THE LOOM OF CREATION

by Dennis Milner and Edward Smart

Chapter IX – Experiments With The Form-Producing Aspects
Of The Etheric Forces Of The Material World

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Part Three: Experiments With Etheric Forces

At this point it would perhaps be as well to recapitulate the objective that is sought in this book. The more that we have studied the phenomena of para-psychology, mysticism etc., the more it has seemed necessary to seek an understanding which encompasses ‘ordinary life’ and these more extreme phenomena of existence, and in Parts I and II of this book we have tried to bring order into our studies in these fields. At the same time we have felt challenged by the apparent evidence for the existence of etheric forces to make an experimental investigation into this subject. In this investigation we have used a technique based on the photographic recording of phenomena registered with electrical impulses. Some aspects of the phenomena that we have observed would be expected from known concepts of electrical behaviour; however, many other observations do not appear to be explicable in terms of such concepts, but they do appear to correlate with the etheric force concepts of objective mysticism. Thus we have had to seek to perceive also the relationship between objective mysticism, with its etheric force concepts, and the findings of established science.

The etheric force viewpoint is that the physical world is a manifestation of the interaction of four basic fields of etheric force which themselves arise from the activity of Spiritual Beings working creatively in the cosmic ether. Substances are that part of the etheric activity that has remained behind from an early stage in evolution and has thus become independent of evolutionary progress and thereby provides a sub-stratum on which man can evolve as an independent being. Life forms are the result of the inter-weaving activity of the cosmic, or free, etheric forces in the world of substance. This type of metaphysical thinking is not new and was current in the background from which the scientific era arose. Science, however, rejected the possibility of investigating objectively any spiritual worlds of activity and confined itself to
observing and seeking to understand the immediately apprehensible properties of the physical world thus replacing metaphysics by physics.

Nevertheless two aspects of the original metaphysical viewpoint have remained and have influenced scientific thinking. One of these is that physical phenomena are brought about by fields of force,* while the other is that the physical world comprises substances which were created long ago and exist now unaffected by, or independent of, any processes of evolution. In its extreme view the fields-of-force approach conceives the physical world as being patterns of stress and strain in space or ‘a world aether’ and those scientists who have pursued this point of view have had the task of searching for a unified system of force fields which would account for the physical world of substance as we experience it. The substance viewpoint conceives of the material world as comprising assemblages of atoms held together by interactions
between them. The problems have then been to determine the nature and origin of these atoms and of the forces of interaction that form them into substances. Both viewpoints have been, and are, existent in science, but the atomic viewpoint tends to be dominant.

We suggest that the reason for the dominance of the atomic, substance, viewpoint is that our way of seeing things is determined by our inner nature. Thus a politician whose inner impulses drive him to assert himself by acquiring power sees the behaviour of other politicians in terms of power seeking; a person who seeks to establish himself in the eyes of the world through the acquisition of wealth sees other people as motivated by seeking wealth; a scientist who seeks recognition and status through his science projects this view onto other scientists seeing them also to be status seeking. The essential common feature of man’s inner nature during the scientific era has been that he has been developing as an independent Ego being while living in the world of substance. We thus experience the importance of ourselves and of our
individual activities and we tend to see the total human system as the sum of the activities of the individuals. This view is then projected outwards by scientists who thus see the behaviour of substances as the sum of the activity of the individual units or atoms. Likewise scientists studying living organisms tend to see these in terms of conglomerations of individual cells that have by some means come together to form the organisms.

According to objective mysticism man is a lowly member of the Spiritual Creative Order who is slowly becoming differentiated as an individual, out of the world activity which works through him, rather than the world activity being the sum of that of the individual human beings. This is occurring as a result of the activity of the differentiating and individualising life etheric force and it is the inner experience of
this activity that gives rise to man’s current viewpoint. While the life etheric force initially created, out of the inter-weaving continuum of cosmic activity, individual beings and substances, it continues to permeate through these seeking to differentiate them further, in opposition to the other unifying etheric forces. In this way atomic structures arise within substances and cellular structures within living organisms and
these take on a degree of individuality and of independent living existence of their own.

