THE MYSTERY OF SPACE
The Thinker and the Ego--Increscent Automatism of the
Intellect--The Egopsyche and the Omnipsyche--Kosmic Order or
Geometrism--Life as Engendering Element--The Mystery of Space
Stated--Kathekos and Kathekotic Consciousness--Function of the
Ideal--The Path of Search for an Understanding of the Nature and
Extent of Space Must Proceed in an Inverse Direction.
The fragmentariness of the Thinker's outlook upon the universe of
spatiality is due to the inhibitive action set up by the constrictive
bonds which his complicate mechanism of intellectuality interposes
between himself and reality. The Thinker, who stands back of and uses
the various media of objective consciousness, such as the neural
mechanisms, brain, emotions, his individualized life-force and the
mind which together make up the instruments with which he contacts the
sensuous domain, by adapting his consciousness to these means, as the
artisan utilizes his tools, constitutes his own intellectuality. The
intellectuality, then, is the totality of media by which consciousness
effects its entrance into the sensuous world and by which it receives
impressions therefrom. In other words, it is the sum of all those
qualities, operations, processes and mechanisms which are recognized as
constituting the _modus vivendi_ of man's intellectuality, and these
are, in reality, nothing more than the ego himself.
Many have been inclined to regard that which has been called the
ego as the highest sovereign power in the state of manhood. He has
been looked upon as the final consideration in the constitution of
the human being. But the ego is an evolutionary product and the
concomitant of self-consciousness which is the I-making faculty in
man's psychic life. It is that quality of consciousness which makes
man conceive of himself as a separate, detached and independent being.
It is a purely intellectual or tuitional product, and, as such, is to
be differentiated from the intuitional or life-quality which is the
essence of man's real selfhood. With respect to the Thinker, the ego
occupies precisely the same status as the agent to his principal. As
the agent is the representative of the principal in all matters which
come within the scope of his prescribed jurisdiction so is the ego the
agent of the Thinker who is a spiritual intelligence. Accordingly,
from an ethical viewpoint the Thinker is responsible for the acts of
the agent and can in no wise escape the penalties accruing as a result
of the agent's violations. Just as a commercial firm sends out a
representative for the collection of data concerning certain phases of
its business or it may be of any business or the entire world market
so the Thinker projects his own consciousness into the mechanisms
which are in their totality the egoic life. That is, he sends out his
agent, the ego, into life and into the objective world of facts and
demands that he shall convey to him, from all points of the territory
which he is expected to cover, reports of his findings. Of course,
these reports which are transmitted by the ego (the intellectual
mechanism of the Thinker) are more or less well prepared summations
of his individual observations and deductions. These are the percepts
which the ego presents to the Thinker's consciousness. Concepts are
formed by the Thinker in his treatment of these sense-presentations.
It very frequently happens that the ego transmits reports which, for
one reason or another, give very imperfect knowledge of the matter
which his reports are designed to cover. Often it is necessary that
additional and supplemental reports be made about the same thing, and
even then, it is well-nigh impossible, if not quite so, for him fully
to cover every detail of the matter under consideration and in no case
is it possible for him to do more than report on the superficialities
of the question under scrutiny. If the ego, in his operations, be
imagined to be hampered by similar circumstances and difficulties as
those which would ordinarily beset a commercial attaché it will then
be clear that his reports must ever be fragmentary because of the
inaccessibility of much of the data which would be necessary for a full
report, and further, because of the inadequacy of his methods and means
of gathering data due to the inherent limitations of his capabilities,
endurance and perspicacity and innumerable other limitations and
difficulties which must be faced in all search for the real. So that,
while the sufficiency of the means which the ego enjoys at this stage
for all practical purposes is granted no hesitancy is entertained when
it comes to a discovery of the reals of knowledge in declaring their
insufficiency.
Then, too, when it is remembered that these egoic reports are in
the nature of neurographical communications which are similar to
telegraphic despatches and must pass through several stations, as
ganglia, etc., often being relayed from one to another, it will be
quite apparent that much, even of the original quality of the missives
forwarded, will have been lost or radically changed in some way before
it is finally delivered for the inspection of the Thinker himself. It
not infrequently happens, even in perfectly normal beings, that the
ego in filing, recording, transcribing, interpreting, translating and
otherwise preparing these data for the Thinker's use, lets a cog slip,
misplaces some of the data, loses or destroys fragments of it and so is
unable to maintain a complete portfolio of his materials.
As the Thinker is entirely dependent upon his agent, the ego, for
the trustworthiness of his information covering the matter of the
sensuous world it is obvious that at best his information is very
fragmentary indeed, and necessarily so when it is considered that the
_modus operandi_ of his agent and the difficulty of his operations are
so complicate as to magnify the obstructions in the way to complete
freedom in this regard.
To continue the similitude of principal and agent it may be asserted
that it is also true that the commercial house that sends out its
attaches frequently will send letters containing directions as to
procedure, sometimes censuring for past delinquencies and sometimes
commending for praiseworthy deeds; and this, too, in addition to the
original instructions which were given at the outset. It even comes to
pass that the home office, because of some meretricious accomplishment,
as the marked increase of efficiency shown by the agent's close
application to his duties and the consequent success of his operations,
confers certain favors upon the agent or removes some of the
restrictions which were originally imposed, gives an increase in salary
or promotes the agent to a higher and more lucrative office with larger
powers and greater authority. This is analogous to what the Thinker
does for the ego. For he not only receives reports from the ego, but
often, in the shape of intuitions, gives additional information as to
the proper manner of doing things, sheds more light upon some obscure
operation, commends for duty well performed, condemns for failures or
for wrong-doing, rewards arduous toil with greater powers of vision,
keener insight, greater capabilities; in fact, promotes the ego in the
sight of other egos by marking him out as an exceptional ego. But the
curious aspect of this procedure is that, in time and after the ego
has been repeatedly commended and promoted and otherwise favored by
the Thinker, he begins to think that he owns the firm, that he is the
life and main support of the whole corporation. He becomes arrogant,
self-willed and finally falls into the illusion that he alone is
responsible for the phenomenal success of the firm. This is the source
of that illusion of the intellect which makes itself think that it, the
ego, is all there is to man, that his instruments of operation in the
objective world are the only kind of instruments that may be used; that
his method of gathering data about things is the only safe and sure
method; and so it develops that the intellectuality is the source of
man's separateness, his individuality and his apparent aloofness from
other men and things. It is, of course, needless to point out that in
this way the intellect comes to be the tyrant of man, ruling with a
rigid monopoly and as an all-exclusive autocracy.
