K.H., Koot Hoomi a.k.a. KuthumiK.H. on Electro-Magnetism, Solar Forces and Attenuated Matter
From The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett
Letter No. 23b, Nos. 8 -14;
[K.H.'s Replies to the Queries in Letter 23a II.]1882
(8) ... Rain can be brought on in a small area of space -- artificially and without any claim to miracle or superhuman powers, though its secret is no property of mine that I should divulge it. I am now trying to obtain permission to do so. We know of no phenomenon in nature entirely unconnected with either magnetism or electricity -- since, where there are motion, heat, friction, light, there magnetism and its alter ego (according to our humble opinion) -- electricity will always appear, as either cause or effect -- or rather both if we but fathom the manifestation to its origin. All the phenomena of earth currents, terrestrial magnetism and atmospheric electricity, are due to the fact that the earth is an electrified conductor, whose potential is ever changing owing to its rotation and its annual orbital motion, the successive cooling and heating of the air, the formation of clouds and rain, storms and winds, etc. This you may perhaps, find in some text book. But then Science would be unwilling to admit that all these changes are due to akasic magnetism incessantly generating electric currents which tend to restore the disturbed equilibrium. By directing the most powerful of electric batteries, -- human frame electrified by a certain process, you can stop rain on some given point by making "a hole in the rain cloud," as the occultists term it. By using other strongly magnetized implements within, so to say, an insulated area -- rain can be produced artificially. I regret my inability to explain to you the process more clearly. You know the effects produced by trees and plants on rain clouds; and how their strong magnetic nature attracts and even feeds those clouds over the tops of the trees. Science explains it otherwise, maybe. Well, I cannot help it, for such is our knowledge and the fruits of milleniums of observations and experience. Were the present to fall into the hands of Hume, he would be sure to remark that I am vindicating the charge publicly brought by him against us: "Whenever unable to answer your arguments (?) they (we) calmly reply that their (our) rules do not admit of this or that." -- Charge notwithstanding, I am compelled to answer that since the secret is not mine I cannot make of it a marketable commodity.
Let some physicists calculate the amount of heat required to vaporize a certain quantity of water. Then, let them compute the quantity of rain needed to cover an area -- say, of one square mile to a depth of one inch. For this amount of vaporization they will require, of course, an amount of heat that would be equal to at least five million tons of coal. Now the amount of energy of heat that would be equal to at least five million tons of coal. Now the amount of energy of which this consumption of heat would be the equivalent corresponds (as any mathematician could tell you) -- to that which would be required to raise a weight of upwards of ten million tons, one mile high. How can one man generate such amount of heat and energy? Preposterous, absurd! -- we are all lunatics, and you who listen to us will be placed in the same category if you ever venture to repeat this proposition. Yet I say, that one man alone can do it, and very easily if he is but acquainted with a certain "physico-spiritual" lever in himself, far more powerful than that of Archimedes. Even simple muscular contraction is always accompanied with electric and magnetic phenomena, and there is the strongest connection between the magnetism of the earth, the changes of weather and man, who is the best barometer living, if he but knew to decipher it properly; again, the state of the sky can always be ascertained by the variations shown by magnetic instruments.
It is now several years that I had an opportunity of reading the deductions of science upon this subject; therefore, unless I go to the trouble of catching up what I may have remained ignorant of, I do not know the latest conclusions of Science. But with us, it is an established fact that it is the earth's magnetism that produces wind, storms, and rain. What science seems to know of it, is but secondary symptoms always induced by that magnetism and she may very soon find out her present errors. Earth's magnetic attraction of meteoric dust, and the direct influence of the latter upon the sudden changes of temperature especially in the matter of heat and cold, is not a settled question to the present day, I believe. (2) It was doubted whether the fact of our earth passing through a region of space in which there are more or less of meteoric masses has any bearing upon the height of our atmosphere being increased or decreased, or even upon the state of weather. But we think we could easily prove it; and since they accept the fact that the relative distribution and proportion of land and water on our globe may be due to the great accumulation upon it of meteoric dust; snow -- especially in our northern regions -- being full of meteoric iron and magnetic particles; and deposits of the latter being found even at the bottom of seas and oceans, I wonder how Science has not hitherto understood that every atmospheric change and disturbance was due to the combined magnetism of the two great masses between which our atmosphere is compressed! I call this meteoric dust a "mass" for it is really one. High above our earth's surface the air is impregnated and space filled with magnetic, or meteoric dust, which does not even belong to our solar system.
