[cover: Total eclipse of the sun in France, August 11, 1999.]

(Transcribed and Compiled by A. Trevor Barker, The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnet, 1923.)

LETTER No. 23b (9)

II.

(K.H.’s Replies to the Queries in Letter 23a II. — Ed.)

"Is the sun’s corona, an atmosphere? of any known gases? And why does it assume the rayed shape always observed in eclipses?"

♦

"Call it a chromosphere or atmosphere, it can be called neither; for it is simply the magnetic and ever present aura of the sun, seen by astronomers only for a brief few moments during the eclipse and by some of our chelas — whenever they like — of course while in a certain induced state. A counterpart of what the astronomers call the red flames in the “corona” may be seen in Reichenbach’s crystals or in any other strongly magnetic body. The head of a man — in a strong ecstatic condition, when all the electricity of his system is centred around the brain, will represent — especially in darkness — a perfect simile of the Sun during such periods. The first artist who drew the aureoles about the heads of his gods and Saints, was not inspired, but represented it on the authority of temple pictures and traditions of the sanctuary and the chambers of initiation where such phenomena took place. The closer to the head or to the aura-emitting body — the stronger and the more effulgent the emanation — (due to hydrogen science tells us — in the case of the flames); hence — the irregular red flames around the Sun or the “inner corona.” The fact that these are not always present in equal quantity shows only the constant fluctuation of the magnetic matter and its energy, upon which also depend the variety and number of spots. During periods of magnetic inertia the spots disappear or rather remain invisible. The further the emanation shoots out the more it loses in intensity, until gradually subsiding it fades out; hence — the “outer corona,” its rayed shape being due entirely to the latter phenomenon whose effulgence proceeds from the magnetic nature of the matter and the electric energy and not at all from intensely hot particles as asserted by some astronomers. All this is terribly unscientific, nevertheless a fact, to which, I may add another by reminding you that the Sun we see is not at all the central planet of our little Universe, but only its veil or its reflection. Science has tremendous odds against studying that planet which luckily for us we have not: Foremost of all — the constant tremours of our atmosphere which prevent them from judging correctly the little they do see. This impediment was never in the way of the ancient Chaldee and Egyptian astronomers; nor is it an obstacle to us, for we have means of arresting, or counteracting such tremours — acquainted as we are with all the akasic conditions. No more than the rain secret, would this secret — supposing we do divulge it — be of any practical use to your men of Science unless they become occultists and sacrifice long years to the acquirement of powers. Only fancy a Huxley or a Tyndall studying Yog-vidya! Hence the many mistakes into which they fall and the conflicting hypotheses of your best authorities. For instance: the Sun is full of iron vapours — a fact that was demonstrated by the spectroscope showing that the light of the corona consisted largely of a line in the green part of the spectrum very nearly coinciding with an iron line. Yet Professors Young and Lockyer rejected that, under the witty pretext, if I remember, that, if the corona were composed of minute particles like a dust cloud (and it is this that we call “magnetic matter”) these particles would (1) fall upon the sun’s body, (2) comets were known to pass through this vapour without any visible effect on them; (3) Professor Young’s spectroscope showed that the coronal line was not identical with the iron one, etc. Why they should call those objections “scientific” is more than we can tell.

(1) The reason why the particles — since they call them so — do not fall upon the sun’s body is self-evident. There are forces co-existent with gravitation of which they know nothing; besides that other fact that there is no gravitation properly speaking; only attraction and repulsion. (2) How could comets be affected by the said passage since their “passing through” is simply an optical illusion: they could not pass within the area of attraction without being immediately annihilated by that force, of which no vril can give an adequate idea since there can be nothing on earth that could be compared with it.

Passing as the comets do through a “reflection” no wonder that the said vapour has “no visible effect on these light bodies.” (3) The coronal line may not seem identical through the best “grating spectroscope,” nevertheless, the corona contains iron as well as other vapours. To tell you of what it does consist, is idle, since I am unable to translate the words we use for it, and that no such matter exists (not in our planetary system, at any rate) — but in the sun. The fact is, that what you call the Sun is simply the reflection of the huge “store-house” of our System wherein all its forces are generated and preserved; the Sun being the heart and brain of our pigmy Universe, we might compare its faculae — those millions of small, intensely brilliant bodies of which the Sun’s surface away from the spots is made up — with the blood corpuscles of that luminary — though some of them as correctly conjectured by Science are as large as Europe. Those blood corpuscles are the electric and magnetic matter in its sixth and seventh state. What are those long white filaments twisted like so many ropes, of which the penumbra of the Sun is made up? What — the central part that is seen like a huge flame ending in fiery spires, and the transparent clouds, or rather vapours formed of delicate threads of silvery light, that hangs over those flames — what — but magneto-electric aura — the phlogiston of the Sun? Science may go on speculating for ever — yet so long as she does not renounce two or three of her cardinal errors she will find herself groping for ever in the dark. Some of her greatest misconceptions are found in her limited notions on the law of gravitation; her denial that matter may be imponderable; her newly invented term “force” and the absurd and tacitly accepted idea, that force is capable of existing per se, or of acting any more than life, outside, independent of, or in any other wise than through matter: in other words that force is anything but matter in one of her highest states — the last three on the ascending scale being denied because only Science knows nothing of them; and her utter ignorance of the universal Proteus, its functions and importance in the economy of nature — magnetism and electricity. Tell Science that even in those days of the decline of the Roman Empire, when the tatooed Britisher used to offer to the Emperor Claudius his nazzur of “electron” in the shape of a string of amber beads that even then, there were yet men remaining aloof from the immoral masses, who knew more of electricity and magnetism than they, the men of Science, do now, and Science will laugh at you as bitterly as she now does over your kind dedication to me. Verily, when your astronomers speaking of Sun-matter, term those lights and flames as “clouds of vapour” and “gases unknown to science” (rather!) — chased by mighty whirlwinds and cyclones — whereas we know it to be simply magnetic matter in its usual state of activity — we feel inclined to smile at the expressions. Can one imagine the “Sun’s fires fed with purely mineral matter . . . with meteorites highly charged with hydrogen giving the Sun a far reaching atmosphere of ignited gas”? We know that the invisible Sun is composed of that which has neither name, nor can it be compared to anything known by your Science — on earth; and that its “reflection” contains still less of anything like “gases,” mineral matter, or fire, though even we when treating of it in your civilized tongue are compelled to use such expressions as “vapour” and “magnetic matter.” To close the subject, the coronal changes have no effect upon the earth’s climate, though spots have — and Professor N. Lockyer is mostly wrong in his deductions. The Sun is neither a solid nor a liquid, nor yet a gaseous globe; but a gigantic ball of electro-magnetic Forces, the store-house of universal life and motion, from which the latter pulsate in all directions, feeding the smallest atom as the greatest genius with the same material unto the end of the Maha Yug."