From the above implications it would appear that the intellect and the
intuitive faculty are two separate and distinct processes, and so they
are. One is the inverse of the other. The tendence of the egoic life or
the intellect is for the external while the intuition is an internal
process. The intellect acts from without towards the interior while the
intuition acts from within outward. The intellect is the product of the
intuition which is another term for the consciousness of the Thinker on
his own plane. Just as the child lives a separate and distinct, though
dependent, life from the parents so the intellect has a _modus vivendi_
which is distinct and separate from that of the Thinker, and yet it is
in all points dependent upon the life of the Thinker. Here again, we
find an analogy in the relation of the child to the parent. As some
children are more amenable to the will of the parent than others,
so, in some persons, the intellect is more amenable to the action of
the intuition than in others. Yet it is a certain fact that the more
the outward life is governed by the intuition, i.e., the more the
intellect responds to the intuitive faculty of the Thinker, the higher
the order of the life of the ego and the more accurate his decisions
and judgments. In fact, it assuredly may be asserted that the place
of every individual in the scale of evolution is determined in a very
large measure by the degree of agreement between the intuition and the
intellect or by the ease with which the intuition may operate through
the intellect as a medium. At least, the quality of one's life may be
determined directly by these considerations.
The Thinker being himself a pure spiritual intelligence, living upon
the plane of spirit and therefore unhampered by the difficulties
which the ego meets in his operations in the objective sensorium, and
possessed of far greater knowledge, is correspondingly free from the
limitations of the ego and very naturally closer to kosmic realities.
Hence, he is better situated for the procurement of correct notions
of relations, essentialities and the like. It is believed, therefore,
that in the proportion that these two processes, the intellectual and
the intuitional, are brought, in the course of evolution, to a closer
and more rigid agreement, in the proportion that the Thinker is able
to transmit the intuitograms in the shape of concepts or that the
intuition is made more and more conceptual, in just that proportion is
humanity becoming perfect and its evolution complete. The difficulty
found to inhere in the conceptualization of intuitions so that they may
be propagated from man to man seems not to lie in the Thinker himself,
but more essentially in the ego, in the intellectuality and its
complicate schematism or plan of action. It would appear, therefore,
that the only way of escaping or transcending this difficulty is for
the ego so to refine his vehicles or so facilitate his plan of action
by eliminating the numerous relays or sub-stations intervening between
the consciousness of the Thinker and that which may be said to be his
own that the transmission of intuitograms may be accomplished with
the greatest ease and clearness. While no attempt will be made to
indicate the probable line of action which the ego or objective man
will adopt for this purpose, it is believed that it may be said without
pedanticism that the only true method of attaining unto this much
desired state of things is, first of all, by assuming a sympathetic
attitude not only towards the question of the intuition itself but
to all phenomena which are an outgrowth of, or incident to, the
manifestations of the intuitive faculty through the intellectuality,
and second, by the practice of prolonged abstract thought, this latter
procedure effecting a suspension of the intellectuality temporarily
at the same time allowing it to experience an undisturbed contact
with the intuitional consciousness, thereby laying the basis for
future recognition of its nature and quality. It would seem that
these two conditions are absolutely necessary in order that a more
congruent relationship may be promoted between these two cognitive
faculties. Ordinarily, it would appear that the philosopher who is
undoubtedly inured to the necessities of continuous abstraction or
the mathematician whose most common tasks naturally fall in this
category would be among all men most apt to develop to the point of
conceptualizing intuitograms readily, yet it seems that this is not
the case. And there is good reason for it. The mind of the philosopher
and the mathematician is intellectual rather than intuitional and is,
therefore, wedded to matter, to the action and reaction of matter
against matter and hence operating in a direction at variance with the
trend of an intuitional mind. And this condition is undoubtedly due to
a lack of a sympathetic attitude towards this species of consciousness.
At any rate, it is thought that a too great anxiety in this respect
need not be entertained by humanity at all, for the reason that in
the case of a faculty, the rudimentary outcroppings of which are so
marked and universally observable and existing in greater or lesser
degrees in various human beings, there is ample evidence for the
belief that it is being carefully and duly promoted by a well-directed
evolution of psychic faculties and powers, so that at the proper time,
determinable by the state of perfection reached by the intellectuality
or the ego in the operation of his cognitive processes, the much
desired agreement of these two faculties will have been realized and
the conceptualization of intuitograms into propagable conceptions an
accomplished fact. Until this goal shall have been reached and the
intuition shall have overshadowed the intellect as the intellect now
overshadows the intuition; or the consciousness of the ego, derived
from the interplay of the Thinker's consciousness among the various
elements which constitute the ego himself, shall have been merged with
that of the Thinker, the outlook must remain fragmentary, only becoming
a well-ordered whole as the barriers of dissidence are broken down in
succession.
The evolution of consciousness, from the simple, undifferentiated
_moneron_ to the differentiated cell and from that to the cell-colony
and from the cell-colony to the organism, traversing in successive
paces through all the stages of lower life--mineral, vegetable and
animal--to the stages of the simple, communal consciousness of the
higher animals, to the self or individual consciousness of the human
being, each requiring millions of years for its perfection before a
more advanced stage is entered, has been one continuous relinquishment
of the lower and less complicate for the higher and more complex
expression of itself through the given media. When a newer and higher
stage of consciousness is being entered by humanity its appearance
or manifestation is first made in the most advanced of the race and
that only in a dim, vague way. This rudimentary condition persists
for some time, perhaps many thousands of years, then the faculty
becomes more general in appearance, the number of advanced individuals
increases, and consequently, as in the case of the intuitive faculty,
it becomes universally prevalent in all humanity; becomes transmissible
as so-called "acquired characters," and then appears as the normal
faculty of the entire human family cropping out in each individual.
Thus, in passing from the few advanced ones in the beginning to that
stage where it becomes the common possession of all, a faculty requires
many thousands of years for its perfection, and especially has this
been true in the past history of the development of human faculties.
But it is believed that the sweep of the life current as it proceeds
from form to form, from faculty to faculty, gains in momentum as it
proceeds, so that in these latter years due to the already highly
developed vehicular mechanisms at its disposal not so great a period
of time as formerly is required for the _out-bringing_ of a new
faculty. It might well be that while in the past hundreds of thousands
of years were necessary in the perfection of organs and faculties,
in these latter days only a few thousand, perhaps hundreds, may be
necessary and that in the days of the future not even so many years
may be required to universalize a faculty. And especially does this
appear to be true in a state of affairs where so large a number of
persons are beginning consciously to take their evolution in hand and
by volitional activities are supplying greatly increased impetus to
their psychic processes which under ordinary, natural methods would
be considerably slower in their development. It is quite obvious that
all cultural efforts when applied to the betterment of a given plant,
animal or faculty result in a corresponding hastening of the process of
growth far in excess of what that growth would be under normal, natural
conditions. All the present faculties possessed by man are remarkably
susceptible to cultural influences; in fact, the standing edict of
ethical and social law is that the human faculties must be cultivated
as highly as possible, thereby giving the spirit a more perfect medium
of expression. These observations, therefore, lead irresistibly and
unavoidably to the conclusion that the time for the upspringing of
the intuitional faculty in the human organism is even now upon us,
that undoubtedly in certain very advanced ones it has already reached
a notable degree of perfection and is rather more general than would
appear in the absence of careful investigation.
