Energy—Mind and Matter

42:4.1Light, heat, elec­tric­ity, mag­netism, chem­ism, en­ergy, and mat­ter are—in ori­gin, na­ture, and des­tiny—one and the same thing, to­gether with other ma­te­rial re­al­i­ties as yet undis­cov­ered on Uran­tia.

42:4.2We do not fully com­pre­hend the al­most end­less changes to which phys­i­cal en­ergy may be sub­ject. In one uni­verse it ap­pears as light, in an­other as light plus heat, in an­other as forms of en­ergy un­known on Uran­tia; in un­told mil­lions of years it may reap­pear as some form of rest­less, surg­ing elec­tri­cal en­ergy or mag­netic power; and still later on it may again ap­pear in a sub­se­quent uni­verse as some form of vari­able mat­ter go­ing through a se­ries of meta­mor­phoses, to be fol­lowed by its out­ward phys­i­cal dis­ap­pear­ance in some great cat­a­clysm of the realms. And then, af­ter count­less ages and al­most end­less wan­der­ing through num­ber­less uni­verses, again may this same en­ergy re-emerge and many times change its form and po­ten­tial; and so do these trans­for­ma­tions con­tinue through suc­ces­sive ages and through­out count­less realms. Thus mat­ter sweeps on, un­der­go­ing the trans­mu­ta­tions of time but swing­ing ever true to the cir­cle of eter­nity; even if long pre­vented from re­turn­ing to its source, it is ever re­spon­sive thereto, and it ever pro­ceeds in the path or­dained by the In­fi­nite Per­son­al­ity who sent it forth.

42:4.3The power cen­ters and their as­so­ciates are much con­cerned in the work of trans­mut­ing the ul­ti­ma­ton into the cir­cuits and rev­o­lu­tions of the elec­tron. These unique be­ings con­trol and com­pound power by their skill­ful ma­nip­u­la­tion of the ba­sic units of ma­te­ri­al­ized en­ergy, the ul­ti­ma­tons. They are mas­ters of en­ergy as it cir­cu­lates in this prim­i­tive state. In li­ai­son with the phys­i­cal con­trol­lers they are able to ef­fec­tively con­trol and di­rect en­ergy even af­ter it has trans­muted to the elec­tri­cal level, the so-called elec­tronic stage. But their range of ac­tion is enor­mously cur­tailed when elec­tron­i­cally or­ga­nized en­ergy swings into the whirls of the atomic sys­tems. Upon such ma­te­ri­al­iza­tion, these en­er­gies fall un­der the com­plete grasp of the draw­ing power of lin­ear grav­ity.

42:4.4Grav­ity acts pos­i­tively on the power lanes and en­ergy chan­nels of the power cen­ters and the phys­i­cal con­trol­lers, but these be­ings have only a neg­a­tive re­la­tion to grav­ity—the ex­er­cise of their anti­grav­ity en­dow­ments.

42:4.5Through­out all space, cold and other in­flu­ences are at work cre­atively or­ga­niz­ing ul­ti­ma­tons into elec­trons. Heat is the mea­sure­ment of elec­tronic ac­tiv­ity, while cold merely sig­ni­fies ab­sence of heat—com­par­a­tive en­ergy rest—the sta­tus of the uni­ver­sal force-charge of space pro­vided nei­ther emer­gent en­ergy nor or­ga­nized mat­ter were pres­ent and re­spond­ing to grav­ity.

42:4.6Grav­ity pres­ence and ac­tion is what pre­vents the ap­pear­ance of the the­o­ret­i­cal ab­so­lute zero, for in­ter­stel­lar space does not have the tem­per­a­ture of ab­so­lute zero. Through­out all or­ga­nized space there are grav­ity-re­spond­ing en­ergy cur­rents, power cir­cuits, and ul­ti­ma­tonic ac­tiv­i­ties, as well as or­ga­niz­ing elec­tronic en­er­gies. Prac­ti­cally speak­ing, space is not empty. Even the at­mo­sphere of Uran­tia thins out in­creas­ingly un­til at about three thou­sand miles it be­gins to shade off into the av­er­age space mat­ter in this sec­tion of the uni­verse. The most nearly empty space known in Neb­a­don would yield about one hun­dred ul­ti­ma­tons—the equiv­a­lent of one elec­tron—in each cu­bic inch. Such scarcity of mat­ter is re­garded as prac­ti­cally empty space.