Science having luckily discovered, that, as our earth with all the other planets is carried along through space, it receives a greater proportion of that dust matter on its northern than on its southern hemisphere, knows that to this are due the preponderating number of the continents in the former hemisphere, and the greater abundance of snow and moisture. Millions of such meteors and even of the finest particles reach us yearly and daily and all our temple knives are made of this "heavenly" iron, which reaches us without having undergone any change -- the magnetism of the earth keeping them in cohesion. Gaseous matter is continually added to our atmosphere from the never ceasing fall of meteoric strongly magnetic matter, and yet it seems with them still an open question whether magnetic conditions have anything to do with the precipitation of rain or not! I do not know of any "set of motions established by pressures, expansions, etc., due in the first instance to solar energy." Science makes too much and too little at the same time of "solar energy" and even of the Sun itself; and the Sun has nothing to do whatever with rain and very little with heat. I was under the impression that science was aware that the glacial periods as well as those periods when temperature is "like that of the carboniferous age" -- are due to the decrease and increase or rather to the expansion of our atmosphere, which expansion is itself due to the same meteoric presence? At any rate, we all know, that the heat that the earth receives by radiation from the sun is at the utmost one third if not less of the amount received by her directly from the meteors.
(9) Call it a chromosphere or atmosphere, it can be called neither; for it is simply the magnetic and ever present aura of the sun, seen by astronomers only for a brief few moments during the eclipse and by some of our chelas -- whenever they like -- of course while in a certain induced state. A counterpart of what the astronomers call the red flames in the "corona" may be seen in Reichenbach's crystals or in any other strongly magnetic body. The head of a man -- in a strong ecstatic condition, when all the electricity of his system is centred around the brain, will represent -- especially in darkness -- a perfect simile of the Sun during such periods. The first artist who drew the aureoles about the heads of his Gods and Saints, was not inspired, but represented it on the authority of temple pictures and traditions of the sanctuary and the chambers of initiation where such phenomena took place. The closer to the head or to the aura-emitting body -- the stronger and the more effulgent the emanation (due to hydrogen science tells us, in the case of the flames); hence -- the irregular red flames around the Sun or the "inner corona." The fact that these are not always present in equal quantity shows only the constant fluctuation of the magnetic matter and its energy, upon which also depend the variety and number of spots. During periods of magnetic inertia the spots disappear, or rather remain invisible. The further the emanation shoots out the more it loses in intensity, until gradually subsiding it fades out; hence -- the "outer corona," its rayed shape being due entirely to the latter phenomenon whose effulgence proceeds from the magnetic nature of the matter and the electric energy and not at all from intensely hot particles as asserted by some astronomers.