Now, just as the intellect has made for individuality, has emphasized
the separateness of the Thinker's existence from that of other
thinkers, has developed self-consciousness to a very high degree, even
pushing it far over into the domain of the higher consciousness to the
temporary obscuration of the latter, so the intuitional will make for
union, for the brotherhood of man, for co-operation and for the common
weal. Through it man will come gradually into the consciousness that
fundamentally, in his inner nature, in every respect of vital concern,
he is at-one with his fellowmen and not only with the apparent units
of life but with all life as expressed in whatsoever form throughout
the universe. Then, too, he will be closer to the reality of things,
of actions and natural processes; in fine, he will have begun the
development of the space-mind which will bring him to the knowledge
that he is one with space also and, therefore, with the divine life of
the world.
One of the peculiarities of the vital force which shows itself in
the consciousness as man's intellect, is its growing _automatism_,
or that tendency which enables the consciousness to perform its
functions automatically and thus allow opportunity for the development
of newer and higher faculties. Actions, oft repeated, tend to become
automatic. This is also true of thought and consciousness. It is one
of the beneficent results of abstract thought that it develops, or
tends to develop, a kind of automatism whereby a marked saving in time
and energy is effected. This affords opportunity for other things.
It is undoubtedly true that in the days of the truly primitive man
his consciousness was more completely engaged in the execution of
the ergonic functions of cells, organs and tissues; that all those
processes which are now said to be involuntary and reflexive were
at one time, in the distant past of man's evolution, the results of
conscious volitions. This is a condition which must have preceded
even the development of the intellect itself. Indeed, there could be
no intellect in a state where the entire modicum of consciousness was
being utilized in the performance of cellular and histologic functions.
The rise of the intellect must have been in direct ratio to the
development of automatism among the cells, tissues and organs, so that
as these came gradually to perform their special labors reflexively
the intellect began to be formulated and to grow, at first only
incipiently, then more and more completely until it reached its present
state. At the present stage of its evolution, a great deal of the
labor of the intellect is beginning to fall into a kind of increscent
automatism, although only rudimentarily, in many instances. Yet, as a
result of this tendency, quite the whole of the phenomena of perception
is characterized by a sort of automatic action. And the mind perceives
without conscious volition. Many of the steps of conceptualization
are automatic, in part, if not wholly. Certain it is that impulses
once set in operation whether consciously or unconsciously continue
to act along the same line until exhausted or until the end has
been attained. Consequently, it is a proven fact that often serious
mathematical and philosophic problems have been solved by the mind long
after any conscious effort to solve them had ceased. Often solutions
have been arrived at during sleep. Many such cases might be cited, but
the phenomenon is now so common that almost every one can cite some
experience in his own life that will substantiate the claim.
There is no doubt but that these phenomena are evidences of a reflexive
development in the intellect. The time will come undoubtedly, and
necessarily so if the intellect is to give way to a higher faculty,
which shall be as much above the intellect in its grasp of things
as the intellect is now above the simple consciousness of the lower
animal, when quite the entirety of our intellectual processes will
become automatic or self-performing. What then remains of the egoic
schematism, after its transmutation or elevation as the organ of
the intuitional consciousness will be utilized as the organ of the
Thinker's involuntary cognitive processes. This will mean that all
of that laborious ideation which is now the abstract thought of the
Thinker will be performed automatically, leaving the higher aspect
of the egoic consciousness free to conceptualize or intuitograph
the intuitions. Perceptualization then will be replaced by
conceptualization. This latter will occupy about the same status as the
former does now. And necessarily, perception will become more complex.
In other words, while we now perceive simple percepts which are again
arranged into concepts making a composite picture of the object, we
shall then be taking in the composite picture of the object at first
hand, thereby dispensing with the rather slow process of perception as
it now operates. We shall still be perceiving, but what we perceive
will be concepts rather than percepts, as at present.
The increased powers of intellection gained as a result of the
increscent _automatism_ in the intellect, the flowering forth of
the intuitive faculty and the general enhancement of the intellect
throughout all its processes will enable it to entertain concepts or
composite picture of things just as readily and as perfectly as it can
at present deal with a single percept. Concepts will be replaced by
super-concepts or intuitographs. Increased perspicacity will enable the
Thinker to manipulate the concepts and intuitographs with the same ease
and readiness and withal the mind will have attained unto an almost
unrealizable freedom in its search after truth.
The outcome of this new adjustment which, of course, will not spring
up at once, but by insensible degrees, will be the clarification and
unification of our knowledge. It will mean also the simplification
of it; the obviation of diversities of opinions, the springing up of
a new and winnowed system of philosophy which shall be the true one;
further, it will imply the lessening of the probability of error in our
judgments and conclusions; the removal of illusion to a much larger
degree than to-day is possible and the realization by every one of
something of the essence of things, of causes and effects, of actions,
operations, natural forces and laws; in fact, a condition of mind
which will present to the consciousness the simple truth above every
conceivable phase of kosmic life which may come within the scope of the
Thinker's observation.
The further implications of this view are that there is a difference
between the Thinker and the intellectuality. The Thinker is eternal
and partakes, therefore, of the very essence of primordial originality
while the mentality is an artificial process, the resultant of the
adaptation of the Thinker's consciousness to his vehicular contrivances
of objective cognition and the interplay of his life among them.
If the appearance of a choppy sea disturbed by the passage of a brisk
breeze over its surface be imagined, a similitude of the great ocean
of life may be envisaged. The wavelet crests symbolize the egos; the
base of the wavelet which is one with the great sea of water represents
the Thinker which is one with the divine life and consciousness of
the kosmos. Just as wavelet crests are continually springing up and
falling back into the sea, so are egos continually being cast forth
and reabsorbed into the universality of life only to be recast, as a
wavelet crest or ego, upon the surface of the moving ocean of life.
