"Thoughts are things" is the sleepiest of bromides. Every spiritist and occultist is born with that spoon in his mouth whether he knows it or not. But just what, if you please, do you mean by a "thing"? In common use a thing is an object, and an object is objective, visible, and usually tangible. But since thoughts and feelings are not of this sort, how can they be called things? Obviously and QED, such talk is all mystical moonshine.
But now, suppose I visualize a milk bottle on one end of a table, a large cube on the other, and a solid brick wall across one end of the room. Then suppose some one experienced in the use of this gadget comes in and locates these mental images by feeling around with it, somewhat as a dowser does with a forked stick or a pendulum. Has the thought-form, the mental image taken on "thingness", or has it not?
Elaborate and repeated experiments show that this feat can actually be performed. Make a mind image, place it definitely in space, and the Aurameter can find it. Touch one book in a row of 50, and the instrument will pick out the right one. We suggest, there is "something there", just as real and objective as any visible brick or box or bottle could possibly be. We suggest, the burden of explanation is now on the skeptic. Let him explain what is happening, and he had better make it good.
But to go on from there - since we have no space here to battle with straw men.
I put an imaginary milk bottle on the table in front of me, and the aurameter man can find it. But it's just as easy and as quick for me to put it in another room, another house, another block or city distant. I can put it anywhere I want to, provided I can visualize enough of the background, and distance makes no difference at all, per se. If my friend in Calcutta has an Aurameter and can use it, and I steadfastly visualize a black cat or a bronze Buddha in his library, and if he knows where and when to look for the something I am sending, he will be able to find it and describe its outlines.
Now, this is the projection of an image, and an image or thought is evidently a reality. That is, it has a material existence, although the matter it is made of happens to be invisible, and untouchable by our unaided hands. It is, if you please, what we call an existent in etheric matter. If you poke the positive pole of a magnet into the positive field of another magnet, you feel a strong repulsion, the push-away of like polarities. The magnetic field is an invisible, tangible entity composed of etheric stresses, but no one thinks of denying its existence. The thought form seems to have the same kind of existence, and the resistence it offers to the aurameter bob feels to the hand exactly the same as that exerted by the magnet. But before the invention of the aurameter we had no instrument (except possibly the pendulum) for measuring it.
Otherwise stated, a thought image is an etheric construct made by the operation of mind-energy on the ethers. If you don't believe in the ethers, or in the 'energic' character of thought, go ahead and make your own interpretation - only, please do not fail to explain just what it is the aurameter finds and how it finds it.
In other words, try to "save" the phenomena - or, don't throw out the baby along with the bath water.
Our assumption and information and reasonable belief is, that etheric matter exists everywhere, and that there is an infinite series of ethers of increasing density, and that all of them are particulate in structure, and consequently interpenetrate. [*] Our so-called dense matter is really (comparatively) a rarefaction, and the enormously dense ethers pass through it like wind through a mesh with huge interstices. That makes good science and good metaphysics, once you stop to think about it, as most people will not do.
If, as is highly believable, there are etheric beings living in etheric worlds, their bodies and worlds and all that is in them will be far more dense than ours, the component particles will be thousands or millions of times smaller than our atoms and electrons, and consequently the etheric matter will be responsive to the more subtle forms of energy, that is, to thought energy. And if I visualize a pumpkin, I create said pumpkin in etheric matter, but it's out of my plane of visual perception. If I were in an etheric body I would be able to see it, and I could send it by my thought energy to any place I chose. And if I want to construct a flying disc, I would first think it into existence and then spot the etheric creation anywhere I wished.
It's our information and belief, that most of our space visitors get here in just that way. It is not a problem of constructing a craft out of materials known to us as matter and have it capable of flying across space and withstanding the conditions of space fight. The craft [3] is first built out of enormously dense etheric matter, by thinking it in to form; and this etheric form is 'teleported' or 'spotted' along with crew into the upper regions of the earth's atmosphere - the 'trip' of course taking no time at all. Within the Earth's gravitational field the vibratory rates of the etheric matter are converted into the slower rate of our earth matter, and then the craft becomes visible and tangible to us. If it is true that we now have many visitors even from 'beyond the galaxies', hundreds and even thousands of light years distant, it must be plain that they do not get here in any craft made of earth-substances and travelling at any speed we have even conjectured, and that they do not 'cross space' at all in our sense of the words.
All this kind of thinking clicks well enough with both ancient and modern metaphysics, and also with much contemporary speculative science. It was talking about the aurameter that got us into all this - for the obvious reason that we now have, for the first time, a 'gadget' which will show the material presence of an ether-form, or thought form. Our vast ignorance of the whole concept of the ethers, is a kind of black hole of Calcutta for the western mind. We're gadget-minded and want to see something move, or hear something click, or read numbers on a scale before we think a 'thing' is 'real'. If the aurameter should be studied enough so that its evidence gets through the first layer of western ignorance and stupidity, it will be rated as 20th century achievement No. 1.