All this is terribly unscientific, nevertheless a fact, to which, I may add another by reminding you that the Sun we see is not at all the central planet of our little Universe, but only its veil or it's reflection. Science has tremendous odds against studying that planet which luckily for us we have not: foremost of all -- the constant tremours of our atmosphere which prevent them from judging correctly the little they do see. This impediment was never in the way of the ancient Chaldee and Egyptian astronomers; nor is it an obstacle to us, for we have means of arresting, or counteracting such tremours -- acquainted as we are with all the akasic conditions. No more than the rain secret, would this secret -- supposing we do divulge it -- be of any practical use to your men of Science unless they become Occultists and sacrifice long years to the acquirement of powers. Only fancy a Huxley or a Tyndall studying Yog-vidya! hence the many mistakes into which they fall and the conflicting hypotheses of your best authorities. For instance: the Sun is full of iron vapours -- a fact that was demonstrated by the spectroscope showing that the light of the corona consisted largely of a line in the green part of the spectrum, very nearly coinciding with an iron line. Yet Professors Young and Lockyer rejected that, under the witty pretext, if I remember, that, if the corona were composed of minute particles like a dust cloud (and it is this that we call "magnetic matter") these particles would (1) fall upon the sun's body, (2) comets were known to pass through this vapour without any visible effect on them; (3) Professor Young's spectroscope showed that the coronal line was not identical with the iron one, etc. Why they should call those objections "scientific" is more than we can tell.
(1) The reason why the particles -- since they call them so -- do not fall upon the sun's body, is self-evident. There are forces co-existent with gravitation of which they know nothing; besides that other fact that there is no gravitation properly speaking; only attraction and repulsion. (2) How could comets be affected by the said passage since their "passing through" is simply an optical illusion; they could not pass within the area of attraction without being immediately annihilated by that force, of which no vril can give an adequate idea, since there can be nothing on earth that could be compared with it. Passing as the comets do through a "reflection" no wonder that the said vapour has "no visible effect on these light bodies." (3) The coronal line may not seem identical through the best "grating spectroscope," nevertheless, the corona contains iron as well as other vapours. To tell you of what it does consist is idle, since I am unable to translate the words we use for it, and that no such matter exists (not in our planetary system, at any rate) -- but in the sun. The fact is, that what you call the Sun is simply the reflection of the huge "store-house" of our System wherein ALL its forces are generated and preserved; the Sun being the heart and brain of our pigmy Universe, we might compare its faculae -- those millions of small, intensely brilliant bodies of which the Sun's surface away from the spots is made up -- with the blood corpuscles of that luminary -- though some of them as correctly conjectured by science are as large as Europe. Those blood corpuscles are the electric and magnetic matter in its sixth and seventh state. What are those long white filaments twisted like so many ropes, of which the penumbra of the Sun is made up? What -- the central part that is seen like a huge flame ending in fiery spires, and the transparent clouds, or rather vapours formed of delicate threads of silvery light, that hangs over those flames -- what -- but magneto-electric aura -- the phlogiston of the Sun? Science may go on speculating for ever, yet so long as she does not renounce two or three of her cardinal errors she will find herself groping for ever in the dark.
Some of her greatest misconceptions are found in her limited notions on the law of gravitation; her denial that matter may be imponderable; her newly invented term "force" and the absurd and tacitly accepted idea, that force is capable of existing per se, or of acting any more than life, outside, independent of, or in any other wise than through matter: in other words that force is anything but matter in one of her highest states, -- the last three on the ascending scale being denied because only science knows nothing of them; and her utter ignorance of the universal Proteus, its functions and importance in the economy of nature -- magnetism and electricity. Tell Science that even in those days of the decline of the Roman Empire, when the tatooed Britisher used to offer to the Emperor Claudius his nazzur of "electron" in the shape of a string of amber beads that even then, there were yet men remaining aloof from the immoral masses, who knew more of electricity and magnetism than they, the men of science, do now, and science will laugh at you as bitterly as she now does over your kind dedication to me. Verily, when your astronomers speaking of sun-matter, term those lights and flames as "clouds of vapour" and "gases unknown to science" (rather!) -- chased by mighty whirlwinds and cyclones -- whereas we know it to be simply magnetic matter in its usual state of activity -- we feel inclined to smile at the expressions. Can one imagine the "Sun's fires fed with purely mineral matter" -- with meteorites highly charged with hydrogen giving the "Sun a far-reaching atmosphere of ignited gas"? We know that the invisible Sun is composed of that which has neither name, nor can it be compared to anything known by your science -- on earth; and that its "reflection" contains still less of anything like "gases," mineral matter, or fire, though even we when treating of it in your civilized tongue are compelled to use such expressions as "vapour" and "magnetic matter." To close the subject, the coronal changes have no effect upon the earth's climate, though spots have -- and Professor N. Lockyer is mostly wrong in his deductions. The Sun is neither a solid nor a liquid, nor yet a gaseous globe; but a gigantic ball of electro-magnetic Forces, the store-house of universal life and motion, from which the latter pulsate in all directions, feeding the smallest atom as the greatest genius with the same material unto the end of the Maha Yug.
