(28) So truly does advanced modern scientific thought recognize the nature of vibrations, that the axiom is announced that "The difference in things consists entirely of difference in vibrations." This axiom is akin to the ancient occult aphorism that "Things manifest differences according to their rate of vibrations." So, it is seen, all human investigation tends to prove the truth of the old occult axiom that "Everything vibrates." IV. The Principle of Rhythm The Principle of Rhythm manifests that universal regular swing or time-beat which is apparent in all the manifested world, from its highest to its lowest manifestation. The ancient occult axiom "Everything beats time" expresses this fundamental fact of the Cosmos.

(21) Motion or Active Energy . The ancient occult teaching that "Everything moves" seems to be fully corroborated by all subsequent investigation. Motion, of course, results from the presence and power of Active Energy. And Active Energy is found everywhere present and in manifestation. Both the occult teaching and modern science teach that everything is undergoing constant change, and change is impossible without active energy and motion. Active Energy manifests through gravitation, cohesion, chemical affinity, electronic attraction, expansion, contraction, centrifugal and centripetal force, light, heat, magnetism, electricity, etc., etc. And there are much finer forces than these known to the occultists, though not as yet discovered by science. Wherever there is Substance there is Motion. Nothing is at absolute Rest. Everything Moves. From the tiniest electron or atom, up to the greatest sun, all is in constant motion. Remember, the occult teaching is that "Everything moves." And "everything" includes All-that-is-Manifest.

(24) The occultists go further than this, and assert that even on the mental and spiritual planes there is ever manifest a condition of vibration. In fact, the occultists teach that the distinction between the several planes of being is almost entirely due to the difference in the rate and character on the vibrations manifested. The difference between steel and gold, or diamond and clay is entirely a matter of difference in vibrations. All forms of energy are accompanied by distinctive degrees of vibrations. The conditions of material substances are created by the respective degree of vibrations manifested by each.

(11) The esoteric teachings, as has been said, clearly and positively state that before there began the wonderful process of Evolution from simple to more complex forms of manifestation—from lower to higher—there must first have been an "involution" or in-folding of the World Soul into the simple, gross, elemental forms of matter. The vibrations must have been first lowered, before they can have been increased.

(8) Of this I'll give thee here on earth an instance, which the eye can see. Regard the animals down here - a man, for instance, swimming! The water moves, yet the resistance of his hands and feet give him stability, so that he is not borne along with it, nor sunk thereby. A: Thou hast, Thrice-greatest one, adduced a most clear instance. H: All motion, then, is caused in station and by station. The motion, therefore, of the cosmos (and of every other hylic to the cosmos, but by things interior [outward] to the exterior - such [things] as soul, or spirit, or some such other thing incorporeal. 'Tis not the body that doth move the living thing in it; nay, not even the whole [body of the universe a lesser] body e'en though there be no life in it.

(1) But whence that circular movement?

In imitation of the Intellectual-Principle.

And does this movement belong to the material part or to the Soul? Can we account for it on the ground that the Soul has itself at once for centre and for the goal to which it must be ceaselessly moving; or that, being self-centred it is not of unlimited extension , and that its revolution carries the material mass with it?

If the Soul had been the moving power it would be so no longer; it would have accomplished the act of moving and have brought the universe to rest; there would be an end of this endless revolution.

In fact the Soul must be in repose or at least cannot have spatial movement; how then, having itself a movement of quite another order, could it communicate spatial movement?

But perhaps the circular movement is not spatial or is spatial not primarily but only incidentally.

What, by this explanation, would be the essential movement of the kosmic soul?

A movement towards itself, the movement of self-awareness, of self-intellection, of the living of its life, the movement of its reaching to all things so that nothing shall lie outside of it, nothing anywhere but within its scope.

The dominant in a living thing is what compasses it entirely and makes it a unity.

If the Soul has no motion of any kind, it would not vitally compass the Kosmos nor would the Kosmos, a thing of body, keep its content alive, for the life of body is movement.

Any spatial motion there is will be limited; it will be not that of Soul untrammelled but that of a material frame ensouled, an animated organism; the movement will be partly of body, partly of Soul, the body tending to the straight line which its nature imposes, the Soul restraining it; the resultant will be the compromise movement of a thing at once carried forward and at rest.

But supposing that the circular movement is to be attributed to the body, how is it to be explained, since all body, including fire has straightforward motion?

The answer is that forthright movement is maintained only pending arrival at the place for which the moving thing is destined: where a thing is ordained to be, there it seeks, of its nature, to come for its rest; its motion is its tendence to its appointed place.

Then, since the fire of the sidereal system has attained its goal, why does it not stay at rest?

