(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.

(9) Science informs us that all forms of physical energy or force, manifesting as light, heat, electricity, magnetism, etc., arise from vibrations of the particles of which matter is composed. These vibrations are, of course, caused by the motion of the particles; and these motions are caused by the manifestation of attraction or repulsion between the particles. Proceeding further, we see that the manifestation of attraction and repulsion between the particles of matter arise from the "likes and dislikes," the "loves and hates" of the atoms and particles—and that these, in turn are but manifestations of elemental consciousness . So we see, here, that even the manifestation of physical energy and force is but the accompaniment and result of the presence and activity of elemental consciousness.

(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.

(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.

(8) In previous quotations from Haeckel, and other modern scientists, we have seen that advanced modern science recognizes the presence of "something like consciousness" in the atoms of matter, and 'ascribes their movements to "likes and dislikes," "loves and hates," arising from the perception of certain qualities in each other, and the response thereto: this means, of course, that the atoms possess and manifest "feeling" and "will" in an elementary form, phase, and degree. There are results arising from these manifestations of consciousness on the part of the atoms, however, which are not usually taken notice of by writers of the subject, either in the ranks of the occultists, or those of science. Let us now consider these, briefly.

(17) As has been stated elsewhere in this chapter, modern science now stands on the threshold of the discovery (by actual laboratory proof) that there is no such thing as "lifeless" matter—and that Everything is Alive. This has been the contention of the occultists for thousands of years. As a writer has said, it would seem that as in the case of the great Tunnel of the Alps, the two bands of workers, each on its own side of the mountain, were fast approaching the place where only a thin partition separated them one from another; and that already they can faintly hear the sounds of each others' picks penetrating the thin dividing wall between the two camps. The occultist may now safely await the day when modern science will actually "prove for him the old teaching of the esoteric schools." Moreover, science is coming very near to the place when it will perceive the truth of the old occult axiom that "All Power is Will-Power," and that the movements of electrons, atoms, molecules, and masses of matter are in response to an inward "feeling" resulting from the attraction or repulsion to or from other forms of matter, and the "will" action in response thereto, as Haeckel and Nageli (materialistic scientists though they may be called) have claimed for half a generation past. The contention of the Materialists that Life and Mind are but qualities of Matter, and are to be found in all forms of material objects, needs but to be inverted in order to show the Truth, long since uttered by the ancient occultists, namely that Matter is but the Outer Garment of Soul (Life-Mind), and that all material forms are ensouled by Life and Mind. The conception of the Materialists is but the Inverted Pyramid of Error, while the conception of the Occultists is the firmly placed, and soundly resting, true Pyramid of Truth—that Rock of Ages which can never be overturned, for it rests squarely and firmly on the Eternal Base of Being.

(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.

(7) I. The Plane of the Elements On this Plane of Consciousness is manifested the actions and reactions between the subtle elements of which all material forms are composed. Here occurs the play between the atoms, the electrons, the ions, the corpuscles, and the still more tenuous particles of substance of which science has as yet no knowledge. And, going still further back, it may be said that on this plane occurs the play of phases of substance as much more tenuous and subtle than the electrons as the latter are more tenuous than the atoms. Little can be said concerning these practically unknown forms and phases of matter, although the occult teachings are quite full of them.

(10) On this plane of consciousness are operated many of those forms of "magic" known to all occultists. The occultist moves Matter not by exerting a physical force upon it by means of his mind and will, but, instead, by acting upon the consciousness of the material atoms by the power of his own consciousness! This is no place, of course, to go into detail concerning this phase of occultism, but it has been thought well to indicate here the source and nature of the power underlying occult phenomena of this kind, and the "why and wherefore" of its manifestation.

(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.

(7) But the esoteric schools of thought, and the occultists, were always insistent upon the principle that there was nothing lifeless in the universe—that everything was instinct with life in some form, degree, or phase. And, lo! modern science has at last reached the point where it is practically looking Occultism squarely in the face, in full agreement upon this important point. The old idea of a half-lifeless universe is fast passing away, and men of advanced science are beginning to whisper to each other that "The Universe is Alive, as a Whole and in all of its parts." Surely this is a remarkable change in scientific opinion.

(13) When the lowest point in the scale of Involution was reached, then the Law of Rhythm asserted itself, and the upward climb began—the first movement of Evolution began to manifest itself. And, at this precise point, there was begun the manifestation of what may be termed "individualization," or the forming of centres of activity and consciousness. The World Soul descended into the depth of Involution en masse , and then began to emerge from those depths by an apparent "splitting up" process, in which the active new-born centres of activity began to assert themselves and to move upward toward self-expression. The simpler centres which occultists know to be the centers of activity in the electrons of matter began to form molecules. There was of course manifested the presence of mind within this gross matter—but only the faint glimmerings were manifested, for the gross enveloping sheaths of matter almost smothered the mental principles involved within them.

(7) We are thus brought back to the nature of that underlying matter and the things believed to be based upon it; investigation will show us that Matter has no reality and is not capable of being affected.

Matter must be bodiless- for body is a later production, a compound made by Matter in conjunction with some other entity. Thus it is included among incorporeal things in the sense that body is something that is neither Real-Being nor Matter.

Matter is no Soul; it is not Intellect, is not Life, is no Ideal-Principle, no Reason-Principle; it is no limit or bound, for it is mere indetermination; it is not a power, for what does it produce?