* The fields of force approach of science and its relation to metaphysics has been evaluated in some depth in a recent book by William Berkson, ‘Fields of Force’, published by Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1 974

The etheric force viewpoint is, then, that a s created by the Spiritual Hierarchies the physical world comprises two parts. One part is the substance state that has been left behind in evolution and gives rise to the mineral world. The other part is a world of interweaving fields of etheric forces, generated by the Spiritual Hierarchies, which combine with, and raise up living forms out of, the world of substance. Substances are themselves ‘congealed’ etheric forces, so that as man manipulates substances he generates from them inter-weaving fields of etheric force which produce effects in the physical world. It is the two aspects of, firstly, the substance state and, secondly, the force fields associated with substances, that are the basis of current scientific thinking. The system of cosmic creative etheric forces that bring about living activity plays, as yet, little part in man’s thinking, although there is much evidence for its existence.

Although science has come to some extent to recognise the properties of substances and the associated force fields it has done so on an ad hoc basis, introducing a new property or field when the experimental results showed this to be necessary. When physics rejected metaphysics, which was at that time necessary for man’s development as an independent being, it rejected at the same time the possibility of arriving, by the conventional scientific method, at a unified understanding of the nature of the world. However, by taking account of the overall framework provided by the concepts of objective mysticism it should now be possible to strive towards such an integrated view. The key to this development is to interpret the behaviour of the physical world in terms of the inter-weaving activity of the etheric forces and this is the direction in which we have striven in the interpretation of our experimental results on ‘etheric force-field photography’.

In our researches we have worked with phenomena associated with electricity. What exactly electricity is has been the subject of much scientific investigation, primarily as it occurs in association with the mineral world. The evidence shows that, on the one hand, electricity has a substance aspect, in that it can be regarded as ‘particle-ised’ charge which manifests in association with substance, as, for example, with the
electron. While on the other hand it manifests as fields of force and as radiations or vibrations in ‘space’. Light has also been found to manifest as radiations or vibrations in space and it has been further found that electrical radiations are of a similar type to light radiations. Additionally, as with electricity, light has been found to manifest a particle-like nature.

Now objective mysticism states that the basic force at work in creation underlying the phenomena of light and electricity is the light etheric force. As this force works freely in the cosmos it is in itself invisible, but where it interacts with the world of substance its effects become visible in that it illuminates matter and plays an important part in producing living forms. At the same time, as the light ether enters the individualising force field of the Earth, or of a piece of detecting equipment made from ‘earth’, so it becomes, and manifests as, individualised or particle-ised. Electricity is light ether that has been ‘grasped’ by the retarding negative-life etheric force field of the earth to give rise to the independent world of etheric force/substance that man can explore and utilise for his evolutionary development. Thus, when man frees this light ether/electricity from the earth’s etheric field it manifests a similar behaviour to that of light. That is, on the one hand it manifests as electromagnetic radiations, while on the other hand it manifests an individualised, particle-ised, aspect.

However, according to objective mysticism the illumination of matter and the phenomena of electricity are only partial, limited, aspects of the basic light etheric force. The primary function of this force has been, and is, to produce awareness, i.e., the organs and the inner activity associated with awareness, in man. In the retarded stream of evolution of the animal kingdom the activity of the light etheric force has
evolved lesser degrees of awareness and the associated organs. In the further retarded plant kingdom the light etheric force has evoked a functional response, and thereby the form of the plant. Thus, when we free light ether/electricity from the mineral world we should find that, as well as exhibiting a radiation aspect and a particle aspect, it also manifests a shaping, forming, functioning aspect. It is this latter facet of light ether/electricity that we have been exploring in our researches.

