ETHERIC NOTES -- III
by GERALD LIGHT
I have been asked almost every possible question the human mind could devise or imagine concerning The Etherian Peoples. In the beginning of my attempts to share with my friends and their friends something of the experiences I had with these Beings I went into great detail and used every means at my disposal to try and answer questions. Before long I realized that no matter how long I talked, what I said and what I implied, my listeners were obtaining very little information. At first I attributed this to my own lack of descriptive powers; and I lay awake nights trying to think up ways and means to more clearly and accurately explain the many remarkable situations which are so unfamiliar to the people of our planet. Eventually I came to the paramount reason why I was having so little success in passing my knowledge on to my friends. I isolated, so to speak, the major impasse over which I seemed unable to take anyone.
Stripped of endlessly related modifications, comparatives and conditions I saw, at last, that the one reason why I could not sensibly explain Etheria to my earthly friends lay in a strange and completely absurd distinction which we all make concerning the very fundamentals of our material existence. For various reasons we, as earth people, have built up a system of religious, philosophical or meta-physical barriers which actually have no existence, or validity, except in our own minds. We make a very peculiar distinction between what we call "outer" and "inner", or "material" and "spiritual", "human" and "divine".
The Etherians make no distinction between the different rates of "consciousness" between the "visible" and the "invisible", as do we. To Them, the idea of "Man" being human or earthly and "God" being divine or spiritual is a ludicrous bit of infantile nonsense. The Etherians have absolutely no comprehension of an "inner world" and an "outer plane". They know nothing of an earth and its related heaven (which forms the basis of all our world religions.)
Our habit of making, or trying to make, an impassable boundary between two or more vibratory levels of energy and substance seems totally insane to Them. To these Peoples of "Inner and Outer Space" we are the veriest idiots in that we attempt to regard one vibration or level of substance as mortal, physical and essentially evil; and another level of the same substance as divine, exalted immortal and it celestial in its basic qualities.
The Etherians are unable to make any distinctions (save possibly a hypothetical premise in order to understand our lopsided attitudes between those elements of being which we call variously mind, will, energy, substance, matter and spirit. Perhaps I should condition that statement slightly since They are brilliantly able to discuss these various elements as such. But They do not make, nor do They see the slightest necessity to make, a distinction between will, energy, mind and so on as these elements operate in different levels and with different speeds or vibrations. In other words, our "human" will is as valid to Them as is that will which we assign to our deity. The energy and substance of our physical or "earthly" plane is as divine, as heavenly, as cosmic as the energy and matter of the "inner planes" or our "heaven". "God's will", as opposed to or superior to "man's will", is an absurdity to the Etherians. They do not understand how we can be so ridiculous as to make such distinctions in our religions and philosophies. It is the same, to Them, as considering ice an earthly, mortal substance; water an astral or psychic material; and vapor as heavenly and divine!
The apologists for our human whimsicalities may proffer the excuse that we do not know and see these "inner planes" and should therefore be forgiven our intellectual inconsistencies in this matter of the so-called human and divine.
However, neither do the people of Etheria "see" the various planes or know them as precisely as They understand the one in which They happen to be functioning at any given moment. We are surrounded constantly by forces which are not visible, not material in any tangible or substantial sense -- yet we do not hesitate to use them and to regard them as normal, earthly, "human" and a part of our contemporary consciousness. The currents in our electrical machines are certainly of a magical, psychic and occult nature. We never "see" them. We see only the reactions of them, the result of harnessing them to our needs and requirements. Still We do not deify electricity, label it astral and fence it in with philosophical premises.
The Etherian has no consciousness of anything until he or she uses it through one or more of his senses. Then he "knows" it, understands something of its nature, and endeavors to make it a part of himself. And in this last endeavor lies, probably if not certainly, the crux of the entire difference between ourselves and the selves of these remarkable people.
The mental processes of the Etherians are brilliantly contrived to enable the Ego, or if you like, the Spirit, to contact endless aspects of substance and force in whatever natural element, or plane, he may find himself. This utilitarian capacity produces a pantheistic philosophy that is intensely practical and of immediate purpose to him. [3] In our philosophy we speculate --- while these strange Etherian people operate. Their metaphysical systems are extraordinary simple and direct, and instantly applicable to their normal and essential needs. The huge volumes of theoretical speculation and guess-work with which our own philosophers have occupied themselves over the centuries might interest the Etherians as so much theosophical curiosa; but They dismiss our topheavy philosophies as indifferently as we dismiss the efforts of certain oriental pundits to prove how long is forever, how high is up.
In our present earthly, human instruments is to be found the basic element or aspect of every force and power which moves through our own planet, and the other globes which make up our system. But of this we know, and have known, precious little. The Etherians believe that we, of earth, should give our first attention to a discovery and recognition of the forces and elements which compose our instrument --- and stop speculating what kind of a heaven or paradise we will inherit when we die.
The ability of the Etherian peoples to use the forces of life and energy within their bodies is achieved, so They say (and They should surely know), by Their becoming conscious of these forces through the application and control of Their senses. My last letter went into this far enough to present the idea at least as a theoretical proposition, (a proposition which our earthly occult "leaders" have choked upon and promptly spit out --- for the simple reason that such a theory demands a personal application of its students. Horrible thought!)
The philosophy of Etheria, on this point is wonderfully simple and direct: The more one uses of God, the more one understands or knows God. And the more one knows God the more one becomes --- God. Take it or leave it; you cannot contrive a more sensible and practical attitude. In Etheria, the first law of life is --- use. What you have in Etheria --- you use; and what you use, you become, CONSCIOUSLY BECOME. Automatic living, so popular in our world, is regarded with horrified distaste and revulsion in Etheria. Hence, through the simple process of using, consciously, a part of God, Etherians become God. And they produce scientific wonders which make us the equal of nothing, in comparison.
The beings of Etheria are unable to experience death as do the beings of earth. Etherians do not go to "Paradise" simply because they do not know anything about such a "heavenly" state --- and do not seem at all distressed by such a fate.
However, there is a state which might be likened, slightly, to that which we of this earthly world experience. An Etherian may "die" several times during a hundred years or so. But it is a death in the same sense that we all die to our childhood state and go on into what we call maturity.
Death, in our understanding, is impossible to an Etherian because he is not imprisoned in his body by the absurd notions which we insist upon believing to be part of a "divine" plan. His body is an instrument in the most literal and exact sense of the word. The Etherian takes on, and leaves off, a body as easily and consistently as the radio-wave flows through a small, simple instrument of a single tube --- or through the highly complex set packed with tubes and magical equipment. He will no more identify himself with a body (in the sense of ownership, or egoic imprisonment) than does the free-flowing radio-wave.
The people of Etheria are totally free from the endless distinctions, reservations, and conditions of substance with which we surround ourselves, and with which, sooner or later, we destroy these selves. Not only do we establish immutable standards of mind and emotion that distinguish us from what we term "animals". We also regard the body of these animals as of a substance less "divine", less "Spiritual" and "holy" than our own. And we do not even consider the plant and mineral forms as having any possible relation or similarity to our own forms.
In this pitifully primitive world of earth we manage to achieve rather sublime heights in the creative arts, through the development of superlative faculties of rhythm, harmony, coordination and comparison. Yet we are hopelessly doomed by our apparent inability to use these same creative faculties to pierce the tragically artificial dimension we impose in terms of religion and philosophy.
Now and then I have ventured to make a statement which is based in absolute reality, and which holds the solution to most of the questions troubling those few earthly minds who seriously, and urgently, seek to grasp the meaning and message of Etheria and its races. I will make it here -- without the slightest anticipation of anyone accepting, or considering it:
The Flying Saucers, Discs and other Aeroforms (their number is legion) are, in many instances the actual bodies of the Etherian creatures. (And here we shall all-bow our venerable heads in a moment of silence to mark the point at which Gerald's Light went out, or off the well-known beam.)
It is possible that this latest deduction of my deluded brain may evoke a bit more response, from that pontifical hierarchy of "authorities" which suggests extreme caution in these matters, than did my last letters. I shall, however, not wait for that august assembly to bestir itself from its complacent slumber upon the pinnacles of the philosophical mountain (which they regard as their private property), and give me the nod to go ahead. It is to these self same authorities that mankind owes its present condition of pitiful ignorance and intellectual poverty.
--- Gerald Light - 10545 Scenario Lane, Los Angeles 24, California. ---
Continue with Gerald Light's "Etheric Notes" (Letter IV)
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