The Spiritualists do not know what they are really doing.  Their investigations are likely to result in course of time either in wicked sorcery or in the utter spiritual ruin of thousands of men and women.*

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* We share entirely in this idea.—­Ed. Theos.
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The views I have herein expressed have been often illustrated by our ancient writers by comparing the course of a man’s life or existence to the orbital motion of a planet round the sun.  Centripetal force is spiritual attraction, and centrifugal terrestrial attraction.  As the centripetal force increases in magnitude in comparison with the centrifugal force, the planet approaches the sun—­the individual reaches a higher plane of existence.  If, on the other hand, the centrifugal force becomes greater than the centripetal force, the planet is removed to a greater distance from the sun, and moves in a new orbit at that distance—­the individual comes to a lower level of existence.  These are illustrated in the first two instances I have noticed above.

We have only to consider the two extreme cases.

When the planet in its approach to the sun passes over the line where the centripetal and centrifugal force completely neutralize each other, and is only acted on by the centripetal force, it rushes towards the sun with a gradually increasing velocity, and is finally mixed up with the mass of the sun’s body.  This is the case of a complete adept.

Again, when the planet in its retreat from the sun reaches a point where the centrifugal force becomes all-powerful, it flies off in a tangential direction from its orbit, and goes into the depths of void space.  When it ceases to be under the control of the sun, it gradually gives up its generative heat, and the creative energy that it originally derived from the sun, and remains a cold mass of material particles wandering through space until the mass is completely decomposed into atoms.  This cold mass is compared to the fifth principle under the conditions above noticed, and the heat, light, and energy that left it are compared to the sixth and seventh principles.

Either after assuming a new orbit or in its course of deviation from the old orbit to the new, the planet can never go back to any point in its old orbit, as the various orbits lying in different planes never intersect each other.

This figurative representation correctly explains the ancient Brahmanical theory on the subject.  It is merely a branch of what is called the Great Law of the Universe by the ancient mystics.

—­T.  Subba Row

Appendix

Note I.