By Marguerite dar Boggia
God, Science & The Secret Doctrine was written by Christopher P. Holmes. Holmes tries to have the reader understand what Science has accomplished in its theories of the universe. Holmes greatly understands the book The Secret Doctrine, written a century ago by Madame H.P. Blavatsky. Where Science agrees with Madame Blavatsky, Science is correct. It still has a few things to change, such as its understanding of gravity. On page 116, Holmes writes:
The AKASA and ETHERS
The subject of the Aether is extremely subtle and complex, and Blavatsky approaches it from varied angles using different terms and explanations. The term ether is most commonly used to refer to a fifth element, the original out of which emerge fire, water, air, and earth. The ultimate Aether is the Eternal Parent Space referred to in allegory as the Great Sea or the Chaos. Blavatsky uses the term Akasa to refer to the ultimate Aether. This term is from the Vedas and relates to the emanations of Mula Prakriti or of root nature. The Vedas distinguish Purusha and Prakriti, Spirit and Matter, and regard Prakriti as having one undifferentiated state, 'Mulaprakrini', and seven differentiated forms (consistent with The Secret Doctrine and Kabbalah). Blavatsky notes: "Prakriti in its primary state is Akasa," says a Vedantin scholar...It is, as said, the noumenon of the seven-fold differentiated Prakriti." (p. 256)
Blavatsky was most critical of the Science of her day for their view of Space as empty and void and as a passive background for the motions of atoms. Instead, Space is a living entity, and its inherent properties allow for the unity and correlation of all manifest phenomena. The Akasa provides the medium ultimately for that Omniscience that thrills throughout every finite point of the universe, as H.P.B. describes:
Official Science knows nothing to this day of the constitution of Ether, neither as akasha nor as the one sacred Aether of the Greeks, is it to be found in any of the states of matter known to modern physics. It is MATTER on quite another plane of perception and being.... the majority of the eminent and learned materialists often utter the greatest fallacies. Let us take the following case. Most of them reject action in distans (one of the fundamental principles in the question of Aether or Akasa in Occultism) while....there is no physical action, which, on close examination, does not resolve itself into actio in distance...." (S.D. pp. 487-8) It is the presence of the Aether or Akasa which enables all "actio in distans," ot nonlocal effects and quantum entanglement. Ultimately, everything is entangled within the lower ethers and the ultimate Akasa of Space. Whereas modern physicists have argued over 'actio at a distance' and its role in everyday life, Blavatsky states that all actions involve nonlocal influences and everything is correlated and unified within deep Space.
"Space is a substantial though (apparently) an absolutely unknowable living Entity."
Space is the real world, while our world is an artificial one. It is the One Unity throughout its infinitude, in its bottomless depths as on it illusory surface, a surface studded with countless phenomenal Universes, systems, and mirage-like worlds....in the real world, which is a Unity of Forces, there is a connection of all matter in the plenum". (p. 615)
According to The Secret Doctrine the whole range of physical phenomena and the laws of nature proceeds from the Primary of the Ether--Akasa. Furthermore, all things are interconnected, and effects are correlated through the Akasa. The radiation of Mulaprakriti is connected to the World Soul, as is all-natural phenomena known or unknown to Science. Whatever the views of physical Science upon the subject, Occult Science has been teaching for ages that Akasa -- of which Ether is the grossest form...is cosmically a radiant, cool, diathermanous plastic matter, creative in its physical nature, correlative in its grossest aspects and portions, immutable in its higher principles....called the Sub-Root. In conjunction with radiant heat, it recalls "dead worlds to life." In its higher aspect, it is the Soul of the World; in its lower, it is the DESTROYER. (Blavatsky, 1888, pp. 10 & 13)
All things are ensouled through the Akasa, and when the life forces withdraw from a material form or volume of Space, it serves as the destroyer. As Newton described, Space is God's sensorium, and Space enables the correlation of all forces and the workings of the laws of nature. In Blavatsky's view, understanding the nature of the Aether of Space is one of the keys to understanding ancient wisdom teachings, ancient metaphysics, and modern physics.
References:
Christopher P. Holmes, "God, Science & The Secret Doctrine pp 116-118
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