_And so, in this respect, the universum of life and consciousness
which are essentially one is in a constant state of ever-becoming,
un-becoming and re-becoming._
Another implication is that, on account of the diversity and complexity
of the means of contact with the external world, it is not possible for
the ego to arrive at more than a fragmentary understanding of even the
latent geometrism of life, mind and materiality. In our examination
of the sensuous world, we are very much like the three blind men set
to examining an elephant. One set to scrutinizing his trunk by means
of his sense of feeling. When asked for his judgment as to what the
elephant was he declared it was a snake; a second who began with the
legs found it to be like huge pillars; and a third who caught hold of
the elephant's tail and declared the elephant to be like a rope. Each
one of the blind men described what he was able to perceive. To each
what he felt was all there was upon which he could render judgment. And
so, artists, philosophers, mathematicians, musicians, mechanicians,
religious seers, metaphysicians and all other types of mind, are
just so many blind men set to the examination of an elephant, or the
sensuous world. Each one confidently believes his view to be correct;
each one is satisfied with the deliveries of his senses. Yet no one
of them is wholly correct, no one of them has seen every phase and
aspect of the problem. Does it not, therefore, appear to be the more
reasonable and urgent that the view which synthesizes the judgments of
all the possible examiners thereby constructing a composite idea of
the entire mass of judgments is the more reliable and the more correct?
Referring again to the dual intelligence, the ego and the Thinker,
which together constitute man, it is deemed necessary, in order to
present the concept of this duality to the mind of the reader in the
way that shall enable him easily to recall it, to designate the egoic
intelligence as the _egopsyche_, and the Thinker's intelligence as the
_omnipsyche_.
The egopsyche is the I-making faculty, the faculty of
self-consciousness and the synthesis of all those psychic states and
functions known as the intellect or mind and includes the ethical
aspect of man's nature. The omnipsyche is the organism of kosmic
consciousness, the space-mind, or man's higher self and that which
connects with or allies him to all life; it is the basis of human
unity and of unity with divinity, just as the egopsyche is the basis
of separation and individuality; it is the organ of direct and
instantaneous cognition and the permanent essence which has persisted
through every form which the being, man, has ever assumed and through
every stage of human evolution. In it are stored up the memories of
the Thinker's past, the secrets of life, mind, being, reality, and the
history of life from the beginning; in it also the plan of action for
the future of the life-wave as it passes from plane to plane, from
stage to stage, and from form to form. It is the spark from the flame
that is never quite free from its source; it is the continuous spark,
the prolonged ray which does not go out and cannot be extinguished. It
is that in man which when full union therewith has been attained makes
him a god in full consciousness.
The omnipsyche is really a neglected and overlooked factor in the
doctrine of evolution. Evolutionists, while they claim life to be
continuous and that man has come through all the kingdoms of nature in
succession and has spent millions of years in the perfection of his
various organs, faculties and stages of consciousness, make no ample
allowance for what is in reality the basal element in evolution--a
continuous, persisting, permanent life-force which does not lose its
identity from the beginning to the end of the process. This fact--that
that spark of life which set out upon the evolutionary journey as a
moneron has glowed steadily from that stage to manhood, maintaining
meantime its original purposiveness and intent--seems to be the most
obvious consideration of the whole doctrine, yet it has been more or
less completely ignored. The elementary requirements of evolution
would seem to establish clearly the necessity for some such eternally
persisting principle as the omnipsyche which is capable of such subtle
adaptations to every conceivable form of life and in which should be
gathered up the evolutionary results of every life-cycle. For this
purpose the omnipsyche or unifying principle in man was designed
from the beginning and it is that which constitutes the basis of his
intellectual nature while in a far larger sense it is the divinity in
man himself. It is indeed strange that so important a factor as the
omnipsyche should have been omitted by evolutionists. Yet it can be
accounted for upon the grounds of the purely mechanistic character
of all intellectual attempts at solving the problems of vital
manifestations. But so long as men rely upon mechanical explanations
of such phenomena so long will they be prone to overlook the very
essentialities of the problems which they devoutly wish to solve.
The continuity of the physical germ-plasm of the human species,[27]
now quite generally admitted, would suggest, it seems, an analogous
condition to the continuity of the psychic plasm called the omnipsyche,
the only difference being that the omnipsyche is an intelligent
factor while the physical plasm is a medium of transmission though
non-intelligent. The omnipsyche is, therefore, the psychic reservoir
of evolution into which are stored the transmuted psychics of moneron,
amoeba, jellyfish and every other form which it has ensouled and acts
as the storeroom of man's psychic operations as well as the source of
his intellectuality.
We turn now from the study of a sketch of the mechanism of man's
consciousness which gives at its best only a fragmentary view of the
universe of spatiality to a consideration of space itself in the light
of its interrelational bearings upon the question of intellectuality.
[27] See _The Germ Plasm; A Theory of Heredity_, by A. WEISSMAN.
In the chapter on the "Genesis and Nature of Space" we have, in
tracing out the engenderment of space, proved it to be basically one
with matter (and indeed the progenitor of matter), also with life and
consciousness. Further, it has been shown that all the characteristics
of materiality are due to the adaptation of consciousness to it
and that out of this adaptation grew the intellectuality. A close
approximation to this view was maintained by KANT when he discovered
that our faculty of thinking or the intellect only finds again in
matter the mathematical order or properties which our faculty of
perceiving or consciousness has deposed there. It appears, therefore,
that when the intellect approaches matter or spatiality it finds always
a ready yieldance to its demands simply because intellectuality has
previously established therein the delineation or map of the path
over which it necessarily must traverse in its examination of the
object of its pursuit. In other words, the kosmic mind in engendering
materiality and spatiality has set up therein a kosmic order or
geometrism. Both motor and intellectual progress, therefore, can be
made through the world of spatiality because of the immanence of this
kosmic geometrism which lies latent in the very fabric of the world of
substance fashioning both the character and the nature of the intellect
as well as of space itself. So that there is a perfect congruity
subsisting between spatiality and intellectuality. Accordingly it is
impossible for either one or the other to transcend the grim grasp of
the mathematical order which binds them in such lasting and fundamental
agreement. Extra-spatiality may degrade itself into spatiality,
and indeed in the very nature of the case, does so degrade itself,
yet spatiality can never raise itself beyond the limits set by its
engendering parent. Materiality may become more and more spatialized
and consciousness more and more intellectualized, but they must proceed
hand-in-hand one not superseding the other.
Being the essence of the natural geometry which is everywhere immanent
in the universum of matter, space becomes an organized and ordered
extension, in fact is the totality of such organized and ordered
extension, which conforms to the latent geometrism the engenderment of
which it is the sole cause in the last analysis. Does it not appear
then that all that mass of artificial geometry which has sprung
up as a result of departures made from this natural geometry is
utterly baseless and most certainly lacking in the kosmic agreement
which spatiality lends to our primary conceptions? Of course, it is
admittedly possible to devise certain conventional forms of logic and
endow them with all the evidences of a rigid consistency but which,
because of their purely artificial character, will fall far short
of any real conformity to the potential geometrism which has been
established in spatiality. And this fact is of utmost significance for
all those who seek to find justification either logically or naturally
for the existence of a multi-dimensional quality in space; for, if a
clear, discriminative conception as to the categorical relationship,
each to each, of the two kinds of geometry be carried in mind, it will
not be easy to confound them neither will it be difficult to discern
where the one ends and the other begins.
