Vinaire's Blog

Reference: Tertium Organum

NOTE: Text in color contains my comments.

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Chapter 21: Higher Logic

Man’s transition to a higher logic. | The necessity for rejecting everything “real.” | “Poverty of the spirit.” | The recognition of the infinite alone as real. | Laws of the infinite. | Logic of the finite — the Organon of Aristotle and the Novum Organum of Bacon. | Logic of the infinite — Tertium Organum. | The higher logic as an instrument of thought, as a key to the mysteries of nature, to the hidden side of life, to the world of noumena. | A definition of the world of noumena on the basis of all the foregoing. | The impression of the noumenal world on an unprepared consciousness. | “The thrice unknown darkness in the contemplation of which all knowledge is resolved into ignorance.”

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Everything that has been said about mathematical magnitudes is true also with regard to logical concepts. Finite mathematical magnitudes and logical concepts are subject to the same laws. 

We have now established that the laws discovered by us in a space of three dimensions, and operating in that space, are inapplicable, incorrect and untrue in a space of a greater number of dimensions. 

And as this is true of mathematics, so is it true of logic. 

As soon as we begin to consider infinite and variable magnitudes instead of those which are finite and constant, we perceive that the fundamental axioms of our mathematics cannot be applied to the former class. 

And as soon as we begin to think in other terms than those of concepts, we must be prepared to encounter an enormous number of absurdities from the standpoint of existing logic. 

These absurdities seem to us such, because we approach the world of many dimensions with the logic of the three-dimensional world. 

It has been proven already that to an animal, i.e., to a two-dimensional being, thinking not by concepts, but by perceptions, our logical ideas must seem absurd. 

The logical relations in the world of many dimensions seem equally absurd to us. We have no reason whatsoever to hope that the relations of the world of causes can be logical from our point of view. On the contrary, it may be said that EVERYTHING LOGICAL is phenomenal. Nothing can be logical, from our standpoint, there. All that is there must seem to us a logical absurdity, nonsense. We must remember that it is impossible to penetrate there with our logic.

The relation of the general trend of the thought of humanity toward the “other world” has always been highly incorrect. 

In “positivism” men have denied that other world altogether. This was because, not admitting the possibility of relations other than those formulated by Aristotle and Bacon, men denied the very existence of that which seemed absurd and impossible from the standpoint of those formulae. Also, in spiritism they attempted to construct the noumenal world on the model of the phenomenal, that is, against reason, against nature, they wanted at all costs to prove that the other world is logical from our standpoint, that the same laws of causality operate just as in our world, and that the other world is nothing more than the extension of ours. The “other world” of spiritists or spiritualists in all existing descriptions of it is a naive and barbaric concept of the unknown. 

Positive philosophy perceived the absurdity of all dualistic theses, but having no power to expand the field of its activity, limited by logic and “the infinite sphere,” it could think of nothing better than to DENY. 

Mystical philosophy alone felt the possibility of relations other than those of the phenomenal world. But it was arrested by hazy and unclear sensations, finding it impossible to define and classify them. 

Nevertheless, science must come to mysticism, because in mysticism there is a new method — and then to the study of different forms of consciousness, i.e., of forms of receptivity different from our own. Science should throw off almost everything old and should start afresh with a new theory of knowledge. 

Science cannot deny the fact that mathematics grows, expands, and escapes from the limits of the visible and measurable world. Entire departments of mathematics take into consideration quantitative relations which did not and do not exist in the real world of positivism, i.e., relations which have no correspondence to any realities in the visible, three-dimensional world. 

But there cannot be any mathematical relations to which the relation of some realities would not correspond. Therefore mathematics transcends the limits of our world, and penetrates into a world unknown. This is the telescope, by the aid of which we begin to investigate the space of many dimensions with its worlds. Mathematics goes ahead of our thought, ahead of our power of imagination and perception. Even now it is engaged in calculating relations which we cannot imagine or comprehend. 

It is impossible to deny all this, even from the strictly “positivistic,” i.e., positive standpoint. Thus science, having admitted the possibility of the expansion of mathematics beyond the limits of the sensuously perceived world — that is beyond the limits of a world accessible (though theoretically) to the organs of sense and their mechanical aids— must thereby recognize the expansion of the real world far beyond the limits of any “infinite sphere” or of our logic, i.e., must recognize the reality of “the world of many dimensions.” 

The recognition of the reality of the world of many dimensions is the already accomplished transition to, and understanding of, the world of the wondrous. And this transition to the wondrous is impossible without the recognition of the reality of new logical relations which are absurd and impossible from the standpoint of our logic. 

What are the laws of our logic? 

They are the laws of our receptivity of the three-dimensional world, or the laws of our three-dimensional receptivity of the world. 

If we desire to escape from the three-dimensional world and go farther, we must first of all work out the fundamental logical principles which would permit us to observe the relations of things in a world of many dimensions — seeing in them a certain reasonableness, and not complete absurdity. If we enter there armed only with the principles of the logic of the three-dimensional world, these principles will drag us back, will not give us a chance to rise from the earth. 

First of all we must throw off the chains of our logic. This is the first, the great, the chief liberation toward which humanity must strive. Man, throwing off the chains of “three-dimensional” logic, has already penetrated, in thought, into another world. And not only is this transition possible, but it is accomplished constantly. Although unhappily we are not entirely conscious of our rights in “another world,” and often sacrifice these rights, regarding ourselves as limited to this earthly world, paths nevertheless exist. Poetry, mysticism, the idealistic philosophy of all ages and peoples, preserve the traces of such transitions. Following these traces, we ourselves can find the path. Ancient and modern thinkers have given us many keys with which we may open mysterious doors; many magical formulas, before which these doors open of themselves. But we have not understood either the purpose of these keys or the meaning of the formulas. We have also lost the understanding of magical ceremonies and rites of initiation into mysteries which had a single purpose: to help this transformation in the soul of man. 

Therefore the doors remained closed, and we even denied that there was anything whatever behind them; or, suspecting the existence of another world, we regard it as similar to ours, and separate from ours, and tried to penetrate there unconscious of the fact that the chief obstacle in our path was our own division of the world into this world and that. 

The world is one, only the ways of knowing it are different; and with imperfect methods of knowledge it is impossible to penetrate into that which is accessible to perfect methods only. 

All attempts to penetrate mentally into that higher, noumenal world, or world of causes, by means of the logic of the phenomenal world, if they did not fail altogether, or did not lead to castles in the air, gave only one result: in becoming conscious of a new order of things, a man lost the sense of the reality of the old order. The visible world began to seem to him fantastic and unreal, everything all about him was disappearing, was vanishing like smoke, leaving a dreadful feeling of illusion. In everything he felt the abyss of infinity, and everything was plunging into the abyss. 

This sense of the infinite is the first and most terrible trial before initiation. Nothing exists! A little miserable soul feels itself suspended in an infinite void. Then even this void disappears! Nothing exists. There is only infinity, a constant and continuous division and dissolution of everything. The mystical literature of all peoples abounds in references to this sensation of darkness and emptiness. 

Such was that mysterious deity of the ancient Egyptians, about which there exists a story in the Orpheus myth, in which it is described as a “Thrice-unknown darkness in contemplation of which all knowledge is resolved into ignorance.” *[“The Ancient Wisdom” by Annie Besant, Introd. p. 23, Theosophical Publishing Society, London.]

This means that man must have felt horror transcending all limits as he approached the world of causes with the knowledge of the world of phenomena only, his instrument of logic having proved useless, because all the new eluded him. In the new as yet he sensed chaos only, the old had disappeared, gone away and become unreal. Horror and regret for the loss of the old mingled with horror of the new — unknown and terrible by its infinitude. 

At this stage man experiences the same thing that an animal, becoming a man, would feel. Having looked into a new world for an instant, it is attracted by the life left behind. The world which it saw only for an instant seems but a dream, a vision, the creation of imagination, but the familiar old world, too, is never thereafter the same, it is too narrow, in it there is not sufficient room. The awakening consciousness can no longer live the free life of the beast. Already it knows something different, it hears some voices, even though the body holds it. And the animal does not know where or how it can escape from the body or from itself. 

A man on the threshold of a new world experiences literally the same thing. He has heard celestial harmonies, and the wearisome songs of earth touch him no longer, nor do they move him — or if they touch and move him it is because they remind him, of celestial harmonies, of the inaccessible, of the unknown. He has experienced the sensation of an unusual EXPANSION of consciousness, when everything was clear to him for a moment, and he cannot reconcile himself to the sluggish earthly work of the brain. 

These moments of the “sensation of infinity” are accompanied by unusual emotions. 

In theosophical literature, and in books on occultism, it is often asserted that on entering into the “astral” world, man begins to see new colors, colors which are not in the solar spectrum.* [Although it should be remembered that we see only three out of seven colors of the solar spectrum.]  In this symbolism of the new colors of the “astral sphere” is conveyed the idea of those new emotions which man begins to feel along with the sensation of the expansion of consciousness — “of the sea pouring into the drop.” This is the “strange bliss” of which mystics speak, the “heavenly light” which saints “see,” the “new” sensations experienced by poets. Even conversational psychology identifies “ecstasy” with entirely unusual sensations, inaccessible and unknown to man in the life of every day. 

This sensation of light and of unlimited joy is experienced at the moment of the expansion of consciousness (the unfoldment of the mystical lotus of the Hindu yogi), at the moment of the sensation of infinity, and it yields also the sensation of darkness and of unlimited horror. 

What does this mean? 

How shall we reconcile the sensation of light with the sensation of darkness, the sensation of joy with that of horror? Can these exist simultaneously? Do they occur simultaneously? 

