(1837-1898). An American inventor who developed the Keely motor that was reported to be able to produce tremendous physical pressure without the use of heat, electricity or other ordinary fuel or source of power. His demonstration of the machine convinced many investors to be part of the Keely Motor Company which was launched in 1874. He constructed many models of the machine, the first ones of which weighed up to 22 tons.

The venture failed however because it appeared that no one else could make the machine work except Keely. Helena P. Blavatsky explained in The Secret Doctrine that Keely’s motor involved an occult principle which is as yet unknown to science, and its operation necessitated the presence of a person who had unusual powers such as Keely himself. A machine operator who watched him run the engine offered to do it himself, without result. When Keely operated it, it ran. The machine operator did it again, and failed. But when Keely put his hand on the shoulder of the operator, the machine ran. According to Blavatsky:

It was “Keely’s ether” that acted truly, while “Smith’s or Brown’s” ether would have remained for ever barren of results. For Keely’s difficulty has hitherto been to produce a machine which would develop and regulate the “force” without the intervention of any “will power” or personal influence, whether conscious or unconscious of the operator. In this he has failed, so far as others were concerned, for no one but himself could operate on his “machines.” (SD I:562)

The force that Keely unconsciously discovered was a sidereal force

known to, and named by the Atlanteans MASH-MAK, and by the Aryan Rishis in their Ashtar Vidya by a name that we do not like to give. It is the vril of Bulwer Lytton’s “Coming Race,” and of the coming races of our mankind. . . . The discovery in its completeness is by several thousand — or shall we say hundred thousand? — years too premature. (SD I:563)

V.H.C.

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