(10) I believe not. The stars are distant from us, at least 500,000 times as far as the Sun and some as many times more. The strong accumulation of meteoric matter and the atmospheric tremours are always in the way. If your astronomers could climb on the height of that meteoric dust, with their telescopes and havanas they might trust more than they can now in their photometers. How can they? Neither the real degree of intensity of that light can be known on earth -- hence no trustworthy basis for calculating magnitudes and distances can be had, -- nor have they hitherto made sure in a single instance (except in the matter of one star in Cassiopeia) which stars shine by reflected and which by their own light. The working of the best double star photometers is deceptive. Of this I have made sure, so far back as in the spring of 1878 while watching the observations made through a Pickering photometer. The discrepancy in the observations upon a star (near Gamma Ceti) amounted at times to half a magnitude. No planets but one have hitherto been discovered outside of the solar system, with all their photometers, while we know with the sole help of our spiritual naked eye a number of them; every completely matured Sun-star having like in our own system several companion planets in fact. The famous "polarization of light" test is as about trustworthy as all others. Of course, the mere fact of their starting from a false premise cannot vitiate either their conclusions or astronomical prophecies, since both are mathematically correct in their mutual relations, and that it answers the given object. The Chaldees nor yet our old Rishis had either your telescopes or photometers; and yet their astronomical predictions were faultless, the mistakes, very slight ones in truth -- fathered upon them by their modern rivals -- proceeding from the mistakes of the latter.
You must not complain of my too long answers to your very short questions, since I answer you for your instruction as a student of occultism, my "lay" chela, and not at all with a view of answering the Journal of Science. I am no man of science with regard to, or in connection with modern leraning. My knowledge of your Western Sciences is very limited in fact; and you will please bear in mind that all my answers are based upon, and derived from, our Eastern occult doctrines regardless of their agreement or disagreement with those of exact science. Hence, I say: --
"The sun's surface emits per square mile, as much light (in proportion) as can be emitted from any body." But what can you mean in this case by "light"? The latter is not an independent principle; and, I rejoiced at the introduction, with a view to facilitate means of observation -- of the "diffraction spectrum;" since by abolishing all these imaginary independent existences, such as -- heat, actinism, light, etc., it rendered to Occult Science the greatest service, by vindicating in the eyes of her modern sister our very ancient theory that every phenomenon being but the effect of the diversified motions of what we call Akasha (not your ether) there was in fact, but one element, the causative Principle of all. But since your question is asked with a view to settling a disputed point in modern science I will try to answer it in the clearest way I can. I say then, no, and will give you my reasons why. They cannot know it, for the simple reason that heretofore they have in reality found no sure means of measuring the velocity of light. The experiments made by Fizeau and Cornu known as the two best investigators of light in the world of science, notwithstanding the general satisfaction at the results obtained, are not a trustworthy data neither in respect to the velocity with which sunlight travels nor to its quantity. The methods adopted by both these Frenchmen are yielding correct results (at any rate approximately correct, since there is a variation of 227 miles per second between the result of the observations of both experimenters albeit made with the same apparatus) -- only as regards the velocity of light between our earth and the upper regions of its atmosphere. Their toothed wheel, revolving at a known velocity records, of course, the strong ray of light which passes through one of the niches of the wheel, and then has its point of light obscured whenever a tooth passes -- accurately enough. The instrument is very ingenious and can hardly fail to give splendid results on a journey of a few thousand metres there and back; there being between the Paris observatory and its fortifications no atmosphere, no meteoric masses to impede the ray's progress; and that ray finding quite a different quality of a medium to travel upon than the ether of Space, the ether between the Sun and the meteoric continent above our heads, the velocity of light will of course show some 185,000 and odd miles per second, and your physicists shout "Eureka"! Nor do any of the other devices contrived by science to measure that velocity since 1887 answer any better. All they can say is that their calculations are so far correct. Could they measure light above our atmosphere they would soon find that they were wrong.