They do so occur, and must be exactly thus. Mystical literature gives us examples of it. The simultaneous sensations of light and darkness, joy and horror, symbolize as it were the strange duality and contradiction of human life. It may happen to a man of dual nature, who following one side of his nature has been led far into “spirit,” and on the other side is deeply immersed in “matter,” i.e., in illusion, in unreality — to one who believes too much in the reality of the unreal. 

Generally speaking the sensation of light, of life, of consciousness penetrating all, of happiness, gives a new world. But the same world to the unprepared mind will give the sensation of infinite darkness and horror. In this case the sensation of horror will arise from the loss of everything real, from the disappearance of this world. 

In order not to experience the horror of the new world, it is necessary to know it beforehand, either emotionally — by faith or love — or intellectually, by reason. 

And in order not to experience horror from the loss of the old world, it is necessary to have renounced it voluntarily either through faith or reason. 

One must renounce all the beautiful, bright world in which we are living; one must admit that it is ghostly, phantasmal, unreal, deceitful, illusory, mayavic. One must reconcile oneself to this unreality, not be afraid of it, but rejoice at it. One must give up everything. One must become POOR IN SPIRIT, i.e., make oneself poor by the effort of one’s spirit. 

This most profound philosophical truth is expressed in the beautiful evangelical symbol: 

Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 

These words become clear in the sense of a renouncement of the material world only. “Poor in spirit” does not mean poor materially, in the worldly meaning of the word, and still less does it signify poverty of spirit. Spiritual poverty is the renouncement of matter; such “poverty” is his when a man has no earth under his feet, no sky above his head. 

Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head. 

This is the poverty of the man who is entirely alone, because father, mother, other men, even the nearest here on earth he begins to regard differently, not as he regarded them before; and renounces them because he discerns the true substances that he is striving toward; just as, renouncing the phenomenal illusions of the world, he approaches the truly real. 

The moment of transition — that terrible moment of the loss of the old and the unfoldment of the new — has been represented in innumerable allegories in ancient literature. To make this transition easy was the purpose of the mysteries. In India, in Egypt, in Greece, special preparatory rituals existed, sometimes merely symbolical, sometimes real, which actually brought a soul to the very portals of the new world, and opened these portals at the moment of initiation. But no outward rituals and ceremonies could take the place of self-initiation. The great work must have been going on inside the soul and mind of man. 

Science needs to recognize that substance is anything substantial enough to be sensed. It needs to recognize that, in addition to matter and radiation, thought is also a substance. It needs to recognize that mind is also a sense organ because it senses thought. 

The axioms of mathematics and logic become very different when applied to a universe of infinite dimensions. The transition from a three-dimensional world to a universe of infinite dimensions is thought to be very difficult, but it does not have to be, especially when it is done on a gradient. As one approaches the awareness of infinite dimensions, one knows that the only constant would be oneness  (continuity, consistency and harmony) that is applied to all dimensions and their magnitudes.

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But how can logic help a man to pass to the consciousness of a new and higher world? 

We have seen that MATHEMATICS has already found the path into that higher order of things. Penetrating there, it first of all renounces its fundamental axioms of identity and difference. 

In the world of infinite and fluent magnitudes, a magnitude may be not equal to itself; a part may be equal to the whole; and of two equal magnitudes one may be infinitely greater than the other. 

All this sounds like an absurdity from the standpoint of the mathematics of finite and constant numbers. But the mathematics of finite and constant numbers is itself the calculation of relations between nonexistent magnitudes, i.e., an absurdity. And therefore only that which from the standpoint of this mathematics seems an absurdity, can be the truth. 

Logic now goes along the same path. It must renounce itself, come to perceive the necessity for its own annihilation — then out of it a new and higher logic can arise. 

In his Critique of Pure Reason Kant proved the possibility of transcendental logic. 

Before Bacon and earlier than Aristotle, in the ancient Hindu scriptures, the formulae of this higher logic were given, opening the doors of mystery. But the meaning of these formulae was rapidly lost. They were preserved in ancient books, but remained there as some strange mummeries of extinguished thought, the words without real content. 

New thinkers again discovered these principles, and expressed them in new words, but again they remained incomprehensible, again they suffered transformation into some unnecessary ornamental form of words. But the idea persisted. A consciousness of the possibility of finding and establishing the laws of the higher world was never lost. Mystical philosophy never regarded the logic of Aristotle as all-embracing and all-powerful. It built its system outside of logic or above logic, unconsciously going along those paths of thought paved in remote antiquity. 

The higher logic existed before deductive and inductive logic was formulated. This higher logic may be called intuitive logic — the logic of infinity, the logic of ecstasy. 

Not only is this logic possible, but it exists, and has existed from time immemorial; it has been formulated many times; it has entered into philosophical systems as their key — but for some strange reason has not been recognized as logic. 

It is possible to deduce the system of this logic from many philosophical systems. The most precise and complete formulation of the law of higher logic I find in the writing of Plotinus, in his On Intelligible Beauty. I shall quote this passage in the succeeding chapter. 

I have called this system of higher logic Tertium Organum because for us it is the third canon — third instrument — of thought after those of Aristotle and Bacon. The first was the Organon, the second, Novum Organum. But the third existed earlier than the first. 

Man, master of this instrument, of this key, may open the door of the world of causes without fear. 

The axioms which Tertium Organum embraces cannot be formulated in our language. If we attempt to formulate them in spite of this, they will produce the impression of absurdities. Taking the axioms of Aristotle as a model, we may express the principal axiom of the new logic in our poor earthly language in the following manner: 

. . . . A is both A and Not-A. 

or 

. . . . Everything is both A and Not-A. 

or, 

. . . . Everything is All. 

But these axioms are in effect absolutely impossible. They are not the axioms of higher logic, they are merely attempts to express the axioms of this logic in concepts. In reality the ideas of higher logic are inexpressible in concepts. When we encounter such an inexpressibility it means that we have touched the world of causes. 

The logical formula: A is both A and Not-A, corresponds to the mathematical formula: A magnitude can be greater or less than itself. 

The absurdity of both these propositions shows that they cannot refer to our world. Of course absurdity, as such, is indeed not an index of the attributes of noumena, but the attributes of noumena will certainly be expressed in what are absurdities to us. To hope to find in the world of causes anything logical from our standpoint is just as useless as to think that the world of things can exist in accordance with the laws of a world of shadows or stereometry according to the laws of planimetry. 

To master the fundamental principles of higher logic means to master the fundamentals of the understanding of a space of higher dimensions, or of the world of the wondrous. 

In order to approach to a clear understanding of the relations of the multi-dimensional world we must free ourselves from all the “idols” of our world, as Bacon calls them, i.e., from all obstacles to correct receptivity and reasoning. Then we shall have taken the most important step toward an inner affinity with the world of the wondrous. 

A two-dimensional being, in order to approach to an understanding of the three-dimensional world, already should have become a three-dimensional being before it can rid itself of its “idols,” i.e., of its conventional — converted into axiomatic — ways of feeling and thinking, which create for it the illusion of two-dimensionality. 

What is it exactly from which the two-dimensional being must liberate itself? 

First of all —and most important — from the assurance that that which it sees and senses really exists; from this will come the consciousness of the incorrectness of its perception of the world, and then the idea that the real, new world must exist in quite other forms — new, incomparable, incommensurable with relation to the old ones. Then the two-dimensional being must overcome its sureness of the correctness of its categories. It must understand that things which seem to it different and separate from one another may be parts of some to it incomprehensible whole, or that they have much in common which it does not perceive; and that things which seem to it one and indivisible are in reality infinitely complex and multifarious. 

The mental growth of the two-dimensional being must proceed along the path of the recognition of those common properties of objects, unknown to it before, which are the result of their similar origin or similar functions, incomprehensible from the point of view of a plane. 

When once the two-dimensional being has admitted the possibility of the existence of hitherto unknown common properties of objects, which before seemed different, then it has already approached to our own understanding of the world. It has approached to our logic, has begun to understand the collective name, i.e., a word used not as a proper noun, but as an appellate noun — a word expressing a concept. 

The “idols” of the two-dimensional being, hindering the development of its consciousness, are those proper nouns, which it has itself given to all the objects surrounding it. For such a being each object has its own proper noun, corresponding to its perception of the object; common names, corresponding to concepts, it knows not of. Only by getting rid of these idols, by understanding that the names of things can be not only proper, but common ones as well, will it be possible for it to advance farther, to develop mentally, to approach the human understanding of the world. Take the most simple sentence: 

. . . . John and Peter are both men. 

For the two-dimensional being this will be an absurdity, and it will represent the idea to itself after this fashion: 

. . . . John and Peter are both Johns and Peters. 

In other words, every one of our logical propositions will be an absurdity to it. Why this is so is clear. Such a thing has no concepts; the proper nouns which constitute the speech of such a being have no plurals. It is easy to understand that any plural of our speech will seem to it an absurdity. 

As we approach the universe of infinite dimensions, we note that mathematics renounces its fundamental axioms of identity and difference in favor of continuity of magnitudes. Thus, such a transition may require that we free ourselves from the “idols” (fixations) of our world. We do this by looking more closely at our existing concepts against what we actually see and sense.

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Where are our “idols”? From what shall we liberate ourselves in order to pass to an understanding of the multi-dimensional world? 

First of all we must get rid of our assurance that we see and sense that which exists in reality, and that the real world is like the world which we see — i.e., we must rid ourselves of the illusion of the material world. We must understand mentally all the illusoriness of the world perceived by us in space and time, and know that the real world cannot have anything in common with it; to understand that it is impossible to imagine the real world in terms of form; and finally we must perceive the conditionality of the axioms of our mathematics and logic, related as they are to the unreal phenomenal world. 