It's still bad form, of course, to so much as mention radiesthesia in 'orthodox' and official scientific circles - and the aurameter comes under that classification, as a radi-sensitive device, and so will be rated even lower than the pendulum, the former ne plus ultra of childishness. But what is the twaddle of today is often the gospel of tomorrow.
This aurameter also suggests the possibility of mental communication on this plane by etheric images and symbols. It is also revealing many unknown rays, waves, vibrations - for instance, an energy stream given off from the tips of cones. It's going to intrude into the field of psychometry and pendulum analysis generally - and it also tells us more about the human aura than is found in all the books. It is, in short, one fine notable ray of light into the black hole we just spoke about - our western ignorance of the etheric worlds and peoples.
The point is sometimes raised, that if (say) a Venusian Etherian wants to visit Terra (for to see but not to admire) he doesn't need to think up a disc or a mile~long space ship to travel in. His body is made of etheric matter, and it responds to his will, and all he has to do is to think himself even into the most secret places of our world - and there he is. We are informed that this is quite true, leaving aside various if's and but's. But let us suppose that he wants to make observations and records, use instruments, maybe offset bad radiation effects, needs active cooperation by other Etherian scientists. It seems natural that he, or they, should prefer to create discs or other craft, load them with the required apparatus, transfer the whole by teleportation to some region close to the earth, and then convert to our vibration rate and so come into our field of perception.
All this is very crude and sketchy, no doubt, and sounds like amateurish scientifiction; yet I think that basically it is reasonable and plausible and fits in with the known data.
There has been a good deal of twaddle in the newspapers during the last few months, about a 'revival' of the 'obsolete' ether theory, particularly by an English scientist. But the ether concept has never been discarded. Einstein, Jeans, Eddington and many others have said so explicitly. Consider the following quotations from Eddington:
"Thirty years ago there was much debate over the question of ether drag - whether the earth moving round the sun drags the ether with it. At that time the solidity of the atom was unquestioned, and it was difficult to believe that matter could push its way through the ether without disturbing it. It was surprising and perplexing to find as the result of experiments that no convection of the ether occurred. But we now realize that the ether can slip through the atc as easily as through the solar system, and our expectation is all the other way . . .
"(That velocity through the ether is meaningless) does not mean that the ether is abolished. we need an ether. The physical world is not to be analyzed into isolated particles of matter or electricity with featureless interspace. We have to attribute as much character to the interspace as to the particles, and quite an army of symbols is required to describe what is going on in the interspace. We postulate ether to bear the characters of the interspace as we postulate matter or electricity to bear the characters of the particles . . .
"In the last century it was widely believed that ether was a kind of matter, having properties such as mass, rigidity, motion, like ordinary matter… This ceased to be the orthodox view years before the advent of the relativity theory. Logically it was abandoned by the 19th century investigators who regarded matter as vortices, knots, squirts etc.,in the ether; for clearly they could not suppose that ether consisted of vortices in the ether. But it may not be safe to assume that the authorities in question were logical.
"Nowadays it is agreed that ether is not a kind of matter.* Be-non-material, its properties are sui generis. We must determine them by experiment; and since we have no ground for any preconception the experimental conclusions can be accepted without surprise. Mass and rigidity such as we meet with in matter will naturally be absent in ether; but the ether will have new and definite characters of its own. In a material ocean we can say that a particular particle of water which was here a few moments ago is now over there; there is no corresponding assertion that can be made about the ether. If you have been thinking of the ether in a way which takes for granted this property of permanent identification of its particles, you must revise your conception . . . The ether itself is as much to the fore as it ever [5] was, in our present scheme of the world. But velocity through the ether (is meaningless)." (Nature of the Physical World, pp. 3, 30, 31, 32)
Since the passages quoted were written subsequent to the advent of the relativity theory (and in view of later utterances by Einstein and others), the assertion that the concept of the ether has been discarded is absurd. There is, however, a matter of semantics involved in the last paragraph quoted from Eddington. He is unwilling to describe the ether as matter, since it does not possess the characters of matter as we know it - mass, rigidity etc. This is a question of definitions. If the ethers possess enormous density and consist of extremely small particles in extremely rapid motion, then their mass and rigidity will lie outside the range of our instruments - hence, by definition, we can say they are not "matter". The point is obvious and not worth laboring, except that Eddington takes a needless plunge into mysticism by postulating a necessary but characterless X to equate with the interspaces. Incidentally, it does us no good to merely substitute the term space for ether unless space be itself a substance or stuff and not mere nothingness - which is a flatus vocis and not a concept at all.
