Leadbeater, Charles W.: Man Visible and Invisible: Examples of different types of men as seen by means of trained clairvoyance (London, 1902)

8 MAN VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE.

become ice at a lower temperature, and steam
at a higher one, so every solid which we know
might become liquid or gaseous under proper
conditions; every liquid may be made solid or
gaseous, every gas may be liquefied and even
solidified. We know that air itself has been
liquefied, and that some of the other gases have
been reduced to a solid slab.

Occult chemistry shows us another and higher
condition than the gaseous, into which also all
substances known to us can be translated or
transmuted; and to that condition we have
given the name of etheric. That which science
postulates as ether is found by occult chemistry
to be not a homogeneous body, but simply
another state of matter; not itself a new kind
of substance, but ordinary matter reduced to a
particular state. We may have, for example,
hydrogen in an etheric condition instead of as
a gas ; we may have gold or silver or any other
element either as a solid, a liquid or a gas, or
in this other higher state which we call etheric.
Just as we find in the world about us some
elements normally solid, as is gold; some
normally liquid, as is mercury; and some
normally gaseous, as is oxygen, so there are
substances which are normally etheric—which
ordinarily exist in that condition, though by
special treatment they can be brought down to