Evidently because the very nature of fire is to be mobile: if it did not take the curve, its straight line would finally fling it outside the universe: the circular course, then, is imperative.

But this would imply an act of providence?

Not quite: rather its own act under providence; attaining to that realm, it must still take the circular course by its indwelling nature; for it seeks the straight path onwards but finds no further space and is driven back so that it recoils on the only course left to it: there is nothing beyond; it has reached the ultimate; it runs its course in the regions it occupies, itself its own sphere, not destined to come to rest there, existing to move.

Further, the centre of a circle is distinctively a point of rest: if the circumference outside were not in motion, the universe would be no more than one vast centre. And movement around the centre is all the more to be expected in the case of a living thing whose nature binds it within a body. Such motion alone can constitute its impulse towards its centre: it cannot coincide with the centre, for then there would be no circle; since this may not be, it whirls about it; so only can it indulge its tendence.

If, on the other hand, the Kosmic circuit is due to the Soul, we are not to think of a painful driving ; the soul does not use violence or in any way thwart nature, for "Nature" is no other than the custom the All-Soul has established. Omnipresent in its entirety, incapable of division, the Soul of the universe communicates that quality of universal presence to the heavens, too, in their degree, the degree, that is, of pursuing universality and advancing towards it.

If the Soul halted anywhere, there the Kosmos, too, brought so far, would halt: but the Soul encompasses all, and so the Kosmos moves, seeking everything.

Yet never to attain?

On the contrary this very motion is its eternal attainment.

Or, better; the Soul is ceaselessly leading the Kosmos towards itself: the continuous attraction communicates a continuous movement- not to some outside space but towards the Soul and in the one sphere with it, not in the straight line , but in the curving course in which the moving body at every stage possesses the Soul that is attracting it and bestowing itself upon it.

If the soul were stationary, that is if it dwelt wholly and solely in the realm in which every member is at rest, motion would be unknown; but, since the Soul is not fixed in some one station There, the Kosmos must travel to every point in quest of it, and never outside it: in a circle, therefore.

(27) "When the revolving object reaches a certain degree or rate of vibration, its molecules disintegrate, and resolve themselves into the original elements or atoms. Then the atoms, in turn disintegrate, and are resolved into the countless corpuscles which constitute the atom. And finally even the corpuscles disintegrate, and a condition of ethereal substance is produced. Science does not dare to follow the illustration further, but the occultists teach that if the vibrations were continuously increased the revolving object would mount up the successive states of manifestation, and would display the various higher stages of consciousness." The occultists teach that each and every mental or emotional state has its own distinctive rate of vibration, and that the secret of "emotional contagion" is due to the fact that similar vibrations are set up in the emotional nature of persons subjected to the influence of strong emotion in another person. All manifestations of thought, emotion, will, desire, or feeling, or any other mental state, are accompanied and caused by vibrations of a certain high rate, and that these vibrations tend to influence others in their field of "induction," and tend to set up in the others similar vibrations. In this fact lies the secret of Mental Influence, Personal Magnetism, etc. A knowledge and mastery of the science of mental vibrations enables the skilled Rosicrucian to change the rate of his mental vibrations at will, and to thus maintain a state of mental calm and power, unaffected by the thought vibrations of those around him.

(118) For it is of God and in God, and cannot be withheld or hindered, but only by the seven nature- spirits of the body, which generate the animated or soulish spirit; they have the reins in their hand, and generate it as they please. ["God's Spirit has all the wellsprings, but distinguished itself in three Principles, where three sources or qualities arise, the first in the fire according to the first Principle, and the second in the light in the second Principle, and the third in the spirit of this world in the aërial and astral source."]

(2) And what of lower things?

: the single thing here is not an all but a part and limited to a given segment of space; that other realm is all, is space, so to speak, and is subject to no hindrance or control, for in itself it is all that is.

And men?

As a self, each is a personal whole, no doubt; but as member of the universe, each is a partial thing.

But if, wherever the circling body be, it possesses the Soul, what need of the circling?

Because everywhere it finds something else besides the Soul .

The circular movement would be explained, too, if the Soul's power may be taken as resident at its centre.

Here, however, we must distinguish between a centre in reference to the two different natures, body and Soul.

In body, centre is a point of place; in Soul it is a source, the source of some other nature. The word, which without qualification would mean the midpoint of a spheric mass, may serve in the double reference; and, as in a material mass so in the Soul, there must be a centre, that around which the object, Soul or material mass, revolves.

The Soul exists in revolution around God to whom it clings in love, holding itself to the utmost of its power near to Him as the Being on which all depends; and since it cannot coincide with God it circles about Him.

Why then do not all souls thus circle about the Godhead?

Every Soul does in its own rank and place.

And why not our very bodies, also?