We began by talking about the aurameter because its performances make us realize that etheric bodies are 'real' in a material sense, in the same way that a magnetic field is *real* ; and the quotations from Eddington show that the ether is vez; much of a 'reality' to the physicist, whether he calls it matter or non-matter or space or an X which can neither be kept out of his equations nor evaluated. The importance of the whole matter, for the 'average man' at least, is that unless he can somehow integrate the reality of the etheric worlds into his own thinking, he will never understand a host of remarkable phenomena now occurring on our own plane of existence. Precisely because of this lack of understanding, we are in grave danger of a period of public panic and world-wide confusion. This danger is not merely a matter of being scared witless by "fireballs" and "discs" and nameless flaming monsters of the skies. It is a most ancient and rational occult teaching, that all the life of our world, and all 'material objects, and the whole of Nature as known to us, originated in the etheric worlds - the true homeland of the human race. Furthermore, it is the personal conviction of many of us that probably the only hope for humanity now lies in friendly contact and cooperation with the etheric peoples, many of whom are, we now believe, excarnate humans operating from etheric rather than astral levels.
For the last five years we have been saying things similar to this, and other and wiser folk have been saying it all down the course of human history. We do not keep repeating them in any hope of 'enlightening humanity', but only by way of making a kind of gesture which may call the attention of a few, who may then proceed as they will, each on his own path of understanding.
In view of our reference to Natalli (note to page 2) we may be [6] permitted to introduce a quotation from him. Natalli is a 16th century astronomer who has long been communicating through the deep-trance mediumship of Mark Probert. (This medium, by the way, has almost no knowledge of technical and scientific subjects). The Natalli Control stated, early in March 1952 -
"If we look at densities as blending slowly we arrive at a density which will be to all intents homogeneous" (i.e., by successive division of the constituent particles of matter). "But this is not really the case. By basing on the quantum theory each state is periodical a period behaviour of the atoms. This period state can only be conceived of by thinking in this manner. The action of the atom in each grade of density is not a stable condition, but rather a kind of blinking, in lawful sequence. In each passing fraction of time this a different form of motion. Action taking place in one density will cause another form of action in another density. It is this action which creates what you call form.
"Now, we wonder where the atom is, in the fraction of time when it is not in action. There is a time vacuum existing between the peri-states of motion. We have a cause~and-effect in play and spanning the gulf of the time interval. There is a stream of force passing between the two densities. Due to the fact that we cannot ever get to a state of nothingness (by successive divisions) the field between the time intervals we may call a play going on between the two - between the proton and the neutron. They exchange energies until there is a kind of absorption of one of them. Both are sending off energy, and the energy of one is picked up by other bodies. You have a complete breakdown of the atomic body, and it pours itself across this time vacuum into another dimension, where in forming an atomic structure it is moving at a different rate of speed. It may lose or gain electronic bodies in the new dimension and will create a web-like structure with other atoms to form a solid.
"The time vacuum lies in the exchange of neutron and proton in which one of these has absorbed the energy of the other. In that moment you have a time vacuum . . .
"The fractions of time are not really as we perceive them; the notion is so fast that we cannot make any estimate. But there is a pause in this time field that is a complete nothingness. This is basically a heat action and could be thought of according to a dimension of time as a magnetic or electromagnetic field according to the time interval between. We can say that it is magnetic or electrical or electro-magnetic, or that it is pure heat, depending largely on its use in any particular dimension of time. A passing point that is without atomic structure. The atom pours itself out into another dimension of time, across the time field. This is space-time, or a space vacuum between the nucleus and the electron." [*]
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- [1] Invented by BSR Assoc. V.L. Cameron. An 80-page booklet now ready. ($3)
- [2] "An infinite series of particulate ethers" sounds like a logical impasse, but less formidable than a homogeneous ether. The difficulty is neatly handled by Natalli in our Transcript 15, pg. 3.
- [3] Though somewhat aside from the chief concern of this article, we add a philosophical suggestion of extreme importance. In the application of quantum theory to psychology, to mind-as-energy, we have for the first time a satisfactory solution of the difficulty known as solipsism. ML.
References
- Eddington, Arthur S. The Nature of the Physical World. Cambridge: At the University Press, 1928. Print. [Digital: <https://archive.org/details/natureofphysical00eddi>]
- Cameron, Verne L, Max F. Long, and Meade Layne. The Cameron Aurameter. San Diego, Calif: Talk of the Times Press, 1953. Print. [Re-edition from BSRF, with additional material by Riley Crabb: <#B0013, "The Cameron Aurameter">]