But in 1923 astronomer Edwin Hubble spotted distant fuzzy blobs of light through a 100-inch Hooker telescope. He realized they were agglomerations of stars, and his observations proved there were galaxies outside our own.

What Is a Galaxy?

A galaxy is a massive system comprised of stars, interstellar dust and gas, and a component we’ll learn more about momentarily called dark matter. Galaxies are bound by gravitation and usually revolve around a supermassive black hole.

The Milky Way, Our Home

The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy over 100,000 light-years in across. (A light year is a unit of distance determined by how far light travels in one year at 186,282 miles per second.) Our galaxy contains anywhere from 200–400 billion stars. That’s a lot of stars.

Our sun is located about two-thirds of the way out from the center of the galaxy, on the inner edge of what is called the Orion-Cygnus Arm. And around this single sun orbit the planets, including the one we live on.

The Milky Way is estimated to contain hundreds of billions of planets, 10 billion of which could be located in the habitable zone of the stars they revolve around. This lends fairly good odds for the possibility of life on some of those planets or their moons.

Ours Is One of Many Galaxies

We think the Earth is huge. But it’s tiny compared to Jupiter or Saturn.

It would take years to travel to these neighboring planets in a spacecraft. Yet these distances are nothing compared to the distance between stars—or the expanse between galaxies.

Ours is not the only galaxy in the neighborhood. And it’s by no means the largest.

The Adromeda galaxy, the closest to us, is over 200,000 light years in diameter. Messier 87 is larger still, but IC 1011 is six million light years wide—enormous in comparison to ours—and the largest galaxy known.

Galaxies vary in size and can contain anywhere from 10 million to 100 trillion stars. There are more than 170 billion galaxies in the observable Universe.

Galaxies, Clusters, Filaments, and Dark Matter

Galaxies are themselves like stars, sprinkled throughout the Universe. They are collected in clusters, which are grouped in super clusters that make up filaments over a billion light years long. These filaments are networked in a vast cosmic web like the texture of a sponge, a sponge saturated with dark matter.

Dark matter is matter that neither emits nor scatters light or other electromagnetic radiation, and so cannot be directly seen with telescopes. Dark matter is believed to constitute 83% of the matter in the universe and 23% of the mass-energy. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter)

Dark matter holds galaxies together in groups and combines these groups together in space. There is about six times as much dark matter in the Universe as there is regular matter. The Universe could not exist without this enigmatic substance. It’s what fills the “empty” spaces of the filament sponge.

How Big Is the Universe?

Is this intergalactic sponge the entire Universe? Or is it only a tiny fraction of something even bigger?

Is our Universe the only one? Or is it merely a cell in the greater body of All That Is, like one sun among the trillions in a galaxy?

Contemplating such things can boggle the mind. It seems that space and all it contains goes on forever in ever vaster scales.

The same is true of the small.

The Cellular and the Subatomic

Zoom back in to our Universe, to our galaxy, to our solar system, to our planet, to where you are. Look at your own hand.

Living matter is composed of cells so small you need a microscope to see them. And the matter of this plane is comprised of molecules—combinations of atoms so miniscule that they cannot be seen without the aid of an electron microscope.

We once thought atoms were the smallest unit of matter. Today they seem big as solar systems with the discovery of more and more subatomic particles such as neutrinos and quarks and leptons and gauge bosons.

Particle theory may lead to the discovery of subatomic substances like the conceptual koilon mentioned in “How Spirit Interpenetrates the Physical”.

Where Do You Fit In?

Now they say that no matter how large or how small—or how far apart—each part of the Universe is connected with every other, transcending even time.

All this talk can leave you feeling pretty small. Where do we fall in the grand scheme of things?

In a Universe as colossal and glorious as ours, I see the plan of Infinite Intelligence at work, manifesting both Natural Law and personal care. David wrote,

³When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars that you have established;
⁴what are human beings that you are mindful of them,
mortals that you care for them?
⁵Yet you have made them a little lower than God,
and crowned them with glory and honour.

–Psalm 8:3-5 NRSV

The next time you look at the stars—or your own hand—realize how immense the Universe it, but know that you’re still important and that your presence matters.

Rose Vanden Eynden’s primer begins with terminology, the philosophy of Spiritualism and natural law, and progresses to preparing your mind and body to contact Spirit.

Get the book on Amazon

What I found especially helpful about this book is the description of spirit guides in part 3. Just knowing what a gatekeeper guide is and what one does helped me to understand a lot about how mediumship works.

Rose covers the tools used in Spirit work, and gives some great exercises for developing and testing your skills. The section on giving readings and sittings is also very practical and took away a lot of the mystery (and trepidation) in performing this work for others. With her help, I am not giving readings of my own!

I recently attended one of Rose’s workshop on public mediumship in Lily Dale, and I’m impressed with her knowledge, skill, and professionalism. She’s really a terrific teacher. Along with other students, I gave one of my first readings at “Inspiration Stump.”

I also want to say that I’ve had many readings, and I consider Rose’s to be in the best of them. You will learn much from her down-to-earth style. You can reach her at
http://www.vandeneynden.biz/.