In mathematics the idea of infinity will help us to do this. The unreality of finite magnitudes in comparison with infinite ones is obvious. In logic let us dwell upon the idea of monism, i.e., the fundamental unity of everything which exists, and consequently recognize the impossibility of constructing any axioms, which involve the idea of opposites —of theses and antitheses — upon which our logic is built. 

The logic of Aristotle and of Bacon is at bottom dualistic. If we really deeply assimilate the idea of monism, we shall dethrone the “idol” of this logic. 

The fundamental axioms of our logic reduce themselves to identity and contradiction, just as do the axioms of mathematics. At the bottom of them all lies the admission of our general axiom, namely, that every given something has something opposite to it; therefore every proposition has its anti-proposition, every thesis has its anti-thesis. To the existence of any thing is opposed the non-existence of that thing. To the existence of the world is opposed the non-existence of the world. Object is opposed to subject; the objective world to the subjective; the I is opposed to the Not-I; to motion — immobility; to variability — constancy; to unity — heterogeneity; to truth — falsehood; to good —evil. And in conclusion, to every A in general is opposed Not-A. 

The recognition of the reality of these divisions is necessary for the acceptance of the fundamental axioms of the logic of Aristotle and Bacon, i.e., the absolute and incontestable recognition of the duality of the world — of dualism. The recognition of the unreality of these divisions and that of the unity of all opposites is necessary for the comprehension of higher logic. 

Where are our “idols” (fixations)? We note that substance has a spectrum from matter to radiation to thought. As we approach thought we approach infinities of substance in terms of its space, time and motion. The opposites of duality now become two relative values on a continuous scale and the notion of gradient comes into play.

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At the very beginning of this book the existence of THE WORLD and of THE PSYCHE was admitted, i.e., the reality of the dual division of everything existent, because all other opposites are derived from this opposition. 

Duality is the condition of our knowledge of the phenomenal (three-dimensional) world; this is the instrument of our knowledge of phenomena. But when we come to the knowledge of the noumenal world (or the world of many dimensions), this duality begins to hinder us, appears as an obstacle to knowledge. 

Dualism is the chief “idol”; let us free ourselves from it. 

The two-dimensional being, in order to comprehend the relations of things in three dimensions and our logic, must renounce its “idol” — the absolute singularity of objects which permits it to call them solely by their proper names. 

We, in order to comprehend the world of many dimensions, must renounce the idol of duality. 

But the application of monism to practical thought meets the insurmountable obstacle of our language. Our language is incapable of expressing the unity of opposites, just as it cannot express spatially the relation of cause to effect. Therefore we must reconcile ourselves to the fact that all attempts to express super-logical relations in our language will seem absurdities, and really can only give hints at that which we wish to express. 

Thus the formula, 

. . . . A is both A and Not-A, 

or, 

. . . . Everything is both A and Not-A, 

representing the principal axioms of higher logic, expressed in our language of concepts, sounds absurd from the standpoint of our usual logic, and is not essentially true. 

Let us therefore reconcile ourselves to the fact that it is impossible to express super-logical relations in our language as it is at present constituted. 

The formula, “A is both A and Not-A” is untrue because in the world of causes there exists no opposition between “A” and “Not-A.” But we cannot express their real relation. It would be more correct to say: 

. . . . A is all. 

But this also would be untrue, because “A” is not only all, but also an arbitrary part of all, and at the same time a given part. 

This is exactly the thing which our language cannot express. It is to this that we must accustom our thought, and train it along these lines. 

We have the dualism of object and observer. The object starts to overlap with the observer as we place our attention on the observer; for example, the body and mind of the observer thought to be subjective at first, gradually become objective. The same thing happens to spirit too as we look at it more closely. The “observer” then reduces to a “universal awareness” without any identity looking at objects having dimensions of identity.

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We must train our thought to the idea that separateness and inclusiveness are not opposed in the real world, but exist together and simultaneously without contradicting one another. Let us understand that in the real world one and the same thing can be both a part and the whole, i.e., that the whole, without changing, can be its own part; understand that there are no opposites in general, that everything is a certain image of all. 

And then, beginning to understand all this, we shall grasp the separate ideas concerning the essentials of the “noumenal world,” or the world of many dimensions in which we really live. 

In such case the higher logic, even with its imperfect formulae, as they appear in our rough language of concepts, represents in spite of this a powerful instrument of knowledge of the world, our only means of preservation from deceptions. 

The application of this instrument of thought gives the key to the mysteries of nature, to the world as it is. 

We must train ourselves to think in terms of objects being outcomes of certain sets of dimensional values so we can perceive the oneness (continuity, consistency and harmony) of all reality.

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Let us endeavor to enumerate those properties of THE WORLD OF CAUSES which result from all the foregoing. 

It is first of all necessary to reiterate that it is impossible to express in words the properties of the world of causes. Every thought expressed about them in our ordinary language will be false. That is, we may say in relation of the “real” world that “every spoken thought is a lie.” It is possible to speak about it only conditionally, by hints, by symbols. And if one interprets literally anything said about it, nothing but absurdity results. Generally speaking, everything said in words regarding the world of causes is likely to seem absurd, and is in reality its mutilation. The truth it is impossible to express; it is possible only to give a hint at it, to give an impulse to thought. But everyone must discover the truth for himself. “Another’s truth” is worse than a lie, because it is two lies. This explains why truth very often can be expressed only by means of paradox, or even in the form of a lie. Because, in order to speak of truth without a lie, we should know some other language — ours is unsuitable. 

What then are we able to say about the world of many dimensions, about the world of noumena, or world of causes? 

1. In that world “TIME” must exist spatially, i.e. temporal events must exist and not happen — exist before and after their manifestation, and be located in one section, as it were. Effects must exist simultaneously with causes. That which we name the law of causality cannot exist there, because time is a necessary condition for it. There cannot be anything which is measured by years, days, hours — there cannot be before, now, after. Moments of different epochs, divided by great intervals of time, exist simultaneously, and may touch one another. Along with this, all the possibilities of a given moment, even those opposite to one another, and all their results up to infinity, must be actualized simultaneously with a given moment, but the length of a moment can be different on different planes. 

2. There is nothing measurable by our measures, nothing commensurable with our objects, nothing greater or less than our objects. There is nothing situated on the right or left side, above or below one of our objects. There can be nothing similar to our objects, lines or figures and at the same time exist. Different points in our space, divided for us by enormous distances, may meet there. “Distance” or “proximity” are there defined by inner “affinity” or “remoteness,” by sympathy or antipathy, i.e., by properties which seem to us to be subjective. 

3. There is neither matter nor motion. There is nothing that could possibly be weighed or photographed, or expressed in the formulae of physical energy. There is nothing which has form, color or odor — nothing possessing the properties of physical bodies. Nevertheless, the properties of the world of causes, granted an understanding of certain laws, can be considered in enumerated categories. 

4. There is nothing dead or unconscious. Everything lives, everything breathes, thinks, feels; everything is conscious, and everything speaks. 

5. In that world the axioms of our mathematics cannot be applied, because there is nothing finite. Everything there is infinite and, from our standpoint, variable. 

6. The laws of our logic cannot act there. From the standpoint of our logic, that world is illogical. This is the realm the laws of which are expressed in Tertium Organum. 

7. The separateness of our world does not exist there. Everything is the whole. And each particle of dust, without mentioning of course every life and every conscious being, lives a life which is one with the whole and includes the whole within itself. 

8. In that world the duality of our world cannot exist. There being is not opposed to non-being. Life is not opposed to death. On the contrary, the one includes the other within itself. The unity and multiplicity of the I; the I and the Not-I; motion and immobility; union and separateness; good and evil; truth and falsehood — all these divisions are impossible there. Everything subjective is objective, and everything objective is subjective. That world is the world of the unity of opposites. 

9. The sensation of the reality of that world must be accompanied by the sensation of the unreality of this one. At the same time the difference between real and unreal cannot exist there, just as the difference between subjective and objective cannot exist. 

10. That world and our world are not two different worlds. The world is one. That which we call our world is merely our incorrect perception of the world: the world seen by us through a narrow slit. That world begins to be sensed by us as the wondrous, i.e., as something opposite to the reality of this world, and at the same time this, our earthly world, begins to seem unreal. The sense of the wondrous is the key to that world. 

11. But everything that can be said about it will not define our relation to that world until we come to understand that even comprehending it we will not be able to grasp it as a whole, i.e., in all its variety of relations, but can think of it only in this or that aspect. 

12. Everything that is said about the world of causes refers also to the All. But between our world and the All there may be many transitions.

The “world of causes” is actually the world of postulates. Prior to the “world of causes” is Unknowable. Any thought about the unknowable is a postulate. A postulate is a creative emotion plus concept. It is from a postulate that any sensation and reasoning starts. Reality is made of postulates that are one (continuous, consistent and harmonious) together. The twelve points listed above are postulates of Tertium Organum.

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Reference: Tertium Organum

NOTE: Text in color contains my comments.

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Chapter 19: New Knowledge

The intellectual method, objective knowledge. | The limits of objective knowledge. | The possibility of the expansion of the application of the psychological method. | New forms of knowledge. | The ideas of Plotinus. | Different forms of consciousness. | Sleep (the potential state of consciousness). | Dreams (consciousness enclosed in itself, reflected from itself). | Waking consciousness (dualistic sensation of the world, the division of the I and the Not-I). | Ecstasy (the liberation of the self). | Turiya (the absolute consciousness of all, as of the self). | “The dewdrop slips into the shining sea” | Nirvana.

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Having established the principle of the possible unification of the forms of our knowledge, let us discover if this unification is not somewhere realized; how it may be realized; and whether it will be realized in a form entirely new, or in one of the existing forms which shall include all others in itself. 

