Bab 21
Perlunya meninggalkan logika fenomenal kita untuk pendekatan noumenal. Ilmu pengetahuan harus mengakui bahwa hanya melalui puisi dan mistisisme kita dapat mendekati dunia sebab-sebab. Persiapan melalui iman dan cinta diperlukan untuk mengatasi teror ketidakterbatasan. Arti sebenarnya dari 'Miskin dalam roh'. Organon Aristoteles, Organum Novum Bacon dan Tertium Organum yang, meskipun sering dilupakan, ada sebelum yang lain dan merupakan kunci ke sisi kehidupan yang tersembunyi. Perlunya membuang 'berhala' dua dimensi kita dan berusaha menghitung sifat-sifat dunia sebab-akibat.
Everything said about mathematical magnitudes refers also to logical concepts. Finite mathematical magnitudes and logical concepts are subject to the same laws. We have now made it clear that laws discovered by us in three-dimensional space and operating in this space are inapplicable, incorrect and untrue in a space of a greater number of dimensions. This is equally true in mathematics and in logic. As soon as, instead of finite and constant magnitudes, we begin to examine infinite and variable magnitudes, we see that the fundamental axioms of our mathematics cannot refer to them. And as soon as, instead of concepts, we being to think in other terms, we must be prepared to meet with an enormous number of absurdities from the point of view of existing logic. They would seem absurdities to us because we approach the many dimensional world with the logic of the three-dimensional world. It was shown earlier that for an animal, i.e. for a two-dimensional being thinking not by concepts but by representations, our logical propositions are bound to seem absurd.
The logical relations in the world of many dimensions appear just as absurd to us. There is no reason whatever for hoping that in the world of causes relations can be logical from our point of view. On the contrary, we may say that EVERYTHING LOGICAL is only phenomenal. On the other side there can be nothing logical from our point of view. Everything that exists there is bound to appear to us a logical absurdity, nonsense. And we must remember that we cannot orientate ourselves there with our logic. The attitude of human thought in its main trends to the 'world beyond' was always entirely wrong. The 'world beyond' of the spiritualists, in all the existing versions of it, is but a naive and primitive representation of the unknown.
In 'positivism' people have denied the world beyond altogether, because, refusing to admit the possibility of logical relations other than those formulated by Aristotle and Bacon, people denied the very existence of anything that appeared senseless and impossible from the point of view of these formulae. And in 'spiritualism' they attempted to build a noumenal world on the pattern of the phenomenal, i.e. against reason, in defiance of the forces of nature, they wanted at all costs to prove that the world beyond is logical from our point of view, that the same laws of causation operate there as in our world, and that the world beyond is nothing more than a continuation of ours. Positivist philosophy saw the absurdity of dualistic theses, but, unable to widen the field of its activity limited by logic and the 'infinite sphere', it could not think of anything better than DENIAL. Only mystical philosophy felt the possibility of relations other than these of the phenomenal world. But it dwelt on vague and nebulous sensations, unable to define or classify them.
Science must come to mysticism, and then to the study of forms of consciousness and consequently of perception - other than ours. Science must throw off almost everything old and must start from a new theory of cognition, for mysticism offers a new approach.
Science cannot deny the fact that mathematics grows, widens and passes beyond the boundaries of the visible and measurable world. Whole sections of mathematics examine quantitative relations which do not exist and never existed in the real world of positivism, i.e. relations to which there are no corresponding realities in the visible, i.e. the three-dimensional world.
But there cannot be any mathematical relations for which there would be no corresponding realities at all. Consequently, mathematics transcends the boundaries of this world and peeps into the world of the unknown. It is a telescope by means of which we begin to investigate the space of many dimensions with its worlds. Mathematics goes in the vanguard of our thought, in the vanguard of our powers of imagination and representation. It already calculates relationships which we are totally incapable of imagining or even thinking about.
All this cannot be denied even from the strictly 'positivist', i.e. positive point of view. And, having admitted the possibility of widening the field of mathematics beyond the limits of the world known through the senses, i.e. beyond the limits of the world accessible (be it only theoretically) to the organs of sense and to apparatus, science must, by this very fact, admit the expansion of the real world far beyond the limits of the 'infinite sphere' and logic. In other words it must recognize the reality of the 'world of many dimensions'. The recognition of the reality of the world of many dimensions is an already accomplished transition to the understanding and the recognition of the world of the 'miraculous'. And a transition to the miraculous is impossible without admitting the reality of new logical relations, absurd and impossible from the point of view of our logic. What are the laws of our logic? They are the laws of our perception of the three-dimensional world or the laws of our three-dimensional perception of the world. If we want to leave the three-dimensional world behind and advance further, we must first of all evolve some fundamental logical principles which would enable us to observe the relationships of things in the world of many dimensions and see in them a certain orderly interdependence rather than complete absurdity. If we enter there with logical principles of the three-dimensional world, they will drag us back, will not allow us to rise above the ground. We must first of all, throw off the fetters of our logic. This is the first, the great and the principal liberation towards which humanity should strive. A man who has thrown off the fetters of 'three-dimensional logic', has already passed in thought into another world. And this transition is not only possible but is being constantly accomplished. Unfortunately, we are not entirely aware of our rights to the 'other world' and often lose these rights, considering ourselves locked into this terrestrial world. And yet ways leading there exist. Poetry, mysticism, idealistic philosophy of all ages and peoples preserve traces of such transition. Following these traces we also can find the way. Ancient and modern thinkers have left us many keys with which we can unlock the mysterious doors, and many magical formulae before which these doors open by themselves. But we failed to understand the purpose of either the keys or the formulae; and we have lost the understanding of magical ceremonies and rituals of initiation in the Mysteries, which pursued only one aim - to help this transition in man's soul.
And so the doors have remained locked, and we even deny that there is anything behind these doors. Or, suspecting the existence of another world, we regard it as similar to ours and separate from ours, and attempt to penetrate it without realizing that the chief obstacle on our path is our own division of the world into this world and the world beyond. The world is one - but the means of perceiving it are different. And with imperfect means of perception it is impossible to penetrate into that which is accessible only to the perfect.
