The following very important contribution to this series of Studies in The Mahatma Letters has been chosen from among several as yet unpublished comments made by Dr. de Purucker at the close of the Sunday evening Lodge programs. On this occasion, the meeting of September 28, 1941, he opened his remarks with some very interesting teaching about the polar magnetism of the earth; but as including this would make the present article too long, the Editors have reserved that portion of the talk for a future issue. The following remarks cover a discussion of Questions 11 and 12, page 146 of The Mahatma Letters and the Master's comments thereon to be found on pages 167-8. It is significant perhaps that this address fell on the Sunday evening exactly a year before Dr. de Purucker's passing. This and subsequent numbers of this series which may appear in the future in the Forum had not been edited by Dr. de Purucker.
Unfortunately this question about Jupiter and the Raja-Sun is not one that can be answered outside of esoteric teachings, and I am being perfectly frank about it. I think it would be a shame to deceive any honest and thoughtful student by sidestepping. The explanation of this matter is esoteric and wholly so. Therefore it cannot be touched upon in a gathering of this kind.
Let us continue then to the subject of heat and cold on Jupiter. If our dear people would use the vast Theosophical learning which they have — and I am not speaking sarcastically — and apply it to this matter of planetary heat and cold, there would be no question or difficulty about it. They would not question, for instance, whether Jupiter is hotter than the earth or colder. Actually it is enormously hotter than our earth, and the modern scientific theory of its being a thousand or several thousand miles of block ice is simply based on the theory that, being so much farther from the sun than the earth is, it gets a great deal less heat from the sun and therefore de facto must be in a state of arctic chill. But you see our teaching is that the planets do not get their heat from the sun, or very little indeed.
The sun is the great beating heart and brain of our system, the ultimate fountain and source of all the energy in the solar system as a whole. But with regard to this particular matter of heat and cold, it is the planets which keep themselves warm by their own vitality just as the human body does. It is not the sun which gives me my vital heat. The body creates its own vital heat. Of course if I go out in the sun and I feel the sun's rays pouring on my bare head, my head will be heated just as a plant will or a stone or anything else that is exposed to the sun's rays. But this is not heat coming from the sun, or very little in any case, perhaps twenty-five percent.
What is actually taking place is that an enormous efflux of electric and magnetic power flows from the sun and sets in vibration whatever this electric power falls upon. It is just exactly as every electrician knows: if you pass an electric current through a length of wire filament you create an ohmage, that is a resistance, which makes the particles in the wire through which the electric current passes, and which possesses this high resisting power, to glow with heat. It is not the electricity which carries heat and deposits it there. Electricity is neither hot nor cold. It is the power of the electricity meeting this resistance, which throws the molecules and atoms of this resisting medium into intense vibration, more rapid than that of billions and quadrillions of vibrations in a human second, and therefore heats it. Electricity is not itself hot. Just so with the sun. The sun is neither hot nor cold as we understand heat and cold. It is an enormous body of force, forces, which include electricity and magnetism and consciousness and life and intelligence and other things.
No, what makes Jupiter so hot is its own vital power. What produces this vital power in a heated body? You could ask the same question about our earth. What makes the earth warm or cold? The vital power of the earth — call it magnetism if you wish — interacting and reacting with the magnetic continent above our heads: give and take, electric, electro-magnetic or magnetic action and interaction. Just so does my own vital heat make my own body warm. If we had to trust to exterior heat to keep us alive and had no interior natural native vital heat of our own, if we went twenty feet from a fire we would freeze up in half an hour or in quarter of an hour. But such things do not occur.
So it is with Jupiter. When planets are young, very young, they are enormously hotter than when they grow old. So it is even with the human being in a small degree. The hottest little dynamo that I have ever known is a baby. When boyhood is reached, your heat diminishes. When you reach manhood it grows still less: you are not then burning up in a constant fevered heat as a baby is. The teaching in the book shows us clearly. The Master says: Imagine if all our oceans were turned into ice and all our atmospheric fluids were turned into liquids; then, he says, just imagine the reverse process, and you will have some idea of what it is like on Jupiter, which means, so hot there that what would be our oceans are turned to gases and what we call metals, stones and such things are turned to fluids. Just the reverse process. And it is strange enough that that was originally the idea of science.
The part played by the meteoric veils over every continent which is not in obscuration, as Mars is in obscuration — the part played by these meteoric continents is enormous. Some people don't like to accept this idea, although it is true, because they think it diminishes the dignity of our glorious Father Sun. It does not diminish his dignity. Because I have some vital heat of my own, that does not diminish the dignity of my teacher. Why should he be blamed or praised because I was born with vital heat? It is not a derogation of the dignity of the sun to say that the planets are living bodies also, living organisms.
Now Mars is in obscuration, consequently the meteoric veil surrounding Globe D of the Mars-chain is very thin. When the life-waves begin to come into Mars again, as they will before many millions of years have passed, Mars also will begin again to be re-covered with what scientists call heavy clouds, which are really veils of meteoric dust. Attracted psycho-vital-magnetically by the tremendously vital power of the planets which they surround, these meteoric continents perform somewhat the same function with regard to the planets that the human aura does for us. The meteoric veils are composed of dust, the effluvia rising up from the earth partly, but mainly and more largely from interplanetary and interstellar cosmic dust: the refuse, the sweat, the detritus, of other manvantaras, karmically drawn back, as life-atoms are drawn back to the reincarnating man.