It lives on the farther side of all these categories and so has no tide to the name of Being. It will be more plausibly called a non-being, and this in the sense not of movement or station (in Not-Being) but of veritable Not-Being, so that it is no more than the image and phantasm of Mass, a bare aspiration towards substantial existence; it is stationary but not in the sense of having position, it is in itself invisible, eluding all effort to observe it, present where no one can look, unseen for all our gazing, ceaselessly presenting contraries in the things based upon it; it is large and small, more and less, deficient and excessive; a phantasm unabiding and yet unable to withdraw- not even strong enough to withdraw, so utterly has it failed to accept strength from the Intellectual Principle, so absolute its lack of all Being.

Its every utterance, therefore, is a lie; it pretends to be great and it is little, to be more and it is less; and the Existence with which it masks itself is no Existence, but a passing trick making trickery of all that seems to be present in it, phantasms within a phantasm; it is like a mirror showing things as in itself when they are really elsewhere, filled in appearance but actually empty, containing nothing, pretending everything. Into it and out of it move mimicries of the Authentic Existents, images playing upon an image devoid of Form, visible against it by its very formlessness; they seem to modify it but in reality effect nothing, for they are ghostly and feeble, have no thrust and meet none in Matter either; they pass through it leaving no cleavage, as through water; or they might be compared to shapes projected so as to make some appearance upon what we can know only as the Void.

Further: if visible objects were of the rank of the originals from which they have entered into Matter we might believe Matter to be really affected by them, for we might credit them with some share of the power inherent in their Senders: but the objects of our experiences are of very different virtue than the realities they represent, and we deduce that the seeming modification of matter by visible things is unreal since the visible thing itself is unreal, having at no point any similarity with its source and cause. Feeble, in itself, a false thing and projected upon a falsity, like an image in dream or against water or on a mirror, it can but leave Matter unaffected; and even this is saying too little, for water and mirror do give back a faithful image of what presents itself before them.

(3) The truth may be resumed in this way:

There is a lowest power of the Soul, a nearest to earth, and this is interwoven throughout the entire universe: another phase possesses sensation, while yet another includes the Reason which is concerned with the objects of sensation: this higher phase holds itself to the spheres, poised towards the Above but hovering over the lesser Soul and giving forth to it an effluence which makes it more intensely vital.

The lower Soul is moved by the higher which, besides encircling and supporting it, actually resides in whatsoever part of it has thrust upwards and attained the spheres. The lower then, ringed round by the higher and answering its call, turns and tends towards it; and this upward tension communicates motion to the material frame in which it is involved: for if a single point in a spheric mass is in any degree moved, without being drawn away from the rest, it moves the whole, and the sphere is set in motion. Something of the same kind happens in the case of our bodies: the unspatial movement of the Soul- in happiness, for instance, or at the idea of some pleasant event- sets up a spatial movement in the body: the Soul, attaining in its own region some good which increases its sense of life, moves towards what pleases it; and so, by force of the union established in the order of nature, it moves the body, in the body's region, that is in space.

As for that phase of the Soul in which sensation is vested, it, too, takes its good from the Supreme above itself and moves, rejoicingly, in quest of it: and since the object of its desire is everywhere, it too ranges always through the entire scope of the universe.

The Intellectual-Principle has no such progress in any region; its movement is a stationary act, for it turns upon itself.

And this is why the All, circling as it does, is at the same time at rest.

(23) The Motion which acts upon Sensible objects enters from without, and so shakes, drives, rouses and thrusts its participants that they may neither rest nor preserve their identity- and all to the end that they may be caught into that restlessness, that flustering excitability which is but an image of Life.

We must avoid identifying Motion with the objects moved: by walking we do not mean the feet but the activity springing from a potentiality in the feet. Since the potentiality is invisible, we see of necessity only the active feet- that is to say, not feet simply, as would be the case if they were at rest, but something besides feet, something invisible but indirectly seen as an accompaniment by the fact that we observe the feet to be in ever-changing positions and no longer at rest. We infer alteration, on the other hand, from the qualitative change in the thing altered.

Where, then, does Motion reside, when there is one thing that moves and another that passes from an inherent potentiality to actuality? In the mover? How then will the moved, the patient, participate in the motion? In the moved? Then why does not Motion remain in it, once having come? It would seem that Motion must neither be separated from the active principle nor allowed to reside in it; it must proceed from agent to patient without so inhering in the latter as to be severed from the former, passing from one to the other like a breath of wind.

Now, when the potentiality of Motion consists in an ability to walk, it may be imagined as thrusting a man forward and causing him to be continually adopting a different position; when it lies in the capacity to heat, it heats; when the potentiality takes hold of Matter and builds up the organism, we have growth; and when another potentiality demolishes the structure, the result is decay, that which has the potentiality of demolition experiencing the decay. Where the birth-giving principle is active, we find birth; where it is impotent and the power to destroy prevails, destruction takes place- not the destruction of what already exists, but that which intervenes upon the road to existence.

Health comes about in the same way- when the power which produces health is active and predominant; sickness is the result of the opposite power working in the opposite direction.

Thus, Motion is conditioned, not only by the objects in which it occurs, but also by its origins and its course, and it is a distinctive mark of Motion to be always qualified and to take its quality from the moved.