According to ʿAbduʾl-Bahá, heat, light, and electricity result from the vibrations of an unobservable ether which, I would conjecture, has now been largely replaced by strings and the electromagnetic spectrum.
Ether appears to be used as a metaphor, an intellectual reality, for spirit:
... the nature of ether is unknown, but that it existeth is certain by the effects it produceth, heat, light and electricity being the waves thereof. By these waves the existence of ether is thus proven....
... in the world of being there exist forces unseen of the eye, such as the force of ether previously mentioned, that cannot be sensed, that cannot be seen. However, from the effects it produceth, that is from its waves and vibrations, light, heat, electricity appear and are made evident.
Reflect that light is the expression of the vibrations of the etheric matter: the nerves of the eye are affected by these vibrations, and sight is produced. The light of the lamp exists through the vibration of the etheric matter; so also does that of the sun, but what a difference between the light of the sun and that of the stars or the lamp!...
... ethereal matter is not sensible, though it has an undoubted existence. The power of attraction is not sensible, though it certainly exists. From what do we affirm these existences? From their signs. Thus this light is the vibration of that ethereal matter, and from this vibration we infer the existence of ether.
O thou shining ray!
Verily, the ray, being transmitted from the etheric sphere, rends the space and reaches the surface of the earth and dispels the gloomy darkness. Verily, be thou one of the rays of the Sun of Truth and then thou wilt cause the darkness of error to disappear and wilt change its intense obscurity into a discovering light which will guide (the people) unto the Kingdom of God.
O thou effulgence of the Kingdom!
I read thy letter and was informed of thy speech, the contents of which were full of the feelings within thy consciousness, and of thy spiritual sympathies. The light is divided into two kinds, material and spiritual. 250 The material light is a vanishing matter and is known by etheric vibrations. But the spiritual light is the divine, eternal and never-ending quality and is a truth of the Kingdom. Blessed is thy face for that it hath taken a portion and a radiance from that Light.
In a letter of clarification, or elucidation, written on behalf of the dear Universal House of Justice:
With reference to your question about the “ether”, the various definitions of this word as given in the Oxford English Dictionary all refer to a physical reality, for instance, “an element,” “a substance”, “a medium”, all of which imply a physical and objective reality and, as you say, this was the concept posited by nineteenth century scientists to explain the propagation of light waves. It would have been understood in this sense by the audiences whom ʿAbduʾl-Bahá was addressing. However, in Chapter XVI of “Some Answered Questions”,
ʿAbduʾl-Bahá devotes a whole chapter to explaining the difference between things which are “perceptible to the senses” which He calls “objective or sensible”, and realities of the “intellect” which have “no outward form and no place”, and are “not perceptible to the senses”. He gives examples of both “kinds” of “human
knowledge.” The first kind is obvious and does not need elaboration. To illustrate the second kind the examples He gives are: love, grief, happiness, the power of the intellect, the human spirit and
“ethereal matter.” (In the original Persian the word “ethereal” is the same as ”etheric.”) He states clearly that “Even ethereal matter, the forces of which are said in physics to be heat, light, electricity and magnetism, is an intellectual reality, and is not sensible.” In other words, the “ether” is a concept arrived at intellectually to explain certain phenomena. In due course, when scientists failed to confirm the physical existence of the “ether” by delicate experiments, they constructed other intellectual concepts to explain the same phenomena.
In considering the whole field of divinely conferred “infallibility” one must be careful to avoid the literal understanding and petty-mindedness that has so often characterised discussions of this matter in the Christian world. The Manifestation of God (and, to a lesser degree, ʿAbduʾl-Bahá and Shoghi Effendi,) has to convey tremendous concepts covering the whole field of human life and activity to people whose present knowledge and degree of understanding are far below His. He must use the limited medium of human language against the limited and often erroneous background of His audience's traditional knowledge and current understanding to raise them to a wholly new level of awareness and behaviour. It is a human tendency, against which the Manifestation warns us, to measure His statements against the inaccurate standard of the acquired knowledge of mankind. We tend to take them and place them within one or other of the existing categories of human philosophy or science while, in reality, they transcend these and will, if properly understood, open new and vast horizons to our understanding.
From a
letter, dated June 3, 1982, written on behalf of the Universal House of Justice to an individual Baháʾí.
