The Electron: The last Investigation

The last investigation was made on October 13th, 1933.  A radio receiving set was used as we wished to find out what was the electron.  It is not our Anu but might possibly be an astral atom.  The valve, which is supposed to be throwing off streams of electrons, was examined. Just as the work was suspended, Mr. Leadbeater thought that he had a glimpse of what lay at the back of the nature of positive and negative in electricity.  It seemed as if this distinction went as far back as the nature of the "bubble" itself in Koilon.  But he was tired and the work was suspended.  I left for South America for a year.  Next year Mr. Leadbeater passed away at the age of 87.

An astral atom would be the Anu for the 6th state of matter.

C.W.L., C.J., Mr.  Zuurman.

C.W.L. is C.W. Leadbeater

(Globe with two metal plates inside, connected by a coiled filament)

C.J.         heats a piece of ordinary iron.

               First see what happens when a piece of iron is heated.  What we want to know is—when hot, the ordinary theory is that the particles vibrate more rapidly.

               We want to know whether it sends off any emanations or any particles.

C.W.L.   I do not think so, but it may presently when it gets hot.

C.J.         Is the heat producing any change in the astral atmosphere round it?

C.W.L.   Of course; everything—astral and physical—vibrates somewhat more strongly; but if you want to heat it enough to affect the astral matter, you will need .  .  .  It makes very little difference to the astral.

C.J.         The ordinary heating of this does not produce a discharge of particles?

C.W.L.   It has not yet, but perhaps it may if you make it hot enough, because it is true that a thing sufficiently heated does burn away.

C.J.         That is not the idea.  Does it emanate these things?  Do the electrons come off?

(The two metal plates and filament are heated)

C.J.         Do you want only the plate heated?

Z.           Only the plate.  It is the filament which produces the electrons.  I will remove one plate.

C.W.L.   What is the electron like?  How will we know it?

C.J.         Here is something which we can make red hot.  A needle.  Now it is quite red hot.  Does it throw off anything now?

C.W.L.   I do not see that it is throwing off anything physical.  Mind, it is causing radiations round it.

C.J.         Of what?

C.W.L.   All sorts of things.  Everything that comes near it is affected by it.

C.J.         Just as a hot current of air throws about leaves.  Is the red-hot needle discharging a stream of anything?

C.W.L.   Not out of itself, but it does heat the ether and everything else immediately around it.  It is not causing any electric action.

C.J.         Is it sending off parts of itself which we could call electrons?

C.W.L.   I do not know what an electron is.  There is nothing particular happening, except far more violent vibrations.

(Plate and filament brought)

C.J.         You see the little M or V on the filament?  When the filament is heated, then electrons flow in because this gets a current through.  Then from the hot filament, it draws off particles.  It causes the discharge of something that are called electrons.  We can't test that because we have no current through here.

C.W.L.   It is red hot already.

C.J.         In that condition produce an electric current.  Now examine what is happening inside.  The positive will be drawing off from the hot filament a certain number of things.

(Go to radio near window)

C.W.L.   Where is that grid arrangement inside?

Z.           It is covered up; you can't see it.

(Current is turned on in machine)

C.W.L.   Hot?

Z.           A little bit.

C.W.L.   The difference then is that electricity is running through that.

C.J.         And running through that filament that is hot produces a pull of something that are called electrons.

C.W.L.   It certainly creates a considerable disturbance all round it.  Are these things radiating clean out through the machine?

C.J.         Now what happens?

Z.           They are discharged and go through the valve and back through—a continual flow of current.

C.W.L.   What is it, the current that is going up and down the business that you showed us?

C.J.         A negative current?

Z.           Yes, but that has nothing to do with it.

C.J.         It is merely to make the filament hot by the current.  Another electric current, positive, makes this positive and draws over the negative particles in the filament.

C.W.L.   There is a current; I do not know what it is.  Whatever it is, it can sweep the ordinary Anu before it.

C.J.         Anu of what?

C.W.L.   Well, the ordinary Anu.

C.J.         Where is this current?

C.W.L.   It appears to be coming in, your ordinary electricity coming in.

C.J.         That is in the grid, but that is very much like ordinary electricity going through the tungsten wire of a bulb.

Z.           The current flows here always, except here one filament.

C.W.L.   Flows across?

Z.           Yes.

C.J.         Between the grid and the plate?

Z.           No, between the filament and the plate.  The whole circle is closed except there.

C.W.L.   When the electricity is flowing through, there is a vast amount of general activity all about there.  What you want is to pick out from that general activity these things that you call electrons.

C.J.         The gap between the filament and the plate?

C.W.L.   Light is shining across.

C.J.         What is it made of?

C.W.L.   Something glowing, of course.

C.J.         That is what we want to know.

C.W.L.   Just between the filament and the one plate.  Look here, just let me try another chair, in case of accidents.  (Takes an arm chair.)  Now then, I am going to hold that—this is where the President (Dr. Besant) would come in so usefully—in the same place physically, and then shoot up into the astral and look down at it.  See here; it is not quite a real thing, it is a maya.  The light shooting across is not really continuous at all. It gives that effect, like a whirling stick.  Wait a minute.  You are breaking up the ordinary Anu.

