Dark Matter

I've just acquired a copy of Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs by Lisa Randall after reading an excerpt from it in Nautilus Cosmos, dated February 2017. In the Nautilus article she writes:

In the usual scenario, dark matter lacks this type of interesting influence and structure. The common assumption is that dark matter is the “glue” that holds together galaxies and galaxy clusters, but resides only in amorphous clouds around them. But what if this assumption isn’t true and it is only our prejudice—and ignorance, which is after all the root of most prejudice—that led us down this potentially misleading path? 

If we were creatures made of dark matter, we would be very wrong to assume that the particles in our ordinary matter sector were all of the same type. Perhaps we ordinary matter people are making a similar mistake. Given the complexity of the Standard Model of particle physics, which describes the most basic components of matter we know of, it seems very odd to assume that all of dark matter is composed of only one type of particle. Why not suppose instead that some fraction of the dark matter experiences its own forces? 

She goes on to say:

Perhaps nuclear-type forces act on dark particles in addition to the electromagnetic-type one. In this even richer scenario, dark stars could form that undergo nuclear burning to create structures that behave even more similarly to ordinary matter than the dark matter I have so far described. In that case, the dark disk could be populated by dark stars surrounded by dark planets made up of dark atoms. Double-disk dark matter might then have all of the same complexity of ordinary matter. 

Partially interacting dark matter certainly makes for fertile ground for speculation and encourages us to consider possibilities we otherwise might not have. Writers and moviegoers especially would find a scenario with such additional forces and consequences in the dark sector very enticing. They would probably even suggest dark life coexisting with our own. In this scenario, rather than the usual animated creatures fighting other animated creatures or on rare occasions cooperating with them, armies of dark matter creatures could march across the screen and monopolise all the action. 

But this wouldn’t be too interesting to watch. The problem is that cinematographers would have trouble filming this dark life, which is of course invisible to us—and to them. Even if the dark creatures were there (and maybe they have been) we wouldn’t know. You have no idea how cute dark matter life could be—and you almost certainly never will. 

Scientists have long dismissed the notion of an astral plane, a plane supposedly as real and diverse as our own physical plane but composed of a finer state of matter. The justification is that it can't be seen or felt and that it is totally invisible and undetectable. With dark matter however, scientist are admitting the existence of a state of matter that "can't be seen or felt and is totally invisible and (largely) undetectable". What if this dark matter harbours dark life that is as real and diverse as the life we experience here on the physical plane? What if dark matter is in fact what constitutes the substance of the astral plane?

While the two planes usually remain distinctly separate, there is overlap as for example when a person has an out-of-body experience during a medical emergency. In such a case, the consciousness of the person is resident in the astral body that is usually floating above the physical body.

As Randall says:

Dark objects or dark life could be very close—but if the dark stuff’s net mass isn’t very big, we wouldn’t have any way to know. Even with the most current technology, or any technology that we can currently imagine, only some very specialised possibilities might be testable. “Shadow life,” exciting as that would be, won’t necessarily have any visible consequences that we would notice, making it a tantalising possibility but one immune to observations.

Proponents of an astral plane describe it as being "very close", interpenetrating our physical plane but not having "any visible consequences that we would notice" and being "immune to observations". It's tempting to suspect that such a "shadow" plane and the "shadow life" that it supports are composed of dark matter.

For a long time I've dismissed the notion of dark matter and dark energy as representing an inadequacy of the Standard Model of particle physics to explain what's really going on in the physical universe. At the same time, I've fully accepted the notion of the astral plane made up of a finer state of matter than is found in the physical plane. Dark matter seems to be a way of reconciling my doubts about the Standard Model with my belief in the astral and higher planes.

There's confusion about the difference between the astral plane and the etheric plane, just as there is about the difference between the astral body and the etheric body. However, these words of Max Heindel shed some light on what the ether is:

According to the Rosicrucian writings of American occultist and mystic Max Heindel there is - in addition to the solids, liquids, and gases which compose the Chemical Region of the Physical World - a finer grade of matter called ether that permeates the atomic structure of the earth and its atmosphere. It is disposed in four grades of density and is considered to be a kind of physical matter. Source.

In this conception, the first three subplanes of the physical are solid, liquid and gaseous whereas its four higher subplanes are comprised of finer matter in four grades of density. Could this finer matter be the elusive dark matter? To quote from Max Heindel again:

According to Max Heindel's Rosicrucian writings, the etheric body, composed of four ethers, is called the "Vital Body" since the ether is the way of ingress for vital force from the Sun and the field of agencies in nature which promote such vital activities as assimilation, growth, and propagation. It is an exact counterpart of our physical body, molecule for molecule, and organ for organ, but it is of the opposite polarity. It is slightly larger, extending about one and one-half inches beyond the periphery of the physical body. Source.

These four uppermost subplanes, as conceived by Max Heindel, are still comprised of physical matter, "finer matter" if you will, and maybe it is this that constitutes dark matter. An excerpt from an article at this site tries to clarify the difference between etheric and astral:

The etheric body is usually divided, for clarity, into two parts. The first of these is the etheric double; this closely resembles the ordinary body of matter, extending out perhaps an inch beyond the surface of the skin, and provides the framework of subtle formative energies on which the material body is built. It contains a series of channels (the meridians of Oriental medicine) and energy centers, which have an important role in mystical work. 

The second part of the etheric body is called the aura or, in another context, the Sphere of Sensation. This is a roughly egg-shaped field of energies surrounding the etheric double, extending out several feet from the physical body. It serves as the interface between the etheric body of the individual and that of the cosmos, and all the forces of the universe are reflected on its surface. 

The astral body cannot be so easily mapped out in this kind of spatial language. A body of consciousness, it comes closer to the modem idea of "mind" than to that of "body," although neither of these too-rigid categories fits well anywhere in the mystical view of the Soul. The astral body can be thought of as a field of energy occupying roughly the same space as the aura, but constantly shaped and reshaped by patterns of thought and feeling. All images, words, and sensations affect this body, and are affected by it in turn; it interacts freely with the astral level of the cosmos, and with the astral bodies of other human and non-human beings. It contains most of those parts of the self we normally think of as "mental" or "inner"— intellect, emotion, imagination, will, and memory, the instruments of concrete consciousness — and it is also the basis for the individual personality.