The chronological development of our work was that we found the accounts of clairvoyants and the investigations of other workers, relating to auras and force fields associated with the human being and with other living entities very challenging. We thus sought ourselves to find some way of investigating the possibility of such phenomena. We established our electrical/ photographic technique and we registered what appeared to be auras around leaves and also a range of other phenomena, none of which could we understand. We therefore tried to simplify our experiments so that they yielded more basic, less complicated, phenomena. This led to a body of data on the form-producing aspect of electricity. From this basis we were then able to explore more complex formative features associated with liquids, leaves, magnets and atomic
structures. At the same time we sought for concepts that might explain the various phenomena that we had been recording. It was in this way that we came upon the viewpoint of objective mysticism and its apparent correlation with our results. But to try to interpret our results in terms of these ideas we have been forced to try to comprehend objective mysticism at increasingly deeper levels. It is only by going right
back to the fundamental processes of creation and the basis of the physical world as described by Steiner and other mystics, and as we have tried to outline it in Part II, that we have found concepts that appear to correlate with our experimental findings.

CHAPTER IX
Experiments With The Form-Producing Aspects Of The Etheric Forces
Of The Material World The Experimemal Technique

In order to find a starting point for an experimental investigation we sought for evidence that might be amenable to exploration in laboratory experiments. In our search we came across the work of a French medical doctor, Baraduc, who around the turn of the century investigated the ‘lights of the human soul’ [ref. 99]. Among the phenomena presented in his book, Baraduc showed the hand of an ‘over electrified’ person
registered on a photographic plate, in which a band of illumination about 1/4 in. wide can be seen around the hand [fig. 53). Baraduc gave no information about how this photograph was obtained, but other results show that he was using a Wimshurst machine i.e., a device for generating high voltage static electricity. We therefore started experiments in which we tried to obtain registrations on a photographic plate
with such a machine and we followed up any signs of unusual phenomena.

After some time we changed to a Van de Graaf machine as this proved less temperamental to operate, but the function of it was the same, i.e., it generated high voltage static electricity. Almost from the beginning of the investigation we began to obtain registrations which were suggestive of etheric force activity, associated in particular with leaves, magnetic compass needles and liquids. However, we had no idea which of the factors we were manipulating were significant in producing the results. There thus ensued a lengthy period of research in which, by examining the effect of every variable implicit in the technique, we sought to establish the conditions under which various
types of phenomena were registered. The results that we recorded during this part of the investigation were therefore obtained when the essential parameters were ill defined. Some types of phenomena were registered again and again; in other cases we registered something interesting and then ‘lost it’, in the sense that some factor was involved which we could not determine and we therefore could not reproduce the result.

The technique was essentially to apply the electrical impulses associated with the sparking of the electrostatic generator to the object being investigated. This was in contact with a photographic plate. The effects obtained were found to be very much determined by the number of sparks, and by the difficult-to-control spark characteristics. As we became more clear about the effect of the parameters involved we were
able to obtain results under simpler and better defined conditions. In particular, instead of applying multiple ill-defined electrical impulses, it became possible to obtain results with one controlled pulse of electricity. The results became consistent and reproducible and the images on the photographic plates sharp and clear. It was then possible to begin to re-examine the field that had been explored previously in a more
controlled manner with simplified experiments and thereby to gain a better understanding of what was taking place. However, by using the single controlled pulse method, further interesting phenomena were recorded which themselves required extensive investigation, so that the re-examination of the field initially explored is far from complete. The situation at present is thus that a substantial number of results
have been built up using the controlled single pulse technique. These are readily reproducible and about two-thirds of the results presented in this book fall into this category. There remains a further considerable body of phenomena that were recorded with the ill-defined multiple pulse technique, of which examples are given in this book. Most of these phenomena were registered many times. There are two cases where (as stated in the text) the result was fully registered once only. These are included because they suggest important phenomena and there is some support for their validity in that partial registrations of these phenomena were recorded on other occasions, suggesting that they were reproducible if only the right experimental conditions could be established. In all cases the conditions under which the results were obtained are given in the text and/or in Part IV.

The reproducible results are obtained by using, instead of an electrostatic generator, an electrical power supply unit with which the electrical parameters can be applied in a more controlled and well defined manner. In the technique which we now use, which is very simple, a photographic plate is ‘exposed to electricity’ in a dark room. This is done by incorporating it in a ‘sandwich’ in which it is placed between two
metal plates and opposite to another glass or photographic plate, with an air gap in between provided by a cardboard spacing frame [fig. 54]. Then a high voltage (5,000 to 20,000 volts) is applied across the plates for a short period of time.