C.J.         Into the astral?

C.W.L.   Of course, into the primordial, into the Adi plane of bubbles, but they dart back in a moment (as astral atoms).  We are watching something which I do not know how to count.  It is taking place so rapidly you have to count in thousandths of seconds or millionths.

C.J.         What is taking place?

C.W.L.   This much.  Your Anu breaks up and reforms, many times within a flash.  The thing is not continuous at all, but looks as if it were.

C.J.         One Anu after another gets disintegrated?

C.W.L.   It is a very small interval, and yet in that interval they appear to disintegrate and come together on the other side probably a thousand times in a second or more.

C.J.         But where are these Anu from?

C.W.L.   They are being swept along by the current apparently.  What have you done to the current?  Have you slackened that current at all?

C.J.         Are the Anu from the coating of the filament, the outermost sheath?

C.W.L.   It is all happening so tremendously quickly. I am going to slow it down. I do not want to burst anything.  Slow it down and see what happens.  I thought at first that it was flowing in one way as a current; but if you slow it down a little, it does not appear to be doing that.  It is really flowing backwards and forwards.  It looks as though it were running one way, but it is like that (makes a motion) and then going on.  Why is that, and what is it?  You say these electrons ought to be streaming out somewhere?

C.J.         Towards the middle of the plate from the filament.

C.W.L.   That is where they are going.  I had the impression that you thought they would radiate out of the machine.  They do not.

C.J.         In the middle of the plate with the current?

C.W.L.   I am sorry, but as far as I can see they are flowing backwards and forwards with inconceivable rapidity; and one would almost say that it is only at intervals that one of them is caught and goes on.  Does it delay the flow?

C.J.         I do not know.  Is it the Anu flowing backwards and forwards?

C.W.L.   The Anu is disintegrated.

C.J.         Is it the astral that is flowing backwards and forwards?

C.W.L.   Yes.

C.J.         Obviously what they call the electron is the astral atom.  Our Anu is broken up into 49 astral atoms.

C.W.L.   Yes, broken up into its constituent bubbles.

C.J.         It is they that are flowing back and forth, and finally one gets absorbed in the current and goes along.

C.W.L.   That is probably happening several hundred times in a second.

C.J.         What are the rest?  Where do they get discharged?  Into the astral atmosphere?

C.W.L.   They are kept in very violent motion.

(Shut off the current in the machine)

C.W.L.    It has all gone back to its ordinary condition.  I do not believe they have lost any electrons.

C.J.         Slight loss?  Now we will have the same position, but will put on the grid.  It will have the effect of steadying that flowing back and forth.

(Try to get some broadcasting, but get only noise)

C.W.L.    What makes that noise?

Z.            The pump at the printing press, or power-house.

C.W.L.    That is noise coming through the wire?

C.J.         The grid is working now.  What is it doing to the coming back and forth?

C.W.L.    Wait a bit.  The noise is coming through the machinery.  So we ought to be able to see what is to be sent, even though the howls are fiendish.  The grid, you say, modifies the noise?

C.J.         The purpose of the grid is to get the rate higher or lower.

C.W.L.    I should say that the grid was rather an obstruction.

C.J.         It is intended to be.

Z.            The grid discharges positive whichever current flows.

C.J.         If the grid is positive, and since the plate is also positive, then the flow of electrons is more and more.

Z.            When it is negative, then the flow is reduced.

(Turn off the noise.  No music)

C.W.L.    Current was flowing through.  Here is another curious thing I did not notice before.  Why does it split up your Anu?  I think it not only splits him up, it sorts him out.  There are positive and negative Anu.  One goes on one side and the other on another.  I want just to follow that.  It is difficult for our thick-headed human conceptions to grasp that these things can take place at this amazing rapidity, not lightning but a hundred times that speed.  It is sorting out negative and positive.

C.J.         What does the negative do?

C.W.L.    Goes on one side, and the other on the other.

C.J.         But does it get absorbed into the plate?

C.W.L.    Yes; it all comes together again.  But wait a minute; what I am trying to see is whether by any of these actions you can change a positive Anu into a negative one, or a negative into a positive.  I cannot be sure of that yet.  But where is this solar system scheme that we are supposed to see—a negative atom going around a positive?  Aren't we?

C.J.         Well, leave these theories, if you please; and investigate and tell us what you see.  We will build a theory.  What is happening to the positive and negative Anu?  What follows?

C.W.L.    But it follows so desperately quickly that I cannot follow it.  It takes some slowing down scheme; but in doing that I probably will affect it.  A good deal depends on the rapidity of the vibration.  Is this supposed to be hot?

Z.            Yes.

C.W.L.    Red hot?

Z.            No; dark hot.

C.W.L.    But it all looks to me like a blinding light.  Now it is at your receiving station that these things are sorted somehow back into sound vibrations and all that.  Aren't they?

Z.            Yes; it is a confusing process.  The first valve sends wave lengths.  If I take the first valve, probably the process will be more simple.

C.J.         What have you now?

Z.            All three valves.  I'll make it with one valve only.

C.W.L.    The three valves would only intensify the process.

