Loom of Creation
by Dennis Milner & Edward Smart
Chapter XI – Atomic Structures
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The first series of experimental results that we described showed the types of formations that registered on photographic plates when an electrical/light etheric pulse was applied to them. The second series of results was concerned with the types of registrations obtained when an electrical/light ether pulse was passed through liquid. It was suggested that some of the higher levels of etheric force were driven off from a very small part of the liquid by the excess light ether pressure, and that this brought about the patterns on the photographic plates. When a liquid is present in the sandwich only as a vapour and a low potential is applied for a few seconds (such that light ether does not register immediately on the plates) then a totally different phenomenon is registered, as in figs. 97 and 98. The technique used is to carry out the experiments in a gastight chamber which is first evacuated and then filled with air bubbled through the liquid under investigation. Alternatively, similar results can be obtained by putting in the sandwich a disc of filter paper wet with the liquid being examined. Fig. 97 shows the type of result recorded with water vapour and fig. 98 that pertaining to acetone vapour. It can be seen that in both cases discs of chemical etheric force are registered along with ‘chains of activity’.
We suggest that in these experiments electricity/light ether is entering into a minute proportion of the vapour atoms in the sandwich and is exerting its expansive, dematerialising, effect to break these atoms down into their constituent components. At the same time the binding force which holds these components together as ‘atoms’ is freed and the chemical ether aspect of it registers on the photographic plates. Once
again we derive this interpretation from the concepts of objective mysticism, and again we do so because these are the only concepts, of which we are aware, that appear to describe what we observe. Firstly, however, we need to give some outline of the problem involved and of the concepts on which we wish to draw.
Science has established that substances which at first sight look solid and continuous in fact consist of arrays of small units or atoms. The concept that matter is made up of atoms was first expounded by the Greeks. It was picked up again during the recapitulation phase of the Renaissance in Western Civilisation and has since become the basis for the physical and chemical interpretation of the nature and behaviour of matter in modern science. The first major contribution by Western Civilisation to the atomic, or corpuscular viewpoint as it was called, came from Newton. He postulated the existence of short range forces acting at a distance (by analogy with gravitational forces acting through space) and thereby accounted for cohesion of the corpuscles into solid bodies, and for chemical reactions, capillary attraction, expansion of gases and other phenomena of the physical world. To correlate the corpuscular viewpoint with the fact that there is a variety of different materials in Nature, Newton proposed that ‘. . . . God in the beginning formed matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable moveable particles, of such sizes and figures, and with such properties, and in such proportions to space, as most conduced to the end for which he formed them. . .’ The early scientists sought in their chemistry to isolate these ultimate types of corpuscles and they thereby gradually came to recognise the various elements of which the mineral world is composed. The concept that matter ultimately consists of various types of basic immutable corpuscles then seemed established and entirely satisfactory until the end of the nineteenth century. Then, with the discovery of the much smaller particle, the electron, and of the phenomenon of radio-activity, in which atoms were found to disintegrate, it became apparent that the atom was not the ultimate unit of matter and that it had a substructure. It soon became clear that this substructure comprised a nucleus with an ‘atmosphere’ of electrons around it. The nucleus was at first thought to be a unity, but it gradually became apparent that the nucleus itself has a substructure. This substructure was initially thought to comprise conglomerations of two types of particles, protons and neutrons, but further evidence has shown that many other types of particles are associated with it. The problem of what in fact comprises the structure
of the nucleus of the atom is by no means yet resolved and it remains a highly active subject of research by scientists.
At the end of the nineteenth century, at the time when it was first realised that the atom had a substructure, objective mysticism was beginning to emerge in Western Civilisation. According to objective mysticism consciousness is something quite apart from the physical body, but as it is usually directed to the phenomena of the sense organs it ‘sees’ the world in the way determined by the structure of these organs. However, objective mystics would claim that they can detach their consciousness from the physical body and that it is then possible to relate it to any level of activity in the Solar System, however large or small in scale this activity may be. In particular, it is claimed, it is possible to ‘see’ into the internal structure of atoms. Around the turn of the century two objective mystics, Leadbeater and Besant, in this way investigated the atomic structures of a large number of the elements and described these structures in great detail [ref. 3 16].