Get SO YOU WANT TO BE A MEDIUM? now on Amazon.

Is your house haunted?

Are you experiencing paranormal activity that you believe is spirit contact from the other side?

If so, what’s the best way to handle it?

The “show yourself and get out!” approach popularized on many ghost-hunting programs fails to consider that, in this world or the next, “spirits are still people, and they want to be recognized, remembered, understood, and respected” (from the book). If someone’s visitor was your grandmother, how would you want them to treat her?

This short treatise on how to handle hauntings and spiritual contact takes a humane and practical approach to:

• Determining whether the activity is paranormal in origin
• Gauging whether the activity is interactive and increasing
• Deciding if the interaction is malicious
• Contacting the spirit
• Getting the spirit to move on

If you desire to know more about contacting the spirit realm or freeing your home of unwanted spirit visitors, this practical guide is a must.

Get IN DEFENSE OF DEPARTED SPIRITS now.

Prayer didn’t work. Fasting didn’t work. Psychotherapy and inner healing didn’t work. Deliverance failed. And reparative therapy made me want to commit suicide.

I tried everything over the course of twenty years to rid myself of same-sex attraction. I realized I could no longer deny who I was simply because my spiritual community held narrowly prescribed notions of what was acceptable, moral, and holy.

So I decided to be true to myself, to discover who God had really made me to be. I came out of the closet and took Christ with me.

“God loves the sinner but hates the sin.” The only Christian from my former life who maintained contact with me through my early coming out process finally said she was “concerned” with my “lifestyle choice” (implying I had chosen a life of sin). I answered with a long letter sharing my feelings and espousing my hard-earned beliefs. Response to a Concerned Heterosexual Christian is adapted from this reply.

This short book details my struggle and everything I did to overcome it. With twenty years in the evangelical charismatic church, a masters in biblical studies, years in Christian publishing and missions work, and time spent pastoring, I present this contemporary issue from a personal viewpoint that’s scripturally educated.

• Do LGBT people need to be fixed, healed?

• Does the stance of conservative Christianity represent the nature of God and Christ to everyone?
• Do we have scriptural precedent for accepting LGBT people just as they are?

If you’ve struggled with these issues regardless of your orientation, you owe it to yourself and all those inside and outside of Christ’s fold to foster a new understanding, “That they may be one as we are one” (John 17:11,22).

Get Response to a Concerned Heterosexual Christian now on Amazon.

I struggled with writing this post for months because it’s so hard to communicate how this all works. The best explanation, although still not easy to understand, comes from Theosophist Charles W. Leadbeater’s A Textbook of Theosophy, chapter 3. I will do my best to summarize and simplify his teaching.

Elemental Matter: Koilon, or Ether

First off, Leadbeater establishes that “what are commonly called force and matter are in reality only two varieties of Spirit at different stages in evolution and the real matter or basis of everything lies in the background unperceived.”

In their treatise Occult Chemistry, Leadbeater and Annie Besant term this elemental root matter “koilon” (also called “ether”).

How the Planes Were Formed

When the universe was formed, Creative Intelligence supposedly set up a workspace the size of a universe. It then expelled force into this sphere like breath, filling it with “tiny bubbles.” (Cue the Wayne Newton background music, please…)

These bubbles are sub-atomic particles infinitely smaller than any particle now known to science. (I envision them as the myriad stars of a galaxy that is only the size of a single atom.) These koilon particles are the ultimate building blocks of which matter in all its forms is composed on every plane. If this sounds far-fetched, consider the concept of “quantum foam” proposed by theoretical physicist John Wheeler.

Into this sphere, the Creator sent forth

…successive impulses of force, gathering together the bubbles into ever more and more complex aggregations, and producing in this way seven gigantic interpenetrating worlds of matter of different degrees of density, all concentric and all occupying the same space.

–Charles W. Leadbeater, A Textbook of Theosophy

The lowest and densest of these realms consists of matter that makes up our physical world. In levels of lessening density are the higher realms that make up the spiritual worlds. (Note that even these “spiritual” planes are material; however, we are in the habit of referring to anything higher than the lowest physical plane as “spirit.” But they each have their own brand of physical matter.)

The Individual Realms and Their Atomic Density

As I understand it, the realm where these particles exist singly is the highest, least dense (first) spiritual plane.

How were the other worlds created?

Leadbeater explains that the deity sent forth impulses of force that created smaller vortices in its workspace. These vortices gathered the bubbles into groups of 49 particles, each which formed a potential atom of that plane. (Realize that my use of “atom” in this post is conceptual only and does not necessarily correspond to the scientific definition of an atom. After all, I’m no scientist!) Each of these 49-particle aggregations created the atomic material for the second spiritual plane.

Another impulse created vortices that gathered these 49-particle atoms into a larger group of 49, or 2041 base particles (49^2). These aggregates created the atomic material for the third spiritual plane. Naturally it is denser than the second and first planes.