For this we shall return to the fundamental principles of our knowledge, and compare the possible chances for the development of different paths, i.e., we shall try to find out as best we may that path which leads to the new knowledge, and in the shortest time. 

Up to a certain point we have already established this regarding the emotional path; the growth of the emotions, their purification and their liberation from the materialistic elements of possession and fear of loss must lead to super-personal knowledge and to intuition. 

But how can the intellectual path lead to the new forms of knowledge? 

First of all, what is the new knowledge? 

The new knowledge is direct knowledge, by an inner sense. I feel my own pain directly; the new knowledge can give me the power to sense, as mine, the pain of another man. Thus the new knowledge is the expansion of a direct experience. The question is, can the expansion of objective knowledge be founded upon this new experience? Let us analyze the nature of objective knowledge. 

Our objective knowledge is contained in science and philosophy. Inner experience science has always regarded as a thing given, which cannot be changed, but as something “doubtful,” standing in need of verification and affirmation by the objective method. Science has studied the world as an objective phenomenon, and it has striven to study the psyche and its properties as such another objective phenomenon. 

In another quarter, the study of the psyche from the inside, so to speak, was proceeding simultaneously with this, but to this study no great significance was ever attached. The limits of inner knowledge, i.e., the limits of the psyche, were considered to be strictly definite, established, and unchangeable. Only for objective knowledge, founded upon identical inner experience, was the possibility of expansion admitted. 

Let us discover if there is not some mistake here: is the expansion of objective knowledge, founded upon a limited experience, really possible, and are the possibilities of experience really limited?

New knowledge involves the unification of both emotion and intellect. It progresses from materiality to fine thought. It is based on the expansion of direct experience.

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Developing science, i.e., objective knowledge, is encountering obstacles everywhere. Science studies phenomena; just as soon as it attempts to discover causes, it is confronted with the wall of the unknown, and to it unknowable. The question narrows itself down to this: is this unknowable absolutely unknowable, or is it so only for the methods of our science? 

At the present time the situation is just this: the number of unknown facts in every region of scientific knowledge is rapidly increasing; and the unknown threatens to swallow the known — or the accepted as known. One might define the progress of science, especially latterly, as a very rapid growth of the regions of nescience. 

Nescience of course existed before, and not in less degree than at present. But before, it was not so clearly recognized — at that time science did not know what it does not know. Now it knows this more and more, and more and more knows its conditionality. A little more, and in every separate branch of science that which it does not know will become greater than that which it knows. 

In every department science itself is beginning to repudiate its own foundations. A little more, and science in its entirety will ask, “Where am I?” 

Positive thinking — which conceived of its problem as the deducing of general conclusions from the findings of each separate science and all of them combined — will feel itself compelled to deduce conclusions from that which science does not know. Then all the world will see before it the colossus with feet of clay, or rather without any feet at all, but with a formidable misty body, hanging in the air. 

For a long time philosophy has realized the lack of feet of this colossus, but the majority of cultivated mankind is still hypnotized by positivism, which sees something in place of those feet. However, it will be necessary to part company with this illusion very soon. Mathematics, lying at the very foundation of positive knowledge, and to which exact science always pointed with pride, as to its subject and vassal, is in reality now denying all positivism. Mathematics was included in the cycle of positive sciences only by mistake, and soon indeed mathematics will become the principal weapon AGAINST POSITIVISM. 

By positivism I mean, in this connection, that system which affirms, in contradiction to Kant, that the study of phenomena can bring us nearer to things in themselves, i.e., which affirms that by going along the path of the study of phenomena we can come to an understanding of causes, and — this is important — which regards physico-mechanical phenomena as the cause of biological and psychic phenomena. 

The usual positivistic view denies the existence of the hidden side of life, i.e., it finds that the hidden side consists of electro-magnetic phenomena and opens to us only little by little — and that the progress of science consists in the gradual unveiling of the hidden. 

“This is not known as yet,” says the positivist, when his attention is called to something ‘hidden,’ “but it will he known. Science, going by the same path that it has gone up to now, will discover this also. Five hundred years ago, Europe did not know of the existence of America; seventy years ago we did not know of the existence of bacteria; twenty-five years ago we did not know of the existence of radium. But America, bacteria and radium are all discovered now. Similarly and by the same methods, and by such methods only, will be discovered everything that is to be discovered. The apparatuses are being perfected, the methods, processes and observations are being refined. That which we did not even suspect a hundred years ago, has now become a generally known and generally understood fact. Everything that is possible to be known will become known after this manner.” 

Thus do the adherents of the positivistic viewpoints speak, but at the foundation of these reasonings lies a deep delusion. 

The affirmation of positivism would be quite true did positivism move uniformly in all directions of the unknown; if sealed doors did not exist for it; if in the multitude of questions the principal questions did not remain just as obscure as in those times when science did not exist at all. We see that enormous regions are closed utterly to science, that it never penetrated into them, and worst of all it made not a single step in the direction of those regions.

There are multitudes of problems the solving of which science has not even attempted; problems in the presence of which the contemporary scientist, armed with all his science, is as helpless as a savage or a four-year-old child. 

Such are the problems of life and death, the problems of space and time, the mystery of consciousness, etc., etc. 

We all know this, and the only thing we can do is to try not to think about the existence of these problems, to forget about them. We do so as a rule, but this does not annihilate them. They continue to exist, and at any given moment we may turn to them and try on them the rigidity and force of our scientific method. And every time, at such an attempt, we find that our scientific method is not equal to these problems. By its aid we can discover the chemical composition of remote stars; can photograph the skeleton within the human body, invisible to the human eye; can invent a floating mine which can be controlled from a distance by means of electrical waves, and can in this way annihilate in a moment hundreds of lives; but by the aid of this method we cannot tell what the man standing beside us is thinking about. Not matter how much we may weigh, sound or photograph a man, we shall never know his thoughts unless he himself tells them to us. BUT THIS IS TRULY QUITE A DIFFERENT METHOD. 

The scientific method is oriented toward studying physical phenomena only. From the beginning, It has been unable to find the causes of the biological and psychic phenomena. The attempts of science to study the metaphysical phenomena, such as life, consciousness and death, has only exposed the inadequacy of the scientific method.

The sphere of action of the method of exact science is strictly limited. This sphere is the world of the immediate experience accessible for man. In the world lying beyond the domain of usual experience exact science with its methods has never penetrated and will never penetrate. 

The expansion of objective knowledge is possible only in case direct experience is expanded. But in spite of all the growth of objective knowledge science has made not one step in this direction and the border-line of experience remains in the same place. Could science take a single step in this direction, were we able to feel or sense differently, then we might admit that science might move and take two, three, ten, and ten thousand steps. But it has taken not even one, and it is therefore reasonable to believe that it will never take it. The world outside the experience of the five senses is closed to objective investigation, and for this quite definite causes exist. 

By no means everything that exists can be detected by any of five senses. 

Objective existence is a very narrowly defined form of existence, and does not by any means exhaust or comprehend existence as a whole. The mistake of positivism consists in the fact that it has recognized as really existing only that which exists objectively, and it has even begun to deny the very existence of all the rest. 

But what is objectivity? 

We can define it in this way: because of the properties of our receptivity, or because of the conditions under which our psyche works, we segregate a small number of facts into a definite group. This group of facts represents in itself the objective world, and is accessible to the investigation of science. But in no case does this group represent in itself EVERYTHING THAT IS EXISTING. Extension in space and existence in time constitute the first condition of objective existence. And yet the forms of the extension of a thing in space, and those of its existence in time are created by the cognizing subject, and do not belong to the thing itself. Matter is first of all three-dimensional. This three-dimensionality is the form of our receptivity. Matter of four dimensions would imply a change in the form of our receptivity. 

Materiality is the condition of existence in space and time, i.e., a condition of existence under which “at one time, and in one place, two similar phenomena cannot occur.” This is an exhaustive definition of materiality. It is clear that under the conditions known to us, two similar phenomena, occurring simultaneously in one place, will compose one phenomenon. But this is obligatory for those conditions of existence which we know, i.e., for such matter as we perceive. For the universe it is absolutely not obligatory. We constantly observe the conditions of materiality in those cases in which we must create in our life a sequence of phenomena or are obliged to select, because our matter does not permit us to juxtapose in a definite interval of time more than a certain number of phenomena. The necessity for selection is perhaps the chief visible sign of materiality. Outside of matter, the necessity for selection is done away with, and if we imagine the life of a feeling being, independent of the conditions of materiality, such a being will be capable of possessing simultaneously such faculties as from our standpoint are incompatible, opposite, and eliminative of one another: the power of being in several places at the same time; to command different views; to perform opposite and mutually exclusive actions simultaneously. 

Mind is a sense organ. It senses objects in a thought environment. These objects have substance, space and time of their own and they are positioned in the thought environment. The object may have a material core wrapped in radiation and a thought envelope. In other words, it has both physical and spiritual dimensions. A phenomenon occurs in thought space. Two similar phenomena will have similar space and time of their own and exist in two different thought locations. They are thought to be two; therefore, they cannot be one. Awareness belongs to the universe. Any sense of self is a thought object, with which the awareness is identifying itself.

In speaking of matter it is necessary always to remember that matter is not a substance, but a condition. Suppose for example, that a man is blind. It is impossible to regard this blindness as a substance; it is a condition of the existence of a given man. Matter is some sort of blindness. 

Objective knowledge can grow infinitely, its progress depending on the perfection of its instruments and the refinement of its methods of observation and experiment. One thing only it cannot transcend — the limits of the three-dimensional sphere, i.e., the conditions of space and time, for the reason that objective knowledge is created under these conditions, and the conditions of the existence of the three-dimensional world are the conditions of its existence. Objective knowledge will always be subject to these conditions, for otherwise it would cease to exist. No apparatus, no instrument, will ever conquer these conditions, for should they conquer they would destroy themselves first of all. Perpetual motion, i.e., the violation of the fundamental laws of the three-dimensional world as we know it, would be the only victory over the three-dimensional world in the three-dimensional world itself. 

