"When the prakritic atom is vibrating in chord with its etheric envelope," say our textbooks, "we have physical phenomena --light, heat, electricity." "Yes," says the Hindu teacher; "but when the atom and its ether and its prana are vibrating in chord, we have life and vital phenomena added to the energy. When the atom and its ether, prana, and manasa are vibrating in chord, we have mind and mental phenomena added to the life and energy." Each atom has energy, life, and mind in posse. In the living leaf the prakriti, ether, and prana are sounding the threefold silver chord of life. In the animal, the manasa is sounding the same note with them, making the fourfold golden chord of mind. Even in the plant there may be a faint manasic overtone, for the potentiality of life and mind is in everything. This unity of the physical universe with the physical atom, and with all things created--earth, animal, or crystal--is the physical backbone of Oriental metaphysics. Prakriti, ether, prana, and manasa are in our vernacular the Earth, Air, Fire, and Water of the old philosophers--the "Four Elements." The Oriental physics has been guarded most jealously. For many thousands of years it has been the real occult and esoteric teaching, while the Oriental metaphysics has been open and exoteric. It could not be understood without the key, and the key was in the physics known only to "the tried and approved disciple." A little has leaked out--enough to whet the appetite of the true student and make him ask for more. Chapter Two The Two Kinds of Perception To the savage, matter appears in two forms--solid and liquid. As he advances a step he learns it has three forms--solid, liquid and gas. He cannot see the gas, but he knows it is there. A little further on he learns that matter as he knows it is only a minute portion of the great universe of matter--the few chords that can be struck on the five strings of his senses, and limited to one octave or key. Whether the particular matter he investigates has a solid, a liquid, or a gaseous form depends upon its rate of vibration. If it is a liquid, by raising its rate of vibration one third it becomes a gas; by reducing it one third it becomes a solid. Each kind of matter has vibration only through one octave. It is known to us only by its vibration in that octave. Each kind of matter has a different octave--is set on a higher or lower key, so to speak, but all octaves of vibration are between the highest of hydrogen gas and the lowest of carbon. In mechanical compounds, such as air or brass, the rate of vibration of the compound is the least common multiple of the two or more rates. In chemical compounds, such as water or alcohol, the rate is that of the highest, the others uniting in harmonic fractions.