Attempts with the logic of the phenomenal world to penetrate in thought into the world beyond, the world of noumena, the world of causes, if they did not prove a complete failure or did not lead a man to the world of waking dreams, gave one result only. - Conscious of the new order of things man lost the sense of the reality of the old order. The visible world began to appear to him fantastic, unreal; everything vanished around him, disappeared like smoke, leaving a terrifying sensation of illusion. He felt in everything the abyss of infinity, and everything pouring away into this abyss.
The sensation of infinity is the first and most terrifying trial before initiation. There is nothing! The small insignificant soul feels itself suspended in an infinite void. Then even the soul itself ceases to exist. There is nothing there is only infinity, the constant and continuous breaking up and dissolution of everything. In the mystical literature of all peoples there are references to this sensation of void and darkness. The mysterious deity of the ancient Egyptians, mentioned in the Orphic myths* was: 'The thrice-unknown darkness in contemplation of which all knowledge is resolved into ignorance.'
This means that, approaching the world of causes with nothing but the knowledge of the world of phenomena, with his own instrument of logic which proved futile because all the new eluded him, a man was bound to experience a terror surpassing all limits. In the new he felt as yet nothing but chaos, the old was vanishing, receding, becoming unreal. Terror and regret at the loss of the old was mingling with the fear of the new, the unknown, terrifying in its infinity.
At this stage a man goes through the same experience as that of an animal in becoming a man. After a momentary glimpse of the new world it is dragged back by life. The world it has glimpsed for a short moment seems a dream, a fantasy, a creation of its imagination. But the old world of the past is no longer the same either, it becomes narrow, there is no longer any room in it. The awakening consciousness can no longer lead the same wild and free life of a beast. It already knows something, hears some voices. And at the same time the body holds it. And it does not know where and how it can escape it or escape from itself.
A man on the threshold of the new world has exactly the same experience. He has heard the music of heaven, and the dull songs of the earth no longer touch or move him; or, if they do touch and move him, it is because they speak to him of heavenly sounds, of the unattainable, of the unknown. He has experienced a feeling of an extraordinary EXPANSION of consciousness, when for a moment everything was clear to him, and he cannot reconcile himself to the slow earthly working of the brain. Moments of 'sensation of infinity' are connected with quite special emotions.
In 'theosophical' literature and in books on occultism it is often said that, passing into the 'astral' world man begins to see new colours, colours which are not in the solar spectrum.* This symbolism of the new colours of the 'astral sphere' conveys precisely the thought about the new emotions which a man begins to experience together with the sensations of an expanded consciousness - 'the ocean being absorbed by a drop'. This is the 'incredible bliss' of which mystics speak, the heavenly light which the saints 'see', the 'new sensations' which poets experience. Even conversational psychology connects 'ecstasy' with completely unusual new sensations, inaccessible and unknown to man in ordinary life.
This sensation of light and infinite joy is experienced in moments of expansion of consciousness (the unfolding of the mystic lotus of the Indian Yogi), at the moment of the sensation of infinity which produces, at the same time, the sensation of darkness and boundless terror. What does it mean? How to reconcile the sensation of light with the sensation of darkness, the sensation of joy with the sensation of terror? Can it be simultaneous? Does it happen simultaneously?
It does happen and it has got to be so. Mystical literature gives us examples of this. The simultaneous sensation of light and darkness, joy and terror seems to symbolize the strange duality and contradiction of human life. It can happen to a man who is very sharply divided, with one side of his nature gone far into the 'spirit' and the other side deeply sunk in 'matter', i.e. in illusion, in unreality; with too profound a faith in the reality of the unreal. Speaking generally, the new world gives the sensation of light, of life, of all-pervading consciousness, of joy. . . . But to a mind which is not prepared the same world will give a sensation of infinite darkness and terror. Moreover, the sensation of terror must come from the loss of everything real, from the disappearance of this world. In order not to experience the terror of the new world, it is necessary to know it beforehand, either emotionally - through faith and love, or intellectually - by reason.
And in order not to experience terror at the loss of the old world, one should renounce it voluntarily beforehand, also either through faith or reason. It is necessary to renounce voluntarily all the beautiful bright world we live in, to admit that it is a mirage, a phantom, an unreality, deceit, illusion, may a. One should become reconciled to this unreality, not be afraid of it but rejoice in it. One should be stripped of everything. One should become POOR IN SPIRIT, i.e. make oneself poor by an effort of one's spirit. The beautiful Gospel symbol expresses the deepest philosophical truth: Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
These words become clear only if taken in the sense of renunciation of the material world. 'Poor in spirit' does not mean poor in the material sense, in the everyday meaning of the word; and it certainly does not mean poverty of the spirit. Spiritual poverty is renunciation of matter, such 'poverty' when a man has no ground under his feet and no sky over his head. Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, But the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.
This is the kind of poverty when a man is completely alone, because he begins to see other people, even the most near to him, his father, his mother, not as he saw them before, but differently, and renounces them because he sees real entities towards which he strives, just as in renouncing the phenomenal phantasm of the world he approaches that which is truly real. The moment of transition, the terrible moment of the loss of the old and the unfolding of the new was depicted in ancient literature in an infinite number of allegories. The purpose of the Mysteries was to make this transition easier. In India, in Egypt, in Greece there existed special preparatory rituals, sometimes only symbolical, sometimes real, actually leading the soul to the very doors of the new world, and opening these doors at the moment of initiation. But external rites and ceremonies could not by themselves create initiation. The chief work had to go on within the soul and the mind of man. How then can logic help man to pass to the consciousness of this new higher world? We have seen that mathematics has already found a way into this higher order of things. Penetrating there, it first of all renounces its fundamental axioms of identity and difference. In the world of infinite and fluid magnitudes a magnitude can be not equal to itself; a part may be equal to the whole; and of equal magnitudes one may be infinitely greater than another.