The essential feature of Leadbeater and Besant’s description is that physical atoms comprise conglomerations of many much smaller etheric atoms. At the basis of all substance are two ‘ultimate atoms’. If the origin of the force that brings these ultimate atoms into being is traced further back, then one enters the spiritual, or astral, world. The ultimate atoms have currents of force entering and leaving them, and the difference between the two types is that in one type the force comes from the spiritual world into the etheric atom whereas in the other type force flows from the etheric atom into the spiritual world. These ultimate atoms thus exist at the borderline of exchange between the spiritual and the etheric worlds. In Leadbeater and Besant’s account the two types of ultimate etheric atoms are combined together in various numbers and configurations t o form atoms at a second etheric level. The second level etheric atoms are combined together to give rise to further atoms at a third etheric level and the same thing happens again to give rise to fourth etheric level atoms. These then manifest in the
earth’s gravity field as gaseous atoms. In this way, Leadbeater and Besant claimed, physical atoms comprise large numbers of ultimate atoms. Hydrogen contains the smallest number of 18 ultimate atoms, while heavier physical atoms contain many hundreds or thousands of ultimate atoms. The ultimate atoms are organised in chains and these chains are coiled and grouped together in various ways to form the atoms of higher etheric levels. The higher etheric atoms are in turn grouped together in multitudinous ways to form the physical atoms.
The general principles of objective mysticism start from the basis that the aim of evolution has been the creation of man. Other aspects of material existence represent left behind stages of development. The physical structures of man, of animals and to a Jesser extent of plants, comprise vast numbers of units, or cells, organised by currents of etheric force into the nutritive and distributive, the respiratory, the nervous, the supportive and the reproductive systems of the body. The organisation of the mineral world likewise arises from interweaving currents of etheric force. The original formation of the solid ‘body’ of the earth came about when interweaving currents of chemical, light and warmth ether were ‘grasped and congealed’ by the negative life etheric force to give rise to a structure of interweaving veins of minerals. The arrangement of the ultimate atoms within the nucleus of the physical atom arises in a similar way; etheric currents within the physical atom order the ultimate atoms into filaments and other arrays.
We are now in a position to revert to a consideration of our experimental results. When we look for the origin of the ‘chains of activity’ shown in figs. 97 and 98, then it would seem that they arise as though from a process analogous to the unwinding of a ball of wool. This ball is in itself minute and cannot be seen, but the skeins, as they unwind, expand and enlarge to a size at which they become visible and register on the photographic plate [fig. 99]. (These phenomena occur on a comparatively small scale and have to be enlarged to be distinguishable, and the way in which they register is something over which we have no control, so that they are not as sharp and precise as one would wish. Nevertheless the main features of their behaviour can be clearly seen).
The concept that we would propose to explain this behaviour is that in our experiments we are releasing light etheric force into the atmosphere between the photographic plates. The atoms of vapour which are then affected comprise a balance between the condensing life and chemical etheric forces and the expansive warmth and light “etheric forces. We suggest that in some cases the freed light etheric force is
absorbed by vapour atoms and that this excess light etheric force upsets the atomic balance causing all, or part, of some vapour atoms to expand and disintegrate into their etheric constituents. Sometimes the effect produced, instead of an unwinding, is of a general disintegration as in fig. 100. We suggest that this is the explanation for the phenomena that we observe because the appearance of the unwound chains is often in accord with the descriptions of Leadbeater and Besant.
Leadbeater and Besant state that the ultimate atom is ‘a sphere, slightly flattened, and there is a depression at the point where force flows in, causing a heart-like form. And that when ‘an electric current is brought to bear on the atoms…. they arrange themselves in parallel lines and in each line the heart shaped depression receives the flow, which passes out through the apex into the depression of the next and so on’.* The diagram which Leadbeater and Besant give to illustrate this description is shown in fig. 101. Some of the ‘chains of activity’ which we have registered conform closely to this description [fig. 102], while other such ‘chains’ would seem to be a variant of this formation [fig. 103].
It will be noticed that the appearance of the units in these chains has much in common with the warmth spheres of fig. 56 (a), p. 163. The warmth etheric–state is the first state of manifestation of activity in the world ether and the ultimate atoms are thus atoms of warmth etheric state. The warmth etheric state in the earlier photograph [fig. 56] represents a state of freed etheric force that has come about on degeneration of the freed light etheric force to warmth ether. The atomic chains, however, represent the warmth etheric state in the ‘bound’ or ‘chained’ condition. These ultimate warmth etheric atoms are then ordered by the higher light etheric force to give rise to light etheric force atoms. The chemical etheric force then orders the light ether atoms to give rise to chemical etheric atoms and the same process takes place again with the life etheric force to give rise to gaseous atoms. In this way each etheric state is a higher derivative of, and under appropriate conditions can be reduced to, the state below it. When the atom is disintegrated the binding force is released. Thus in fig. 97,
which shows the result obtained with water vapour, the disintegration into etheric chains is accompanied by significant release of chemical etheric force, which registers as bright circular discs. The acetone vapour result does not show such extensive quantities of chemical ether because this is more a warmth ether dominated liquid (and hence vaporises readily).
