We can now see what is meant by illusion, or Maya, and understand why such stress is laid upon it by every teacher.

Take the physical side first.  The motion of a top gives it bands of color to our eyes that it does not have at rest.  They are temporary and not permanent, a result of motion merely; illusion and not reality.

The motion of the material atoms of the four planes, in harmony with their vibration, a motion the spiritual world does not have, produces all material phenomena.  This is of course within the kinetic belts, for above or below them there is no change, and its phenomena are the mere change in relation of one atom to another caused by motion.  The changes are not real.  They disappear when the motion stops.  They have no existence in matter above or below the belt.

All phenomena of every kind are as much an illusion as the supposed bands of colour around the top.  The illusion is the result of changes of relation in differentiated atoms caused by their motion.  Without this motion the four material globes would dissolve into the atomic dust of the manasic world, with all that is within them.  The whole material universe is all illusion; a mere temporary relation of its atoms through motion, without Reality or permanence.

What then is real?  What is not illusion?  That which is beyond the physical, that which is its cause and root; broadly, the metaphysical, which is not the result of differentiated atoms through relation.  What was real in the top is real here.  What was illusion in the top is illusion here.

The meta-physical or spiritual (the terms are interchangeable) does not have to pass beyond the manasic globe to get on the solid ground of reality.  The spiritual world is here in every physical atom and in every aggregation of them; in every planet, sun, and star; for they are seven, each and every one, not four.  Behind the illusion of one atom or many, whether here or on Alcyone, there is reality and permanency in the undifferentiated cause, the spiritual archetype, the three higher beads on the string which are the proper study of metaphysics.

Chapter Eleven

Stumbling Blocks in Eastern Physics

The Western student of the ancient Eastern physics soon meets serious stumbling-blocks; and one at the very threshold has in the last half century turned many back.  In beginning his study of the solar system, the pupil is told: 

The first three planets—­Mercury, Venus, and the moon—­are dead and disintegrating.  Evolution on them has ceased.  The proof of this is found in the fact, that they have no axial rotation, Mercury and Venus always presenting the same surface to their father, the sun, and the moon the same surface to its daughter, the earth.