On developing it is clear that the photographic emulsion has been ‘exposed’ in some way [fig. 55].

Suggested Basic Features Of This Investigation

Having described the type of experimental approach that is employed in this work it is necessary in order to make sense of the complex range of results that follow, to outline the interpretation which we are suggesting underlies them.

We usually think of the formation of an image on a photographic plate as being caused by light. However, according to objective mysticism everything that we observe physically results from the action of etheric forces. Therefore when we perceive light we are perceiving the action of the invisible light etheric force on the earth’s atmosphere or substances. This produces visible light or illuminated matter; likewise it is
the etheric force and not the light itself which produces the photographic image. Thus light etheric force, which can only be perceived through its action on the substantial world, will register on a photographic plate. We are therefore suggesting that fig. 55 and our further results are registering the existence and behaviour of light etheric force. Now, since light etheric force is a higher derivative of warmth ether, when it evolves from warmth ether the form it takes shows something of the character of that warmth ether. Conversely, when light ether degenerates to warmth ether the form it takes up in so doing gives information about the form which the warmth ether is adopting. This is another important feature of the results to be considered.

One further factor has to be taken into account. As a result of the remaining behind principle the etheric forces have become ‘frozen’ or ‘congealed’ in the mineral world. This is what the mineral world comprises: highly condensed, congealed, etheric force. When we work with electricity we are freeing and manipulating the frozen light etheric force. Thus with electricity we produce heat, light, and vibrations in the ether as effects in the substantial world, all of which are produced in their primary form by the light etheric force from the Sun. These effects of electricity are well recognised by science. However, the light etheric force acting freely in Nature also has a shaping, raying-out, action, so that the light etheric force freed with electricity should show a similar effect. The warmth etheric force has a spherical forming action, so that where light ether devolves to, or evolves from, warmth ether, there should be some indication of spherical formations.

We are suggesting therefore, that the results to be described arise from the shaping effects of etheric forces, primarily the light etheric force, freed with electricity, as they register on a photographic plate. These forces when freed exert their characteristic shaping behaviour and thus give rise to the forms that are produced throughout Nature by the continuously acting free etheric forces. In out work we have also obtained some information about the free etheric forces acting in Nature where they have influenced the behaviour of the electrically freed forces.

When the experimental conditions are suitably changed, much more complex registrations are obtained on the the photographic plate than that shown in fig. 55. The most elementary form registered is of accumulation of spheres [(fig. 56(a)].

To suggest an interpretation of this result we would recall that, according to Steiner, the first stage of ‘material’ creation is the formation of spherical warmth entities in the cosmic ether. Steiner describes these as follows: ‘Picture to yourself a mulberry or blackberry, composed as it is of ever so many tiny berries. To the supersensible observer Saturn looks like this in the evolutionary epoch here described’.* In the next
stage of creation (the Old Sun planetary stage) light appears. However, again according to Steiner, that which appears at each stage in its fully developed form already manifests in the previous stage to a limited extent. Steiner states: that at a further state of evolution in the Old Saturn planetary stage ‘A life of light begins, flickering here and there within the Saturn world and dying down again. At some places a quivering of glowing light will appear, at others something more like rapid lightning flashes. The Saturn warmth-bodies begin to glimmer and glisten, even to radiate light’* We would suggest that fig. 56(a) shows warmth ether in its characteristic spherical form, with
sufficient light ether associated with the warmth ether spheres to make them ‘glimmer’ and thus register on a photographic plate.

* From ‘Occult Science, An Outline’ by Rudolf Steiner, -reproduced by courtesy of the publishers, Rudolf Steiner Press, London.

More detail about how these ‘warmth spheres’ arise is obtained by taking two photographs simultaneously, one on each side of the sandwich. The complementary photograph to that of the warmth spheres is fig. 56(b). This figure shows a well-defined pattern of light traces or tracks, none of which have registered on the opposite photographic plate, which shows only warmth spheres. This is despite the fact that the distance between the plates was only three hundredths of an inch.