Because the forward path is characteristic of body and because all the body's impulses are to other ends and because what in us is of this circling nature is hampered in its motion by the clay it bears with it, while in the higher realm everything flows on its course, lightly and easily, with nothing to check it, once there is any principle of motion in it at all.

And it may very well be that even in us the Spirit which dwells with the Soul does thus circle about the divinity. For since God is omnipresent the Soul desiring perfect union must take the circular course: God is not stationed.

Similarly Plato attributes to the stars not only the spheric movement belonging to the universe as a whole but also to each a revolution around their common centre; each- not by way of thought but by links of natural necessity- has in its own place taken hold of God and exults.

(86) So the Holy Ghost is the moving spirit in the whole Father, and proceedeth or goeth forth from eternity to eternity continually from the Father and the Son, and replenisheth the whole Father; he is nothing less or greater than the Father and the Son; his moving power is in the whole Father.

(1) It is by Spirit that all species in the Cosmos are [or] moved or ruled,—each one according to its proper nature given it by God. Matter, or Cosmos, on the other hand, is that which holds all things,—the field of motion, and the that which crowds together all; of which God is the Ruler, distributing unto all cosmic things all that is requisite to each. It is with Spirit that He fills all things, according to the quality of each one’s nature.

(11) It is intelligible rest that moves material motion in this way, since Cosmos is a sphere - that is to say, a head. And naught of head above's material, as naught of feet below's intelligible, but all material. And head itself is moved in a sphere-like way - that is to say, as head should move, is mind. All then that are united to the "tissue" of this "head" (in which is soul) are in their nature free from death - just as when body hath been made in soul, are things that hath more soul than body. Whereas those things which are at greater distance from this "tissue" - there, where are things which have a greater share of body than of soul - are by their nature subject unto death. The whole, however, is a life; so that the universe consists of both the hylic and of the intelligible.

(67) We know that the Body without the Spirit is a Thing that lies still; for though the Body of Christ (which the holy Element generated in the P Mercy) is from God, yet the Mobility and Life stands only in the Deity; and in us Men in the Spirit of the Soul, and in the Spirit of the great World, which are unseparated in this Body upon Earth.

(44) The [soulish] spirit of the soul is very much more subtle, and more incomprehensible than the body, or the seven qualifying or fountain spirits, which hold, retain and form the body; for it goeth forth from the seven spirits, as God the Holy Ghost goeth forth from the Father and the Son.

(48) When the animated or soulish spirit goeth forth out of the body, then it is one thing with the hidden Deity, and is together the midst or centre in the imaging or framing of a thing in nature, as God the Holy Ghost himself is.

(3) It is by Spirit that all things are governed in the Cosmos, and made quick,—Spirit made subject to the Will of Highest God, as though it were an engine or machine. So far, then, [only] let Him be by us conceived,—as Him who is conceivable by mind alone, who is called Highest God, the Ruler and Director of God Sensible, —of Him who in Himself includes all Space, all Substance, and all Matter, of things producing and begetting, and all whatever is, however great it be. XVII

(47) But the animated or soulish spirit generateth itself in the heart, out of or from the seven qualifying or fountain spirits, in that manner as the Son of God is generated, and keepeth its seat in the heart, and goeth forth from that seat in the divine power, as the Holy Ghost from the Father and the Son; for it has the same subtleness as the Holy Spirit of God, and it uniteth, qualifieth or operateth with God the Holy Ghost.

(2) And so, although Eternity is stable, motionless, and fixed, still, seeing that the movement of [this] Time (which is subject to motion) is ever being recalled into Eternity,—and for that reason Time’s mobility is circular,—it comes to pass that the Eternity itself, although in its own self, is motionless, [yet] on account of Time, in which it is—(and it is in it),—it seems to be in movement as all motion. So that it comes to pass, that both Eternity’s stability becometh moved, and Time’s mobility becometh stable. So may we ever hold that God Himself is moved into Himself by [ever-] same transcendency of motion. For that stability is in His vastness motion motionless; for by His vastness is [His] law exempt from change.

(19) By certain fixed natural laws each soul is restricted to the realms of its own sub-plane or division of the Astral Plane, except that it may, if it desires, visit the planes beneath its own—but it cannot visit those higher than its own. The law of vibrations acts as the astral policemen in these matters. Disembodied souls may thus communicate with and have converse and association with each other, but only by the higher soul visiting the lower, and never the reverse.

(68) For though the spirit seeth the wheel, and would fain comprehend its form or frame in every place, yet it cannot do it exactly enough, because of the turning of the wheel: But when the wheel cometh about again, so that the spirit can again see the first apprehended or conceived form, then continually it learneth more and more, and always delighteth in and loveth the wheel, and longeth after it still more and more. Now observe: