ETHERIC NOTES -- IV
by GERALD LIGHT
Over the years I have probably written enough pages to make up 30-40 novels. What I wrote about was something quite familiar to me, and reasonably familiar to my readers. At any rate, all of us had had some preparation of both our mentation and our emotions in respect to the ideas in my essays and articles. But to write of Etheria in such a fashion is about as hopeful as reciting The Iliad to the gold-fish in my lily pond expecting them to follow me verse by wondrous verse. Nor is my illustration ill-chosen. Were you to spend an hour with me at the close of a lecture and observe the confusion in our "question and answer" times you would be more hopeful of the gold-fish catching on. And this is not the slightest disparagement to my listeners..... So much by way of preamble to a few remarks on my statement, that "frequently, in a most literal sense, the Aeroforms are the actual bodies of the Etherians."
Let me quote you: "As you know, the first and very obvious and natural objection of the 'average' man will be something like this: 'I can understand' (he may say) 'something about the idealist point of view as to the nature of the external world, and so on. I can even understand that an Etheric being might create a Disc as a thought-form and identify himself with it - and it could be of any shape and size. But look at all the small physical phenomena which go along with this. Why should these occur at all? I mean sounds, colors, lights, falls of such stuff as "tin-foil" - which evaporates - radiation of heat, odours, radiant energies, etc. All of these are gross physical phenomena.'", etc.,etc.
You believe Mr. Average will be disturbed by these extraneous manifestations, these "small phenomena" because they apparently are not, or need not be, a part of the Etherians Disc-body (or any other size, shape or appearance his etheric body may assume)? You say, "In short, it is the simple, obvious physical data which have to be taken care of, I think, before even the need for a 4-D theory can be stressed."
Well, before we can allow Average-Man any conclusions of an empirical nature on the bodies of the Disc-people, let us see what he knows and understands about his OWN body. And at the outset I am afraid we will have to dismiss the average-man and ask the specialist in the human body what he understands about our forms. The doctor, especially the surgeon who should know his way around our organic dwellings, may be highly conversant with the location of [2] every tissue, nerve, vein, muscle and bone of these earthly bodies. They may know them intimately. They may know the HOW of them. But of the WHY they are sensibly silent. One of the most illumined of these scientists, Dr. Carrell, succeeded in keeping a piece of tissue living for years. He built an artificial heart which, I am told, is still beating. He clearly demonstrated his grasp of the HOW of our bodily functions --- and he boldly admitted his total ignorance as to WHY it functions. "It can hardly be," he reasoned, "for the mere perfecting of the form. Nature has already produced thousands of highly perfected human bodies in the primitive races; forms beside which our civilized bodies are pitiful indeed."
Whence the body, in the first place? Whence, indeed, save from pure mind: For how can we conceive of the invisible dot of original spermatia as anything BUT mind? From the invisible point of light (as Dr. Carrell calls it) comes the instrument, the machine, the space-time-ship which we call our body. From this invisible dot, endlessly expanded, comes the full-grown man. Or, should he not be large enough to make the issue sufficiently impressive, take the elephant, or his greater ancestor, the mastodon. For that matter, take a dinosaur if it will help any; for after all, it is largely a matter of our level of perception, our point of observation which enables us, or compels us, to draw our conclusions (all of which can be totally inaccurate, or biased.) Doubtless, a flea hopping heroically up and down the vertebrae of a dinosaur would report it to be a great chain of mountains. And probably his less vigorous relative, a louse, struggling through the mass of hair on a human head Would insist that it was a forest.
If, as you say, "it is the simple, obvious physical data which will have to be taken care of" first, then may I suggest that if any volunteer of our average-man ranks will step into my library I can quickly dazzle, bewilder and overwhelm him with a veritable host of "small phenomena" functioning on and in living tissue, organic bodies, animal AND human forms that will make any such phenomena from space-ships and saucers fade quickly into the equal of nothingness. Everything anyone has ever seen in connection with an Aeroform, be it Saucer, Disc, Cigar, Wheel, or whatnot, can be seen also in connection with the normal functioning of organic life, of animal forms, and human anatomy. Is it necessary for me to remind the average-man of the fabulously practical conveniences Nature has developed in myriads of animal-forms from the tiny amoeba to the one called Man? If you wish I can fill up the entire issue of ROUND ROBIN simply itemizing the remarkable functions of zoological life (including human organs) which bear an amazing similarity to every type of machines known to us.
The Aeroforms ARE living substance floating in the fluids of the great Etheric tides. (Some may prefer to call it "mind-substance".)
Do you feel that it is still necessary for me to go into detail on the many and brilliant duplications in Nature of our mechanical sciences? It is said that in our human bodies there is every principle known to mechanics and electronics. The popping of our tiny lung-cells, allowing us to breathe, is compared to the combustion engine which powers our autos. The heart has a marvelous system of locks and valves which balances the flow of blood, and its pressure, through the body. These are comparisons which any student worthy of the name can gather for himself by the dozens.
If he turns outside himself he will be met with a simply bewildering collection of mechanical principles, scientifically developed and perfected, in the tiny and apparently inconsequential insect life of his garden.
In Louisiana last summer I was fascinated with the spectacle of thousands of fire-flies lighting the black forests as if by magic. These were not glow-worms, with the soft, golden glow. They projected a flash of intense white light which was so bright that I was blinded for a moment or so if they were near my face.
Perhaps Mr. Average is by now biting his nails as he attempts to masticate the idea of the Disc-bodies being of solid steel, or better "Materials unknown to our science." I doubt if he will pause for a moment and wonder at the hardness of his nails and the fact that it does not hurt to bite them and that he actually has no sensitivity in them. And that he can trim them, painlessly, and cast the bits away with no grief, no sense of loss, no psychological complex to suffer. Mr. Average is indeed a marvelous machine of seven supreme cylinders, guaranteed to give more "horse-power" and more lasting service than any contraption his money can buy. And he has in him every chemical substance indigenous to our planet; not necessarily in the identical combinations existing in our globe, but so the Etherians insist, instantly available to him, in his body, if he so wishes.
As far as hardness, solidity, indestructibility goes, look again at Nature. Think of the mammoths of old, dinosaurs and such, which were little else than walking fortresses. If that troubles you, Mr. Average, watch the beetles in your garden. Some are practically indestructible. (For that matter, did you ever try to smash a flea by your fingertips?) In India there are butterflies, gorgeous things, which will attack a grown man as quickly as a kitten. And they launch a gas attack which will knock a human flat if he gets enough of it. These sane little devils come from a cocoon which is so hard you could not break it with a hammer. The natives boil them, to kill the larvae, and then make necklaces of them. But if the tiny [4] worm is allowed to reach maturity, he somehow generates enough explosive power to shatter one end of the chrysalis. The natives think it great fun to gather a handful of the cocoons, near hatching time, and hide them in bed pillows or blankets to frighten old people when they start to pop open.
So what does all this have to do with our first consideration: The incredible statement that the Aeroforms, in actuality, are the literal bodies of beings who live in Etheria? It has to do with my attempts to free Mr. Average-Man from his totally inadequate conceptions of what may, or could, constitute a body.
No one, average or otherwise, will be able to comprehend a situation which is without parallel in our metaphysical systems until he begins to understand the mental nature of matter, or the material nature of mind. This has nothing to do with the simple aspects of "Mental-Science" as studied and promoted by various groups of "New-Thoughtists." We are dealing with a substance, a force, an element of consciousness about which not only our contemporary scientists know nothing --- but with which our metaphysical arbiters are totally ignorant. And for the plain and simple fact that this substance concerns planes, zones or vibrations of thought no modern or ancient school of esoteric wisdom has more than dimly suspected.
The existence, not only of this substance and its various vibrational divisions, but of the beings living within it, will shortly be proven through the discovery of a second satellite of our earth. This moon, and several others in a company of satellites moving at great speed around our globe, too fast to be photographed by present-day cameras, will shortly come closer and prove their existence in an undeniable fashion. The bodies of the beings occupying these tiny satellites will in all probability prove to be completely unorthodox insofar as flesh and blood forms are known to us. I trust that Mr. Average-Man does not find it too great a strain on his powers of endurance to witness this manifestation of inter-planetary communication.
The difficulty which we, as humans, experience in knowing ourselves as either mind or substance is unquestionably the reason for our instinctive resistance to this remarkable feature of using our bodies as machines, in the most actual practical and literal sense.
Few of us have any real comprehension of the basic features of either our bodies or our so-called minds. And little is to be gained here by going into that bewildering array of technical distinctions which various systems have succeeded in making, over the ages, between mind, substance, energy, will, consciousness, etc.
However, here is a point which may be of help to those few intrepid adventurers who are thrilled with the possibilities of duplicating the phenomenal aspects of the Etherians and their body-control: There will come a change, a development, an addition in one's mind, or that which we feel must be mind. This development might be likened to the "illuminations" which most religions affirm as a part of their tenants; or it might considered as one of the "initiations" which so many students of the occult and mystic paths expect, and often declare they have experienced. There will indeed come a change in one's mentality --- and also in one's ability to feel. By feeling I mean our ability to knew or cognize through any or all of our so-called "senses" -- as well as several additional faculties which new lie dormant in most of us, but which will suddenly spring into action, as it were, and produce new, strange, or peculiar results.
There is a definite procedure the student of earth MUST follow if he is to touch these new dimensions, these etheric potentials, not only with safety but with practical results. Unquestionably, mystics, yogis, sadhus and students of the Ancient Wisdom have touched those potencies in moments of intense absorption. But few if any have, or seem to have, comprehended just what they touched, and grasped its essentially etheric nature. I recall with amusement the various attempts I made in Shanti Niketan to associate myself with a flower, a butterfly, even a cobra --- in order to experience (as I was told I would) the consciousness of these creatures. I once made Samyama on an elephant (with the intention of bringing into my body some of its enormous strength) but only succeeded in having the creature approach me with a suspicious glare in his eye which completely terminated my meditation and ended with me in the flowerbed in a state of total panic. (Possibly the same sort of panic which will overwhelm thousands as they are compelled to realize that when they meet the Saucers and Aeroforms they are meeting the very person and presence of the Beings from the Great Etherian Planes of Mind.)
Little by little, I can help a few to a sensible grasp of these amazing features of mind as it expresses in other dimensions, other worlds, other forms and bodies. But it will be a slow, discouraging and difficult task. I am ready and willing however, to attempt it -- should anyone care to join me in such a strange project.
Cordially,
Gerald Light.
March 15, 1954.
Continue with Gerald Light's "Etheric Notes" (Letter V)
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