(11) It is -- so far; but is fast changing. Your science has a theory, I believe, that if the earth were suddenly placed in extremely cold regions -- for instance where it would exchange places with Jupiter -- all our seas and rivers would be suddenly transformed into solid mountains; the air, -- or rather a portion of the aeriform substances which compose it -- would be metamorphosed from their state of invisible fluid owing to the absence of heat into liquids (which now exist on Jupiter, but of which men have no idea on earth). Realize, or try to imagine the -- reverse condition, and it will be that of Jupiter at the present moment.
The whole of our system is imperceptibly shifting its position in space. The relative distance between planets remaining ever the same, and being in no wise affected by the displacement of the whole system; and the distance between the latter and the stars and other suns being so incommensurable as to produce but little if any perceptible change for centuries and milleniums to come; -- no astronomer will perceive it telescopically, until Jupiter and some other planets, whose little luminous points hide now from our sight millions upon millions of stars (all but some 5000 or 6000) -- will suddenly let us have a peep at a few of the Raja-Suns they are now hiding. There is such a king-star right behind Jupiter, that no mortal physical eye has ever seen during this, our Round. Could it be so perceived it would appear, through the best telescope with a power of multiplying its diameter ten thousand times, -- still a small dimensionless point, thrown into the shadow by the brightness of any planet; nevertheless -- this world is thousands of times larger than Jupiter. The violent disturbance of its atmosphere and even its red spot that so intrigues science lately, are due -- (1) to that shifting and (2) to the influence of that Raja-Star. In its present position in space imperceptibly small though it be -- the metallic substances of which it is mainly composed are expanding and gradually transforming themselves into aeriform fluids -- the state of our own earth and its six sister globes before the first Round -- and becoming part of its atmosphere. Draw your inferences and deductions from this, my dear "lay" chela, but beware lest in doing so you sacrifice your humble instructor and the occult doctrine itself, on the altar of your wrathful Goddess -- modern science.
(12) I am afraid not much, since our Sun is but a reflection. The only great truth uttered by Siemens is that inter-stellar space is filled with highly attenuated matter, such as may be put in air vacuum tubes, and which stretches from planet to planet and from star to star. But this truth has no bearing upon his main facts. The sun gives all and takes back nothing from its system. The sun gathers nothing "at the poles" -- which are always free even from the famous "red flames" at all times, not only during the eclipses. How is it that with their powerful telescopes they have failed to perceive any such "gathering" since their glasses show them even the "superlatively fleecy clouds" on the photosphere? Nothing can reach the sun from without the boundaries of its own system in the shape of such gross matter as "attenuated gases." Every bit of matter in all its seven states is necessary to the vitality of the various and numberless systems -- worlds in formation, suns awakening anew to life, etc., and they have none to spare even for their best neighbours and next of kin. They are mothers, not stepmothers, and would not take away one crumb from the nutrition of their children. The latest theory of radiant energy which shows that there is no such thing in nature, properly speaking, as chemical light, or heat ray is the only approximately correct one. For indeed, there is but one thing -- radiant energy which is inexhaustible and knows neither increase nor decrease and will go on with its self-generating work to the end of the Solar manvantara. The absorption of Solar Forces by the earth is tremendous; yet it is, or may be demonstrated that the latter receives hardly 25 per cent. of the chemical power of its rays, for these are despoiled of 75 per cent. during their vertical passage through the atmosphere at the moment they reach the outer boundary "of the aerial ocean." And even those rays lose about 20 per cent. in illuminating and caloric power -- we are told. What with such a waste must then be the recuperative power of our Father-Mother Sun? Yes; call it "Radiant Energy" if you will: we call it Life -- all-pervading, omnipresent life, ever at work in its great laboratory -- the SUN.
