Energy—Mind and Matter

42:7.1The for­ma­tion of all mat­ter is on the or­der of the so­lar sys­tem. There is at the cen­ter of ev­ery minute uni­verse of en­ergy a rel­a­tively sta­ble, com­par­a­tively sta­tion­ary, nu­clear por­tion of ma­te­rial ex­is­tence. This cen­tral unit is en­dowed with a three­fold pos­si­bil­ity of man­i­fes­ta­tion. Sur­round­ing this en­ergy cen­ter there whirl, in end­less pro­fu­sion but in fluc­tu­at­ing cir­cuits, the en­ergy units which are faintly com­pa­ra­ble to the plan­ets en­cir­cling the sun of some starry group like your own so­lar sys­tem.

42:7.2Within the atom the elec­trons re­volve about the cen­tral pro­ton with about the same com­par­a­tive room the plan­ets have as they re­volve about the sun in the space of the so­lar sys­tem. There is the same rel­a­tive dis­tance, in com­par­i­son with ac­tual size, be­tween the atomic nu­cleus and the in­ner elec­tronic cir­cuit as ex­ists be­tween the in­ner planet, Mer­cury, and your sun.

42:7.3The elec­tronic ax­ial rev­o­lu­tions and their or­bital ve­loc­i­ties about the atomic nu­cleus are both be­yond the hu­man imag­i­na­tion, not to men­tion the ve­loc­i­ties of their com­po­nent ul­ti­ma­tons. The pos­i­tive par­ti­cles of ra­dium fly off into space at the rate of ten thou­sand miles a sec­ond, while the neg­a­tive par­ti­cles at­tain a ve­loc­ity ap­prox­i­mat­ing that of light.

42:7.4The lo­cal uni­verses are of dec­i­mal con­struc­tion. There are just one hun­dred dis­tin­guish­able atomic ma­te­ri­al­iza­tions of space-en­ergy in a dual uni­verse; that is the max­i­mum pos­si­ble or­ga­ni­za­tion of mat­ter in Neb­a­don. These one hun­dred forms of mat­ter con­sist of a reg­u­lar se­ries in which from one to one hun­dred elec­trons re­volve around a cen­tral and rel­a­tively com­pact nu­cleus. It is this or­derly and de­pend­able as­so­ci­a­tion of var­i­ous en­er­gies that con­sti­tutes mat­ter.

42:7.5Not ev­ery world will show one hun­dred rec­og­niz­able el­e­ments at the sur­face, but they are some­where pres­ent, have been pres­ent, or are in pro­cess of evo­lu­tion. Con­di­tions sur­round­ing the ori­gin and sub­se­quent evo­lu­tion of a planet de­ter­mine how many of the one hun­dred atomic types will be ob­serv­able. The heav­ier atoms are not found on the sur­face of many worlds. Even on Uran­tia the known heav­ier el­e­ments man­i­fest a ten­dency to fly to pieces, as is il­lus­trated by ra­dium be­hav­ior.

42:7.6Sta­bil­ity of the atom de­pends on the num­ber of elec­tri­cally in­ac­tive neu­trons in the cen­tral body. Chem­i­cal be­hav­ior is wholly de­pen­dent on the ac­tiv­ity of the freely re­volv­ing elec­trons.

42:7.7In Or­von­ton it has never been pos­si­ble nat­u­rally to as­sem­ble over one hun­dred or­bital elec­trons in one atomic sys­tem. When one hun­dred and one have been ar­ti­fi­cially in­tro­duced into the or­bital field, the re­sult has al­ways been the in­stan­ta­neous dis­rup­tion of the cen­tral pro­ton with the wild dis­per­sion of the elec­trons and other lib­er­ated en­er­gies.

42:7.8While atoms may con­tain from one to one hun­dred or­bital elec­trons, only the outer ten elec­trons of the larger atoms re­volve about the cen­tral nu­cleus as dis­tinct and dis­crete bod­ies, in­tactly and com­pactly swing­ing around on pre­cise and def­i­nite or­bits. The thirty elec­trons near­est the cen­ter are dif­fi­cult of ob­ser­va­tion or de­tec­tion as sep­a­rate and or­ga­nized bod­ies. This same com­par­a­tive ra­tio of elec­tronic be­hav­ior in re­la­tion to nu­clear prox­im­ity ob­tains in all atoms re­gard­less of the num­ber of elec­trons em­braced. The nearer the nu­cleus, the less there is of elec­tronic in­di­vid­u­al­ity. The wave­like en­ergy ex­ten­sion of an elec­tron may so spread out as to oc­cupy the whole of the lesser atomic or­bits; es­pe­cially is this true of the elec­trons near­est the atomic nu­cleus.

42:7.9The thirty in­ner­most or­bital elec­trons have in­di­vid­u­al­ity, but their en­ergy sys­tems tend to in­ter­min­gle, ex­tend­ing from elec­tron to elec­tron and well-nigh from or­bit to or­bit. The next thirty elec­trons con­sti­tute the sec­ond fam­ily, or en­ergy zone, and are of ad­vanc­ing in­di­vid­u­al­ity, bod­ies of mat­ter ex­ert­ing a more com­plete con­trol over their at­ten­dant en­ergy sys­tems. The next thirty elec­trons, the third en­ergy zone, are still more in­di­vid­u­al­ized and cir­cu­late in more dis­tinct and def­i­nite or­bits. The last ten elec­trons, pres­ent in only the ten heav­i­est el­e­ments, are pos­sessed of the dig­nity of in­de­pen­dence and are, there­fore, able to es­cape more or less freely from the con­trol of the mother nu­cleus. With a min­i­mum vari­a­tion in tem­per­a­ture and pres­sure, the mem­bers of this fourth and out­er­most group of elec­trons will es­cape from the grasp of the cen­tral nu­cleus, as is il­lus­trated by the spon­ta­neous dis­rup­tion of ura­nium and kin­dred el­e­ments.

42:7.10The first twenty-seven atoms, those con­tain­ing from one to twenty-seven or­bital elec­trons, are more easy of com­pre­hen­sion than the rest. From twenty-eight up­ward we en­counter more and more of the un­pre­dictabil­ity of the sup­posed pres­ence of the Un­qual­i­fied Ab­so­lute. But some of this elec­tronic un­pre­dictabil­ity is due to dif­fer­en­tial ul­ti­ma­tonic ax­ial rev­o­lu­tion­ary ve­loc­i­ties and to the un­ex­plained “hud­dling” pro­cliv­ity of ul­ti­ma­tons. Other in­flu­ences—phys­i­cal, elec­tri­cal, mag­netic, and grav­i­ta­tional—also op­er­ate to pro­duce vari­able elec­tronic be­hav­ior. Atoms there­fore are sim­i­lar to per­sons as to pre­dictabil­ity. Statis­ti­cians may an­nounce laws gov­ern­ing a large num­ber of ei­ther atoms or per­sons but not for a sin­gle in­di­vid­ual atom or per­son.