A Textbook of Theosophy | Page 8

ultimate atom of the physical
world--not any of the atoms of which chemists speak, but that ultimate
out of which all their atoms are made. We have at this stage arrived at
that condition of affairs in which the vast whirling sphere contains
within itself seven types of matter, all one in essence, because all built
of the same kind of bubbles, but differing in their degree of density. All
these types are freely intermingled, so that specimens of each type
would be found in a small portion of the sphere taken at random in any
part of it, with, however, a general tendency of the heavier atoms to
gravitate more and more towards the centre.
The seventh impulse sent out from the Third Aspect of the Deity does
not, as before, draw back the physical atoms which were last made into
the original dissociated bubbles, but draws them together into certain
aggregations, thus making a number of different kinds of what may be
called proto-elements, and these again are joined together into the
various forms which are known to science as chemical elements. The
making of these extends over a long period of ages, and they are made

in a certain definite order by the interaction of several forces, as is
correctly indicated in Sir William Crookes's paper, The Genesis of the
Elements. Indeed the process of their making is not even now
concluded; uranium is the latest and heaviest element so far as we
know, but others still more complicated may perhaps be produced in
the future.
As ages rolled on the condensation increased, and presently the stage of
a vast glowing nebula was reached. As it cooled, still rapidly rotating, it
flattened into a huge disc and gradually broke up into rings surrounding
a central body--an arrangement not unlike that which Saturn exhibits at
the present day, though on a far larger scale. As the time drew near
when the planets would be required for the purposes of evolution, the
Deity sets up somewhere in the thickness of each ring a subsidiary
vortex into which a great deal of the matter of the ring was by degrees
collected. The collisions of the gathered fragments caused a revival of
the heat, and the resulting planet was for a long time a mass of glowing
gas. Little by little it cooled once more, until it became fit to be the
theatre of life such as ours. Thus were all the planets formed.
Almost all the matter of those interpenetrating worlds was by this time
concentrated into the newly formed planets. Each of them was and is
composed of all those different kinds of matter. The earth upon which
we are now living is not merely a great ball of physical matter, built of
the atoms of that lowest world, but has also attached to it an abundant
supply of matter of the sixth, the fifth, the fourth and other worlds. It is
well known to all students of science that particles of matter never
actually touch one another, even in the hardest of substances. The
spaces between them are always far greater in proportion than their
own size--enormously greater. So there is ample room for all the other
kinds of atoms of all those other worlds, not only to lie between the
atoms of the denser matter, but to move quite freely among them and
around them. Consequently, this globe upon which we live is not one
world, but seven interpenetrating worlds, all occupying the same space,
except that the finer types of matter extend further from the centre than
does the denser matter.

We have given names to these interpenetrating worlds for convenience
in speaking of them. No name is needed for the first, as man is not yet
in direct connection with it; but when it is necessary to mention it, it
may be called the divine world. The second is described as the monadic,
because in it exist those Sparks of the divine Life which we call the
human Monads; but neither of these can be touched by the highest
clairvoyant investigations at present possible for us. The third sphere,
whose atoms contain 2,401 bubbles, is called the spiritual world,
because in it functions the highest Spirit in man as now constituted.
The fourth is the intuitional world, [Previously called in Theosophical
literature the buddhic plane.] because from it come the highest
intuitions. The fifth is the mental world, because from its matter is built
the mind of man. The sixth is called the emotional or astral world,
because the emotions of man cause undulations in its matter. (The
name astral was given to it by mediæval alchemists, because its matter
is starry or shining as compared to that of the denser world.) The
seventh world, composed of