All this sounds like an absurdity from the point of view of the mathematics of finite and constant numbers. But the very mathematics of finite and constant numbers is a calculation of relationships among non-existent magnitudes, i.e. an absurdity. Therefore, only that which seems an absurdity from the point of view of this mathematics can be the truth. Logic goes through the same process. It has to renounce itself, arrive at the necessity of its own annihilation - and then a new and higher logic may arise from it. In his Critique of Pure Reason Kant proved the possibility of a transcendental logic. Before Bacon and before Aristotle, in ancient Indian scriptures there were given formulae of that higher logic which unlocked the doors of the mysteries. But the meaning of these formulae was soon lost. They were preserved in ancient books, but only as some strange mummies of extinct thought, words without real content.
New thinkers again re-discovered these principles, expressed them in new words. But again they remained not understood, again they turned into some useless verbal ornament. But the idea continued. Belief was never lost in the possibility of finding and establishing the laws of the higher world. Mystical philosophy never regarded Aristotelean logic as all embracing or omnipotent. It built its systems outside logic or above logic, unconsciously, following the lines of thought laid down in the deepest antiquity. Higher logic existed before deductive and inductive logic was ever formulated. Higher logic may be called intuitive logic, the logic of infinity, the logic of ecstasy. This logic is not only possible, but it exists, and has existed from time immemorial; it was formulated many times; it entered as a key into philosophical systems - but in some strange way it was not recognized as LOGIC.
The system of this logic can be deduced from a great many philosophical systems. I find the most exact and the fullest formulation of this logic in Plotinus, in his treatise 'On Intelligible Beauty'. I shall quote this passage in the following chapter. I have called the system of higher logic 'TERTIUM ORGANUM', because for us it is the third instrument or the third law of thought after Aristotle and Bacon. The first was ORGANON, the second NOVUM ORGANUM. But the third existed before the first. A man possessing this key can open the doors of the world of causes without fear. The axioms which Tertium Organum contains cannot be formulated in our language. But if we still try to formulate them, they will produce the impression of absurdities. Taking the axioms of Aristotle as a model, we may express the principal axiom of the new logic in our poor earthly language in the following way:
A is both A and not A, or
Every thing is both A and not A, or
Every thing is All.
But in fact these formulae are completely impossible. And they are not axioms of higher logic; they are merely attempts to express the axioms of this logic in concepts. In reality the ideas of higher logic are inexpressible in concepts. And when we come up against this in-expressibility, it means that we have come into contact with the world of causes. The logical formula A is both A and not A corresponds to the mathematical formula: a magnitude can be greater or lesser than itself. The absurdity of both these propositions shows that they cannot refer to our world. Naturally, absurdity does not, by itself, indicate that a thing belongs to noumena. But the fact of belonging to noumena will necessarily be expressed for us in absurdity. To hope to find anything in the world of causes that would be logical from our point of view is just as useless as to think that the world of things can exist in accordance with the laws of the world of shadows, or stereometry in accordance with the laws of planimetry. To master the main principles of higher logic means to master the fundamentals of the understanding of higher-dimensional space or the world of the miraculous.
In order to come to a clear understanding of the relations of the many-dimensional world, we must get rid of all the 'idols' of our world (to use Bacon's expression); in other words we must get rid of all the obstacles to a right perception and thinking. And above all we must have an inner kinship with the world of the miraculous. In order to come to the understanding of the three-dimensional world, a two dimensional being must already be three-dimensional, and then get free of its 'idols', i.e. of its accepted ways of feeling and thinking, which have become axiomatic and are creating for it the illusion of two-dimensionality. What exactly must a two-dimensional being get rid of?
First of all - and this is most important - it must get rid of the conviction that what it sees and senses actually exists; and as a result it must become aware of the incorrectness of its representation of the world, and then of the idea that the real, new world must exist in some quite different forms, new, incomparable, incommensurable with the old. Further, the two-dimensional being must get rid of the assurance that its divisions are correct. It must understand that things which appear to it totally different and separated one from another, may be a part of some whole incomprehensible to it, or that they may have much in common, although this may not be noticed; whereas things which seem one and indivisible, are actually infinitely complex and manifold.
The mental growth of the two-dimensional being must proceed along the line of the recognition of those common properties of objects, unknown to it before, which result from their similar origin or similar functions, incomprehensible on a plane. Once the two-dimensional being has recognized the possible existence of common properties, formerly unknown to it, in objects which appear different, it has already come near to our understanding of the world. It has come near to our logic, has begun to understand the use of a collective noun, i.e. a word which is not a proper name but a common noun; in other words, a word expressing a concept.
The 'idols' of the two-dimensional being which obstruct the development of its consciousness are proper names which itself it gives to all surrounding objects. For it every object has its own proper name, corresponding to its own representation of that object; it has no common nouns corresponding to concepts. It is only by getting rid of these 'idols' and understanding that nouns may be both proper and common that it will be able to advance further, to develop mentally, to approach the human understanding of the world. Otherwise, the simplest sentence, such as: John and Peter are both men will be an absurdity for a two-dimensional being. In its own representation it will take approximately the following form: John and Peter are both John and Peter. In other words, every logical proposition of ours will seem an absurdity to it. It is clear why this should be so. It has no concepts; proper names which make up its speech, have no plural. It is clear that the plural of our speech will seem to it an absurdity. But where are our 'idols'? What must we get rid of in order to pass on to the understanding of relations in the many-dimensional world?
First of all we must get rid of the conviction that we see and sense that which actually exists and that the real world is similar to the world we see. In other words, we must get rid of the illusion of the material world. We must understand with mind all the illusory nature of the world we perceive in time and space and understand that the real world can have nothing in common with it. We must understand that we cannot represent to ourselves the real world in forms; and then we must understand the conditional nature of the axioms of our mathematics and logic relating to the unreal, phenomenal world.