Now, the fourth dimension and the entirety of those mathematical
speculations touching upon the question of hyperspace, dimensionality,
space-curvature and the manifoldness of space are purely conventional
and arbitrary contrivances and do not meet with any agreement or
authority in the native geometrism which we find inhering in space
and which the intellect recognizes there. This conclusion seems to be
obvious for the reason that, in the first place, the non-Euclidean
geometries have been constructed upon the basis of a negation of
the latent geometrism of space and intellectuality; and if so, is it
reasonable to expect that either they or any of their conclusions
should accord with the nature of that form of geometry so admirably
delineated by EUCLID? Obviously not. It is a matter of historical
knowledge that the whole of the artificial non-Euclidean geometries
consists of those purely conventional results which investigators
arrived at when they denied or controverted the norms supplied by the
natural geometry. When metageometricians found that they could neither
prove nor disprove the Euclidean parallel-postulate they then set
upon the examination of idealized constructions which negatived the
postulate. The results, thus obtained, although self-consistent enough,
were compiled into systems of geometry which naturally were at variance
with each other and with this inherent geometrism which is found in
spatiality and answered to by the intellect both normally and logically.
Furthermore, there is another consideration which to us seems to be
equally if not more forbidding, in its objections to the coördination
of the two systems of geometry, and that is the fact that the geometry
of hyperspace is denied the corroborative testimony of experience
and this is true of practically the whole of its data. Indeed, there
is perhaps no single element in its entire constitution which claims
the authority of experience. This is undoubtedly the weakest point in
the structure of the hyperspatial geometries. Contrarily, such is not
the case with the natural geometry; for, in this, the intellect in
retracing its steps over the path laid out by that movement which has
at the same time created both the intellect and spatiality, finds an
orderly and commodious arrangement into which it naturally and easily
falls. So exact is this agreement of the intellect with the kosmic
order that if it were possible to remove the whole of spatiality and
materiality there would still be left the frame work which is this
latent geometrism of kosmogenesis. But the fact that the intellect
naturally fills all the interstices of materiality and spatiality,
fitting snugly into all of them as if molded for just that purpose, by
no means warrants the assumption that it would or does also fit the
engendering factor which has created these interstices. The frame work,
the order or the geometrism of the kosmos has been established by life
acting consciously upon the universum of materiality. And in order to
establish this geometrism life had to be mobile, active, creative. It
could not remain static, immobile, and accomplish it. Being mobile,
dynamic, creative, it passes on. It is like a fashioning tool which
the cabinet makers use in cutting out designs upon a piece of wood. It
moves, and keeps moving until the design is finished, and then it is
ready for more designing. Life is like that. It cuts out the designs
in materiality, fashions the form, molds the material, and passes on
to other forms. The intellect fits into these designs gracefully. But
what it finds is not life itself, only the design which life has made.
Hence, as there is neither an empirical spatiality nor materiality in
conformity with which the artificial geometry of the analyst may be
said to exist, and as it may not be said to conform to the path which
life has made in passing through either of these, it is absurd to
predicate it upon the same basis as the natural geometry. And so, we
are forced, in the light of these considerations to deny the validity
and hence the acceptability of the non-Euclidean geometries as either
reasonable or warrantable substitutes for the Euclidean, and denying
which we also formally ignore the claims of the fourth dimension, as
mathematically designed, to any legitimate anchorage in either our
vital or intellectual movements.
It has been shown that the flow of life, as it describes that movement
which we call evolution, engenders simultaneously and consubstantially
spatiality, materiality and intellectuality, and these, in turn, the
natural order or geometrism everywhere immanent in the universe; and
that automatically, one out of the other and each out of the all,
these constitute the totality of kosmic fundamentals. Also we have
sketched the mechanism of man's consciousness and discovered how,
in its evolutionary development it has divided into two aspects,
the egopsychic and the omnipsychic, and these two factors ally him
definitely and adequately to the world of the senses and to the world
of supersensuous cognitions. And thus we have cleared up some of the
misconceptions which had to be confronted and made more easy the
approach to the central idea, thereby conserving the substantiating
influence which a general and more comprehensive view of the whole
would naturally give.
_The totality of kosmic order is space. It is circumscribed by an
orderless envelope of chaos just as the germ of an egg is surrounded
by the egg-plasm. The organized kosmos is the germ, kernel or central,
nucleated mass, enduring in a state of becoming. Involutionary
kathekos or primordial chaos is the egg-plasm which nourishes the
germ or the kosmos and is that out of which the germ evolves.
Kathekos or chaos is the unmanifest, unorganized, unconditioned,
unlimited and undifferentiated plasm. Space is the manifest,
limited, finite, organized germ that, feeding upon the enveloping
chaos, exists in a perpetual state of alternate manifestation
and non-manifestation--appearing, disappearing and reappearing
indefinitely._
The appearance of the kosmos as an orderly elaboration of the
involutionary phase of kosmogenesis, in so far as kosmic order may
be said to be an accomplished fact, marked the turning point in that
procedure whose function it was to make manifest a universe possessing
certain definite characteristics of orderliness; but the kosmos, as it
now stands, may not be thought of as having attained unto a state of
ultimate orderliness. The idea meant to be conveyed is that between
the point of becoming and the actually pyknosed, or solidified stage
in the process of creation there is a more or less well defined line
of demarkation cutting off that which is spatiality from that which
is non-spatiality. Beyond the limits of spatiality is an absence of
geometric order. Here geometry breaks down, becomes impotent, because
it is an intellectual construction; at least, it is not so apparent
as in the manifested kosmos. It is a state about which it is utterly
futile to predicate anything; because no words can describe it. The
most that may be said is that it is absence of geometric order as it
inheres in space. And if so, all those movements comprehended under
the general notions of spatiality, materiality, intellectuality and
geometricity have both their extensive and detensive or inverse
movements nullified in their approach to it. Involutionary _Kathekos_,
therefore, may be said to be the primordial wilderness of disorder
which outskirts the well laid-out and carefully planned garden of
the spatial universe. We may excogitate upon some of the obvious
functions of this kathekotic world-plasm; but in doing so we must leave
off all attempts at a description of its appearance, its magnitude,
extent or other qualities, and think only of its kosmic function.
