built up
by a special arrangement of the smaller molecules of the next higher
subdivision. The application of heat increases the size of the molecules
and also quickens and amplifies their undulation, so that they cover more
ground, and the object, as a whole expands, until the point is reached
where the aggregation of molecules breaks up, and the latter passes from
one condition to that next above it. In the matter of the physical world
the seven subdivisions are represented by seven degrees of density of
matter, to which, beginning from below upwards, we give the names solid,
liquid, gaseous, etheric, superetheric, subatomic and atomic.

The atomic subdivision is one in which all forms are built by the
compression into certain shapes of the physical atoms, without any previous
collection of these atoms into blocks or molecules. Typifying the physical
ultimate atom for the moment by a brick, any form in the atomic subdivision
would be made by gathering together some of the bricks, and building them
into a certain shape. In order to make matter for the next lower
subdivision, a certain number of the bricks (atoms) would first be gathered
together and cemented into small blocks of say four bricks each, five
bricks each, six bricks or seven bricks; and then these blocks so made
would be used as building stones. For the next subdivision several of the
blocks of the second subdivision cemented together in certain shapes would
form building-stones, and so on to the lowest.

To transfer any substance from the solid condition to the liquid (that is
to say, to melt it) is to increase the vibration of its compound molecules
until at last they are shaken apart into the simpler molecules of which
they were built. This process can in all cases be repeated again and again
until finally any and every physical substance can be reduced to the
ultimate atoms of the physical world.

Each of these worlds has its inhabitants, whose senses are normally capable
of responding to the undulations of their own world only. A man living (as
we are all doing) in the physical world sees, hears, feels, by vibrations
connected with the physical matter around him. He is equally surrounded by
the astral and mental and other worlds which are interpenetrating his own
denser world, but of them he is normally unconscious, because his senses
cannot respond to the oscillations of their matter, just as our physical
eyes cannot see by the vibrations of ultra-