In mathematics the idea of infinity will help us to do this. The unreality of finite magnitudes as compared with the infinite is self-evident. In logic we may base our thought on the idea of monism, i.e. the fundamental unity of everything existing, and consequently adopt as our starting point the impossibility of constructing any axioms consisting of contrapositions, theses and antitheses, on which our logic is based. The logic of Aristotle and Bacon is fundamentally dualistic. If we are deeply imbued with the idea of monism, we shall conquer the 'idol' of this logic. The fundamental axioms of our logic may be reduced to identity and contradiction, in the same way as mathematical axioms. At the basis of them all lies the acceptance of one general axiom, namely, that every given something has something opposite to it. Consequently, every proposition has its contra-position, every thesis has its antithesis. To the being of every thing is opposed the non-being of that thing. To the being of the world is opposed the non-being of the world. Object is opposed to subject. Objective world - to the sub-jective world. Not 'I' is opposed to 'I'. Immobility - to motion. Variability - to constancy. Multiformity - to unity. Falsehood - to truth. Evil - to good. And, in conclusion, to every A in general is opposed not A. The recognition of the reality of these divisions is necessary for the acceptance of the fundamental axioms of the logic of Aristotle and Bacon. In other words, this logic requires an absolute and incontestable acceptance of the idea of the duality of the world - dualism. The recognition of the unreality of these divisions and of the unity of all opposites is necessary for the beginning of understanding of higher logic. In the very beginning of this book the existence of the WORLD and of INNER LIFE was 'admitted', in other words, the reality of a dual division of everything existing, because all other contrapositions are derived from this contraposition. Duality is the condition of our perception of the phenomenal (three-dimensional) world; it is the instrument of our perception of phenomena. But when we come to the perception of the noumenal world (or the world of many dimensions), this duality begins to stand in our way, to become an obstacle to knowledge. Dualism is the chief 'idol' we have to get rid of. In order to understand the relations of things in three dimensions and in our logic, a two-dimensional being must renounce the 'idol' of the absolute uniqueness of objects which requires it to call things only by their proper names. We, in order to understand the world of many dimensions, must renounce the idol of duality. But an application of monism to practical thinking comes up against the insurmountable obstacle of our language. Our language is incapable of expressing the unity of opposites, just as it is incapable of expressing spatially the relation of cause and effect. Consequently, we should be prepared to find that all attempts to express super-logical relations in our language will appear absurd, and actually will only hint at what we wish to convey. Thus the formula: A is both A and not A or Everything is both A and not A representing the fundamental axiom of higher logic, as expressed in our language of concepts, sounds an absurdity from the point of view of our ordinary logic, and is essentially untrue. We must be prepared for the fact that it is impossible to express superlogical relations in our language. The formula 'A is both A and not A' is untrue because in the world of causes the very contraposition of 'A' and 'not A' does not exist But we cannot express their real relation. It would be more correct to say, A is all But this also would be untrue, because A is not only all, but also any part of all, and at the same time a given part This is exactly what our language cannot express And it is exactly to this that we must tram and accustom our thought. We must become accustomed to the thought that separateness and combination are not opposites in the real world, but exist together and at the same time, without contradicting each other. We must realize that in the real world the same thing can be both a part and the whole, i.e. that the whole, without changing, can be its own part. We must understand in general that there are no contrapositions and that each thing is a certain archetype of the all. Having begun to understand this we shall begin to grasp separate ideas concerning the essence of the 'noumenal world' or the world of many dimensions in which we actually live. In such a case the higher logic, even with the imperfect formulae -crude as they may appear in our language of concepts - represents a powerful instrument of cognition of the world, the only means of preserving us from illusions. The application of this instrument of thought gives the key to the mysteries of nature, to the world as it is. Let us try to enumerate the properties of the WORLD OF CAUSES which may be derived from everything said so far. It is first of all necessary to emphasize that it is impossible to express in words the properties of the world of causes. Every thought which is expressed about them will be untrue. It can be said about the real world that (in relation to it) 'a thought expressed in words, is a lie'. One can speak about it only conditionally, approximately, by hints, by symbols. And, if anything said about it is understood literally, it will become an absurdity. Generally speaking, everything expressed in words about the world of causes may seem absurd and is actually already a distortion. Truth cannot be expressed. The most one can do is to hint at it, to give an impetus to the thought. But everyone must find truth for himself, by himself. 'Someone else's' truth is worse than a lie, because it is - two lies. This also explains why truth can only be expressed in the form of a paradox, or even in the form of a lie. To speak of truth without lies we must know some other language. Our language is not suitable. What then can we say in our language about the world of many dimensions, the world of noumena or the world of causes?
Everything said about mathematical magnitudes refers also to logical concepts. Finite mathematical magnitudes and logical concepts are subject to the same laws. We have now made it clear that laws discovered by us in three-dimensional space and operating in this space are inapplicable, incorrect and untrue in a space of a greater number of dimensions. This is equally true in mathematics and in logic. As soon as, instead of finite and constant magnitudes, we begin to examine infinite and variable magnitudes, we see that the fundamental axioms of our mathematics cannot refer to them. And as soon as, instead of concepts, we being to think in other terms, we must be prepared to meet with an enormous number of absurdities from the point of view of existing logic. They would seem absurdities to us because we approach the many dimensional world with the logic of the three-dimensional world. It was shown earlier that for an animal, i.e. for a two-dimensional being thinking not by concepts but by representations, our logical propositions are bound to seem absurd.
The logical relations in the world of many dimensions appear just as absurd to us. There is no reason whatever for hoping that in the world of causes relations can be logical from our point of view. On the contrary, we may say that EVERYTHING LOGICAL is only phenomenal. On the other side there can be nothing logical from our point of view. Everything that exists there is bound to appear to us a logical absurdity, nonsense. And we must remember that we cannot orientate ourselves there with our logic. The attitude of human thought in its main trends to the 'world beyond' was always entirely wrong. The 'world beyond' of the spiritualists, in all the existing versions of it, is but a naive and primitive representation of the unknown.
In 'positivism' people have denied the world beyond altogether, because, refusing to admit the possibility of logical relations other than those formulated by Aristotle and Bacon, people denied the very existence of anything that appeared senseless and impossible from the point of view of these formulae. And in 'spiritualism' they attempted to build a noumenal world on the pattern of the phenomenal, i.e. against reason, in defiance of the forces of nature, they wanted at all costs to prove that the world beyond is logical from our point of view, that the same laws of causation operate there as in our world, and that the world beyond is nothing more than a continuation of ours. Positivist philosophy saw the absurdity of dualistic theses, but, unable to widen the field of its activity limited by logic and the 'infinite sphere', it could not think of anything better than DENIAL. Only mystical philosophy felt the possibility of relations other than these of the phenomenal world. But it dwelt on vague and nebulous sensations, unable to define or classify them.
