Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 69.djvu/35

Rh plainly open to the eye from the outside, and all objects near or far are seen alike without perspective. The fourth dimension, the dream of geometry, is plainly visible and in the omnic plane is clearly seen a fifth or sixth dimension. With these chances for error, it is not strange that the Feringhi, or English writers, on the higher planes have made frequent errors, while even the Hindu adept is never quite infallible. As a preparation for such investigation crystal-gazing has been found desirable. Still better is the formation of circles of silence when men and women gather around a white lily or other creation of purity and beauty and, clasping one another by the hand, endeavor to think Ether and Om. After many years of these exercises, gathering around perfect objects under his direction, the Swami said, a few devoted women had even risen to think Devachan and Shushup. No Englishman had, however, come to this and in our Caucasian race not even a woman of English birth had ever been able to think Nirvana. For in Shushup all desire to act is lost, as in Om is all desire of speech. In Nirvana alone is the absolute extinction of all desire—a thing impossible to you Americans.

The scenery of the etheric plane is much as in the physical existence, only more wavering, more delicate, more enchanting. Its objects of fine matter, finer than anything in the atomic or molecular way, freely interpenetrate all merely physical matters. It is therefore not necessary to seek it far from home. In India and Thibet, this scenery is peopled with its multitudes of beings, for these are the oldest lands of man, peopled for ages with him and his creations. California, on the other hand, with the exception of a few areas, as Point Loma and Chinatown, is virgin soil in its astral and ethereal aspects, its sole abundant life being the nature emanations and the essential spirits of animals. One may wander in its verdant etheric shades for weeks and never encounter a human creature. When one meets such a being there on the etheric plane, she is most gracious and friendly, her company a welcome recompense for months of loneliness. The appearance of a friend in these wastes is signalized by the glimmer of his aura which, as a most learned occidental adept has pointed out, appears "as an oval mass of luminous mist of highly complex structure, from its shape sometimes called the Auric Egg." This writer maintains with apparent truth that these auras are not mere emanations but the actual manifestation of the ego on their respective planes. "It is," he says, "the auric egg which is the real man, not the physical body which on this plane crystallizes in the middle of it." This is certainly clear if we keep in mind the difference between this ego-aura and the physical health-aura which is the first purely astral object seen by the untrained and seldom enters the etheric plane. For the sake of clearness we should call the contents of the auric egg the 'etheric double,' which is merely a new name for a very old idea, for it has long been