Etheric plane: Encyclopedia - Etheric plane

Etheric plane

Subtle bodies

Causal plane: Causal body
Mental plane: Mental body
Astral plane: body, projection
Etheric plane: Etheric body
Physical plane: Physical body

The 7 Worlds & the 7 Cosmic Planes
The Seven-fold constitution of Man
The Ten-fold constitution of Man

Cosmology

Sufi cosmology
Tanazzulut

Ray of Creation
The Laws
Three Centres
Five Centres

Plane (Dungeons & Dragons)
  Inner Plane
  Prime Material Plane
  Outer Plane

The etheric plane or etheric region is one of the planes of existence, or more specifically a subplane or planes, in Theosophy and New Age thought. According to C.W. Leadbeater and Annie Besant (Adyar School of Theosophy), and Alice Bailey, the etheric plane constitutes the four higher subplanes of the physical plane, the lower three being the states of solid, liquid, and gaseous matter.

It might be argued that the etheric plane is in part equivalent to Sri Aurobindo's concept of the subtle physical. In Anthroposophy the equivalent is the etheric formative forces.

Etheric plane - Etymology

See Aether (classical element)

The aether (also written as "ether") was widely accepted in ancient Greek philosophy and science. This Greek concept seems to derive directly from the akasha, its Hindu counterpart. In Greek doctrines it seems that the aether was the celestial fire, the pure essence where the gods lived and which they breathed. In this connection, it seems that aether is radiative heat like that of the sun, which is able to propagate in empty space. The Greek word aither derives from an Indo-European root aith- ("burn, shine"). This root figures in the name of Aithiopia (Ethiopia), which means something like "burnt land".

Etheric plane - Alchemy background

Etheric plane - Rosicrucian and Esoteric Christianity conceptions

According to Max Heindel's Rosicrucian writings ^[1], there is - in addition to the solids, liquids, and gases which compose the Chemical Region of the Physical World - a finer grade of matter called ether, which permeates the atomic structure of the earth and its atmosphere. The ether, which is disposed in four grades of density, is considered to be physical matter and responsive to the same laws which govern other physical substances upon the physical world (the blue haze seen in mountain canyons is said to be in fact ether of the kind known to occult investigators as chemical ether). He states that there are various grades of spiritual sight, each suited to the superphysical realm which it opens to our perception: etheric vision, color vision, and tonal vision. Ether is reported to be of four kinds, or grades of density (from the lowest to the highest one) ^[2]:
- the Chemical ether: both positive and negative in manifestation and it is related to the assimilation and excretion processes;
- the Life ether: has also a positive and negative pole and it is related to the forces of propagation;
- the Light ether: the positive pole is related to forces which generate blood heat in the higher species of animal and in the human being and the negative is related to the forces which operate through the senses (passive functions of sight, hearing, feeling, tasting, and smelling);
- the Reflective ether: the medium through which thought makes an impression upon the human brain and this ether cointains pictures which work as reflexions of the memory of nature found at the World of Thought.
Heindel states there are in this Etheric region various classes of sub-human beings and also here it may be observed the Angels who are seen as being one step beyond the human stage, as humans are a degree in advance of the animal evolution.

According to Esoteric Christianity teachings, based upon the Bible and in esoteric knowledge, the next major step in human evolution will be entering and living in the Etheric region of the planet, through a major change which is expected to occur in the Earth's environment ("reserved unto fire") in a future, not identified, time: the "new heavens and a new earth", or "New Galilee". It also teaches that, in order to the human being be able to adapt to these new etheric conditions, it is necessary the development of a body, named Soul body (Paul of Tarsus' "soma psuchicon") or the "Wedding Garment" as taught in the Holy Scriptures, eg.:

• "The kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king, which made a marriage for his son, (...) And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man which had not on a wedding garment:" (Matthew 22:2,11 KJV)
• "And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband." (Revelation 21:2)
• "For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven: If so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked." (2 Corinthians 5:1-3)

However, it also states that before entering "New Galilee" - as mankind walk forward to the understandings of universal brotherhood, during the next six centuries toward the Age of Aquarius - the spiritual sight will start developing allowing human beings to perceive the so-called "dead" living in the supraphysical planes.

Etheric plane - New scientific conception of the Aether ether

During the 19th century science adopted ideas and developed theories related to the luminiferous aether and performed several experiments in order to discover its nature. One of these experiments was the famous Michelson-Morley experiment (1887), based in earlier theories of the invisible aether (or ether). This experiment disproved the existence of an aether to early physics and after Einstein conceived the theory of relativity (and related 'four-space'), since 1904, this conception of an aether was dismissed. However modern scientific theoretical research ^[3], shows that the 19th century Earnshaw's Theorem (1839) - in which the Michelson-Morley experiment and others were based - had an unnoticed flaw which consisted mainly in assuming aether as fixed and electromagnetic in nature; the later Einstein's special and general theory of relativy deviated physics from being able to understand the true nature of the invisible aether. This new paradigm, built through mathematics and physics theoretical language, explains how the invisible aether creates, permeates and interacts with all matter. Through this conception it is possible to explain all the major phenomena which current-day physics is not able to, or that in order to do it has necessity to create several particular, but incompatible, theories. Some of these questions are related to what gravity really is and how it works, about the creation of the proton, the nuclear fusion, creation of stars and planets, the Big bang, etc. According to physicist Harold Aspden, the conception of the structure of the invisible aether, working beyond matter, gives the answer to the long awaited "Unified Field Theory" of physics:

• The message is: "Accept the aether is real and has structure and you can understand how matter is created - but ignore the aether and you live in ignorance!"

• The next message is: "Accept the aether is real and contains a system of electric charges that have a common circular motion which is shared by matter present and you will see the need for something that provides dynamic mass balance. That something is a system of gravitons and they are what governs G, the constant of gravitation. Ignore the aether and you have no way of understanding how G might be evaluated and so resolve the mystery of Unified Field Theory." ^[4]

New theoretical and experimental field of research, called Aetherometry ^[5], created by biophysicist and molecular biologist Paulo Correa and his collaborator Alexandra Correa points a description of the invisible aether, which permeates all matter and its subatomic structure, as dynamic massfree energy (its critical characteristic) being weightless, not electromagnetic, nor composed of photons, nor monopolar electric nor even electric per se (aether encompasses both electric and nonelectric forms of massfree energy, with the former being ambipolar and not monopolar). Matter is then conceived as being aether energy imprisoned in electrically stable constructs that deploy inertial properties in order to conserve both mass (mass-energy) and massbound charge.

These new scientific conceptions and experiments - although not supported by scientific consensus and under heavy discussion among mainstream scientific community - are seen as starting to approach the basic teachings of esoteric movements and schools, throughout current and past civilizations, about the invisible etheric realm.

See also

• Pseudoscience
• Etheric body
• Esoteric cosmology
• Aether theories
• Aether (classical element)
• Aether and general relativity
• Aetherometry
• Luminiferous aether
• Timeline of luminiferous aether

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