This post is perhaps a digression rather than a contribution to the thread, but I hope it is not of the boring type.
I have been reading the posts about gravity and air pressure with interest, but I don´t think the idea has any explanatory potential. Like everything else in the physical continuum, pressurized air is not an absolute and independent agent. Pressure (and all the other behaviors attributed to air) is the result of a force or principle, whether we have a name for it or not. If air pressure causes something, it is in an entirely secondary mode. The ultimate cause of a physical phenomenon (in this case, objects being necessarily pulled downwards) cannot be of the same nature as, i.e. coextensive with, the phenomenon it is responsible for.
Despite its partially Aristotelian foundation, modern science is not rooted in metaphysical principles. As such, it is applicable to certain local scenarios of a pragmatic nature but it sheds no light on the fundamental questions regarding the nature of matter, space, time, consciousness, gravity, energy, life and so forth.
In contrast, traditional sciences, which are now all but extinct, were in fact generally rooted in such principles, despite their cultural, artisanal or mythological forms of expression. By providing legitimate analogies and correspondences between the sensible world and the immaterial world, they allowed man to transcend the realm of physical nature and, very importantly, that of his craft.
Modern science cannot explain gravity because it is helplessly imprisoned in the relative, so all attempts to "find the truth that NASA is hiding from us" by using the tools of modern science are ultimately bound to fail.
Perhaps gravity and weight are better understood by reference to what the
Vedas call the three
gunas (
sattva,
rajas and
tamas).
The three gunas are essential, constitutive and primordial qualities or attributes of beings envisaged in their different states of manifestation. They are not states, but general conditions to which beings are subject, by which they are bound, as it were, and in which they participate in indefinitely varying proportions, with the result that they are distributed hierarchically throughout the entire range of the "three worlds" (Tribhuvana), that is, throughout all the degrees of universal Existence.
Source: R. Guénon, Symbolism of the Cross, p. 23.
In its ordinary, literal sense, the word guna means "cord"; similarly, the terms bandha and pasha, which properly mean "bond", are applied to all the particular and limiting conditions of existence (upadhis) that more specially define this or that state or mode of manifestation. It should however be stated that the term guna is applied more particularly to a bowstring; it would thus express, at least in a certain respect, the idea of "tension" at different degrees and, hence, by analogy, that of "qualification"; but perhaps it is not so much the idea of "tension" that is appropriate here as that of "tendency", which indeed is akin to it as the words themselves show, and which is the idea that most closely answers to the definition of the three gunas.
Source: footnote from the same page.
The three
gunas may be pictured as the two poles of a sphere, with a lateral expansion resulting from their tension:
Caveat 1: The scheme is not an illustration of the physical universe or a planet, although one can certainly draw many exciting analogies from it.
Caveat 2: There are many arbitrary illustrations of the three
gunas on the internet. Please do not bring them to bear against this exposition.
Caveat 3: In this post,
matter is used in the scholastic* sense, not as "understood" by modern science.
The poles
sattva and
tamas correspond to
Purusha (quality, spirit, light, liberation) and
Prakriti (quantity, matter, obscurity, compression). The three
gunas are most often applied to the understanding of human nature, but they are clearly also reflected in the order of the physical world, including all natural cycles and pulsations. In addition, from the anthropological standpoint, one could make the correspondence:
sattva=heaven,
rajas=earth,
tamas=hell.
When seen in this light, "the earth" may indeed be said to be flat and horizontal.
edit: I changed "Aristotelian" to "scholastic" for the sake of clarity, keeping in mind the formula
materia signata quantitate.