THE Adepts do not deny the nebular theory in its general propositions nor the approximate truths of the scientific hypothesis. They only deny the completeness of present theories as well as the entire error of the many so-called “exploded” old theories which, during the last century, have followed each other in such rapid succession. For instance, while denying with Laplace, Herschel and others, that the variable patches of light perceived on the nebulous background of the galaxy ever belonged to remote worlds in the process of formation, and agreeing with modern science that they proceed from no aggregation of formless matter but belong simply to clusters of “stars” already formed; they yet add that many of such clusters that pass in the opinion of the astro-physicists for stars and worlds already evoluted, are in fact but collections of the various materials made ready for future worlds. Like bricks already baked, of various qualities, shapes and colour, these seemingly adult worlds are no longer formless clay, but have become fit units for a future wall, each of them having a fixed and distinctly assigned space to occupy in some forthcoming building. The astronomer has no means of recognizing their relative adolescence, except perhaps by making a distinction between the star-clusters with the usual orbital motion and mutual gravitation, and those termed, we believe, irregular star-clusters of very capricious and changeful appearances. Thrown together as though at random, and seemingly in utter violation of the law of symmetry, they defy observation.

Before an emphatic contradiction of what precedes is attempted, and ridicule offered perchance, it would not seem amiss to ascertain the nature and character of those other so-called “temporary” stars whose periodicity, though never actually proved, is yet allowed to pass unquestioned. What are these stars which, appearing suddenly in matchless magnificence and splendor, disappear as mysteriously, as unexpectedly, without leaving a single trace behind? Whence do they appear? Whither are they engulfed? “In the great cosmic deep,” we say.

Another point most emphatically denied by the “Adepts” is that there exists in the whole range of visible heavens any space void of starry worlds. There are stars, worlds, and systems within, as without, the systems made visible to man, and even within our own atmosphere, for all the physicist knows. The Adept affirms in this connection that orthodox, or so-called “official” science uses very often the word “infinitude” without attaching to it any adequate importance, as a flower of speech rather than a term implying an awful, a most mysterious, Reality. When an astronomer is found in his reports “gauging infinitude,” even the most intuitional of his class is but too often apt to forget that he is gauging only the superficies of a small area and its visible depths, and to speak of these as though they were merely the cubic contents of some known quantity. This is the direct result of the present conception of a three-dimensional space. The turn of a four-dimensional world is near, but the puzzle of science will ever continue until its concepts reach the natural dimensions of visible and invisible space — in its septenary completeness.

It is also necessary to know that the Adepts of the Good Law reject gravity as at present explained. They deny that the so-called “impact theory” is the only one that is tenable in the gravitation hypothesis. They say that if all efforts made by the physicists to connect it with ether in order to explain electric and magnetic distance-action have hitherto proved complete failures, it is again due to the race ignorance of the ultimate states of matter in Nature, and foremost of all of the real nature of the solar stuff. Believing but in the law of mutual magneto-electric attraction and repulsion, they agree with those who have come to the conclusion that “universal gravitation is a weak force,” utterly incapable of accounting for even one small portion of the phenomena of motion. In the same connection they are forced to suggest that science may be wrong in her indiscriminate postulation of centrifugal force, which is neither a universal nor a consistent law. To cite but one instance, this force is powerless to account for the spheroidal oblateness of certain planets. For if the bulge of planetary equators and the shortening of their polar axes is to be attributed to centrifugal force, instead of being simply the result of the powerful influence of solar electro-magnetic attraction, “balanced by concentric rectification of each planet’s own gravitation achieved by rotation on its axis,” to use an astronomer’s phraseology (neither very clear nor correct, yet serving our purpose to show the many flaws in the system), why should there be such difficulty in answering the objection that the differences in the equatorial rotation and density of various planets are directly in opposition to this theory?

The Adepts have never claimed superior knowledge of Western astronomy and other sciences. Yet turning even to the most elementary textbooks used in the schools of India, we find that the centrifugal theory of Western birth is unable to cover all the ground. That, unaided, it can neither account for every spheroid oblate nor explain away such evident difficulties as are presented by the relative density of some planets. How indeed can any calculation of centrifugal force explain to us, for instance, why Mercury, whose rotation is, we are told, only “about one-third that of the Earth, and its density only about one-fourth greater than the Earth,” should have a polar compression more than ten times greater than the latter? And again, why Jupiter, whose equatorial rotation is said to be “twenty-seven times greater and its density only about one-fifth that of the Earth, should have its polar compression seventeen times greater than that of the Earth? Or why Saturn, with an equatorial velocity fifty-five times greater than Mercury for centrifugal force to contend with, should have its polar compression only three times greater than Mercury’s? To crown the above contradictions, we are asked to believe in the “central forces” as taught by modern science, even when told that the equatorial matter of the sun, with more than four times the centrifugal velocity of the earth’s equatorial surface and only about one-fourth part of the gravitation of the equatorial matter, has not manifested any tendency to bulge out at the solar equator nor shown the least flattening at the poles of the solar axis. In other and clearer words, the sun, with only one-fourth of our earth’s density for the centrifugal force to work upon, has no polar compression at all!

Therefore do they say that the great men of science of the West, knowing nothing, or next to nothing, either about cometary matter, centrifugal and centripetal forces, the nature of the nebulae, or the physical constitution of the sun, stars, or even the moon, are imprudent to speak as confidently as they do about the “central mass of the sun” whirling out into space planets, comets, and what-not. Our humble opinion being wanted, we maintain that it evolutes out but the life principle, the soul of these bodies, giving and receiving it back in our little solar system, as the “Universal Life-giver,” the One Life gives and receives it in the Infinitude and Eternity. That the Solar System is as much the microcosm of the One Macrocosm as man is the former when compared with his own little solar cosmos. 

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