English
I cannot give figures in this connection with exactitude, but the third globe 296 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL. going inwards has a rate of rotation equal to about half the rapidity of our outer shell, making one turn in forty-eight hours, and the innermost central globe makes only one turn in about half that time, or say in ninety-six hours. The intervening spheres move at intervening rates. Critics of this present statement will no doubt ask to what forces I assign the task of establishing these rates of rotation in the first instance, or that of keeping them up in spite of the friction which the varying rates concerned must engender. We will come to that directly, but for theosophical students I do not recom- mend to their acceptance the explanations I am now giving, as susceptible of justification at every point by reference to known laws, but simply because they come to me under conditions which entitle me to regard them as invested with adequate occult authority. Again I must emphasise the idea that much was done in connection with the early growth of this world and indeed much is being done to-day in connection with the maintenance of its planetary life, that involves the use of natural forces of which at present modern science knows nothing whatever. The intelligence of the human race as it advances in the path of evolution—at any rate the intelligence of the last developed races which constitute its advanced guard—is steadily overtaking occult teaching and will at a later date interpret with “exactitude phenomiena we can as yet merely recognise without pretending to understand them. But mean- while there must be a margin of tolerance in the minds of occult students eager to rush on in advance of current THE SYSTEM TO WHICH WE BELONG. 207 knowldge for statements that it is impossible as yet to fit in with the limited body of natural law so far cata- logued and indexed. I have been interested in finding since I have been at work upon this interpretation of the Earth’s constitu- tion, that in other schools of oriental occultism besides that with which my own opportunities have chiefly brought me into contact, the Earth is described as resembling in its constitution ‘‘ the skins of an onion.” The subject has not hitherto been treated in any western expositions of theosophic teaching, but the main ideas of the present explanation are vaguely in circulation already among the pupils of some eastern occultists, even though the onion with its skins would not consti- tute a satisfactory analogy for the western scientific mind once directed to the problems of the Earth’s constitution. It has been vaguely known by occult students for a long tine that in the neighbourhood of the North Pole there is a natural orifice in the ground penetrating to inconceivable depths. ‘This wonderful shaft has been regarded as fulfilling some mysterious need of the Earth, analogous to breathing, and it has been supposed that a similar shaft connects the South Pole with the interior, though this is even more impenetrably guarded by the ice of the Antarctic region from the curiosity of humanity than the orifice of the North. I have no information that would enable me to attempt an inter- pretation of the purpose in nature which these great polar shafts fulfil, but I have indicated their position on the diagram appended to this chapter, because I know 298 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL. that they play an enormously important though very mysterious part in the economy of the whole planet and are associated with the activities of the Mighty Being who presides over its growth and health. This reference impinges on a branch of the great subject with which I am dealing to which I will shortly direct attention, but meanwhile it is unnecessary for us to exaggerate the difficulties of the problem presented to us by the question of friction. To begin with it will be obvious that friction will be enormously greater at the equatorial regions of the internal spheres than in the neighbourhood of the poles. But at the equatorial region the thickness of the gaseous stratuin is at the maximum. The interstitial space contracts as it approaches the polar regions and the adjacent spheres are in close contact in the region immediately around the central shaft already spoken of. The friction at such surfaces of contact would be extremely small, areas that need not be thought of as more than a few hundred yards in diameter, revolving against each other in periods considerably exceeding twenty-four hours. For if the internal shell which is the next neighbour of this outermost one on which we live revolves, say at a speed. of thirty-two hours, it would take three days and not twenty-four hours for the complete revolution of the two polar surfaces in contact. The same principle would hold good with emphasised force as we go inward in imagination, for the smaller the interior globes would be the less need be the areas of surface in contact, in view of the purpose for which such contact seems mainly designed,—that THE SYSTEM TO WHICH WE BEIONG. 299 is to say for the purpose of confining the highly com- pressed gases of the interstitial spaces within their proper limits. If there were no surfaces of contact at the polar regions, these gases would rush out into the central shaft and speedily exhaust all their energies, while the shafts in question would, as long as the tremendous process lasted, be volcanoes of unimagin- able violence. ‘That is not their function, which has to do with the circulation of forces within the interior, of which at present we can form but very imperfect conceptions. That they are related with solar influ- ences seeins clear, but it is useless to attempt just yet to elucidate this branch of the colossal subject under exainination. The thickness of the gaseous stratum between our outermost shell and the next concentric sphere is thus about two to three hundred miles around the equator, diminishing to nothing at the poles. At the equatorial region the friction is distributed throughout the stratum, the gases in actual contact with each revolving surface moving no doubt at different speeds with each surface. The friction is therefore to be sought for entirely in the gaseous mass. Such friction would obviously be exceed- ingly small if the gaseous mass were as rarefied as gases on the surface at our atmospheric pressures. It will be much greater when the pressure is such as to bring the gases concerned to something like the densities of rock. But still, owing to the conditions of temperature far above the critical points of any that may be present, they will still be gaseous, and this must be borne in mind in any conjectures concerning the friction problems 300 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL. arising from the exposition I am venturing to put forward. I must now endeavour to interpret as far as that may be possible the expression used above, “the Mighty Being who presides”’ over the growth and health of the planet. In some earlier theosophic writings vague reference has been made to “the Spirit of the Earth.”’ There is such a Spirit, belonging to an evolution quite apart from our own, who is in the first instance an emanation from the stupendous life of the Sun. And such an emanation is the first step taken in connection with the creation of any planet of the system. It is by his power that the meteor streams are guided in the paths of those tremendous collisions which give rise to the successive nebulous clouds required for the construction of the successive concentric spheres The nucleus-globe reinains to the end of the planet’s life his great workshop—if the phrase may be allowed —and storehouse of those incomprehensible energies which maintain the physical health of the planet. It is by virtue of forces emanating from that central globe and passing up the polar shafts that the exact harmony of the axial rotation of the concentric spheres is maintained. Probably indeed, when the parallelism of their axial rotations is once established, no very great force is required to maintain this, for within our own knowledge the plane of rotation of a revolving body 1s not easily disturbed, but so extremely minute a disturbance would be sufficient in this case to block the central shafts that means are employed to guard against even such a slight disturbance. THE SYSTEM TO WHICH WE BELONG. 301 ‘The heat of the interior of the central globe far exceeds any temperature maintained in the interstitial spaces, and a vast army of Elemental Agencies is employed there, under the direction of the Spirit of the Earth, on tasks the nature of which is utterly beyond the range of our present comprehension. But our world somehow depends for its continued life on the activities carried on in the central globe, and they are never relaxed until the planet concerned has fulfilled its destiny and the time has come for its decease or disintegration. I understand that life exists in the Earth’s interior, even in the intensely hot regions of the interstitial spaces, and startling as the idea may seem at the first glance, it is only for the cramped understandings of people brought up to regard the conditions around them as the only kind compatible with consciousness, that the conception will be seriousty embarrassing. Ilesh and blood designed to be the vehicle of conscious- ness on the surface of the external sphere and at tem- peratures familiar to human life would not be adapted to temperatures at which platinum would be a mobile liquid, but every occult student is well aware that his consciousness, his life, can go on just as freely when he is in an astral vehicle or body as when he is animating flesh and blood.