We cannot say that there is back of it a spatiality nor can we say
that it is a spatiality; for whatever may be its extent or volume,
it suffices that it may not be said to be space. It is chaos. Space
is order, organization, geometricity. It cannot be said that there
is a latent geometrism in chaos; because geometric order is found
only in spatiality and is that which distinguishes spatiality from
kathekosity or non-spatiality. Chaos is the lack of spatiality. This,
of course, implies that it is impenetrable to the intellectuality or to
vitality. All inverse movement such as is discovered as taking place
in spatiality and which results in the phenomenalization of space runs
aground when it strikes against the rock-bound coast of kathekosity.
We can only say that it is both the point of origin for the evolving
universe of life and form and its terminus. It is the nebulosity out of
which the whole came and into which all is ultimately occluded.
A great and far-reaching error is made in all our thinking with respect
to the kosmogonic processes when we postulate the complete absorption
of chaos as an early act of kosmogony. Customarily, we think of kosmic
chaos as a primordial condition whose existence was done away as soon
as the universe came into active manifestation. This because it has
been exceedingly difficult, if not quite impossible, for those whose
privilege it was to determine the trend of philosophic thought to free
themselves from the bondage of a dogma which owed its existence to
a traditional or legendary interpretation of facts that ought never
have been so interpreted. Chaos IS and EVER SHALL BE, so long as the
universe itself lacks completion, fullness or perfection in purpose,
extent and possibility. It is undoubtedly being diminished, however,
in proportion as the kosmos is approaching absolute perfection. And
when the last vestige of chaos disappears from the outerskirts of
the maturing kosmos there shall appear a _glorified universe_ of
indescribable qualities.
Space being a perception _a priori_ cannot be determined wholly by
purely objective methods. The yard-stick, the telescope and the
light-year are objects which belong exclusively to the phenomenal and
with them alone never can we arrive at a true conception of the nature
of space. We can no more demonstrate the nature of space by the use
of objective instruments and movements than we can measure the spirit
in a balance. Certainly, then, it cannot be hoped that by taking the
measurement of space-distances in light-years, or studying the nature
of material bodies, we shall be able to fathom this most objectively
incomprehensible and ineluctable thing which we call space. It is such
that every Thinker must, in his own inner consciousness, come into the
realization of that awfully mysterious something which is the nature
of space both as to existence and extent by his own subjective efforts
unaided, uncharted and alone. When we measure, weigh, apportion and
otherwise try to determine a thing we are dealing with the phenomenal
which is no more the thing itself than a shadow is the object which
casts it.
What does it matter that metageometricians shall be able to
demonstrate that space exhibits itself to the senses in a four-or
_n_-dimensional manner? Granting that they may be able to do this,
if merely for the sake of the discussion, when they have finished,
it will not be space that they have determined, but the phenomena
of space, its arborescence, while space itself remain indeterminate
and unapproachable by phenomenal methods. If there are curvature,
manifoldness and _n_-dimensionality these are not properties of space,
but of intellectuality in its cultured state and when it is, therefore,
removed from the native state of conception. Scientists may be able to
weigh the human body, count every cell, name and describe every nerve,
muscle and fiber; they may even be able to know it in every conceivable
part and from every physical angle and relationship, and yet know
nothing of the life which vitalizes that body and makes it appear the
phenomenal thing that it is. So it is not by instruments which man may
devise that we shall be able to determine the true nature and purpose
of space. We must adopt other methods and means and assume other
angles of approach than the purely objective in order to comprehend
space which, being the sole inherent aspect of consciousness, can be
understood best by applying the measures which the latter provides for
its understanding. It would appear, therefore, that the best study of
space is the consciousness itself, knowing which we shall know space.
The universum of space, including the phenomenal universe, and its
relation to consciousness may be likened to a conical funnel whose
base represents the phenomenal world of the senses and whose apex or
smallest point represents ultimate reality.
In Figure 20, we have endeavored to symbolize graphically this
conception of space. The base marked "Sensorium" represents the
sensible world. That marked "Realism" symbolizes the ultimate
plane of reality, the inner essence of the world, the plane of
"things-in-themselves."
The cone arising from the base "sensorium" symbolizes the objective
world as compared with consciousness; the subverted cone, with apex in
the sensorium, represents the evolving human consciousness.
The successive bases have the following symbology: Self-consciousness,
Communal Consciousness, Mikrocosmic Consciousness, Makrokosmic or
Universal Consciousness, the Plane of the Space-Mind Consciousness,
Divine Consciousness, Kathekotic Consciousness, or the Plane of Final
Union with the Manifest Logos.
Self-consciousness is that form of consciousness which enables the
ego to become aware of himself as distinguished from other selves or
the Not-self; the Omnipsychic or Communal Consciousness is that form
of consciousness from which arises the realization by the Thinker of
his oneness with all other thinkers and with other forms of life.
Mikrocosmic consciousness denotes a still higher form of consciousness,
as that which enables the Thinker to become conscious of his living
identity with the life of the world or the planet on which he lives.
It represents a stage in the expansion of consciousness when it
becomes one with the consciousness of the planet upon which it may
be functioning. Makrokosmic consciousness accomplishes the awareness
of the Thinker's unity with the life of the kosmos or universe. The
space-mind and the consciousness which constitutes it enable the
Thinker to comprehend the originality and the terminality of kosmic
processes. It is archetypal so far as the life-cycle of the universe
is concerned because the beginning, the intermediate portion and the
ending of the kosmos are encompassed within it. Divine consciousness
is that form of consciousness which arises upon the unification of the
Thinker's consciousness with that of the manifest deity; it is, in
fact, omniscience. The kathekotic consciousness belongs to the ultimate
plane of reality; to kosmic origins and chaogeny, and therefore,
pertains to the plane of non-manifestation.
[Illustration: FIG. 20.--Kosmos and Consciousness]
The implications are that in comparison with the sensorium, the
Thinker's consciousness is a mere point in space. It is, in reality,
so small and insignificant that the extensity of the physical world
or universe seems unlimited, unfathomable in meaning and infinite in
extent. But as his consciousness expands, as it passes, in evolutionary
succession from one plane of reality to another and higher one,
the illimitability, the incomprehensibility and infinity of the
universe grow ever smaller and smaller, until the plane of divine
consciousness is reached. Then the previously incomprehensible dwindles
into insignificance, lost in the real illimitability, infinity and
unfathomability of consciousness itself. Kosmic psychogenesis, as
exhibited and specialized for the purposes of the evolution of the
Thinker, can have no other destiny than the flowering forth as the _ne
plus ultra_ of manifestation which is nothing short of unification
with the highest form of consciousness existent in the kosmos.
It is not to be considered really that the scope of space is diminished
but that the growing, expanding consciousness of the Thinker will
so reduce the relative extension of it that illimitability will be
swallowed up in its extensity. Consciousness, in becoming infinite
in comprehension, annihilates the imaginary infinity of space.
