How vividly, how unmistakably this knowledge brings home to us the great
doctrine of Mâyâ, the transitoriness and unreality of earthly things, the
utterly deceptive nature of appearances! When the candidate for initiation
sees (not merely believes, remember, but actually _sees_) that what has
always before seemed to him empty space is in reality a solid mass of
inconceivable density, and that the matter which has appeared to be the one
tangible and certain basis of things is not only by comparison tenuous as
gossamer (the "web" spun by "Father-Mother"), but is actually composed of
emptiness and nothingness--is itself the very negation of matter--then for
the first time he thoroughly appreciates the valuelessness of the physical
senses as guides to the truth. Yet even more clearly still stands out the
glorious certainty of the immanence of the Divine; not only is everything
ensouled by the LOGOS, but even its visible manifestation is literally part
of Him, is built of His very substance, so that Matter as well as Spirit
becomes sacred to the student who really understands.

The koilon in which all these bubbles are formed undoubtedly represents a
part, and perhaps the principal part, of what science describes as the
luminiferous æther. Whether it is actually the bearer of the vibrations of
light and heat through interplanetary space is as yet undetermined. It is
certain that these vibrations impinge upon and are perceptible to our
bodily senses only through the etheric matter of the physical plane. But
this by no means proves that they are conveyed through space in the same
manner, for we know very little of the extent to which the physical etheric
matter exists in interplanetary and interstellar space, though the
examination of meteoric matter and kosmic dust shows that at least some of
it is scattered there.

The scientific theory is that the æther has some quality which enables it
to transmit at a certain definite velocity transverse waves of all lengths