to 
refresh the moral and awaken the spiritual nature of man, and to 
erect standards of happiness higher and better than those by which we 
now govern ourselves. 
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Daniel Caldwell
http://hpb.cc
http://theosophy.info