42:4.7Tem­per­a­ture—heat and cold—is sec­ondary only to grav­ity in the realms of en­ergy and mat­ter evo­lu­tion. Ul­ti­ma­tons are humbly obe­di­ent to tem­per­a­ture ex­tremes. Low tem­per­a­tures fa­vor cer­tain forms of elec­tronic con­struc­tion and atomic as­sem­bly, while high tem­per­a­tures fa­cil­i­tate all sorts of atomic breakup and ma­te­rial dis­in­te­gra­tion.

42:4.8When sub­jected to the heat and pres­sure of cer­tain in­ter­nal so­lar states, all but the most prim­i­tive as­so­ci­a­tions of mat­ter may be bro­ken up. Heat can thus largely over­come grav­ity sta­bil­ity. But no known so­lar heat or pres­sure can con­vert ul­ti­ma­tons back into puis­sant en­ergy.

42:4.9The blaz­ing suns can trans­form mat­ter into var­i­ous forms of en­ergy, but the dark worlds and all outer space can slow down elec­tronic and ul­ti­ma­tonic ac­tiv­ity to the point of con­vert­ing these en­er­gies into the mat­ter of the realms. Cer­tain elec­tronic as­so­ci­a­tions of a close na­ture, as well as many of the ba­sic as­so­ci­a­tions of nu­clear mat­ter, are formed in the ex­ceed­ingly low tem­per­a­tures of open space, be­ing later aug­mented by as­so­ci­a­tion with larger ac­cre­tions of ma­te­ri­al­iz­ing en­ergy.

42:4.10Through­out all of this never-end­ing meta­mor­pho­sis of en­ergy and mat­ter we must reckon with the in­flu­ence of grav­ity pres­sure and with the anti­grav­ity be­hav­ior of the ul­ti­ma­tonic en­er­gies un­der cer­tain con­di­tions of tem­per­a­ture, ve­loc­ity, and rev­o­lu­tion. Tem­per­a­ture, en­ergy cur­rents, dis­tance, and the pres­ence of the liv­ing force or­ga­niz­ers and the power di­rec­tors also have a bear­ing on all trans­mu­ta­tion phe­nom­ena of en­ergy and mat­ter.

42:4.11The in­crease of mass in mat­ter is equal to the in­crease of en­ergy di­vided by the square of the ve­loc­ity of light. In a dy­namic sense the work which rest­ing mat­ter can per­form is equal to the en­ergy ex­pended in bring­ing its parts to­gether from Par­a­dise mi­nus the re­sis­tance of the forces over­come in tran­sit and the at­trac­tion ex­erted by the parts of mat­ter on one an­other.

42:4.12The ex­is­tence of pre-elec­tronic forms of mat­ter is in­di­cated by the two atomic weights of lead. The lead of orig­i­nal for­ma­tion weighs slightly more than that pro­duced through ura­nium dis­in­te­gra­tion by way of ra­dium em­a­na­tions; and this dif­fer­ence in atomic weight rep­re­sents the ac­tual loss of en­ergy in the atomic breakup.

42:4.13The rel­a­tive in­tegrity of mat­ter is as­sured by the fact that en­ergy can be ab­sorbed or re­leased only in those ex­act amounts which Uran­tia sci­en­tists have des­ig­nated quanta. This wise pro­vi­sion in the ma­te­rial realms serves to main­tain the uni­verses as go­ing con­cerns.

42:4.14The quan­tity of en­ergy taken in or given out when elec­tronic or other po­si­tions are shifted is al­ways a “quan­tum” or some mul­ti­ple thereof, but the vi­bra­tory or wave­like be­hav­ior of such units of en­ergy is wholly de­ter­mined by the di­men­sions of the ma­te­rial struc­tures con­cerned. Such wave­like en­ergy rip­ples are 860 times the di­am­e­ters of the ul­ti­ma­tons, elec­trons, atoms, or other units thus per­form­ing. The never-end­ing con­fu­sion at­tend­ing the ob­ser­va­tion of the wave me­chan­ics of quan­tum be­hav­ior is due to the super­im­po­si­tion of en­ergy waves: Two crests can com­bine to make a dou­ble-height crest, while a crest and a trough may com­bine, thus pro­duc­ing mu­tual can­cel­la­tion.