Science must come to mysticism, and then to the study of forms of consciousness and consequently of perception - other than ours. Science must throw off almost everything old and must start from a new theory of cognition, for mysticism offers a new approach.
Science cannot deny the fact that mathematics grows, widens and passes beyond the boundaries of the visible and measurable world. Whole sections of mathematics examine quantitative relations which do not exist and never existed in the real world of positivism, i.e. relations to which there are no corresponding realities in the visible, i.e. the three-dimensional world.
But there cannot be any mathematical relations for which there would be no corresponding realities at all. Consequently, mathematics transcends the boundaries of this world and peeps into the world of the unknown. It is a telescope by means of which we begin to investigate the space of many dimensions with its worlds. Mathematics goes in the vanguard of our thought, in the vanguard of our powers of imagination and representation. It already calculates relationships which we are totally incapable of imagining or even thinking about.
All this cannot be denied even from the strictly 'positivist', i.e. positive point of view. And, having admitted the possibility of widening the field of mathematics beyond the limits of the world known through the senses, i.e. beyond the limits of the world accessible (be it only theoretically) to the organs of sense and to apparatus, science must, by this very fact, admit the expansion of the real world far beyond the limits of the 'infinite sphere' and logic. In other words it must recognize the reality of the 'world of many dimensions'. The recognition of the reality of the world of many dimensions is an already accomplished transition to the understanding and the recognition of the world of the 'miraculous'. And a transition to the miraculous is impossible without admitting the reality of new logical relations, absurd and impossible from the point of view of our logic. What are the laws of our logic? They are the laws of our perception of the three-dimensional world or the laws of our three-dimensional perception of the world. If we want to leave the three-dimensional world behind and advance further, we must first of all evolve some fundamental logical principles which would enable us to observe the relationships of things in the world of many dimensions and see in them a certain orderly interdependence rather than complete absurdity. If we enter there with logical principles of the three-dimensional world, they will drag us back, will not allow us to rise above the ground. We must first of all, throw off the fetters of our logic. This is the first, the great and the principal liberation towards which humanity should strive. A man who has thrown off the fetters of 'three-dimensional logic', has already passed in thought into another world. And this transition is not only possible but is being constantly accomplished. Unfortunately, we are not entirely aware of our rights to the 'other world' and often lose these rights, considering ourselves locked into this terrestrial world. And yet ways leading there exist. Poetry, mysticism, idealistic philosophy of all ages and peoples preserve traces of such transition. Following these traces we also can find the way. Ancient and modern thinkers have left us many keys with which we can unlock the mysterious doors, and many magical formulae before which these doors open by themselves. But we failed to understand the purpose of either the keys or the formulae; and we have lost the understanding of magical ceremonies and rituals of initiation in the Mysteries, which pursued only one aim - to help this transition in man's soul.
And so the doors have remained locked, and we even deny that there is anything behind these doors. Or, suspecting the existence of another world, we regard it as similar to ours and separate from ours, and attempt to penetrate it without realizing that the chief obstacle on our path is our own division of the world into this world and the world beyond. The world is one - but the means of perceiving it are different. And with imperfect means of perception it is impossible to penetrate into that which is accessible only to the perfect.
Attempts with the logic of the phenomenal world to penetrate in thought into the world beyond, the world of noumena, the world of causes, if they did not prove a complete failure or did not lead a man to the world of waking dreams, gave one result only. - Conscious of the new order of things man lost the sense of the reality of the old order. The visible world began to appear to him fantastic, unreal; everything vanished around him, disappeared like smoke, leaving a terrifying sensation of illusion. He felt in everything the abyss of infinity, and everything pouring away into this abyss.
The sensation of infinity is the first and most terrifying trial before initiation. There is nothing! The small insignificant soul feels itself suspended in an infinite void. Then even the soul itself ceases to exist. There is nothing there is only infinity, the constant and continuous breaking up and dissolution of everything. In the mystical literature of all peoples there are references to this sensation of void and darkness. The mysterious deity of the ancient Egyptians, mentioned in the Orphic myths* was: 'The thrice-unknown darkness in contemplation of which all knowledge is resolved into ignorance.'
This means that, approaching the world of causes with nothing but the knowledge of the world of phenomena, with his own instrument of logic which proved futile because all the new eluded him, a man was bound to experience a terror surpassing all limits. In the new he felt as yet nothing but chaos, the old was vanishing, receding, becoming unreal. Terror and regret at the loss of the old was mingling with the fear of the new, the unknown, terrifying in its infinity.
At this stage a man goes through the same experience as that of an animal in becoming a man. After a momentary glimpse of the new world it is dragged back by life. The world it has glimpsed for a short moment seems a dream, a fantasy, a creation of its imagination. But the old world of the past is no longer the same either, it becomes narrow, there is no longer any room in it. The awakening consciousness can no longer lead the same wild and free life of a beast. It already knows something, hears some voices. And at the same time the body holds it. And it does not know where and how it can escape it or escape from itself.
A man on the threshold of the new world has exactly the same experience. He has heard the music of heaven, and the dull songs of the earth no longer touch or move him; or, if they do touch and move him, it is because they speak to him of heavenly sounds, of the unattainable, of the unknown. He has experienced a feeling of an extraordinary EXPANSION of consciousness, when for a moment everything was clear to him, and he cannot reconcile himself to the slow earthly working of the brain. Moments of 'sensation of infinity' are connected with quite special emotions.
In 'theosophical' literature and in books on occultism it is often said that, passing into the 'astral' world man begins to see new colours, colours which are not in the solar spectrum.* This symbolism of the new colours of the 'astral sphere' conveys precisely the thought about the new emotions which a man begins to experience together with the sensations of an expanded consciousness - 'the ocean being absorbed by a drop'. This is the 'incredible bliss' of which mystics speak, the heavenly light which the saints 'see', the 'new sensations' which poets experience. Even conversational psychology connects 'ecstasy' with completely unusual new sensations, inaccessible and unknown to man in ordinary life.
