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The second major revolution
in the realm of ideas which was brought about by Science, and which actualized
a fundamental transformation of thinking from that time onwards, was the
Newtonian revolution. Again, as with Copernicus, although this revolution
was brought on by the brilliant insights of Newton, it did not fully mature
in the educated mind of mankind at large, until long after Newton’s
time.
And what is that major change in consciousness? It is this: Whatever happens
out there in the vast macrocosm also happens in exactly the same way in
here, in our little microcosm. The same gravitational law and the same
principles of motion that hold together this Solar System and all the
huge Galaxies, and account for the large-scale motion of the whole Universe,
are also responsible here on Earth for dropping an apple into our lap
from the tree branch that is overhead in the garden where we sit.
The gist of this great breakthrough in human understanding is that Nature's
laws are universal. They tie together the largest and smallest into a
unified web of connections and relationships. We may be infinitesimally
small compared with our vastly greater brothers out in the heavens, like
the planets and stars and nebulae and galaxies and all the other grand
structures that inhabit the Universe. But despite our vast differences
in size we all use the same natural laws and follow the same physical
processes.
Associated with all matter, whether big or small, is the subtler property
of energy, shifting from its potential into its kinetic form and then
back into its potential, and thus providing the basis for the continuous
flux of change that is characteristic of all forms of matter. Old forms
degenerate and disappear, and new forms emerge to take their place in
an ongoing river of change.
This revolutionary insight into the workings of Nature can be associated
with the second level of Reality or the second sheath, called the vital
or pranic sheath, which represents the energetic aspect of the Universe.
Here we are aware of a higher level of organization, an intangible and
more subtle level associated with potential and kinetic energy. Energy
can organize or chaotisize matter, dominating it, animating it, and structuring
it into variable forms. So in this second major revolutionary step we
recognize the organizing principle of energy, which is a step above the
gross, physical aspect of matter, previously discussed.
This energetic view with its universal laws, is a significant step upwards
in Man's consciousness from the stage of awareness that we associated
with the Copernican view, where Man was reduced to just an unrelated,
insignificant speck lost in the infinite ocean of time and space. With
this second revolution a grand underlying organization of the universe
has revealed itself, tied together by the invisible strings of natural
law, through which everything large and small is related.
Although, in this, the Divinity has not reentered man's thinking, nevertheless,
the stage is being prepared for a subtler awareness. Now we have Science
moving on from its earlier focus on gross matter to pursuing the discovery
of the underlying governing laws, involving the extremely powerful concepts
of energy and force fields.
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