But it is necessary to remember that objective knowledge does not study facts, but only the perception of facts. 

IN ORDER THAT OBJECTIVE KNOWLEDGE SHALL TRANSCEND THE LIMITS OF THE THREE-DIMENSIONAL SPHERE, IT IS NECESSARY THAT THE CONDITIONS OF PERCEPTION SHALL CHANGE. 

As long as this does not happen, our objective knowledge is confined within the limits of an infinite three-dimensional sphere. It can proceed infinitely upon the radii of that sphere, but it will never penetrate into that region a section of which constitutes our three-dimensional world. Moreover we know, from the preceding, that should our receptivity become more limited, then objective knowledge would be correspondingly limited also. It is impossible to convey to a dog the idea of the sphericality of the earth; to make it remember the weight of the sun and the distances between the planets is equally impossible. Its objective knowledge is vastly more personal than ours; and the cause of it lies in the dog’s more limited psyche. 

Thus we see that objective knowledge depends upon the properties of the psyche. 

Indeed, between the objective knowledge of a savage and that of Herbert Spencer there is an enormous difference; but that of neither the one nor the other transcends the limit of the three-dimensional sphere, i.e., the limits of the “conditional,” the unreal. In order to transcend the three-dimensional sphere it is necessary to expand or change the forms of receptivity. 

Is the expansion of the limits of receptivity possible? 

The study of complex forms of consciousness assures us that it is possible. 

Plotinus, the famous Alexandrian philosopher (third century) affirmed that for perfect knowledge the subject and object must be united — that the rational agent and the thing being comprehended must not be separate. 

For that which sees is itself the thing, which IS SEEN. [Select Works of Plotinus. Bohn’s Library, p. 271.] 

Here it is indeed necessary to understand, “to see” other than in a literal sense. The “seeing” changes with the changes of the state of consciousness in which it is proceeding. 

But what forms of consciousness exist? 

Hindu philosophy makes the division into four states of consciousness: sleep, dream, waking, and the state of absolute consciousness — turiya * [According to the interpretation of the Southern Hindu school of occultism, the four states of consciousness are understood in somewhat different order. The most remote from the True, the most illusory, is the waking state; the second — sleep -is already nearer to the True; the third – deep sleep without dreams – contact with the True; and the fourth, s&mddhi, or ecstasy – union with the True.] (The Ancient Wisdom, Annie Besant.) 

G. R. S. Mead, in the preface to Taylor’s translation of Plotinus (Bohn’s Library) correlates the terminology of Shankar4charya — the leader of the Advaita-Veddnta school of ancient India — with that of Plotinus. 

The first or spiritual state was ecstasy; from ecstasy it forgot itself into deep sleep; from profound sleep it awoke out of unconsciousness, but still within itself, into the internal world of dreams; from dreaming it passes finally into the thoroughly waking state, and the outer world of sense. 

Ecstasy is the term used by Plotinus; it is entirely identical with the term turiya of Hindu psychology. 

The consciousness, which is in a waking condition, is surrounded by what constitutes its sense-organs and receptive apparatus in the phenomenal world; it differentiates the “subjective” from the “objective,” and differentiates its forms of perception from “reality.” It recognizes the phenomenal objective world as reality, and dreams as unreality, and includes along with it, as being unreal, the entire subjective world. Its vague sensation of real things, lying beyond that which is apprehended by the organs of sense, i.e., sensations of noumena, consciousness identifies as it were with dreams — with the unreal, imaginary, abstract, subjective — and regards phenomena as the only reality. 

Gradually convinced by reason of the unreality of phenomena, or inwardly sensing this unreality and the reality which lies behind, we free ourselves from the mirage of phenomena, we begin to understand that all the phenomenal world is in substance subjective also, that the great realities lie deeper down. Then a complete change takes place in consciousness in all its concepts about reality. That which before was regarded as real becomes unreal, and that which was regarded as unreal becomes real.* [The conceptions of the subjective and of the objective should undergo a change. The usual terminology will be incorrect for an exact understanding. Everything phenomenal will become subjective; and the truly objective will be that which under ordinary conditions is regaled as subjective or non existent.]

This transition into the absolute state of consciousness is “UNION WITH DlVINITY,” “VISION OF GOD,” EXPERIENCING THE “KINGDOM OF HEAVEN,” “ENTERING NIRVANA.” All these expressions of mystical religions represent the psychological fact of the expansion of consciousness, such an expansion that the consciousness absorbs itself in the all. 

C. W. Leadbeater, in an essay, Some Notes on the Higher Planes. Nirvana (The Theosophist. July, 1910) writes: 

Sir Edwin Arnold wrote of that beatific condition, that “the dewdrop slips into the shining sea.” 

Those who have passed through that most marvelous of experiences know that, paradoxical as it may seem, the sensation is exactly the reverse, and that a far closer description would be that THE OCEAN HAD SOMEHOW BEEN POURED INTO THE DROP! 

The consciousness, wide as the sea, with “its centre everywhere and its circumference nowhere,” is a great and glorious fact; but when a man attains it, it seems to him that his consciousness has widened to take in all that, not that he is merged into something else. 

This pouring of the ocean into the drop occurs because the consciousness never loses itself, i.e., does not disappear, does not become extinguished. When it seems to us that consciousness is extinguished, in reality it is only changing its form, it ceases to be analogical to ours, and we lose the means of convincing ourselves of its existence. 

We have no exact data at all to think that it is dissipated. In order to escape from the field possible to our observation, it is sufficient for consciousness TO CHANGE ONLY A LITTLE. 

In the objective world, indeed, this “slipping of the dewdrop into the sea” leads to the annihilation of the drop, to the absorption of it by the sea. We have never observed another order of things in the objective world and therefore cannot imagine it. But in the real, i.e., the subjective world, of course another order must exist and operate. The DROP OF CONSCIOUSNESS merging with the SEA OF CONSCIOUSNESS knows it, but does not itself cease to exist because of that. Therefore undoubtedly, the sea is absorbed by the drop. 

Objective knowledge depends on the ability to sense and assimilate. The actual reality is deeper than the phenomena being observed. We obtain that deeper reality by handling our misconceptions. We become aware of a misconception by sensing an anomaly. We handle our misconceptions by resolving anomalies. Objective knowledge does not replace self. The function of self is to resolve anomalies.

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In the Letters to Flaccus of Plotinus, we find a wonderful description of a psychology and theory of knowledge founded exactly upon the idea of the expansion of receptivity. 

External objects present us only with appearances. Concerning them, therefore, we may be said to possess opinion rather than knowledge. The distinctions in the actual world of appearance are of import only to ordinary and practical men. Our question lies with the ideal reality that exists behind appearance. How does the mind perceive these ideas? Are they without us, and is the reason, like sensation, occupied with objects external to itself? What certainty would we then have — what assurance that our perception was infallible? The object perceived would be a something different from the mind perceiving it. We should have then an image instead of reality. It would be monstrous to believe for a moment that the mind was unable to perceive ideal truth as it is, and that we had not certainty and real knowledge concerning the world of intelligence. It follows, therefore, that this region of truth is not to be investigated as a thing external to us, and so only imperfectly known. It is within us. Here the objects we contemplate and that which contemplates are identical — both are thought. The subject cannot surely know an object different from itself. The world of ideas lies within our intelligence. Truth, therefore, is not the agreement of our apprehension of an external object with the object itself. It is the agreement of the mind with itself. Consciousness, therefore, is the sole basis of certainty. The mind is its own witness. Reason sees in itself that which is above itself and its source; and again, that which is below itself as still itself once more. 

Knowledge has three degrees — opinion, science, illumination. The means or instrument of the first is sense; of the second dialectic; of the third intuition. To the last I subordinate reason. It is absolute knowledge founded on the identity of the mind knowing with the object known. 

There is a raying out of all orders of existence, an external emanation from the ineffable One. There is again a returning impulse, drawing all upward and inward toward the centre from whence all came. . . . Ihe wise man recognizes the idea of the good within him. This he develops by withdrawal into the holy place of his own soul. He who does not understand how the soul contains the beautiful within itself, seeks to realize beauty without by laborious production. His aim should rather be to concentrate and simplify, and so to expand his being; instead of going out into the manifold, to forsake it for the One, and to float upwards toward the divine fount of being whose stream flows within him.

You ask, how can we know the Infinite? I answer, not by reason. It is the office of reason to distinguish and define. The infinite, therefore, cannot be ranked among its objects. You can only apprehend the infinite by a faculty superior to reason, by entering into a state in which you are your finite self no longer —in which the divine essence is communicated to you. This is ecstasy. It is the liberation of your mind from its finite consciousness. Like can only apprehend like; when you thus cease to be finite, you become one with the infinite. In the reduction of your soul to its simplest self, its divine essence, you realize this union — this identity. 

But this sublime condition is not of permanent duration. It is only now and then that we can enjoy this elevation above the limits of the body and the world. I myself have realized it but three times as yet, and Porphyry hitherto not once. 

All that tends to purify and elevate the mind will assist you in this attainment, and facilitate the approach and the recurrence of these happy intervals. There are, then, different roads by which this end may be reached. The love of beauty which exalts the poet; that devotion to the One and that ascent of science which makes the ambition of the philosopher, and that love and those prayers by which some devout and ardent soul tends in its moral purity towards perfection — these are the great highways conducting to the height above the actual and the particular, where we stand in the immediate presence of the Infinite, who shines out as from the depths of the soul. 