The interpretation which we suggest for these two photographs **, the theme of which is common to the further results, is that during the increasing part of the electrical pulse light ether emerges from, and registers on, the photographic plate on the negative side of the sandwich. This light ether gives rise to warmth ether immediately in front of the photographic plate [fig. 57]. Then, on the decreasing part of the electrical pulse, the reverse process takes place, with light ether emerging from the other side of the sandwich. However, the light ether now emerges into an ‘atmosphere’ of warmth ether spheres which determine its behaviour, so that it is taken up by the warmth spheres, causing the latter to ‘glimmer’.

** Patterns of this nature, formed by electrical discharges, are called in established science, Lichtenberg figures, after the scientist who first recorded them. Because contemporary science views electricity as a flow of electrons and/or positive ions explanations for such figures, as far as they have been explained, are usually put forward in these terms (refs. 318, 319).

The relationship between the light ether traces and the warmth spheres can be more clearly perceived when larger patterns are formed (by having a larger air gap in the sandwich) [58(a) and (b)]. Here the light ether is emerging from points, lines and areas of the negative photographic plate [fig. 58(a)]. It then forms its characteristic ‘raying-out’ patterns. Where the light ether can be seen to have emerged in ‘massive’ form generalised warmth and chaos have been created. Then, as the light ether takes on its raying-out forms the warmth chaos has begun to form discrete paths. At each point where the light ether tracks have branched a warmth sphere has formed. Where the light ether has emerged from a point and then formed a branching-out structure a central warmth sphere has formed, with surrounding spheres at each branching-out point. Also to be seen in fig. 58(a) are a few individual point centres with star-like light ether forms radiating from them; these have given rise to single sphere [fig. 58(b)].

In the simpler and more uniform patterns pertaining to the warmth spheres of fig. 56(a) the light ether emerges from a multiplicity of point centres from which it rays out, forming tracks in the photographic emulsion or close to the surface [fig. 56(b)]. (The fact that the light ether emerges from point centres is not very clear in this picture, but becomes apparent when the intensity of the emerging light ether is decreased by reducing the applied voltage). This uniformity of the individual point centres from which the light ether emerges then gives rise to a corresponding uniform pattern of warmth spheres. On the pulse decrease, light ether emerges from the opposite side of the sandwich into an atmosphere of warmth spheres. This is now in the same order as that of creation, in which light ether enters into an ‘atmosphere’ of warmth spheres, so that the ‘glimmering spheres’ described by Steiner are obtained. The glimmering spheres of fig. 56(a) were obtained with a comparatively gentle pulse decrease. When the emergence of light ether is made more intense, by a more rapid pulse decrease, a number of the sphere show ‘lightning flashes’ [fig. 59], corresponding to the other type of light formation associated with warmth spheres described by Steiner.

The Formation of Shapes

It takes a certain amount oftime for the warmth spheres to form. Thus the .essential difference between the ‘chaos’ of fig. 5 5 and the warmth spheres registered in fig. 56(a) was that in the latter the pulse rate increased more slowly. With an intermediate pulse increase rate it is possible to register ‘creation out of chaos’ [fig. 60]. Here, primeval forms have separated out of the ‘chaos’. This, then, is the view objective mysticism appears to take of the formation and existence of the material world. Substantial forms separate out from, and exist in, a substratum of basic cosmic ether

The separation of forms out of the unformed chaos occurs firstly by the formation of spheres of warmth activity and then the light etheric force acts to create forms within these spheres. The types of form that arise depend on whether the sphere-forming warmth ether or the raying-out light ether predominates. This is shown by making the formation of light shapes within the warmth spheres more intense than those registered as the lightning flashes in fig. 59, by using a faster pulse decrease rate. Then two types of form are observed [fig. 61]. In one type of form the light shape is confined by the spherical warmth ether to give ‘cotton balls’. Where the light ether is dominant raying-out shapes, or tentacles, are formed. The registrations of this type are obtained on the positive side of the sandwich, that is, where warmth spheres are first formed, and then secondary light shapes are created within these on the pulse decrease. On the negative side of the sandwich the emerging light ether creates its own characteristic raying-out shapes virtually uninfluenced by warmth ether, [as in fig. 56(b)].

