Fire taught early humans the close relation between matter and energy. The matter of the wood log would slowly vanish as it released warmth and light. Eventually, scientists ended up proving that matter and energy were forever conjoined: each one transmutable into the other.

The conversion of matter into energy has become routine. Atomic fire was in human hand only a few decades after Einstein had first enunciated Energy = Mass x C², implying that prodigious energy was confined within the smallest mass.

The conversion of energy into matter more abstruse. Simply stated, it supposes that impalpable forces can turn into something we may touch. It sounds like magic, but it is a magic that physicists have learned to perform. In long underground tunnels, giant accelerators launch particles against each other at nearly the speed of light. The collisions produce showers of subatomic sparks. Photographed, their intricate arabesques reveal matter being created and annihilated  in cascading interactions. The equivalence of energy and mass, of force and matter, is witnessed in its wondrous splendor.

There is no doubt that "metaphysical" energies exist besides the ones uncovered and quantified by physical science. Plants and animals are receptive to fields that we cannot even detect. Organisms are affected by positive or negative vibrations from other organisms. Thoughts transcend the simple electrochemical activity of the brain.

Together, physical and metaphysical energies amount to a single energy that Eternism calls Universal Energy. Eternons are fractions, fundamental quanta, of this Universal Energy.

• As quanta of physical energy, Eternons are particles of matter.
• As quanta of metaphysical energy, Eternons are waves of consciousness.

This naturally leads us to the next premise.