(13) None can ever be given by your men of Science, whose "bumptiousness" makes them declare that only to those for whom the word magnetism is a mysterious agent the supposition that the Sun is a huge magnet can account for the production by that body of light, heat and the causes of magnetic variations as perceived on our earth. They are determined to ignore and thus reject the theory suggested to them by Jenkins of the R.A.S. of the existence of strong magnetic poles above the surface of the earth. But the theory, is the correct one nevertheless, and one of these poles revolves around the north pole in a periodical cycle of several hundred years. Halley and Handsteen -- besides Jenkins -- were the only scientific men that ever suspected it. Your question is again answered by reminding you of another exploded supposition. Jenkins did his best some three years ago to prove that it is the north end of the compass needle that is the true north pole, and not the reverse as the current scientific theory maintains. He was informed that the locality in Boothia where Sir James Ross located the earth's north magnetic pole, was purely imaginary: it is not there. If he (and we) are wrong, then the magnetic theory that like poles repel and unlike poles attract, must also be declared a fallacy; since if the north end of the dipping needle is a south pole then its pointing to the ground in Boothia -- as you call it -- must be due to attraction? And if there is anything there to attract it, why is it that the needle in London is attracted neither to the ground in Boothia nor to the earth's centre? As very correctly argued, if the north pole of the needle pointed almost perpendicularly to the ground in Boothia, it is simply because it was repelled by the true north magnetic pole when Sir J. Ross was there about half a century ago.
No; our "Lordships" have nothing to do with the inertia of the needle. It is due to the presence of certain metals in fusion in that locality. Increase of temperature diminishes magnetic attraction, and a sufficiently high temperature destroys it often altogether. The temperature I am speaking of is, in the present case rather an aura, an emanation than anything science knows of. Of course, this explanation will never hold water with the present knowledge of science. But we can wait and see. Study magnetism with the help of occult doctrines, and then that which now will appear incomprehensible, absurd in the light of physical science, will become all clear.
(14) They must be. Not all of the Intra-Mercurial planets, nor yet those in the orbit of Neptune are yet discovered, though they are strongly suspected. We know that such exist and where they exist; and that there are innumerable planets "burnt out" they say, -- in obscuration we say; -- planets in formation and not yet luminous, etc. But then "we know" is of little use to science, when the Spiritualists will not admit our knowledge. Edison's tasimeter adjusted to its utmost degree of sensitiveness and attached to a large telescope may be of great use when perfected. When so attached the "tasimeter" will afford the possibility not only to measure the heat of the remotest of visible stars, but to detect by their invisible radiations stars that are unseen and otherwise undetectable, hence planets also. The discoverer, an F.T.S., a good deal protected by M. thinks that if, at any point in a blank space of heavens -- a space that appears blank even through a telescope of the highest power -- the tasimeter indicates an accesion of temperature and does so invariably, this will be a regular proof that the instrument is in range with the stellar body either non-luminous or so distant as to be beyond the reach of telescopic vision. His tasimeter, he says, "is affected by a wider range of etheric undulations than the eye can take cognizance of." Science will hear sounds from certain planets before she sees them. This is a prophecy. Unfortunately I am not a Planet, -- not even a "planetary." Otherwise I would advise you to get a tasimeter from him and thus avoid me the trouble of writing to you. I would manage then to find myself "in range" with you. ...
