prakritic globes within them in a great year of 5,640,000,000 of
our common years. Its orbit has a diameter of
93,000,000,000,000,000 miles.

Beyond the etheric globes, and between them, is a third form of
matter called prana, as much rarer and finer than the ether as
the ether is rarer and finer than prakriti. As this prana has
Alcyone for a center of gravity, it is necessarily a globe; and
there are many of these pranic globes floating in a vast ocean of
manasa--a form of matter as much finer than prana as prana is
finer than ether, or ether than prakriti. With this manasa
(which is a globe) the material, or physical, universe ends; but
there are spiritual globes beyond. The material universe is
created from manasa, downward, but it does not respond to or
chord with the vibration of the globes above, except in a special
instance and in a special way, which does not touch this inquiry.

The physical universe of the ancient (and modern) Hindu physicist
was made up of these four kinds or planes of matter, distributed
in space as "globes within globes."

Professor Lodge in 1884 put forth the theory that prakriti
(physical matter) as we call it, was in its atoms but "whirls" of
ether. Since then speculative science has generally accepted the
idea that the physical atom is made up of many cubic feet of
ether in chemical union, as many quarts of oxygen and hydrogen
unite chemically to make a drop of water. This is an old story
to the Hindu sage. He tells his pupils that the great globe of
manasa once filled all space, and there was nothing else.
Precisely as on this earth we have our elementary substances that