In another place in his works, Plotinus defines the ecstatic knowledge more exactly, presenting such properties of it as to reveal to us quite clearly that the infinite expansion of subjective knowledge is there meant. 

When we see God [says Plotinus] we see him not by reason, but by something that is higher than reason. It is impossible however to say about him who sees that he sees, because he does not behold and discern two different things (the seer and the thing seen). He changes completely, ceases to be himself, preserves nothing of his I. Immersed in God, he constitutes one whole with Him; like the centre of a circle, which coincides with the centre of another circle.

The problem has always been that our receptivity is limited. So, the question has always been, “How do we expand our receptivity and get to the deeper reality?” This is done by resolving anomalies (discontinuities, inconsistencies or disharmonies) in what is observed. This is called assimilation. To assimilate one looks at the anomaly more closely until its exact nature is recognized. When sensations are assimilated they provide clearer perceptions. When perceptions are assimilated they provide clearer memory. When memories are assimilated they provide clearer experience. When experiences are assimilated they provide clearer knowledge. When knowledge is assimilated it results in wisdom.

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Reference: Tertium Organum

NOTE: Text in color contains my comments.

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Chapter 17: Oneness

A living and rational universe. Different forms and lines of rationality. Animated nature. The souls of stones and the souls of trees. The soul of a forest. The human “I” as a collective rationality. Man as a complex being. “Humanity” as a being. The world’s soul. The face of Mahadeva. Prof. James on the consciousness of the universe. Fechner’s ideas. Zendavesta. A living Earth.

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If rationality exists in the world, then it must permeate everything, although manifesting itself variously. 

We have accustomed ourselves to ascribe animism and rationality in this or that form to those things only which we designate as “beings,” i.e., to those whom we find analogous to ourselves in the functions which define ANIMISM in our eyes. 

Inanimate objects and mechanical phenomena are to us lifeless and irrational. 

But this cannot be so. 

It is only for our limited mind, for our limited power of communion with other minds, for our limited skill in analogy that rationality and psychic life in general manifest only in certain classes of living creatures, alongside of which a long series of dead things and mechanical phenomena exist. 

But if we could not converse among ourselves, if every one of us could not infer the existence of rationality and of psychic life in another by analogy with himself, then everyone would consider himself alone to be alive and animated, and he would relegate all the rest of humankind to mechanical, “dead” nature. 

In other words, we recognize as animated only those beings which have psychic life accessible to our observation in three-dimensional sections of the world, i.e., beings whose psyche is analogous to ours. About other consciousness we do not know and cannot know. All “beings” whose psychic does not manifest itself in the three-dimensional section of the world are inaccessible to us. If they contact our life at all, then we necessarily regard their manifestations as those of dead and unconscious nature. Our power of analogy is limited to this section. We cannot think logically outside of the conditions of the three-dimensional section. Therefore everything that lives, thinks and feels in a manner not analogous to us must appear dead and mechanical.

If rationality exists in the world, then it must permeate everything. If we recognize only those beings whose psyche is analogous to ours, as animated, then that is arbitrary. To think that inanimate objects and mechanical phenomena are lifeless and irrational is an anomaly.

But sometimes we vaguely feel an intense life manifesting in the phenomena of nature, and sense a vivid emotionality the manifestations of which constitute the phenomena of (to us) inanimate nature. What I wish to convey is that behind the phenomena of visible manifestations is felt the noumena of emotion. 

In electrical discharges, in thunder and lightning, in the rush and howling of the wind, are seen flashes of the sensuous-nervous shudderings of some gigantic organism. 

A strange individuality which is all their own is sensed in certain days. There are days brimming with the marvelous and the mystic, days having each its own individual and unique consciousness, its own emotions, its own thoughts. One may almost commune with these days. And they will tell you that they live a long, long time, perhaps eternally, and that they have known and seen many, many things. 

In the processional of the year; in the iridescent leaves of autumn, with their memory-laden smell; in the first snow, frosting the fields and communicating a strange freshness and sensitiveness to the air; in the spring freshets, in the warming sun, in the awakening but still naked branches through which gleams the turquoise sky; in the white nights of the north, and in the dark, humid, warm tropical nights spangled with stars — in all these are the thoughts, the emotions, the forms, peculiar to itself alone, of some great consciousness; or better, all this is the expression of the emotions, thoughts and forms of consciousness of a mysterious being — Nature. 

There can be nothing dead or mechanical in nature. If in general life and feeling exist, they must exist in all. Life and rationality make up the world. 

If we consider nature from our side, from the side of phenomena, then it is necessary to say that each thing, each phenomenon, possesses a psyche of its own. 

A MOUNTAIN, A TREE, A RIVER, THE FISH WITHIN THE RIVER, DEW AND RAIN, PLANET, FIRE — each separately must possess a psyche of its own. 

If we consider nature from the other side, from the side of noumena, then it is necessary to say that each thing and each phenomenon of our world is a manifestation in our section of a rationality incomprehensible to us, belonging to another section, the same having there functions incomprehensible to us. In that section of space, one rationality is such and its function is such that it manifests itself here as a mountain, some other manifests as a tree, a third as a little fish, and so forth. 

Nature appears to be alive with emotions, each phenomenon seems to possess a psyche of its own. There is rationality in everything though it may be incomprehensible to us.

The phenomena of our world are very different from one another. If they are nothing else but manifestations in our section of different rational beings, then these beings must be very different too. 

Between the psyche of a mountain and the psyche of a man there must be the same difference as between a mountain and a man. 

We have already admitted the possibility of different existences. We said that a house exists, and that a man exists, and that an idea exists also — but they all exist differently. If we pursue this thought, then we shall discover many kinds of different existences. 

The fantasy of fairy tales, making all the world animate, ascribes to mountains, rivers, forests a psychic life similar to that of men. But this is just as untrue as the complete denial of consciousness to inanimate nature. Noumena are as distinct and various as phenomena, which are their manifestation in our three-dimensional sphere. 

Each stone, each grain of sand, each planet has its noumenon, consisting of life and of psyche, binding them into certain wholes incomprehensible to us. 

The activity of life of separate units may vary greatly. The degree of the activity of life can be determined from the standpoint of its power of reproducing itself. In inorganic, mineral nature, this activity is so insignificant that units of this nature accessible to our observation do not reproduce themselves, although it may only seem so to us because of the narrowness of our view in time and space. Perhaps if that view embraced hundreds of thousands of years and our entire planet simultaneously, we might then see the growth of minerals and metals. 

Were we to observe, from the inside, one cubic centimeter of the human body, knowing nothing of the existence of the entire body and of the man himself, then the phenomena going on in this little cube of flesh would seem like elemental phenomena in inanimate nature. 

But in any case, for us phenomena are divided into living and mechanical, and visible objects are divided into organic and inorganic. The latter are partitioned without resistance, remaining as they were before. It is possible to break a stone in halves, and then there will be two stones. But if one were to cut a snail in two, then there would not be two snails. This means that the psyche of the stone is very simple, primitive — so simple that it may be fractured without change of state. But a snail consists of living cells. Each living cell is a complex being, considerably more intricate than that of a stone. The body of the snail possesses the power to move, to nourish itself, feel pleasure and pain, seek the first and avoid the last; and most important of all, it possesses the faculty to multiply, to create new forms similar to itself, to involve inorganic substance within these forms, subduing physical laws to its service. The snail is a complex centre of transmutation of some physical energies into others. This centre possesses a consciousness of its own. It is for this reason that the snail is indivisible. Its psyche is infinitely higher than that of the stone. The snail has the consciousness of form, i.e., the form of a snail is conscious of itself, as it were. The form of a stone is not conscious of itself. 

In organic nature where we see life, it is easier to assume the existence of a psyche. In the snail, a living creature, we already admit without difficulty a certain kind of psyche. But life belongs not alone to separate, individual organisms — anything indivisible is a living being. Each cell in an organism is a living being and it must have a certain psychic life. 

Each combination of cells having a definite function is a living being also. Another higher combination — the organ — is a living being no less, and possesses a psychic life of its own. 

Invisibility in our sphere is the sign of a definite function. If a given phenomenon in our plane is a manifestation of that which exists on another plane, then on our side evidently, indivisibility corresponds to individuality on that other side. Divisibility on our side shows divisibility on that side. The rationality of the divisible can express itself in a collective, non-individual reason only. 

There are many kinds of different existences whose activities may vary greatly, but they all maintain continuity, consistency and harmony among themselves. Each cell is a living being; but each combination of cells having a definite function is a living being also.

But even a complete organism is merely a section of a certain magnitude, of what we may call the life of this organism from birth to death. We may imagine this life as a body of four dimensions extended in time. The three-dimensional physical body is merely a section of the four-dimensional body, Linga-Sharira. The image of the man which we know, his “personality” is also merely a section of his true personality, which undoubtedly has its separate psychic life. z In our state of development these three psychic lives know one another only very imperfectly, communicating under narcosis only, in trance, in ecstasy, in sleep, in hypnotic and mediumistic states, i.e., in other states of consciousness. 

In addition to our own psychic lives, with which we are indissolubly bound, but which we do not know, we are surrounded by various other psychic lives which we do not know either. These lives we often feel, they are composed of our lives. We enter into these lives as their component parts, just as into our life enter different other lives. These lives are good or evil spirits, helping us or precipitating evil. Family, clan, nation, race — any aggregate to which we belong (such an aggregate undoubtedly possesses a life of its own), any group of men having its separate function and feeling its inner connection and unity, such as a philosophical school, a “church,” a sect, a masonic order, a society, a party, etc., etc., is undoubtedly a living being possessing a certain rationality. A nation, a people, is a living being; humanity is a living being also. This is the Grand Man, ADAM KADMON of the Kabalists. ADAM KADMON is a being living in men, uniting in himself the lives of all men. Upon this subject, H. P. Blavatsky, in her great work,The Secret Doctrine (Vol. Ill, p. 146), has this to say: . . . 