Z.            The first one is a different process.  It is all sorted out, the sound waves from the wave length of the station.  Now there is only one valve.

C.W.L.    When you have all three of them going on, from first to second they are strengthened, not altered.

C.J.         What is "they"?

C.W.L.    Anu, I suppose; but what I rather want to know is how this picking up is done, and what is the object of it.  Do they come together in some different arrangement afterwards?  But I do not quite see that they do.  Only it is so quick that you cannot very well follow it.  I was certainly hoping that this process would change the positive into negative, and vice versa; but I cannot prove that it does.  Wait a minute.  I was trying to count the wretched things, slowing them down enormously, a thousand times, watching the number of male and female that went in, to see whether the numbers go out on the other side.

C.J.         Went where?

C.W.L.    Those flowing across.

C.J.         And go back to the filament again?

C.W.L.    No, no.  Go into the plate.

Z.            Filament to plate.

C.J.         But before that they flow back and forth?

C.W.L.    A hundred times before they are split perhaps.  Remember that whirlpool at Niagara; some bits go round twenty times before they are swept away.  It is like that, but a few million times faster.  Where are these electrons of yours?  Are they the little globes or balls of astral atoms, I wonder?  But aren't they supposed to exist all over the place everywhere?

C.J.         Yes.

C.W.L.    These things do not; they are made for the occasion.

C.J.         What causes the thing to flow back and forth?

C.W.L.    I am not quite sure that the thing does not flow back and forth normally.  Lightning does that.

C.J.         There is one pull and the other.  The filament negative and the plate positive, and it flows back and forth between them.  You say, when the current is going through the wire, there is a series of astral atoms going through the outermost sheath, or is it a series of Anu?

C.W.L.    Running along the outside of the wire, the ordinary electric wire.

C.J.         It is a series of astral atoms that goes through?

C.W.L.    I don't know that they would be necessarily astral.  They would be the ordinary Anu, I think, but electrified, a strain set up at a particular angle.

C.J.         Not in the filament but along the wire; there is a stream of ordinary Anu flowing under the sheath of the wire.  Is that it?

C.W.L.    But they are being swept along it, mind you.  The Anu has no volition of its own.

C.J.         Where from?

C.W.L.    The electricity picks them up.  We never see electricity.  It is driving these things before it.

C.J.         Does it pick up from the atmosphere the Anu everywhere?

C.W.L.    Yes, and it is .  .  . there is another .  .  . probably fifty.  See here.  When you send an electric current through, you stir up all creation for an inch or two on each side of it, so to speak.  Is that what you call the magnetic field?

C.J.         Yes.

C.W.L.    That is a different kind of reaction, a kind of backwash.  How separate the effect of one thing from the effect of another?  I do not think we can escape from the idea that there is a radiation at right angles to the wire.

C.J.         Yes, that is inside.  I would like, if you take two wires—positive and negative—can you see that in one wire there is one type of Anu going along, and in the other another?

C.W.L.    You have one thing over, which is very much separate.

C.J.         Which?

C.W.L.    I can see it from here.  It is that one which sets the light over the disc going.  He is very much separate.

C.J.         Now you can study the two lots.  In these two, are there two separate sets of Anu?

Z.            It is all one type of current going through there.

C.W.L.    What do you consider you are sending along it?

Z.            Maybe plus or minus; I don't know.

C.W.L.    How can you know?

C.J.         The easiest way to observe is in these two—this is plus, that is minus.  Then you can sort it out.

C.W.L.    You definitely have two separate things there.  How do you separate them?

C.J.         Better resume another time.  Let's get on with the electron business where a positive thing comes along, going back through the bulb.  Going out negative.

Z.            Because you have got pressure there it is changed.  We call it plus and minus. (Makes a diagram of a dynamo.)  Here on the bulb is plus or minus.

C.J.         That is your bulb.  Here is a current going through this wire.  How to change the plus to minus?

Z.            The dynamo does it.  By running in the magnetic field, one side becomes plus, and the other side minus.  You get a sort of average.  The average is the weight of pressure.

C.W.L.    But it seems to me that there is a stream of things coming down from the astral, and a stream of things being sucked up. What the dynamo is doing is sucking up the other thing, and these two are sort of complementary.  It is generating one type of current, drawing it from the astral, and the other time sucking up another type from below.

Z.            Suppose you have one magnet very strong, just a single one.  You move it along, there you have currents.

C.J.         One type?

Z.            No, plus and minus, both.  The current goes in a certain direction that we call plus or minus, according to the way it goes.

C.J.         Always you must have the earth as one pole?

Z.            No.  Since you close the wire into a circle, you have a current flowing.

C.W.L.    Then the thing becomes magnetic?

Z.            No, we have the magnet before.

C.W.L.    That is where the current is made?

Z.            Yes, because it flows.

C.J.         Does it flow alternately?

Z.            In one wire always the current is in a certain direction.  The direction of the flow of the current changes.

C.W.L.    What we have to find out is, what is the current itself?  It may be the Divine Life for all we know.

Adyar, Madras, India,

10th November, 1932.

pages 385-390