These two etheric forces of warmth ether and light ether are, according to objective mysticism, the etheric forces which are dominant in air and light and which play a major role in the creation of form and function in Nature. Thus, by manipulating these forces in the type of experiments which are being described, it is possible to reproduce in an elementary form many of the shapes found in Nature. Examples in which light ether is predominant are figs. 62, 63 and 64. Fig. 62 can be compared with wireworm and centipede shapes from the insect world, and with elementary sea creatures and with thorn-bush branches from the plant world. The shapes of fig. 63 can be compared with caterpillars and leggy insects or, from the plant world, with the action of light ether in causing the branching of raying-out boughs and twigs in the formation of trees and bushes. In fig. 64 the light ether has formed a grouped pattern to give a fernlike shape.

A highly evolved pattern of warmth spheres giving rise to flower-like forms can be obtained under suitable conditions [fig. 65]. A less evolved warmth pattern is shown in fig. 66. Here the large mass is of ill-defined warmth ether which at the periphery is breaking down towards individual spheres, giving a ‘finger-like’ formation; the total effect has something in common with some jellyfish and elementary anemone forms.

This photograph offers a pictorial illustration of the way in which objective mysticism portrays creation from the unformed chaos. In this experiment the warmth ether state is being created within the earth’s life etheric force field. The warmth ether forms in the first place as an ill-defined, unformed, near chaos, mass. As it spreads out, its dematerialising, chaoticising power weakens and it comes under the dominance of the life etheric force field which begins to individualise it – thus the ‘finger’ formations. Where the life etheric force completely overcomes the warmth etheric state then warmth ether spheres are separated off. These then begin to lead an ‘independent existence’ i.e., within them arise structures of light etheric force analogous to the next stage in the evolution of entities.

Forms where the spherical warmth ether and the raying-out light ether are acting to more or less the same extent are shown in fig. 67; these resemble clusters of mimosa (wattle) flowers.

A more complex pattern based on the action of light ether is shown in fig. 68. This gives the impression of myriads of daisy-like forms showering out from a source at the bottom of the picture.

A Reversed Or ‘Negative’ Form

Many of the shapes that have been described have as their basis a warmth etheric sphere into which light etheric force enters. Where the light etheric force is weak a dimly lighted sphere which glows from the centre is seen, as in fig. 56(a). If the light etheric force influence is stronger then it manifests raying-out forms, again emanating from the centre of the warmth sphere, as in fig. 59

Another type of form has been observed which has opposite characteristics [fig. 69]. In this case the sphere is brighter at the periphery and, instead of a light raying-out form, there is a dark raying-in structure. This type of form is observed when a plain glass plate (without any photographic emulsion on it) is placed on one side of the sandwich, with the photographic plate on the other side. It is more readily observed if the glass plate is rather thicker than that used in photographic plates. The phenomenon is not registered very clearly and we think this is because it is taking place within the glass plate, rather than, as with all the other illustrations shown, in the air gap adjacent to the photographic emulsion.

The ‘positive’ forms are created in the air gap when excess light ether is applied to the glass plate so that it emerges into the air. There the light ether degenerates into warmth spheres, and then on the reverse part of the pulse light ether illuminates these spheres in various ways. This situation is registered on the photographic plate. The explanation that we would offer for the ‘negative’ forms is that these represent the situation within the glass plate. When the excess light ether enters into the glass plate it creates within the glass warmth spheres filled with luminosity from the excess light ether. Then, on the reverse part of the pulse, light ether is ‘drained off’ from the glass plate. It drains off by the reverse process from which it enters i.e., by ‘raying-in’ towards the centre of the warmth spheres, thus leaving bright rimmed spheres and
showing a dark raying-in structure w here the light ether is draining off.