“It is not the Adam of dust (of Chapter II) who is thus made in the divine image, but the Divine Androgyne (of Chapter I), or Adam Kadmon.” 

ADAM KADMON IS HUMANITY, or humankind — Homo Sapiens — the SPHYNX, i.e., “the being with the body of an animal and the face of a superman.” 

We may assume in man three psychic lives: first, the psychic life of the body, which manifests itself in instincts, and in the constant work of the body; second, his personality, a complex and constantly changing I, which we know, and in which we are conscious of ourselves; third, the consciousness of all life — a greater and higher I. Family, clan, nation, race — any aggregate to which we belong, also possesses a life of its own.

Entering as a component part into different great and little lives man himself consists of an innumerable number of great and little I’s. Many of the I’s living in him do not even know one another, just as men who live in the same house may not know one another. Expressed in terms of this analogy, it may be said that “man” has much in common with a house filled with inhabitants the most diverse. Or better, he is like a great ocean liner on which are many transient passengers, each going to his own place for his own purpose, each uniting in himself elements the most diverse. And each separate unit in the population of this steamer orientates himself, involuntarily and unconsciously regards himself as the very centre of the steamer. This is a fairly true presentment of a human being. 

Perhaps it would be more correct to compare a man with some little separate place on earth, living a life of its own; with a forest lake, full of the most diverse life, reflecting the sun and stars, and hiding in its depths some incomprehensible phantasm, perhaps an undine, or a water-sprite. 

If we abandon analogies and return to facts, so far as these are accessible to our observation, it then becomes necessary to begin with several somewhat artificial divisions of the human being. The old division into body, soul and spirit, has in itself a certain authenticity, but leads often to confusion, because when such a division is attempted disagreements immediately arise as to where the body ends and where the soul begins, where the soul ends and the spirit begins, and so forth. There are no strict limits at all, nor can there be. In addition to this, confusion enters in by reason of the opposition of body, soul and spirit, which are recognized in this case as inimical principles. This is entirely erroneous also, because the body is the expression of the soul, and the soul of the spirit. 

The very terms, body, soul and spirit need explanation. The “body” is the physical body with its (to us) little understood mind; the soul — the psyche studied by scientific psychology — is the reflected activity which is guided by impressions received from the external world and from the body. The “spirit” comprises those higher principles which guide, or under certain conditions may guide, the soul-life. 

Thus a human being contains in itself the following three categories. 

First: the body— the region of instincts, and the inner “instinctive” consciousnesses of the different organs, parts of the body, and the entire organism. 

Second: the soul — consisting of sensations, perceptions, conceptions, thoughts, emotions and desires. 

Third: the region of the unknown — consciousness, will, and the one I, i.e., those things which in ordinary man are in potentiality only. 

We are made up of many parts that have their own psychic life; but these parts are not fully conscious of each other. Similarly, we are part of larger aggregates that have their own life, but we are not fully aware of such aggregates. Man is generally thought to be made of body, soul and spirit. Though there is oneness among these parts, they are thought to be inimical to each other.

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Under the usual conditions of the average man the extremely misty focus of his consciousness is confined to the psyche perpetually going from one object to another. 

I wish to eat.
I read a newspaper.
I wait for a letter. 

Only rarely does it touch the regions which give access to the religious, esthetic and moral emotions, and to the higher intellect, which expresses itself in abstract thinking, united with the moral and esthetic sense, i.e., the sense of the necessity of the co-ordination of thought, feeling, word and action. 

In saying “I,” a man means, of course, not the total complex of all these regions, but that which in a given moment is in the focus of his consciousness. “I wish” (or more correctly, simply “wish,” because man very seldom says I wish): these words (or this word), playing the most important role in the life of man, usually refer not at all to every side of his being simultaneously, but merely to some small and insignificant facet, which at a given moment holds the focus of consciousness and subjects to itself all the rest, until it in turn is forced out by another equally insignificant facet. 

In the psyche of man there occurs a continual shifting of view from one subject to another. Through the focus of receptivity runs a continuous cinematographical film of feelings and impressions, and each separate impression defines the I of a given moment. 

From this point of view the psyche of man has often been compared to a dark, sleeping town in the midst of which night-guards with lanterns slowly move about, each lighting up a little circle around himself. This is a perfectly true analogy. In each given moment there are several such unsteadily lighted circles in the focus, and all the rest is enveloped in darkness. 

Each such little lighted circle represents an I, living its own life, sometimes very short. And there is continuous movement, either fast or slow, moving out into the light more of new and still new objects, or else old ones from the region of memory, or tormentingly revolving in a circle of the same fixed ideas. 

This continuous motion going on in our psyche, this uninterrupted running over of the light from one I to another, perhaps explains the phenomenon of motion in the outer visible world. 

We know already by our intellect, that there is no such motion. We know that everything exists in infinite spaces of time, nothing is made, nothing becomes, all is. But we do not see everything at once, and therefore it seems to us that everything moves, grows, is becoming. We do not see everything at once, either in the outer world, or in the inner world; thence arises the illusion of motion. For example, as we ride past a house the house turns behind us; but if we could see it, not with our eyes, not in perspective, but by some sort of vision, simultaneously from all sides, from below and from above and from the inside, we should no longer see that illusory motion, but would see the house entirely immobile, just as it is in reality. Mentally, we know that the house did not move. 

It is just the same with everything else. The motion, growth, “becoming,” which is going on all around us in the world is no more real than the motion of a house which we are riding by, or the motion of trees and fields relative to the windows of a rapidly moving railway car. 

Motion goes on inside of us, and it creates the illusion of motion round about us. The lighted circle runs quickly from one I to another — from one object, from one idea, from one perception or image to another: within the focus of consciousness rapidly changing I’s succeed one another, a little of the light of consciousness going over from one I to another. This is the true motion which alone exists in the world. Should this motion stop, should all I’s simultaneously enter the focus of receptivity, should the light so expand as to illumine all at once that which is usually lighted bit by bit and gradually, and could a man grasp simultaneously by his reason all that ever entered or will enter his receptivity and all that which is never clearly illumined by thought (producing its action on the psyche nevertheless) — then would a man behold himself in the midst of an immobile universe, in which there would exist simultaneously everything that lies usually in the remote depths of memory, in the past; all that lies at a remote distance from him; all that lies in the future. 

C. H. Hinton very well says, in regard to beings of other sections of the world: 

By the same process by which we know about the existence of other men around us, we may know of the high intelligences by whom we are surrounded. We feel them but we do not realize them. 

To realize them it will be necessary to develop our power of perception. 

The power of seeing with our bodily eye is limited to the three-dimensional section. But the inner eye is not thus limited; we can organize our power of seeing in higher space, and we can form conceptions of realities in this higher space. 

And this affords the groundwork for the perception and study of these other beings than man. 

We are, with reference to the higher things of life, like blind and puzzled children. We know that we are members of one body, limbs of one vine; but we cannot discern, except by instinct and feeling, what that body is, what the vine is. 

Our problem consists in the diminution of the limitations of our perception. 

Nature consists of many entities toward the apprehension of which we strive. 

For this purpose new conceptions have to be formed first, and vast fields of observation shall be unified under one common law. The real history of progress lies in the growth of new conceptions. 

When the new conception is formed it is found to be quite simple and natural. We ask ourselves what we have gained; and we answer: nothing; we have simply removed an obvious limitation.

The question may be put: In what way do we come into contact with these higher beings at present? And evidently the answer is: In those ways in which we tend to form organic unions — unions in which the activities of individuals coalesce in a living way. 

The coherence of a military empire or of a subjugated population, presenting no natural nucleus of growth, is not one through which we should hope to grow into direct contact with our higher destinies. But in friendship, in voluntary associations and above all in the family, we tend towards our greater life. 

Just as, to explore the distant stars of the heavens, a particular material arrangement is necessary which we call a telescope, so to explore the nature of the beings who are higher than we, a mental arrangement is necessary. We must prepare a more extended power of looking. We want a structure developed inside the skull for the one purpose which an exterior telescope will do for the other. 

An average man is focused on immediate needs rather than on the necessity of the co-ordination of thought, feeling, word and action. In saying “I,” he means not the total complex of all these regions, but that which in a given moment is in the focus of his consciousness. Everything is enduring on a vast landscape. There is motion because of relative endurances; but there is also an illusion of motion because of focused and wandering attention.

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This animism of nature takes the most diverse directions. This tree is a living being. The birch tree in general — the species is a living being. A birch tree forest is a living being also. A forest in which there are trees of different kinds, grass, flowers, ants, beetles, birds, beasts — this is a living being too, living by the life of everything composing it, thinking and feeling for all of which it consists. 

This idea is very interestingly expressed in the essay of P. Florensky, The Humanitarian Roots of Idealism. (The Theological Messenger, 1909, II, p. 288. In Russian.) 

Are there many people who regard a forest not merely as a collective proper noun and rhetorical embodiment, i.e., as a pure fiction, but as something unique, living? . . . The real unity is a unity of self-consciousness. . . . Are there many who recognize unity in a forest, i.e., the living soul of a forest taken as a whole — voodoo, wood-demon, Old Nick? Do you consent to recognize undines and water-sprites — those souls of the aquatic element? 

The activities of the life of such a composite being as a forest is not the same as the activity of different species of plants and animals, and the activity of the life of a species is again different from the life of separate individuals. 

Moreover, the diversity of the functions expressed in different life-activities reveals the differences existing between the psychic lives of different “organisms.” The life-activity of a single leaf of a birch tree, is of course an infinitely lower form of activity than the life of the tree. The activity of the life of the tree is not such as the activity of the life of the species, and the life of the species is not such as the life of the forest. 