Accordingly, that which now appears to be beyond mental encompassment
undergoes a corresponding diminution in every respect as the
consciousness expands and becomes more comprehensive. _The mystery
of space decreases as the scope of consciousness increases._ As the
Thinker's consciousness expands the extensity of the manifested
universe decreases. Thus the mystery of every aspect of kosmic life
lessens, and fades away, as the intimacy of our knowledge concerning it
becomes more and more complete. There is no mystery where knowledge is.
Mysteriousness is a symbol of ignorance or unconsciousness, and that
which we do not understand acts as a Flaming Sword keeping the way of
the Temple of Reality lest ignorance break in and despoil the treasures
thereof.
Figure 21 is a graph showing a sectional view of consciousness on
all planes represented as seven concentric circles. This describes
the analogous enveilment of the consciousness when it ensouls a
physical body or when bound to the purely objective world of the
senses. The overcoming of the barriers of reality, represented by
the circumscribing circles is the work of the Thinker who is forever
seeking to expand and to know. For only at its center, as symbolized
here, is the consciousness at one with the highest aspect of kosmic
consciousness and there alone is the mystery of space despoiled of its
habiliments.
[Illustration: FIG. 21.--Septenary Enveilment of Consciousness]
Accordingly, as consciousness or the Thinker is more and more divested
of carnal barriers and illusions there develops a gradual recognition
of the unitariness of spatial extent and magnitude; there arises the
certain knowledge that space has but one dimension and that dimension
is sheer _extension_. The Thinker's sphere of awareness is represented
as if it begins as a point in space and develops into a line which
divides into two lines, the boundaries of the space cones. Thus it may
be perceived that the ancients had a similar conception in mind when
they symbolized kosmogenesis with the dot (.), the line, and the circle
with diameter inscribed, which together represent the universe in
manifestation.
We realize the impossibility of adequately depicting the full
significance of the inverse ratio existing between the extensity of
space and the increscent inclusivity of consciousness by means of
graphs; for neither words nor diagrams can portray the scope and
meaning of the conception in its entirety. Yet they aid the intellect
to grasp a ray of light, an intimation of what the Thinker sees and
understands interiorly.
In this connection it is interesting to note the function of the
ideal in the evolution and expansion of consciousness. The ideal has
no perceptual value; it has no status in the world of the senses. It
is unapproachable either in thought or action, and therefore, lies
beyond the grasp of both the intellectuality and the vitality. It is
indescribable, inconceptible and searchless; for the moment that we
describe, define, or approach the ideal, either intellectually or
vitally, in that moment it ceases to be ideal, but actual. It flees
from even the slightest approach; it never remains the same; it cannot
be attained, at least its attainment causes it to lose its idealty. It
is then no longer the ideal. It is like an _ignis fatuus_; the closer
we come to it the farther away it recedes. It hangs suspended before
the mind like the luscious grapes which hung before the mouth of the
hungry Tantalus. As the grapes and the water receded from his reach
at every effort he made to seize them so the ideal remains eternally
unseizable and unattainable. Whatever, therefore, is in our thought
processes, or in our knowledge, that may be said to be _ideal_, does
not really exist. The ideal is a phantom growing out of the nature and
essence of the intellectuality. Its purpose is to lead merely the mind
on; to allure it, to tantalize, and compel it to grow by exertion, by
the struggle to attain, by the desire to overcome. In this respect, it
serves well its function in the economy of intellectual evolution. It
is a mysterious aspect of the original and eternal desire to live which
is the kosmic _urge_ present in all organized being and has its roots
hidden in the divine purpose of creation.
Idealized constructions, then, are like Arabian feasts conjured up by
a famishing mentality. They are like the dreams of a starving man in
which he actualizes in phantom-stuff the choicest viands in abundant
supply for his imaginary delectation. The mind that is satisfied never
idealizes, never makes an idealized construction. It is only when an
"aching void" is felt, when a longing for the realization of that which
it has not arises within itself, when a feeling of distinct lack, a
want, a hankering after something not in its reach, takes possession of
the mind that it begins to idealize. That is why some minds are without
ideals. It is because they are satisfied with what they have and can
understand. They feel no hungering for better and grander things; they
have no desire to understand the unknown and the mysterious; hence they
do not idealize; they make no attempt to represent unto themselves
a picture of that which is beyond them. Such minds are dormant,
hibernant, asleep, unfeeling and unresponsive to the divine urge.
But the ideal is neither obtainable objectively nor subjectively,
neither phenomenally nor really, so that when we come upon the ideal
in our mode of thinking we have arrived not at a finality or end,
but at that which is designed to lead us on to something higher, to
nobler accomplishments and more extensive conquests. When we have
devised idealized constructions, therefore, we should not therewith be
content but should scrutinize them, examine and study them for their
implications; for thereby we may discover the path and the guide-posts
to a new domain, a new ideal, following which we shall, in time, come
to a point in our search for the real where the fluxional is at a
minimum; we shall reach that something which will admit of no further
struggle--the last chasm between the phenomenal and the real--and
standing on the bridge, consciousness, which engages the twain, shall
have a complete view of that Sacred and Imperishable Land of Kosmic
Realism where like a fleeting cloud of sheerest vapor shall be seen the
phantom-ideal deliquescing and disappearing in the cold, thin air of
the real and the eternal.
Since space is judged to be infinite by the intellect occluded in
such clouds of illusion and hampered by such constrictive bonds of
limitations, as it now endures, we have no right to conclude that the
concept of infinity would still linger before the mind's eyes when
the illusionary veil is removed; in fact, there is ample reason to
believe, nay for the assertion, that the recession of the veil will
reveal just the opposite of this illusion, namely that space is finite,
and even _bounded_ by the fringe of chaogenetic disorderliness. Either
we perceive the real or we do not; either the pure _thingness_ of all
objects can be perceived or it cannot be perceived. If not, granting
that there is such a thing as the real, it must be within the ultimate
range of conceivability. It also seems reasonable that realism exists
somewhere, and if so, must be sought in a direction inverse to that in
which we find the phenomenal and the approach thereto must necessarily
be gradual, continuous and direct and not by abrupt breaks, by twists
and turns. The phenomenal must lie at the terminus of the real, and
_vice versa_. So that by retracing the path blazed out by the real in
coming to phenomenalization we shall perhaps find that which casts our
shadowy world, just as by tracing a shadow in a direction inverse to
that in which it extends we may find the object which projects it.
