70 9 The Secret Liji of Nature
Besant-squatting on the floor, ready with sketch pad-an ovoid body
within which appeared a pattern of two interlaced triangles whose
corners held smaller spherical objects, six in all. Each of these spheres
contained three points of light, which appeared as three-dimensional
particles.The whole structure was seen to rotate on its axis with great
rapidity, at the same time vibrating as its internal bodies performed
similar gyrations.
This observation, made in 1895, says Phillips, was remarkable
enough because the property of spin in atomic particles was as yet un-
known to science. To slow down the spinning and quivering of their
"chemical atomw-as the theosophists believed it to be--Leadbeater
claimed a special form of willpower that enabled him to hold the ob-
ject still enough for closer exanination. Both Leadbeater and Besant
subscribed to the theosophical view that in the physical plane of our
normal reality, matter exists in seven distinct states: solid, liquid, and
gaseous, plus four finer "etheric" states, the latter visible only to clair-
voyants.They therefore believed that what they were studying as they
progressively disintegrated chemical atoms were their various "etheric"
levels, I, 2, 3, and 4, until they reached a particle that, if further at-
tacked, disappeared from their field of vision. This precious particle
they called an "ultin~ate physical atom," or UPA.AS the atoms of all the
elements they investigated-from hydrogen to uranium-consisted
uniformly of UPAS in different numbers and arrangements, they sur-
mised, quite naturally, that these must be the smallest, fundamentally
indivisible, constituent of matter and concluded that their disappear-
ance must be from the etheric into the finer astral.
Eighteen such UPA particles appeared in their hydrogen "chemical
atom" and 290 in their atom of oxygen. Held steady by Leadbeater,
these minute UPAS were found to be uniformly composed of ten dis-
tinct, convoluted, closed spiral curves or "whorls," three of which ap-
peared brighter and thicker than the other seven, the latter changing
color incessantly as the whole heart-shaped UPA pulsated and spun on
its central axis.
Counting and recounting the coiled strands of ten whorls,
Leadbeater consistently came up with 1,680 turns of each heliacal
whorl, making a total of 16,800 in each UPA, a number to which