The functions of these four “lives” are entirely different, and their rationality must be correspondingly different also. 

The rationality of a single cell of the human body must be as much lower in comparison with the rationality of the body — i.e., with the “physical consciousness of man” — as its life-activity is lower in comparison with the life-activity of the entire organism. 

Therefore, from a certain standpoint, we may regard the noumenon of a phenomenon as the soul of that phenomenon, i.e., we may say that the hidden soul of a phenomenon is its noumenon. The concept of the soul of a phenomenon or the noumenon of a phenomenon includes within itself both life and rationality together with their functions in sections of the world incomprehensible to us; and the manifestation of those in our sphere constitutes a phenomenon. 

The idea of an animistic universe leads inevitably to the idea of a “World-Soul” — a “Being” whose manifestation is this visible universe. 

The idea of the “World-Soul” was very picturesquely understood in the ancient religions of India. The mystical poem, The Bhagavad Gita gives a remarkable presentment of Mahadeva, i.e., the great Deva whose life is this world. 

Thus Krishna propounded his teaching to his disciples . . . preparing them for an apprehension of those high spiritual truths which unfold before his inner sight in a moment of illumination. 

When he spoke of Mahadeva his voice became very deep, and his face was illuminated by an inner light. 

Once Arjuna, in an impulse of boldness, said to him: 

Let us see Mahadeva in his divine form. May we behold him? 

And then Krishna . . . began to speak of a being who breathes in every creature, has an hundred-fold and a thousand-fold forms, many-faced, many-eyed, facing everywhere, and who surpasses everything created by infinity, who envelops in his body the whole world, things still and animate. If the radiance of a thousand suns should burst forth suddenly in the sky, it would not compare with the radiance of that Mighty Spirit. 

When Krishna spoke thus of Mahadeva, a beam of light of such tremendous force shone in his eyes, that his disciples could not endure the radiance of that light, and fell at Krishna’s feet. From very fear the hair rose on Arjuna’s head, and bowing low he said: Thy words are terrible, we cannot look upon such a being as Thou evokest before our eyes. His form makes us tremble.

In an interesting book of lectures by Prof. William James, A Pluralistic Universe, there is a lecture on Fechner, devoted to “a conscious universe.” 

Ordinary monistic idealism leaves everything intermediary out. It recognizes only extremes, as if, after the first rude face of the phenomenal world in all its particularity, nothing but the supreme in all its perfection could be found. First, you and I, just as we are in this room; and the moment we get below that surface, the unutterable itself! Doesn’t this show a singularly indigent imagination? Isn’t this brave universe made on a richer pattern, with room in it for a long hierarchy of beings? Materialistic science makes it infinitely richer in terms, with its molecules, and ether, and electrons and what not. Absolute idealism, thinking of reality only under intellectual forms, knows not what to do with bodies of any grade, and can make no use of any psycho-physical analogy or correspondence. 

Fechner, from whose writings Prof. James makes copious quotations, upheld quite a different view-point. Fechner’s ideas are so near to those which have been presented in the previous chapters that we shall dwell upon them more extensively. 

I use the words of Prof. James: 

The original sin, according to Fechner, of both our popular and scientific thinking, is our inveterate habit of regarding the spiritual not as the rule but as an exception in the midst of nature. Instead of believing our life to be fed at the breasts of the greater life, our individuality to be sustained by the greater individuality, which must necessarily have more consciousness and more independence than all that it brings forth, we habitually treat whatever lies outside of our life as so much slag and ashes of life only. 

Or if we believe in Divine Spirit, we fancy it on the one side as bodiless, and nature as soulless on the other. 

What comfort, or peace, Fechner asks, can come from such a doctrine? The flowers wither at its breath, the stars turn into stone; our own body grows unworthy of our spirit and sinks to a tenement for carnal senses only. The book of nature turns into a volume on mechanics, in which whatever has life is treated as a sort of anomaly; a great chasm of separation yawns between us and all that is higher than ourselves; and God becomes a thinnest of abstractions. 

Fechner’s great instrument for verifying the daylight view is analogy. . . . 

Bain defines genius as the power of seeing analogies. 

The number that Fechner could perceive was prodigious; but he insisted on the differences as well. Neglect to make allowance for these, he said, is the common fallacy in analogical reasoning.

Most of us, for example, reasoning justly that, since all the minds we know are connected with bodies, therefore God’s mind should be connected with a body, proceed to suppose that that body must be just an animal body over again, and paint an altogether human picture of God. But all that the analogy comports is a body — the particular features of our body are adaptations to a habitat so different from God’s that if God have a physical body at all, it must be utterly different from ours in structure. 

The vaster orders of mind go with the vaster orders of body. The entire earth on which we live must have, according to Fechner, its own collective consciousness. So must each sun, moon, planet; so must the whole solar system have its own wider consciousness, on which the consciousness of our earth plays one part. So has the entire starry system as such its consciousness; and if that starry system be not the sum of all that IS, materially considered, then that whole system, along with whatever else may be, is the body of that absolutely totalized consciousness of the universe to which men give the name of God. Speculatively Fechner is thus a monist in his theology; but there is room in his universe for every grade of spiritual being between man and the final all-inclusive God. 

The earth-soul he passionately believes in; he treats the earth as our special human guardian angel; we can pray to the earth as men pray to their saints. 

His most important conclusion is, that the constitution of the world is identical throughout. In ourselves, visual consciousness goes with our eyes, tactile consciousness with our skin. But although neither skin nor eye knows aught of the sensations of the other, they come together and figure in some sort of relation and combination in the more inclusive consciousness which each of us names his self. Quite similarly, then, says Fechner, we must suppose that my consciousness of myself and yours of yourself, although in their immediacy they keep separate and know nothing of each other, are yet known and used together in a higher consciousness, that of the human race, say, into which they enter as constituent parts. 

Similarly, the whole human and animal kingdom come together as conditions of a consciousness of still wider scope. This combines in the soul of the earth with the consciousness of the vegetable kingdom, which in turn contributes its share of experience to that of the whole solar system, etc. 

The supposition of an earth-consciousness meets a strong instinctive prejudice. All the consciousness we directly know seems told to brains. But our brain, which primarily serves to correlate our muscular reactions with the external objects on which we depend, performs a function which the earth performs in an entirely different way. She has no proper muscles or limbs of her own, and the only objects external to her are the other stars. To these her whole mass reacts by most exquisite alterations in its total gait, and by still more exquisite vibratory responses in its substance. Her ocean reflects the lights of heaven as on a mighty mirror, her atmosphere refracts them like a monstrous lens, the clouds and snow-fields combine them into white, the woods and flowers disperse them into colors. Polarization, interference, absorption awaken sensibilities in matter of which our senses are too coarse to take any note. 

For these cosmic relations of hers, then, she no more needs a special brain than she needs eyes or ears. Our brains do indeed unify and correlate innumerable functions. Our eyes know nothing of sound, our ears nothing of light, but having brains, we can feel sound and light together, and compare them. . . . . . Must every higher means of unification between things be a literal brain-fibre? Cannot the earth-mind know otherwise the contents of our minds together? 

In a striking page Fechner relates one of his moments of direct vision of truth. 

“On a certain morning I went out to walk. The fields were green, the birds sang, the dew glistened, the smoke was rising, here and there a man appeared, a light as of transfiguration lay on all things. It was only a little bit of earth; it was only one moment of her existence; and yet as my look embraced her more and more it seemed to me not only so beautiful an idea, but so true and clear a fact, that she is an angel — an angel carrying me along with her into Heaven. . . . I asked myself how the opinions of men could ever have so spun themselves away from life so far as to deem the earth only a dry clod. . . . But such an experience as this passes for fantasy. The earth is a globular body, and what more she may be, one can find in mineralogical cabinets.” 

The special thought of Fechner’s is his belief that the more inclusive forms of consciousness are in part constituted by the more limited forms. Not that they are the mere sum of the more limited forms. As our mind is not the bare sum of our sights plus our sounds, plus our pains, but in adding these terms together it also finds relations among them and weaves them into schemes and forms and objects of which no one sense in its separate estate knows anything, so the earth-soul traces relations between the contents of my mind and the contents of yours of which neither of our separate minds is conscious. It has schemes, forms, and objects proportionate to its wider field, which our mental fields are far too narrow to cognize. By ourselves we are simply out of relation with each other, for we are both of us there, and different from each other, which is a positive relation. What we are without knowing, it knows that we are. It is as if the total universe of inner life had a sort of grain or direction, a sort of valvular structure, permitting knowledge to flow in one way only, so that the wider might always have the narrower under observation, but never the narrower the wider. 

Fechner likens our individual persons on the earth unto so many sense-organs of the earth-soul. We add to its perceptive life. . . . It absorbs our perceptions into its larger sphere of knowledge, and combines them with the other data there. The memories and conceptual relations that have spun themselves round the perceptions of a certain person remain in the larger earth-life as distinct as ever, and form new relations. . . .” 

Fechner’s ideas are expounded in his book, Zendavesta. 

This animism of nature takes the most diverse directions. The real unity is a unity of self-consciousness. We may say that the hidden soul of a phenomenon is its noumenon. The idea of an animistic universe leads inevitably to the idea of a “World-Soul” — a “Being” whose manifestation is this visible universe.

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I have made such a lengthy quotation from Prof. James’ book in order to show that the ideas of the animism and of the rationality of the world are neither new nor paradoxical. It is a natural and logical necessity, resulting from a broader view of the world than that which we usually permit ourselves to hold. 

Logically we must either recognize life and rationality in everything, in all “dead nature,” or deny them completely, even IN OURSELVES.

All logic comes from the idea of ONENESS of the universe.

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