“There is no gulf to cross between the prakritic and etheric worlds; none to cross between that and the manasic.  The four worlds are one great world, continuous, interchangeable.  Through the four as well as through the two, there is continuity and not impact.  Whether it is an atom or a world, the four are there.  Nothing, no combination of atoms, no matter of any kind, however small or large, can exist in this prakritic world unless it has the four elements, which from time immemorial our philosophers have called Earth, Water, Fire, Air, meaning the four globes or forms of matter in the universe.  We do not have to leave the earth to live in the etheric globe.  It is here.  Nor do we have to go millions of miles to reach the pranic globe.  It is here.  The problems of light and heat are no easier than the problems of birth and death.  The pranic globe is within us; within everything.  So is the manasic.

“It is here on these higher planes that the chances for worthy study are greatest.  At least we think so, though you may not.  We live on the manasic—­pranic—­etheric globe on precisely the same terms that we live on this of prakriti, and the problems of the three are equally open to us.

“If there are any who care to follow up the line of thought I have opened, who care for the questions that interest us of the East, I will talk as long as they care to listen, provided they will not ask for knowledge that will give them power over others, which cannot fail to be used for evil.”

This is but a glimpse of Hindu physics, yet it has helped us in the metaphysics.  We now understand the chain of globes—­in part.  The earth is fourfold.  As each atom of the earth is fourfold, so their aggregations give us prakritic earth, an etheric earth, a pranic earth, and a manasic earth—­in coadunition and not like the skin of an onion.  They are separate and distinct globes, each on its own plane.  It is four down and three up for the Angel entering matter, whether from the outmost boundary of manasic matter, or the surface of the earth, or the cover of a baseball.  The “chain of globes” in the Secret Doctrine represents the unity of the material universe.

The three-fold nature of the astral model is revealed, and the unity of all prakritic things.  But more than that, to many minds, will be the explanation it gives of why there are but four planes of vibration in matter; that the highest form of development in prakriti shows only four elements, prakriti or body, sensation or force, life, and mind, and that these last three, present in all things in esse, become present in posse when they work together harmonically.

Chapter Six

Our Place on Earth

The next time our wise man from the east was asked to “say a few words and make his own topic,” he spoke, perhaps, as follows: