Vinaire's Blog

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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Reference: Tertium Organum

NOTE: Text in color contains my comments.

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Chapter 15: Love

Occultism and love. Love and death. Our different relations to the problems of death and to the problems of love. What is lacking in our understanding of love? Love as an every-day and merely psychological phenomena. The possibility of a spiritual understanding of love. The creative force of love. The negation of love. Love and mysticism. The “wondrous” in love.  Nietzsche, Edward Carpenter and Schopenhauer on love. “The Ocean of Sex”

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There is not a single side of life which is not capable of revealing to us an infinity of the new and the unexpected, if we approach it with the knowledge that it is not exhausted by its visibility, that beyond this visibility there is a whole “invisible world” — a world of to us new and incomprehensible forces and relations. The knowledge of the existence of this invisible world: this is the first key to it. 

A wealth of “newness” unfolds to us in the most mysterious sides of our existence, in those sides through which we come into direct contact with eternity — in love and in death. In Hindu mythology love and death are the two faces of one deity. Siva, god of the creative force of nature, is at the same time the god of violent death, of murder and destruction. His wife is Parvati, goddess of beauty, love and happiness, and she is also Kali or Durga — goddess of evil, of misfortune, of sickness and of death. Together Siva and Kali are the gods of wisdom, the gods of the knowledge of good and evil. 

In the beginning of his book, The Drama of Love and Death Edward Carpenter very well defines our relation to these deeply incomprehensible and enigmatical sides of existence: 

Love and death move through this world of ours like things apart — underrunning it truly, and everywhere present, yet seeming to belong to some other mode of existence. 

And further: 

These figures, Love and Death, move through the world like closest friends indeed, never far separate, and together dominating it in a kind of triumphant superiority; and yet like bitterest enemies, dogging each other’s footsteps, undoing each other’s work, fighting for the bodies and souls of mankind.

In these few words is shown the contents of the enigma which confronts us, encompasses us, creates and annihilates us. But man’s relation to the two aspects of this enigma is not identical. Strange as it may seem, the face of death has ever been more attractive to the mystical imagination of men than the face of love. There have always been many attempts to understand and define the hidden meaning of death; all religions, all religious doctrines begin with giving to man this or that idea about death. It is impossible to construct any system of world-contemplation without some definition of death; and there are numerous systems such as contemporary spiritism which consist almost entirely of “views upon death,” of doctrines about death and post-mortem existence. (In one of his articles, V. V. Rosanoff observes that all religions consist in substance of teachings about death.) 

But the problem of love, in the contemporary way of looking at the world, is regarded as something given, as something already understood and known. Different systems contribute little that is enlightening to an understanding of love. So although in reality love is for us the same enigma as is death, yet for some strange reason we think about it less. We seem to have developed certain cut and dried standards in regard to an understanding of love, and men thoughtlessly accept this or that standard. Art, which from its very nature should have much to say on this subject, gives a great deal of attention to love; love ever has been, and perhaps still is, the principal theme of art. But even art chiefly confines itself merely to descriptions and to the psychological analysis of love, seldom touching those infinite and eternal depths which love contains for man. 

In reality love is a cosmic phenomenon, in which men, humanity, are merely accidents: a cosmic phenomenon which has nothing to do with either the lives or the souls of men, any more than because the sun is shining, by its light men may go about their little affairs, and may utilize it for their own purposes. If men would only understand this, even with a part of their consciousness, a new world would open, and to look on life from all our usual angles would become very strange. 

For then they would understand that love is something else, and of quite a different order from the petty phenomena of earthly life. 

Perhaps love is a world of strange spirits who at times take up their abode in men, subduing them to themselves, making them tools for the accomplishment of their inscrutable purposes. Perhaps it is some particular region of the inner world wherein the souls of men sometimes enter, and where they live according to the laws of that world, while their bodies remain on earth, bound by the laws of earth. Perhaps it is an alchemical work of some Great Master wherein the souls and bodies of men play the role of elements out of which is compounded a philosopher’s stone, or an elixir of life, or some mysterious magnetic force necessary to someone for some incomprehensible purpose. 

Love in relation to our life is a deity, sometimes terrible, sometimes benevolent, but never subservient to us, never consenting to serve our purposes. Men strive to subordinate love to themselves, to warp it to the uses of their every-day mode of life, and to their souls’ uses; but it is impossible to subordinate love to anything, and it mercilessly revenges itself upon those little mortals who would subordinate God to themselves and make Him serve them. It confuses all their calculations, and forces them to do things which confound themselves, forcing them to serve itself, to do what it wants. 

Mistaken about the origin of love, men are mistaken about its result. Positivistic and spiritistic morality equally recognize in love only one possible result — children, the propagation of the species. But this objective result, which may or may not be, is in any case an effect of the outer, objective side of love, of the material fact of impregnation. If it is possible to see in love nothing more than this material fact and the desire for it, so be it; but in reality love consists not at all in a material fact, and the results of it — except material ones — may manifest themselves on quite another plane. This other plane, upon which love acts, and the ignored, hidden results of love, are not difficult to understand, even from the strictly positivistic, scientific standpoint. 

To science, which studies life from this side, the purpose of love is the continuation of life. More exactly, love is a link in the chain of facts supporting the continuation of life. The force which attracts the two sexes to each other is acting in the interests of the continuation of the species, and is accordingly created by the forms of the continuation of the species. But if we regard love in this way, then it is impossible not to recognize that there is much more of this force than is necessary. Herein lies the key to the correct understanding of the true nature of love. There is more of this force than is necessary, infinitely more. In reality only an infinitesimal part of love’s force incarnate in humanity is utilized for the purpose of the continuation of the species. But where does the major part of that force go? 

We know that nothing can be lost. If energy exists, then it must transform itself into something. Now if a merely negligible percentage of energy goes into the creation of the future by begetting, then the remainder must go into the creation of the future also, but in another way. We have in the physical world many cases in which the direct function is affected by a very small percentage of the consumed energy, and the greater part is spent without return, as it were. But of course this greater part of energy does not disappear, is not wasted, but accomplishes other results quite different from the direct function. 

Take the example of a common candle. It gives Iight, but it also gives considerably more heat than light. Light is the direct function of a candle, heat the indirect, but we get more heat than light. A candle is a furnace adapted to the purpose of lighting. In order to give light a candle must burn. Combustion is a necessary condition for the receiving of light from a candle; it is impossible to ignore this combustion; but the same combustion gives heat. At first thought it appears that the heat from a candle is spent unproductively; sometimes it is superfluous, unpleasant, annoying; if a room is lighted by candles it will soon grow excessively hot. But the fact remains that light is received from a candle only because of combustion — by the development of heat and the incandescence of volatilized gases. 

The same thing is true in the case of love. We may say that a merely negligible part of love’s energy goes into posterity; the greater part is spent by the fathers and mothers on their personal emotions as it were. But this also is necessary. Without this expenditure the principal thing could not be achieved. Only because of these at first sight collateral results of love, only because of all this tempest of emotions, feelings, effervescences, desires, thoughts, dreams, fantasies, inner creations; only because of the beauty which it creates, can love fulfill its immediate function. 

Moreover — and this perhaps is the most important — the superfluous energy is not wasted at all, but is transformed into other forms of energy, possible to discover. Generally speaking, the significance of the indirect results may very often be of more importance than the significance of direct ones. And since we are able to trace how the energy of love transforms itself into instincts, ideas, creative forces on different planes of life; into symbols of art, song, music, poetry; so can we easily imagine how the same energy may transform itself into a higher order of intuition, into a higher consciousness which will reveal to us a marvelous and mysterious world. 

In all living nature (and perhaps also in that which we consider as dead) love is the motive force which drives the creative activity in the most diverse directions.

In springtime with the first awakening of love’s emotions the birds begin to sing, and build nests. 

Of course a positivist would strive to explain all this very simply: singing acts as an attraction between the females and the males, and so forth. But even a positivist will not be in a position to deny that there is a good deal more of this singing than is necessary for “the continuation of the species.” For a positivist, indeed, “singing” is merely “an accident,” a “by-product.” But in reality it may be that this singing is the principal function of a given species, the realization of its existence, the purpose pursued by nature in creating this species; and that this singing is necessary, not so much to attract the females, as for some general harmony of nature which we only rarely and imperfectly sense. 

Thus in this case we observe that what appears to be a collateral function of love, from the standpoint of the individual, may serve as a principal function of the species. 

Furthermore, there are no fledglings as yet: there is even no intimation of them, but “homes” are prepared for them nevertheless. Love inspires this orgy of activity, and instinct directs it, because it is expedient from the standpoint of the species. At the first awakening of love this work begins. One and the same desire creates a new generation and those conditions under which this new generation will live. One and the same desire urges forward creative activity in all directions, brings the pairs together for the birth of a new generation, and makes them build and create for this same future generation. 

We observe the same thing in the world of men: there too love is the creative force. And the creative activity of love does not manifest itself in one direction only, but in many ways. It is indeed probable that by the spur of love, Eros, humanity is aroused to the fulfillment of its principal function, of which we know nothing, but only at times by glimpses hazily perceive.

But even without reference to the purpose of the existence of humanity, within the limits of the knowable we must recognize that all the creative activity of humanity results from love. Our entire world revolves around love as its centre. 

Love unfolds in a human being traits of his which he never knew in himself. In love there is much both of the Stone Age and of the Witches’ Sabbath. By anything less than love many men cannot be induced to commit a crime, to be guilty of a treason, to reanimate in themselves such feelings as they thought to have killed out long ago. In love is hidden an infinity of egoism, vanity and selfishness. Love is the potent force that tears off all masks, and men who run away from love do so in order that they may preserve their masks. 

If creation, the birth of ideas, is the light which comes from love, then this light comes from a great fire. In this eternally burning fire in which humanity and all the world are being incessantly purified, all the forces of the human spirit and of genius are being evolved and refined; and perhaps indeed, from this same fire or by its aid a new force will arise which shall deliver from the chains of matter all who follow where it leads. 

Speaking not figuratively, but literally, it may be said that love, being the most powerful of all emotions, unveils in the soul of man all its qualities patent and latent; and it may also unfold those new potencies which even now constitute the object of occultism and mysticism — the development of powers in the human soul so deeply hidden that by the majority of men their very existence is denied.

[In the first Russian edition of this book, in those sketches which took the place of the present chapter, among other things I made the attempt to classify love, and to differentiate between “love” (individualized feeling) and “sexual emotion” (not individualized and undiscriminating in its longing for the satisfaction of the purely physical desire). But it seems to me now that this division, like all similar divisions, is unsatisfactory. The difference is not in facts but in men. 

On earth there are living two entirely different races of men; and the difficulty of making psychological distinctions depends, in great measure, upon the fact that we endeavor to impose on all men common characteristics which they do not possess.]

In the majority of cases love, as it exists in modern life, has become a trifling away of feelings, of sensations. It is difficult, in the conditions which govern life in the world, to imagine such a love as will not interfere with mystical aspirations. Temples of love and the mystical celebration of love’s mysteries exist in reality no longer: there is the “every-day manner of life,” and psychological labyrinths from which those who rise a little above the ordinary level can only desire to run away. 

For this reason certain fine forms of asceticism are developing quite naturally. This asceticism does not slander love, does not blaspheme against it, does not try to convince itself that love is an abomination from which it is necessary to run away. It is Platonism rather than asceticism. It recognizes that love is the sun, but often does not see its way to live in the sunlight, and so considers it better not to see the sun at all, to divine it in the soul only, rather than receive its light through darkened or smoked glasses. 

In general, however, love represents for men too great an enigma; and often the denial of love and asceticism take on strange and unnatural forms, even with persons who are quite sincere, but unable to understand the great mystical aspect of love. When one encounters these perversions of love, one involuntarily calls to mind the words of Zarathustra: 

Voluptuousness: unto all hair-shirted despisers of the body, a string and stake; and cursed as “the world” by all backworldsmen: for it mocketh and befooleth all erring, misinferring teachers. 

Voluptuousness: to the rabble the slow fire at which it is burnt: to all wormy wood, to all stinking rags, the prepared heat and stew furnace. 

Voluptuousness: to free hearts, a thing innocent and free, the garden-happiness of the earth, all the future’s thanks-overflow to the present. 

Voluptuousness: only to the withered a sweet poison: to the lion-willed, however, the great cordial, and the reverently saved wine of wines. 

Voluptuousness: the great symbolic happiness of a higher happiness and highest hope. For to many is marriage promised and more than marriage — to many that are more unknown to each other than man and woman — and who hath fully understood how unknown to each other are man and woman. 

Beyond this visible world there is a whole invisible word full of s new and unexpected. We come into contact with it through love and death. Love is taken for granted but death is seen as enigmatic. Love is a cosmic phenomenon, which we don’t usually appreciate. It is impossible to subordinate love to anything. Love is much larger a force than what is needed merely for the continuation of the species. Love is the motive force which drives the creative activity in the most diverse directions.

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I have dwelt so long on the subject of the understanding of love because it has the most vital significance; because to the majority of men, approaching the threshold of the great mystery, much is closed or opened to them in this way, and because for many this question represents the greatest obstacle. 

In love the most important element is that which is not, which absolutely does not exist from the usual worldly, materialistic point of view. 

In this sensing of that which is not, and in the contact through it with the world of the wondrous, i.e., truly real, consists the principal element of love in human life. 

It is a well-known psychological fact that in moments of powerful emotion, of great joy or great suffering, everything happening round about a man seems to him unreal — a dream. This is the beginning of the soul’s awakening. When a man in a dream begins to be conscious of the fact that he is asleep and that what he sees is a dream, then he is waking up; so also the soul, beginning to be conscious of the fact that all visible life is a dream, approaches its awakening. And the more powerful, the brighter the inner emotions are, so much the more quickly will the moment of consciousness of the unreality of life come. 

It is very interesting to consider love and men’s relation to love in the light of that method and those analogies which we have already applied to the comparative study of different dimensions. 

Again it is necessary to imagine a world of plane beings, observing phenomena entering their plane from another unknowable world (such as the change of the color of lines on a plane, in reality depending upon the rotation through the plane of a wheel with many-colored spokes). The plane beings believe that the phenomena arise within the limits of their plane, from causes also belonging to the same plane, and that they are finished there. Also, all similar phenomena are to them identical, such as two circles which in reality belong to two entirely different objects. 

On this foundation they erect their science and their morality. Yet if they would decide to discard their “two-dimensional” psychology and try to understand the true substance of these phenomena, then with the aid and by means of these phenomena they could sever their connection with their plane, arise, fly up above it, and discover a great unknown world. 

The question of love holds exactly the same place in our life. 

Only he who can see considerably beyond the facts discerns love’s real meaning; and it is possible to illumine these very facts by the light of that which lies behind them. 

And he who is able to see beyond the “facts” begins to discern much of “newness” in love and through love. 

I shall quote in this connection a poem in prose by Edward Carpenter, from the book Towards Democracy. 

THE OCEAN OF SEX 

To hold in continence the great sea, the great ocean of Sex, within one.
With flux and reflux pressing on the bounds of the body, the beloved genitals,
Vibrating, swaying emotional to the star-glint of the eyes of all human beings.
Reflecting Heaven and all Creatures,
How wonderful! 

Scarcely a figure, male or female, approaches, but a tremor travels across it.
As when on the cliff which bounds the edge of a pond someone moves, then in the bowels of the water also there is a mirrored movement,
So on the edge of this Ocean.
The glory of the human form, even faintly outlined under the trees or by the shore, convulses it with far reminiscences;
(Yet strong and solid the sea-banks, not lightly overpassed);
Till maybe to the touch, to the approach, to the incantation of the eyes of one,
It bursts forth, uncontrollable.
O wonderful ocean of Sex, 

Ocean of millions and millions of tiny seed-like human forms contained (if they be truly contained) within each person.
Mirror of the very universe,
Sacred temple and innermost shrine of each body, Ocean-river flowing ever on through the great trunk and branches of Humanity,
From which after all the individual only springs like a leaf-bud!
Ocean which we so wonderfully contain (if indeed we do not contain thee), and yet who containest us!
Sometimes when I feel and know thee within, and identify myself with thee.
Do I understand that I also am of the dateless brood of Heaven and Eternity. 

Returning to that from which I started, the relation between the fundamental laws of our existence, love and death, the true mutual correlation of which remains enigmatical and incomprehensible to us, I shall merely recall Schopenhauer’s words with which he ends his Counsels and Maxims. 

I should point out how Beginning and End meet together, and how closely and intimately Eros is connected with Death; how Orcus, or Amenthes, as the Egyptians called him, is not only the receiver but the giver of all things . . . Death is the great reservoir of Life. Everything comes from Orcus — everything that is alive now and was once there. Could we but understand the great trick by which that is done, all the world would be clear.

Life is much more than what we are aware of. The best way to become more aware is to systematically investigate what does not make sense. One method is Subject Clearing.

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Reference: Tertium Organum

NOTE: Text in color contains my comments.

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Chapter 13: Life

The apparent and hidden side of life. Positivism as the study of the phenomenal side of life. Of what does the “two-dimensionality” of positive philosophy consist? The regarding of everything upon a single plane, in one physical sequence. The streams which flow underneath the earth. What can the study of life, as a phenomenon, yield? The artificial world which science erects for itself. The unreality of finished and isolated phenomena. The new apprehension of the world.

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There exist visible and hidden causes of phenomena; there exist also visible and hidden effects. 

Let us consider some one example. 

In all textbooks on the history of literature we are told that in its time Goethe’s Werther provoked an epidemic of suicides. 

What did provoke these suicides? 

Let us imagine that some “scientist” appears, who, being interested in the fact of the increase of suicides, begins to study the first edition of Werther according to the method of exact, positive science. He weighs the book, measures it by the most precise instruments, notes the number of its pages, makes a chemical analysis of the paper and the ink, counts the number of lines on every page, the number of letters, and even how many times the letter A is repeated, how many times the letter B, and how many times the interrogation mark is used, and so on. In other words he does everything that the pious Mohammedan performs with relation to the Koran of Mohammed, and on the basis of his investigations writes a treatise on the relation of the letter A of the German alphabet to suicide. 

Or let us imagine another scientist who studies the history of painting, and deciding to put it on a scientific basis, starts a lengthy series of analyses of the pigment used in the pictures of famous painters in order to discover the causes of the different impressions produced upon the beholder by different pictures. 

Imagine a savage studying a watch. Let us admit that he is a wise and crafty savage. He takes the watch apart and counts all its wheels and screws, counts the number of teeth in each gear, finds out its size and thickness. The only thing that he does not know is what all these things are for. He does not know that the hand completes the circuit of the dial in half of twenty-four hours, i.e., that it is possible to tell time by means of a watch.

All this is “positivism.” 

We are too familiar with “positivistic” methods, and so fail to realize that they end in absurdities and that if we are seeking to explain the meaning of anything, they do not lead to the goal at all. 

The difficulty is that for the explanation of the meaning positivism is of no use. For it, nature is a closed book of which it studies the appearance only. 

In the matter of the study of the operations of nature, the positive methods have achieved much, as is proven by the innumerable successes of modern technics, including the conquest of the air. But everything in the world has its own definite sphere of action. Positivism is very good when it seeks an answer to the question of how something operates under given conditions; but when it makes the attempt to get outside of its definite conditions (space, time, causation), or presumes to affirm that nothing exists outside of these given conditions, then it is transcending its own proper sphere. 

It is true that the more serious positive thinkers deny the possibility of including in “positive investigation” the question of why and what for. But as a matter of fact the positive standpoint is not the only possible one. The usual mistake of positivism consists in its not seeing anything except itself — it either considers everything as possible to it, or considers as generally impossible much that is entirely possible, but not for positive inquiry. 

Humanity will never cease to search, however, for answer to the questions why, and wherefore. 

The positivistic scientist finds himself in the presence of nature almost in the position of a savage in a library of rare and valuable books. For a savage a book is a thing of definite size and weight. However long he may ask himself what purpose this strange thing serves, he will never discover the truth from its appearance; and the contents of the book will remain for him the incomprehensible noumenon. In like manner the contents of nature are incomprehensible to the positivistic scientist. 

But if a man knows of the existence of the contents of the book — the noumenon of life — if he knows that a mysterious meaning is hidden under visible phenomena, there is the possibility that in the long run he will discover the contents. 

For success in this it is necessary to grasp the idea of the inner contents, i.e, the meaning of the thing in itself.

The scientist who discovers little tablets with hieroglyphics, or wedgeshaped inscriptions in an unknown language, deciphers and reads them after great labor. And in order to accomplish this he needs only one thing: it is necessary for him to know that these little signs represent an inscription. As long as he regards them simply as an ornament, as the outside embellishment of little tablets, or as an accidental tracing without meaning — up to that time their meaning and significance will be closed to him absolutely. But let him only assume the existence of that meaning and the possibility of its comprehension will be already within sight. 

No secret cipher exists which cannot be solved without the aid of any key. But it is necessary to know that it is a cipher. This is the first and necessary condition. Lacking this it is impossible to accomplish anything.

All visible phenomenon has underlying explanations for questions, such as, why and what for. Such details make the understanding of the phenomenon complete.

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The idea of the existence of the visible and the hidden sides of life was known to philosophy long ago. Phenomena were regarded as only one aspect of the world, and as being infinitely small compared to the hidden aspect — seeming, not existing really, arising in consciousness at the moment of its contact with the real world. Another side, noumena, was recognized as really existing in itself, but inaccessible for our receptivity. 

But there is no greater error than to regard the world as divided into phenomena and noumena — to conceive of phenomena and noumena apart from one another, and susceptible of being separately known. This is philosophic illiteracy, which shows itself most clearly in the dualistic spiritistic theories. The division into phenomena and noumena exists only in our minds. The “phenomenal world” is simply our incorrect perception of the world. 

As Carl DuPrel has said, “The world beyond is this world, only perceived strangely.” It would be more accurate to say, that this world is the world beyond perceived strangely. 

Kant’s idea is quite correct, that the study of the phenomenal side of the world will not bring us any nearer to the understanding of “things-in-themselves.” The “thing-in-itself” — that is the thing as it exists in itself, independently of us. The “phenomenon of the thing” — that is the thing in such semblance as we perceive it. 

The example of a book in the hands of an illiterate savage shows us quite clearly that it is sufficient not to know about the existence of the noumenon of a thing (the contents of the book in this case) in order that it shall not manifest itself in phenomena. On the other hand, the knowledge of its existence is sufficient to make possible its discovery with the aid of the very phenomena which, without the knowledge of the noumenon, would be perfectly useless.

Just as it is impossible for a savage to attain to an understanding of the nature of a watch by a study of its phenomenal side — the number of wheels, and the number of teeth in each gear — so also for the positivistic scientist, studying the external, manifesting side of life, its secret raison d’etre and the aim of separate manifestations will be forever hidden. 

To the savage the watch will be an extremely interesting, complicated, but entirely useless toy. Somewhat after this manner a man appears to the scientist-materialist — a mechanism infinitely more complex, but equally unknown as regards the purpose for which it exists and the manner of its creation. 

We pictured to ourselves how incomprehensible the functions of a candle and of a coin would be for a plane-man, studying two similar circles on his plane. In like manner the functions of a man are incomprehensible to the scientist, studying him as a mechanism. The reason for this is clear. It is because the coin and the candle are not two similar circles, but two different objects, having an entirely different use and meaning in that world which is relatively higher than the plane — and man is not a mechanism, but something having an aim and meaning in the world relatively higher than the visible one. 

The functions of a candle and of a coin in our world are for the imaginary plane-man an inaccessible noumenon. It is evident that the phenomenon of a circle cannot give any understanding of the function of a candle, and its difference from the function of a coin. But two-dimensional knowledge exists not alone on the plane. Materialistic thought tries to apply it to real life. A curious result follows, the true meaning of which is, unhappily, incomprehensible to many people. One of such applications is “the economic man” — this is quite clearly the two-dimensional and flat being moving in two directions — those of production and consumption — i.e., living upon the plane of production-consumption. How is it possible to imagine man in general as such an obviously artificial being? And how is it possible to hope to understand the laws of the life of man, with his complex spiritual aspirations and his great impulse to know, to understand everything around about him and within himself — by studying the imaginary laws of the imaginary being upon an imaginary plane? The inventors of this theory alone possess the secret of the answer to this question. But the economic theory of human life attracts men as do all simple theories giving a short answer to a series of complicated questions. And we are ourselves too entangled in materialistic theories to see anything beyond them.

It is an error to regard the world as divided into phenomena and noumena. The “thing-in-itself” is the complete awareness of the thing when one is not identifying with it. Man cannot be understood just by his appearance or by materialistic economic theories.

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Positivistic science does not really deny the theory of phenomena and noumena, it only affirms, in opposition to Kant, that in studying phenomena we are gradually approaching to noumena. The noumena of phenomena science considers to be the motion of atoms and the ether, or the vibrations of electrons; it conceives of the universe as a whirl of mechanical motion or the field of manifestation of electro-magnetic energy taking on the “phenomenal tint” for us on their reception by the organs of sense. 

“Positivism” affirms that the phenomena of life and psychic phenomena are simply the functions of physical phenomena, that without physical phenomena the phenomena of life, thought and emotion cannot exist and that they represent only certain complex combinations of the foregoing; and furthermore that all these three kinds of phenomena are one and the same thing in substance — and the higher, i.e., the phenomena of life and of consciousness, are only different expressions of the lower, i.e., of one and the same physico-mechanical or electro-magnetic energy. 

But to all this it is possible to answer one thing. If it were true it would have been proven long ago. Nothing is easier than to prove the energetic hypothesis of life and the psyche. Just create life and thought by the mechanical method. Materialism and energetics are those “obvious” theories which cannot be true without proofs, because they cannot not have proofs if they contain even a little grain of truth. 

But there are no proofs at the disposition of these theories; quite the reverse: the infinitely greater potentiality of the phenomena of life and the psyche compared with physical phenomena assures us of the exact opposite. 

The simple fact, above shown, of the enormous liberating, unbinding force of psychic phenomena is sufficient to establish quite really and firmly the problem of the world of the hidden. 

And the world of the hidden cannot be the world of unconscious mechanical motion, of unconscious development of electro-magnetic forces. The positivistic theory admits the possibility of explaining the higher through the lower, the invisible through the visible. But it has been shown at the very beginning that this is the explanation of one unknown by another unknown. There is still less justification for explaining the known through the unknown. Yet that “lower” (matter and motion) through which the positivists strive to explain the “higher” (life and thought) is itself unknown. Consequently it is impossible to explain and define anything else in terms of it, while the higher, i.e., the thought, this is our sole known: it is this alone that we do know, that we are conscious of in ourselves, that we can neither mistake nor doubt. And if thought can evoke or unbind physical energy, and motion can never create or unbind thought (out of a revolving wheel no thought ever arose) so of course we shall strive to define, not the higher in terms of the lower, but the lower in terms of the higher. If the invisible, like the contents of a book or the purpose of a watch, defines by itself the visible, so also we shall endeavor to understand not the visible, but the invisible.

Starting from a false assumption concerning the mechanicality of the noumenal side of nature, positive science, upon which the view of the world of the intelligent majority of contemporary humanity is founded, makes still another mistake in regard to cause and effect, or the law of functions — that is, it mistakes what is cause, and what is effect.

A postulate that underlies the idea of matter is not materialistic itself. So the scientific theory, which says that the phenomena of life and psychic phenomena are simply the functions of physical phenomena, that without physical phenomena the phenomena of life, thought and emotion cannot exist, does not really make sense. The whole spectrum of substance (matter, radiation, thought) must come about together.

It will be interesting to understand the transition from spiritual (thought) to physical (matter), or physical (matter) to spiritual (thought), on the spectrum of substance. This transition must lie in the domain of radiation because spiritual radiation exists as aura around the body; whereas, we are familiar with light as physical radiation.

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Just as the two-dimensional plane-man thinks of all phenomena touching his consciousness as lying on one plane, so the positivistic method strives to interpret upon one plane all phenomena of different orders, i.e., to interpret all visible phenomena as the effects of antecedent visible phenomena, and as the inevitable cause of subsequent visible phenomena. In other words, it sees in causal and functional interdependence merely phenomena proceeding upon the surface, and studies the visible world, or the phenomena of the visible world, not admitting that causes can enter into this world which are not contained in it or that the phenomena of this world can possess functions extending beyond it. 

But this could be true only in case there were no phenomena of life and of thought in the world, or if the phenomena of life and thought were really derivatives from physical phenomena, and did not possess infinitely greater latent force than they. Then only should we have the right to consider the chains of phenomena in their physical or visible sequence alone, as positivistic philosophy does. But taking into consideration the phenomena of life and thought we shall inevitably recognize that the chain of phenomena often translates itself from a sequence purely physical to a biological sequence, i.e., one in which there is much of the hidden and invisible to us — or to a psychical sequence where there is even more of the hidden; but during reverse translations from biological and psychical spheres into physical sequences actions proceed often, if not always, from regions which are hidden from us; i.e., the cause of the visible is the invisible. In consequence of this we must admit that it is impossible to consider the chains of sequences in the world of physical phenomena only. When such a sequence touches the life of a man or that of a human society, we perceive clearly that it escapes from the “physical sphere” and returns into it. Regarding the matter from this standpoint we see that, just as in the life of one man and in the life of a society there are many streams, at times appearing on the surface and spouting up in boisterous torrents, and at other times disappearing deep underground, hidden from view, but only waiting for their moment to appear again on the surface, so do we observe in the world continuous chains of phenomena and we perceive how these chains shift from one order of phenomena to another without a break. We observe how the phenomena of consciousness — thoughts, feelings, desires — are accompanied by physiological phenomena — creating them perhaps —- and inaugurate a series of purely physical phenomena; and we see how physical phenomena, becoming the object of sensations of sight, hearing, touch, smell and the like, induce physiological phenomena, and then psychological. But looking at life from that side, we see only physical phenomena, and having assured ourselves that it is the only reality we may not notice the others at all. Herein appears the enormous power of suggestion in current ideas. To a sincere positivist any metaphysical argument proving the unreality of matter or energy seems sophistry. It strikes him as a thing unnecessary, disagreeable, hindering a logical train of thought, an assault without aim or meaning on that which in his opinion is firmly established, alone immutable, lying at the foundation of everything. He vexedly fans away from himself all “idealistic” or “mystical” theories as he would a buzzing mosquito.

But the fact is that thought and energy are different in substance and cannot be one and the same thing, because they are different sides of one and the same thing. For if we open the cranium of a living man in order to observe all the vibrations of the cells of the gray matter of the brain, and all the quivering white fibres, in spite of everything there will be merely motion, i.e., the manifestation of energy, and thought will remain somewhere beyond the limits of investigation, retreating like a shadow at every approach. The “positivist,” when he begins to realize this, feels that the ground is quaking underneath his feet, feels that by his method he will never approach to the thought. Then he sees clearly the necessity for a new method. As soon as he begins to think about it he begins quite unexpectedly to notice things around him which he did not see before. His eyes begin to open to that which he did not wish to see before. The walls which he had erected around himself begin to fall one after another, and behind the falling walls infinite horizons of possible knowledge, hitherto undreamed of, unroll before him.

Thereupon he completely alters his view of everything surrounding him. He understands that the visible is produced by the invisible; and that without understanding the invisible it is impossible to understand the visible. His “positivism” begins to totter and, if he is a man with a bold thought, then in some splendid moment he will perceive those things which he was wont to regard as real and true to be unreal and false, and those things regarded as false to be real and true. 

First of all he will see that manifested physical phenomena often hide themselves, like a stream that has gone underground. Yet they do not disappear altogether, but continue to exist in latent form in some minds, in someone’s memory, in the words or books of someone, just as the future harvest is latent in the seeds. And thereafter they again burst into light; out of this latent state they come into an apparent one, making a roar, reverberation, motion. 

We observe such transitions of the invisible into the visible in the personal life of man, in the life of peoples, and in the history of humanity. These chains of events go on continuously, interweaving among themselves, entering one into another, sometimes hidden from our eyes, and sometimes visible. 

I find an admirable description of this idea in the chapter on “Karma” in Light on the Path by Mabel Collins.

Consider with me that the individual existence is a rope which stretches from the infinite to the infinite, and has no end and no commencement, neither is it capable of being broken. This rope is formed of innumerable fine threads, which, lying closely together, form its thickness . . . and remember that the threads are living — are like electric wires; more, are like quivering nerves. . . . 

But eventually the long strands, the living threads which in their unbroken continuity form the individual, pass out of the shadow into the shine. . . . 

This illustration presents but a small portion — a single side of the truth: it is less than a fragment. Yet dwell on it; by its aid you may be led to perceive more. What it is necessary first to understand is not that the future is formed by any separate acts of the present, but that the whole of the future is in unbroken continuity with the present, as the present is with the past. In the plane, from one point of view, the illustration of the rope is correct.

The passages quoted show us that the idea of karma, developed in remote antiquity by Hindu philosophy, embodies the idea of the unbroken consecutiveness of phenomena. Each phenomenon, no matter how insignificant, is a link of an infinite and unbroken chain, extending from the past into the future, passing from one sphere into another, sometimes manifesting as physical phenomena, sometimes hiding in the phenomena of consciousness. 

If we regard karma from the standpoint of our theory of time and space of many dimensions, then the connection between distant events will cease to be wonderful and incomprehensible. If events most distant from one another in relation to time touch one another in the fourth dimension, this means that they are proceeding simultaneously as cause and effect, and the walls dividing them are just an illusion which our weak intellect cannot conquer. Things are united, not by time, but by an inner connection, an inner correlation. And time cannot separate those things which are inwardly near, following one from another. Certain other properties of these things force us to think of them as being separated by the ocean of time. But we know that this ocean does not exist in reality and we begin to understand how and why the events of one millennium can directly influence the events of another millennium. 

The hidden activity of events becomes comprehensible to us. We understand that the events must become hidden in order to preserve for us the illusion of time. 

We know this — know that the events of today were the ideas and feelings of yesterday — and that the events of tomorrow are lying in someone’s irritation, in someone’s hunger, in someone’s suffering, and possibly still more in someone’s imagination, in someone’s fantasy, in someone’s dreams. 

We know all this, yet nevertheless our “positive” science obstinately seeks to establish correlations between visible phenomena only, i.e., to regard each visible or physical phenomenon as the effect of some other physical phenomenon only, which is also visible. 

This tendency to regard everything upon one plane, the unwillingness to recognize anything outside of that plane, horribly narrows our view of life, prevents our grasping it in its entirety and taken in conjunction with the materialistic attempts to account for the higher as a function of the lower, appears as the principal impediment to the development of our knowledge, the chief cause of the dissatisfaction with science, the complaints about the bankruptcy of science, and its actual bankruptcy in many of its relations. 

The dissatisfaction with science is perfectly well grounded, and the complaints about its insolvency are entirely just, because science has really entered a cul de sac out of which there is no escape, and the official recognition of the fact that the direction it has taken is entirely the wrong one, is only a question of time.

In the human body the interplay among psychical, biological and physical phenomena is quite obvious. We can say that the whole spectrum of substance (from matter to radiation to thought) is quite active in the body. We simply have to look at it more closely.

At an elementary level, motion is an inherent aspect of substance. It is observed in Brownian motion, in the electrons around the nucleus, and in the rapid propagation of light. We may find a very complex motion present at the level of the DNA.

It appears that biological life may start with the profusion of electrons in a DNA molecule. The live electronic circuits thus formed can compute and control. The DNA molecules throughout the body communicate with each other at lightning speeds through the aura of radiation. Here we have the whole spectrum of substance in smooth operation.

The DNA molecules are capable of passing on the blueprint of the body, and thought programming, through uncountable generations in an unbroken chain. The whole complex system of life is, thus, capable of operating itself.

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We may say — not as an assumption, but as an affirmation — that the world of physical phenomena in itself represents the section, as it were, of another world, existing right here, and the events of which are proceeding right here, but invisibly to us. There is nothing more miraculous or supernatural than life. Consider the street of a great city, in all its details. An enormous diversity of facts will result. But how much is hidden underneath these facts of that which it is impossible to see at all! What desires, passions, thoughts, greed, covetousness; how much of suffering both petty and great; how much of deceit, falsity; how much of lying; how many invisible threads — sympathies, antipathies, interests — bind this street with the entire world, with all the past and with all the future. If we realize this imaginatively, then it will become clear that it is impossible to study the street by that which is visible alone. It is necessary to plunge into the depths. The complex and enormous phenomena of the street will not reveal its infinite noumenon, which is bound up both with eternity and with time, with the past and with the future, and with the entire world. 

Therefore we have a full right to regard the visible phenomenal world as a section of some other infinitely more complex world, manifesting itself at a given moment in the first one. 

And this world of noumena is infinite and incomprehensible for us, just as the three-dimensional world, in all its manifoldness of function, is incomprehensible to the two-dimensional being. The nearest approach to “truth” which is possible for a man is contained in the saying: everything has an infinite variety of meanings, and to know them all is impossible. In other words, “truth,” as we understand it, i.e., the finite definition, is possible only in a finite series of phenomena. In an infinite series it will certainly become its own opposite. 

Hegel has given utterance to this last thought: “Every idea, extended into infinity, becomes its own opposite.”

In this change of meaning is contained the cause of the incomprehensibility to man of the noumenal world. The substance of a thing, i.e., the thing-in-itself, contains an infinite quantity of meanings and functions of something which it is impossible to grasp with our mind. And in addition to this it involves a change of meaning of one and the same thing. In one meaning it represents an enormous whole, including within itself a great number of things; in another meaning it is an insignificant part of a great whole. Our mind cannot bind all this into one; therefore, the substance of a thing recedes from us according to the measure of our knowledge, just as a shadow flees before us. Light on the Path says: 

“You will enter the light, but you will never touch the flame.” 

This means, that all knowledge is relative. We can never grasp all the meanings of any one thing, because in order to grasp them all, it is necessary for us to grasp the whole world, with all the variety of meanings contained in it. 

The principal difference between the phenomenal and noumenal aspects of the world is contained in the fact that the first one is always limited, always finite; it includes those properties of a given thing which we can generally know as phenomena: the second, or noumenal aspect, is always unlimited, always infinite. And we can never say where the hidden functions and the hidden meanings of a given thing end. Properly speaking, they end nowhere. They may vary infinitely, i.e., may seem various, ever new from some new standpoint, but they cannot utterly vanish, any more than they can cease, come to an end. 

All that is highest to which we shall come in the understanding of the meaning, the significance, of the soul of any phenomenon, will again have another meaning, from another, still higher standpoint, in still broader generalization — and there is no end to it! In this is the majesty and the horror of infinity.

The new ideas introduced here that explain life at a fundamental level are:

1. The concept of SUBSTANCE that extends beyond matter.
2. The dimension of substance from matter to radiation to thought.
3. The presence of inherent motion in substance, which increases rapidly from matter to radiation to thought.
4. The DNA molecule having the capability of carrying programming and the ability to compute.
5. The aura of radiation that makes instantaneous coordination possible throughout the body; and, maybe, among a whole specie.

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Let us also remember that the world as we know it does not represent anything stable. It must change with the slightest change in the forms of our knowledge. Phenomena which appear to us as unrelated can be seen by some other more inclusive consciousness as parts of a single whole. Phenomena which appear to us as similar may reveal themselves as entirely different. Phenomena which appear to us as complete and indivisible, may be in reality exceedingly complex, may include within themselves different elements, having nothing in common. And all these together may be one whole in a category quite incomprehensible to us. Therefore, beyond our view of things another view is possible — a view, as it were, from another world, from “over there” from “the other side ”

Now “over there” does not mean some other place, but a new method of knowledge, a new understanding. And should we regard phenomena not as isolated, but bound together with inter-crossing chains of things and events, we would begin to regard them not from over here, but from over there.

Life has the property of ONENESS (continuity, consistency and harmony). The moment a change occurs, other changes occur instantly, such that the oneness is maintained throughout. When this process is interrupted, sickness and aberration results.

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