Then there is the matter of the sun's north and south poles spoken of in this letter. Now there is one point here that needs clearing. I do not remember the Master's exact words, but it is much to the effect that the sun does not take anything from anything else, nor does it give away anything of its own. A perfectly true statement when it is understood. But do not forget this other perfectly true statement, infinitely more important: that nothing exists unto itself alone. Everything helps everything else. Everything lives for everything else. No accident anywhere. And this is a cosmic statement of what we Theosophists call our beautiful doctrine of Universal Brotherhood. The Master means this: that the sun is not vampirized — in the sense that the word vampirize has. Nor is it a spendthrift, wasting and dissipating its vital power by pouring it out needlessly through ages, as our modern science teaches it does, to be wasted in the abysmal deeps of pluperfectly frigid spaces.
The solar system is a closed system in the sense that a human body is a closed system. Agreed that every human body is builded by life-atoms from all other human bodies; but so far as itself goes it is an entity, an individual with its own vital power, feeding itself, having naught to spare to give of vital power to other bodies unless given as a gift. And likewise not vampirizing, in the normal cases, other bodies. Vampirizing and giving of gifts happen, but these are not the normal state of things. Every atom is a closed system in that sense. Yet every atom is connected with every other atom in infinite space, feeding infinite space and infinite space feeding it.
So then, the sun does not vampirize other suns, nor has it any vitality to spare for other suns. It has all it can do to feed its own orbs, the planets and other bodies within its kingdom. Just so my heart feeds my body and its organs and its molecules. It has nothing to spare for feeding other bodies — unless giving as a gift. Nor does my body vampirize other bodies. It does not steal vitality from other bodies, although in abnormal cases any human body can become vampirized; but we are not talking of exceptions and special cases; we are talking of the norm, the rule.
Therefore, what happens is this: the sun follows the same cosmic law that every planet does. It is the heart of its kingdom and likewise the brain of its kingdom. If you look upon it as the heart for an instant, it receives the influxes of the rivers of lives, the circulations of the solar system, in its north pole. They pass through the heart of the sun, are cleansed and washed and leave at the south pole of the sun. Precisely as our earth and every other planet have each its receptor at the north pole, and its ejector or vent at the south pole.
Why, even the ancient Greeks taught this. Do you remember Eolus and the cave of the winds? The cave of the winds was the earth, and the winds were the winds of the spirit, the circulations of the universe figurated as winds: a cave of which the north gate was made of horn through which the gods descend — and through which they ascend also, but mainly descend. And the south gate of the earth, or of the cave of the winds, was made of ivory, signifying the elephants of the south, as the horn does the tusks of the animals of the north. And out of the south gate go the hoards of men. So said the ancients. Why, the occult teaching is simply expressed here without a veil.
In other words, the earth feeds itself physically, magnetically, psychically, spiritually, through the north pole. The currents sweep through the earth — every word here is worth a volume — and leave by the south pole. So it is with the sun. That is the way the sun feeds its family: just as the heart feeds the body. It sends out its blood through the south pole, as it were, and after the circulation around the body has taken place, it receives it in again at the north pole. Fascinating subject!
So be careful how you read and construe. Don't let a single statement given by the Master as an answer to a very limited and specific question cover all the horizon of your thought regarding other things. In other words use your common sense.
So now, Companions, let me close my own remarks on an expression of pleasure that I always feel after hearkening to the words of those who make really wonderful addresses from the platform and the equally wonderful contributions from the auditorium. It just warms every cockle of my heart to see the progress that you dear fellow-students have made. I think it is beautiful, and it fills me with reverence. I think you deserve to know what I feel about these things.
Remember this, and then I go: All the laws of nature, so called, are but the play of conscious and semi-conscious forces. Therefore by their utter consistency and invariability they are called by us the laws of nature. These forces of nature are fluids emanating from great cosmic hearts beating, hearts sending the life blood, each one of its own especial and particular essence, force, spirit, to the farthest reaches that it can contain. We live not only in the presence of divinities, but are in very truth their children. We are builded of them and from them. Human parents are away, far away and distant when compared with the utterly infinite, infinitely intimate because identical relations and ties that exist between these great parents and us their children. Electricity, or magnetism, its alter ego, for instance, is but the fluid efflux from a cosmic entity, a being — of our own solar system in our case, because we are in this solar system. Heat likewise; all the real forces of nature are such. What is gravity? Just the same. We call it love. Some day when science will have learned that gravity is bi-polar as electricity and magnetism are, we may perhaps see returning the wisdom of the old Greek Empedocles who taught in his day that the universe is held in its courses and in its plans of beauty and harmony because of the two great cosmic powers, love and hate as they translate it. It is not a good translation. Attraction and repulsion: better but not good. You might perhaps say love and repulsion; hate is not a good word. Marvelous thoughts! — Good night, Companions!