_It is not out and beyond that we shall find the end of space; it is
not by counting tens of thousands of light-years that the supposed
limits of space shall be attained. The path of search must project
in an opposite direction--not star-ward but Thinker-ward, toward the
subtle habitation of the consciousness itself._ We err greatly when
we think that by measuring distances we shall encompass space; for
that which we measure and determine is but the clouds caused by the
vapor of reality. It is, therefore, not without, but within, in an
inverse direction that the search must proceed. Going back over the
life-stream, beginning where it strikes against the shores of solid
objectivity, deeper and deeper still, past the innermost mile-stone of
the self-consciousness, back into the very heart of the imperturbable
interior of being where the Thinker's castle opens its doors to the
Great Kosmic Self, from that open door-way we may step out into that
great mystery of space--limited, yet not limited, multi-dimensioned,
and yet having only one dimension, veritably real and fundamental, the
Father-Mother of all phenomena. Here the great mystery of mysteries
is revealed as the citadel of the universal and the ultimate real.
In this citadel, the plane of kosmic consciousness, space loses its
spaciousness and time its timeliness, diversity its multiplicity and
oneness alone reigns supreme.
But the movement towards the center and circumference of space, after
this manner, requires aid neither from the notion of space-curvature
nor that of the space-manifold, except, indeed, only in so far as a
state of consciousness or a degree of realism may be said to be a
tridimensional manifold. The feeling that space is single-pointed,
and yet ubiquitously centered, has been indulged by mathematicians
and others in a more or less modified form; but they have imagined it
in the terms of an indefinite proceeding outward until in some manner
unaccountable alike to all we come back to the point of origin. It
has been expressed by PICKERING when he says that if we go far enough
east we shall arrive at the west; far enough north we shall come to
the south; far enough into the zenith we shall come to the nadir.
But this conception is based upon a notion of space which is the
exclusive result of mathematical determinations and subject to all the
restrictions of mathetic rigorousness. It requires that we shall allow
space to be curved. This we decline to do for the reason that it is
both unnecessary and contrary to the most fundamental affirmations of
the _a priori_ faculty of the Thinker's cognitive apparatus. It would
seem to be necessary only that we should extend our consciousness
backward, revert it into the direction whence life came to find that
which we seek. By extension of consciousness is meant the ability to
function consciously upon the various superkosmic spheres or planes
just as we do on the physical. Yet it should be quite as easy to
devise an idealized construction which would imagify the results of
this ingressive movement of the consciousness as to represent the
results of a progressive outward movement star-ward. Having done so the
examination of them could be conducted along lines similar to those
followed in the scrutiny of objective results.
What would it mean to the Thinker if he were able to identify his
consciousness with the ether in all its varying degrees; what would it
mean if he were able to identify his consciousness with life and with
the pure mind-matter of the kosmos; and lastly, with the spiritual
essence of the universe? What if his various vehicles of awareness were
available for his purposes of cognition? What, indeed, if he could
traverse consciously the entire gamut of realism and consciousness
from man to the divine consciousness? Does it not appear reasonable
that as he assumed each of these various vestures of consciousness,
in succession, he would gradually and finally, come to a full
understanding of reality itself? It seems so. This view is even more
cogent when it is considered that the limitations, and consequent
obscuration of consciousness are proportional to the number of vehicles
or barriers through which the Thinker is required to act in contacting
the phenomenal universe. Common sense suggests that freedom of motility
is determined by the presence or absence (more particularly the latter)
of bonds and barriers; that the less the number of such barriers the
greater the scope of motility and consequently greater the knowledge.
PLATO evidently had this in mind when he imagined the life of men
spent in cave-walled prisons in which their bodies were so fixed that
they were compelled to sit in one prescribed position, and therefore,
be unable to see anything except the shadows of persons or objects
as they passed by. He conceived that men thus conditioned would, in
time, suffer the diminution of their scope of consciousness to such an
extent as to reduce it to identification with the shadows on the walls.
Their consciousness would be mere shadow-consciousnesses the entire
data of which would be shadowgraphs. So that for them the only reality
would be the shadows which they constantly saw. A similar thing really
happens to man's consciousness limited to the plane of the objective
world. Things which are not objective do not appear as real to him,
if they do appear at all. It is not that there are no other realities
than those which appear to the egopsychic consciousness or that fall
within its scope; but that this form of consciousness is incompetent
to judge of the nature and appearance of those realities which do not
answer to the limitations under which it exists. And so, with men whose
data of consciousness or whose outlook upon the world of facts, or
rather life, are confined to the narrow bounds of mathematic rigor and
exclusiveness, there may appear to exist no realities which may not
be defined in the terms of mathematics. Similarly, to the empiricist,
used to measurements of magnitudes, weights, and rates of motion,
there may also appear to be no realities which are not amenable to the
mold of his empirical contrivances--the balance, the chromatic and
the scalpel. All of these are shadow men constricted to the metes and
bounds of shadows which they observe only because they are ignorant of
the realities which lie without their plane.
Life has so many ways of exhibiting its remains to the intellect; and
these remains have so many facets or viewpoints from which they may
be studied, that nothing short of a panoramic view of all the modes
of exhibition and of all the facets and angles of appearances will
suffice to present a trustworthy and comprehensive view of the whole.
Then, life itself is so illusive, so unseizable by the intellect that
the testimony of all investigators are required to summarize its modes
of appearance. And, therefore, eventual contentment shall be secured
only when the mass of diverse testimonies is reduced to the lowest
common divisor, and for this purpose the operations of every class of
investigators must be viewed as the work of specialists upon separate
phases, facets and angles of life's remains.
And so it is manifestly absurd for the empiricists, by taking note of
the dimension, extent, quality and character of the shadows, or one
single class of angles, to hope to predicate any trustworthy judgments
about either the realities which cast the shadows or underlie the
angles; because whatever notion or conception they may be able to
gain must of necessity be merely fragmentary and entirely inadequate.
Despite this fact, however, we still have the spectacle of men who,
studying the sensible universum of space-content, endeavor either to
make it appear as a finality in itself, or that the world of the real
must necessarily be conformable to the precise standards which they
arbitrarily set up in their examination of the objective world. It can
be said with assurance that we shall never be able even so much as to
approach a true understanding of the unseen, real world until we shall
have changed our mental attitude towards it and ceased to expect that
it shall necessarily be fashioned and ordered in exactly the same way
as the world of our senses, or that it shall be understood by applying
the same methods of procedure as those which we use in our examination
of the phenomenal, sensuous world. It is a matter of logical necessity
that, as there are no senses which can respond to the real, as there
are no organs which vibrate in accord with the rates of vibration of
the real, there can be no reasonable hope of understanding it by means
of sensuous contrivances and standards.
Let the consciousness, therefore, be turned not outward, but _inward_
where is situated the temple of divine life; let there be taken away
the outward sheaths which enshrine the pure intelligence of the
Thinker; let him grow and expand his sphere of awareness; let there be
an exploration of the abysmal deeps of mind, of life and consciousness;
for buried deeply in man's own inner nature is the answer to all
queries which may vex his impuissant intellectuality.