This process continued until the seventh plane was formed. The seventh is the densest and lowest of all the realms—the physical world where we live.

We could delineate the composition and atomic density of the planes like this:

Your mind boggled yet? Mine was, but as I thought more about it, it began to make sense. I could see how the higher realms interpenetrate the lower.

Atom Size and Empty Space

The atomic particles of the physical world are huge in comparison to those of the sixth plane—or any of the higher planes. Yet we understand from science that individual atoms are comprised of mostly empty space.

(Orbiting electrons are like the moon orbiting the earth, and there’s a whole lot of nothing in between. I once read that if the earth were compressed so that all the empty space in atoms was removed, the earth would be only about 500 meters in diameter.)

Again, this theoretical explanation is very crude. But we can conceive that, with atoms on the physical plane being so huge, plenty of space is left for finer atoms of the higher planes to interpenetrate and float around them. Perhaps an illustration will help:

Note that these spheres are not to scale. But imagine that 49 of the smallest particles on the left fit inside the next larger aggregate. And 49 of the second largest fit into the third, and so on. One atom on the physical (seventh) plane would actually contain 13,841,287,201—that’s nearly 14 billion—particles of koilon.

How the Worlds Interpenetrate Each Other

Envision an empty swimming pool filled with the largest particles that are, say, the size of golf balls. Is the cavity full? Perhaps its full enough that you couldn’t add one more golf ball. But there’s plenty of empty space in the pool.

You could fill the space between the golf balls with particles the size of marbles. Again, is the pool full? No, still more empty space.

You could fill those spaces with particles the size of peas. And then particles the size of BBs. Then pin heads. Then grains of sand. Then talcum powder.

Would the pool be full? You could still add water to fill the minute empty spaces.

Through this crude analogy you can see how particles of different densities can fill the same space. How does this create material reality in the individual worlds?

The Differentiation of Matter Between Worlds

Each of the worlds has its own types of matter, arranged into substances unique to that world. Although composed of the same basic building blocks (the tiny bubbles of koilon), substances between the various worlds are as different as molecules of water are in its various states of ice, water, and vapor on the physical plane.

Each plane and its material vibrate at different frequencies, the physical at the lowest end of the spectrum. So all worlds and their contents are composed of the same elemental substance in varying degrees of density, vibrating at different frequencies. The atomic aggregates for each plane are arranged in different forms to create the molecular compounds for various chemical substances.

The inhabitants of each world can perceive only the material substances of their own plane. This means that someone standing by the swimming pool in their world would see it filled with only golf balls, or only marbles, or BBs, or water. And they would not see the inhabitants of the other worlds who saw the pool filled with the material of their home plane.

This may seem strange, but we experience this phenomenon in our own world, in a sense. Let me explain.

When you look at the sky on a clear, sunny day, although it seems empty, it is not. It is filled with air molecules made of the atoms of the physical plane that are simply too small to see with the eye. But you can feel them if you stick your hand out the window while driving down the highway. Yet these atoms contain mostly space, which is filled with the particles of the successive higher realms.

Seven Bodies for Seven Planes

The higher planes of spirit/matter interpenetrate and coexist with the lower planes. The astral realm where the departed live exists in the same space as your living room and workplace and backyard. Your loved ones on the “other side” are actually right here with you.

Each of us as physical/spiritual beings is also comprised of interpenetrating energy bodies on each of the seven planes. When we die physically, our 49^6 seventh-plane atoms return to the physical environment (ashes to ashes, dust to dust), but our higher bodies remain and continue to exist in the upper spiritual planes:

Each Plane Operates in Its Own Range of Frequencies

In addition to particle size, each realm operates at a higher frequency than the denser realm below it. Unless you are “tuned in” to that frequency, you cannot see, hear, or sense objects, beings, or events on the higher planes—it’s as if they don’t exist. Leadbeater explains:

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-violet light, although scientific experiments show that they exist, and there are other consciousnesses with differently-formed organs who can see by them.

A being living in the astral world might be occupying the very same space as a being living in the physical world, yet each would be entirely unconscious of the other and would in no way impede the free movement of the other. The same is true of all other worlds. We are at this moment surrounded by these worlds of finer matter, as close to us as the world we see, and their inhabitants are passing through us and about us, but we are entirely unconscious of them.

–Charles W. Leadbeater, A Textbook of Theosophy

I like to think of the various realms as radio waves. In the physical world, we are oblivious to the invisible bombardment of radio waves passing through our environment and even our own bodies. Country music, rap, pop, advertisements, talk shows, and the signal for the Emergency Alert System are all penetrating our property and persons. And we are unaware of it… unless we have a radio.

Tuning In to the Other Realms

You can contact and interact with these realms by altering your consciousness.

As you can tune a radio to various frequencies to pick up different stations, you can raise your vibrational frequency to connect with the higher realms. This communication manifests through abilities such as clairvoyance and clairaudience. As a medium, I seek to do this for myself and others.

Although a bit cerebral, I hope these words help to explain how the higher realms interpenetrate each other.

If you would like to contact these realms of Spirit, why not contact me for a session today?