As with the other types of phenomena we have described, we suggest that the photographic technique centres around the registration of light etheric force and of light ether structures and that warmth and chemical ether are only registered to the extent that light ether evolves to, or is devolved from them. Thus the ultimate, warmth etheric, atoms register only rather dimly in figs. 102 and 103. Often very much brighter chains and structures are registered. Leadbeater and Besant describe the third etheric level structures of oxygen as comprising chains, or snakes, of’ bright beads’. Structures such as these are regularly registered with water vapour [fig. 104). Two such types of chains are described, a negative and a positive, which unless separated, intertwine; again something of this nature is often observed [fig. 105]. Prior to unwinding, these chains are described as being coiled spiral-wise; the experimental results clearly suggest that the chains arise from the unwinding of spirals [fig. 106]. A particularly clear spiral, though one without a beaded substructure, is shown in fig. 107. However, this
does not mean that this spiral does not have a substructure. Sometimes, continuous forms of this nature show disintegration into a substructure [fig. 108].
Other types of chains of activity have also been observed, of which fig. 109 shows examples. When registrations are obtained by putting a wet disc of filter paper in the sandwich unwinding chains occasionally form loops around the filter paper disc [fig. 11O]. A particularly complex and beautiful chain was observed when a filter paper disc wet with a homoeopathic remedy based on gold, namely Aurum 12X, was put in the
sandwich, [fig. 111].
Recent experiments in the field of conventional science have shown that atoms comprise agglomerations of a great many more ‘fundamental’ particles than had hitherto been supposed. It is, in fact, conceivable that in the not too far distant future the concepts of science and those of objective mysticism about the structure of atoms will become virtually identical, despite their very different approaches to the subject. According to the etheric force viewpoint we have to envisage that at the beginning of creation a warmth/energy state of the cosmic ether came into being. Then, as subsequent etheric forces came into operation to develop the warmth spheres into bodies for the higher kingdoms of Nature, they also became incorporated with the left-behind warmth/energy state to give rise eventually to the mineral world. Whereas in the mainstream of evolution the higher etheric forces entered into the: warmth entities raising them to a higher level of development, the left-behind warmth/energy substance was not sufficiently evolved to take into itself these higher forces which instead became incorporated as forces which imposed successively higher levels of external organisation on the warmth spheres.
As each etheric force entered into creation it further condensed the previously existing state with, finally, the negative life etheric force bringing about the most highly condensed, or compacted, state of organisation of the warmth spheres. The first etheric forces to enter into creation had brought about less condensed organisations of the warmth spheres. Under the influence of the negative life etheric force these forces and states of organisation became compressed within substances and within the atomic structures of substance. Thus atoms comprise forces of compression in opposition to forces of expansion. If the more expansive forces of warmth ether and light ether are increased, for example by putting heat, light or electricity into the substance then they may bring about a disintegration of the atomic structures and emission of its components, as in thermionic emission, photo-emission, the field emission of electrons and the disintegration of structures apparently recorded in the present work.
The negative life etheric force forms a highly compacted atomic nucleus and would equate with the strong bonding force that science has found to exist in the nucleus. The chemical and light etheric forces are the electromagnetic forces that are at work in atomic structures. According to the latest scientific results (ref. 317) the atomic nucleus can be viewed as rotating strings of particles held in place by centrifugal forces which is well in accord with the etheric force viewpoint and our experimental results.
However, while understanding of atomic structures contributes to understanding of the mineral world it gives no insight into life processes. According to objective mysticism these come about by the action of living fields of force associated with organisms which work in opposition to the deadening fields of force associated with the mineral world. In this respect there may be a basis for the explanation of the observations of Kervran (ref. 313) and others of the transmutations of elements. It may be that in the force fields associated with living organisms substances are broken down into their etheric constituents and then rearranged to the requirements of the organisms and that in some cases, as found by Kervran, this involves transmutations of elements.
The essential feature is that substance is not primary and the basis of existence, but substance is a creation by spiritual activity in a cosmic ether. It is this spiritual activity which is primary and an understanding of existence can only come through seeking understanding of the spiritual purposes and the etheric forces which weave the pattern of existence in a world of substance.