This sensation of light and infinite joy is experienced in moments of expansion of consciousness (the unfolding of the mystic lotus of the Indian Yogi), at the moment of the sensation of infinity which produces, at the same time, the sensation of darkness and boundless terror. What does it mean? How to reconcile the sensation of light with the sensation of darkness, the sensation of joy with the sensation of terror? Can it be simultaneous? Does it happen simultaneously?
It does happen and it has got to be so. Mystical literature gives us examples of this. The simultaneous sensation of light and darkness, joy and terror seems to symbolize the strange duality and contradiction of human life. It can happen to a man who is very sharply divided, with one side of his nature gone far into the 'spirit' and the other side deeply sunk in 'matter', i.e. in illusion, in unreality; with too profound a faith in the reality of the unreal. Speaking generally, the new world gives the sensation of light, of life, of all-pervading consciousness, of joy. . . . But to a mind which is not prepared the same world will give a sensation of infinite darkness and terror. Moreover, the sensation of terror must come from the loss of everything real, from the disappearance of this world. In order not to experience the terror of the new world, it is necessary to know it beforehand, either emotionally - through faith and love, or intellectually - by reason.
And in order not to experience terror at the loss of the old world, one should renounce it voluntarily beforehand, also either through faith or reason. It is necessary to renounce voluntarily all the beautiful bright world we live in, to admit that it is a mirage, a phantom, an unreality, deceit, illusion, may a. One should become reconciled to this unreality, not be afraid of it but rejoice in it. One should be stripped of everything. One should become POOR IN SPIRIT, i.e. make oneself poor by an effort of one's spirit. The beautiful Gospel symbol expresses the deepest philosophical truth: Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
These words become clear only if taken in the sense of renunciation of the material world. 'Poor in spirit' does not mean poor in the material sense, in the everyday meaning of the word; and it certainly does not mean poverty of the spirit. Spiritual poverty is renunciation of matter, such 'poverty' when a man has no ground under his feet and no sky over his head. Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, But the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.
This is the kind of poverty when a man is completely alone, because he begins to see other people, even the most near to him, his father, his mother, not as he saw them before, but differently, and renounces them because he sees real entities towards which he strives, just as in renouncing the phenomenal phantasm of the world he approaches that which is truly real. The moment of transition, the terrible moment of the loss of the old and the unfolding of the new was depicted in ancient literature in an infinite number of allegories. The purpose of the Mysteries was to make this transition easier. In India, in Egypt, in Greece there existed special preparatory rituals, sometimes only symbolical, sometimes real, actually leading the soul to the very doors of the new world, and opening these doors at the moment of initiation. But external rites and ceremonies could not by themselves create initiation. The chief work had to go on within the soul and the mind of man. How then can logic help man to pass to the consciousness of this new higher world? We have seen that mathematics has already found a way into this higher order of things. Penetrating there, it first of all renounces its fundamental axioms of identity and difference. In the world of infinite and fluid magnitudes a magnitude can be not equal to itself; a part may be equal to the whole; and of equal magnitudes one may be infinitely greater than another.
All this sounds like an absurdity from the point of view of the mathematics of finite and constant numbers. But the very mathematics of finite and constant numbers is a calculation of relationships among non-existent magnitudes, i.e. an absurdity. Therefore, only that which seems an absurdity from the point of view of this mathematics can be the truth. Logic goes through the same process. It has to renounce itself, arrive at the necessity of its own annihilation - and then a new and higher logic may arise from it. In his Critique of Pure Reason Kant proved the possibility of a transcendental logic. Before Bacon and before Aristotle, in ancient Indian scriptures there were given formulae of that higher logic which unlocked the doors of the mysteries. But the meaning of these formulae was soon lost. They were preserved in ancient books, but only as some strange mummies of extinct thought, words without real content.
New thinkers again re-discovered these principles, expressed them in new words. But again they remained not understood, again they turned into some useless verbal ornament. But the idea continued. Belief was never lost in the possibility of finding and establishing the laws of the higher world. Mystical philosophy never regarded Aristotelean logic as all embracing or omnipotent. It built its systems outside logic or above logic, unconsciously, following the lines of thought laid down in the deepest antiquity. Higher logic existed before deductive and inductive logic was ever formulated. Higher logic may be called intuitive logic, the logic of infinity, the logic of ecstasy. This logic is not only possible, but it exists, and has existed from time immemorial; it was formulated many times; it entered as a key into philosophical systems - but in some strange way it was not recognized as LOGIC.
The system of this logic can be deduced from a great many philosophical systems. I find the most exact and the fullest formulation of this logic in Plotinus, in his treatise 'On Intelligible Beauty'. I shall quote this passage in the following chapter. I have called the system of higher logic 'TERTIUM ORGANUM', because for us it is the third instrument or the third law of thought after Aristotle and Bacon. The first was ORGANON, the second NOVUM ORGANUM. But the third existed before the first. A man possessing this key can open the doors of the world of causes without fear. The axioms which Tertium Organum contains cannot be formulated in our language. But if we still try to formulate them, they will produce the impression of absurdities. Taking the axioms of Aristotle as a model, we may express the principal axiom of the new logic in our poor earthly language in the following way:
A is both A and not A, or
Every thing is both A and not A, or
Every thing is All.
But in fact these formulae are completely impossible. And they are not axioms of higher logic; they are merely attempts to express the axioms of this logic in concepts. In reality the ideas of higher logic are inexpressible in concepts. And when we come up against this in-expressibility, it means that we have come into contact with the world of causes. The logical formula A is both A and not A corresponds to the mathematical formula: a magnitude can be greater or lesser than itself. The absurdity of both these propositions shows that they cannot refer to our world. Naturally, absurdity does not, by itself, indicate that a thing belongs to noumena. But the fact of belonging to noumena will necessarily be expressed for us in absurdity. To hope to find anything in the world of causes that would be logical from our point of view is just as useless as to think that the world of things can exist in accordance with the laws of the world of shadows, or stereometry in accordance with the laws of planimetry. To master the main principles of higher logic means to master the fundamentals of the understanding of higher-dimensional space or the world of the miraculous.
In order to come to a clear understanding of the relations of the many-dimensional world, we must get rid of all the 'idols' of our world (to use Bacon's expression); in other words we must get rid of all the obstacles to a right perception and thinking. And above all we must have an inner kinship with the world of the miraculous. In order to come to the understanding of the three-dimensional world, a two dimensional being must already be three-dimensional, and then get free of its 'idols', i.e. of its accepted ways of feeling and thinking, which have become axiomatic and are creating for it the illusion of two-dimensionality. What exactly must a two-dimensional being get rid of?
First of all - and this is most important - it must get rid of the conviction that what it sees and senses actually exists; and as a result it must become aware of the incorrectness of its representation of the world, and then of the idea that the real, new world must exist in some quite different forms, new, incomparable, incommensurable with the old. Further, the two-dimensional being must get rid of the assurance that its divisions are correct. It must understand that things which appear to it totally different and separated one from another, may be a part of some whole incomprehensible to it, or that they may have much in common, although this may not be noticed; whereas things which seem one and indivisible, are actually infinitely complex and manifold.
The mental growth of the two-dimensional being must proceed along the line of the recognition of those common properties of objects, unknown to it before, which result from their similar origin or similar functions, incomprehensible on a plane. Once the two-dimensional being has recognized the possible existence of common properties, formerly unknown to it, in objects which appear different, it has already come near to our understanding of the world. It has come near to our logic, has begun to understand the use of a collective noun, i.e. a word which is not a proper name but a common noun; in other words, a word expressing a concept.
The 'idols' of the two-dimensional being which obstruct the development of its consciousness are proper names which itself it gives to all surrounding objects. For it every object has its own proper name, corresponding to its own representation of that object; it has no common nouns corresponding to concepts. It is only by getting rid of these 'idols' and understanding that nouns may be both proper and common that it will be able to advance further, to develop mentally, to approach the human understanding of the world. Otherwise, the simplest sentence, such as: John and Peter are both men will be an absurdity for a two-dimensional being. In its own representation it will take approximately the following form: John and Peter are both John and Peter. In other words, every logical proposition of ours will seem an absurdity to it. It is clear why this should be so. It has no concepts; proper names which make up its speech, have no plural. It is clear that the plural of our speech will seem to it an absurdity. But where are our 'idols'? What must we get rid of in order to pass on to the understanding of relations in the many-dimensional world?
First of all we must get rid of the conviction that we see and sense that which actually exists and that the real world is similar to the world we see. In other words, we must get rid of the illusion of the material world. We must understand with mind all the illusory nature of the world we perceive in time and space and understand that the real world can have nothing in common with it. We must understand that we cannot represent to ourselves the real world in forms; and then we must understand the conditional nature of the axioms of our mathematics and logic relating to the unreal, phenomenal world.
In mathematics the idea of infinity will help us to do this. The unreality of finite magnitudes as compared with the infinite is self-evident. In logic we may base our thought on the idea of monism, i.e. the fundamental unity of everything existing, and consequently adopt as our starting point the impossibility of constructing any axioms consisting of contrapositions, theses and antitheses, on which our logic is based. The logic of Aristotle and Bacon is fundamentally dualistic. If we are deeply imbued with the idea of monism, we shall conquer the 'idol' of this logic. The fundamental axioms of our logic may be reduced to identity and contradiction, in the same way as mathematical axioms. At the basis of them all lies the acceptance of one general axiom, namely, that every given something has something opposite to it. Consequently, every proposition has its contra-position, every thesis has its antithesis. To the being of every thing is opposed the non-being of that thing. To the being of the world is opposed the non-being of the world. Object is opposed to subject. Objective world - to the sub-jective world. Not 'I' is opposed to 'I'. Immobility - to motion. Variability - to constancy. Multiformity - to unity. Falsehood - to truth. Evil - to good. And, in conclusion, to every A in general is opposed not A. The recognition of the reality of these divisions is necessary for the acceptance of the fundamental axioms of the logic of Aristotle and Bacon. In other words, this logic requires an absolute and incontestable acceptance of the idea of the duality of the world - dualism. The recognition of the unreality of these divisions and of the unity of all opposites is necessary for the beginning of understanding of higher logic. In the very beginning of this book the existence of the WORLD and of INNER LIFE was 'admitted', in other words, the reality of a dual division of everything existing, because all other contrapositions are derived from this contraposition. Duality is the condition of our perception of the phenomenal (three-dimensional) world; it is the instrument of our perception of phenomena. But when we come to the perception of the noumenal world (or the world of many dimensions), this duality begins to stand in our way, to become an obstacle to knowledge. Dualism is the chief 'idol' we have to get rid of. In order to understand the relations of things in three dimensions and in our logic, a two-dimensional being must renounce the 'idol' of the absolute uniqueness of objects which requires it to call things only by their proper names. We, in order to understand the world of many dimensions, must renounce the idol of duality. But an application of monism to practical thinking comes up against the insurmountable obstacle of our language. Our language is incapable of expressing the unity of opposites, just as it is incapable of expressing spatially the relation of cause and effect. Consequently, we should be prepared to find that all attempts to express super-logical relations in our language will appear absurd, and actually will only hint at what we wish to convey. Thus the formula: A is both A and not A or Everything is both A and not A representing the fundamental axiom of higher logic, as expressed in our language of concepts, sounds an absurdity from the point of view of our ordinary logic, and is essentially untrue. We must be prepared for the fact that it is impossible to express superlogical relations in our language. The formula 'A is both A and not A' is untrue because in the world of causes the very contraposition of 'A' and 'not A' does not exist But we cannot express their real relation. It would be more correct to say, A is all But this also would be untrue, because A is not only all, but also any part of all, and at the same time a given part This is exactly what our language cannot express And it is exactly to this that we must tram and accustom our thought. We must become accustomed to the thought that separateness and combination are not opposites in the real world, but exist together and at the same time, without contradicting each other. We must realize that in the real world the same thing can be both a part and the whole, i.e. that the whole, without changing, can be its own part. We must understand in general that there are no contrapositions and that each thing is a certain archetype of the all. Having begun to understand this we shall begin to grasp separate ideas concerning the essence of the 'noumenal world' or the world of many dimensions in which we actually live. In such a case the higher logic, even with the imperfect formulae -crude as they may appear in our language of concepts - represents a powerful instrument of cognition of the world, the only means of preserving us from illusions. The application of this instrument of thought gives the key to the mysteries of nature, to the world as it is. Let us try to enumerate the properties of the WORLD OF CAUSES which may be derived from everything said so far. It is first of all necessary to emphasize that it is impossible to express in words the properties of the world of causes. Every thought which is expressed about them will be untrue. It can be said about the real world that (in relation to it) 'a thought expressed in words, is a lie'. One can speak about it only conditionally, approximately, by hints, by symbols. And, if anything said about it is understood literally, it will become an absurdity. Generally speaking, everything expressed in words about the world of causes may seem absurd and is actually already a distortion. Truth cannot be expressed. The most one can do is to hint at it, to give an impetus to the thought. But everyone must find truth for himself, by himself. 'Someone else's' truth is worse than a lie, because it is - two lies. This also explains why truth can only be expressed in the form of a paradox, or even in the form of a lie. To speak of truth without lies we must know some other language. Our language is not suitable. What then can we say in our language about the world of many dimensions, the world of noumena or the world of causes?
- Di dunia ini 'WAKTU' harus ada secara spasial, mis. Waktu acara harus ada dan tidak terjadi. Dengan kata lain, mereka harus ada sebelum dan sesudah pencapaian mereka dan berbohong, seolah-olah, pada bidang yang sama. Efek harus ada bersamaan dengan penyebab. Apa yang kita sebut hukum sebab akibat tidak dapat ada di sana, karena syarat yang diperlukan untuk itu adalah - waktu. Tidak ada yang dapat diukur dengan tahun, hari, dan jam. Tidak mungkin ada sebelum, sekarang dan sesudahnya. Momen dari zaman yang berbeda, dibagi oleh rentang waktu yang lama, ada secara bersamaan dan mungkin berdekatan. Pada saat yang sama semua kemungkinan momen tertentu, bahkan yang bertentangan satu sama lain, bersama dengan semua hasilnya ad infinitum, harus direalisasikan bersamaan dengan momen yang diberikan. Tetapi lamanya momen mungkin berbeda pada pesawat yang berbeda
- Tidak ada yang diukur dengan ukuran kita, tidak ada yang sebanding dengan padatan kita, tidak ada yang lebih atau kurang dari padatan kita. Tidak ada yang terbaring di kanan atau kiri, di atas atau di bawah benda padat kita. Tidak ada yang menyerupai benda padat, garis, atau figur kita. Namun, pada saat yang sama, semua ini mungkin terjadi. Titik-titik berbeda dari ruang kita dibagi untuk kita oleh jarak jauh, harus berdekatan di sana. 'Kedekatan' atau 'jarak' ditentukan di sana oleh 'afinitas' atau 'divergensi' batin, oleh simpati atau antipati, yaitu oleh sifat-sifat yang bagi kita bersifat subyektif.
- Tidak ada masalah di sana, juga tidak ada gerak. Tidak ada yang dapat ditimbang atau difoto, atau diekspresikan dalam formula energi fisik. Tidak ada yang memiliki bentuk, warna atau bau. Tidak ada yang memiliki kualitas tubuh fisik. Pada saat yang sama, dengan memahami hukum-hukum tertentu, sifat-sifat dunia sebab-sebab dapat dipelajari dalam kategori-kategori yang telah disebutkan.
- Tidak ada yang mati atau tidak sadar di sana. Semuanya hidup, semuanya bernafas, semuanya berpikir, semuanya terasa, semuanya sadar dan semuanya berbicara.
- Aksioma matematika kita tidak dapat diterapkan di dunia itu, karena tidak ada yang terbatas di sana. Segala sesuatu di sana tidak terbatas dan, dari sudut pandang kami, variabel.
- Hukum logika kita tidak dapat beroperasi di sana. Dari sudut pandang logika kita bahwa dunia berada di luar logika. Ini adalah domain yang hukumnya dinyatakan dalam TERTIUM ORGANUM.
- Banyaknya dunia kita tidak bisa ada di sana. Semuanya adalah keseluruhan. Dan setiap titik debu yang terpisah, apalagi setiap kehidupan yang terpisah dan setiap makhluk sadar, menjalani satu kehidupan dengan keseluruhan dan mencakup semua keseluruhan dalam dirinya sendiri.
- Di dunia itu tidak ada dualitas dunia kita. Berada di sana tidak bertentangan dengan yang tidak ada. Hidup tidak menentang kematian. Sebaliknya, yang satu termasuk yang lain. Persatuan dan multiplisitas, gerak dan imobilitas; kesatuan dan perpecahan, baik dan jahat, kebenaran dan kepalsuan - semua perpecahan ini tidak mungkin ada di sana. Segala sesuatu yang subyektif adalah objektif, dan segala sesuatu yang objektif adalah subyektif. Dunia itu adalah dunia persatuan yang saling bertentangan.
- Perasaan akan realitas dunia itu harus disertai dengan rasa tidak realistisnya dunia ini. Pada saat yang sama tidak ada perbedaan antara yang nyata dan yang tidak nyata dapat ada di sana, sama seperti tidak ada perbedaan antara subyektif dan obyektif.
- Dunia itu dan dunia kita bukanlah dua dunia yang berbeda. Dunia adalah satu. Apa yang kita sebut dunia kita hanyalah representasi dunia kita yang tidak benar, dunia dilihat melalui celah sempit. Kita mulai merasakan bahwa dunia itu sebagai mukjizat, yaitu sebagai sesuatu yang bertentangan dengan realitas dunia ini. Pada saat yang sama dunia ini, dunia duniawi, mulai tampak tidak nyata.
- Tetapi semua yang dikatakan sejauh ini tidak akan mendefinisikan hubungan kita dengan dunia itu, selama kita tidak menyadari bahwa bahkan dalam memahaminya kita tidak akan merangkulnya secara keseluruhan, yaitu dalam semua variasi hubungan yang ada di dalamnya, tetapi akan memikirkan hanya dalam satu atau aspek lainnya.
- Apa yang telah dikatakan tentang dunia sebab-sebab juga merujuk kepada Yang Semua. Tetapi antara dunia dan Semua mungkin ada banyak tahap transisi.