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Page 1 of 11903 · PDF PAGE 20
…rse his personality is destroyed in the process. Yet it is to be feared that such an adept too often starts on the path with the hideous idea of aggrandizing his own personality to the utmost. But his method is so near to the true one that this tendency is soon corrected, as it were automatically. (The mathematical analogue of this process is to procure for yourself the realization of the nothingness of yourself by keeping the fourth dimension ever present to your mind.) The illusory nature of this idea of an infinite Atman is well shown by the…
1903 · PDF PAGE 14
… the conditions limiting and inyolving them all. Remember that it is not true to say that our 0° existed, nor that it did not exist. The idea of existence ‘was just as much unformulated as that of toasted cheese. But0? is a finite expression, or has a finite phase, and our universe is a finite universe ; its categories are themselves finite, and the expression “infinite space” isa contradiction in terms. The idea of an-absolute and ofan infinite God, is relegated to the limbo of all similar idle and pernicious perversions of truth. Infinity rem…
1903 · PDF PAGE 3
…ry hypothesis of the universe, that of its Infinity, or at any rate that of the infinity of God, or of the infinity of some substance or idea actually existing, we first come to the question of the possibility of the co-existence of God and man. The Christians, in the category of the existent, enumerate among other things, whose consideration we may discard for the purposes of this argument, God, an infinite being ; man; Satan and his angels; man certainly, and Satan presumably, finite beings. These are not
1903 · PDF PAGE 13
…IT COULD EXTEND| [f our 0 was the ordinary 0 of mathematics, there was not truly absolute 0, for 0 is, as I have shown, dependent on the idea of categories. If these existed, then the whole question is merely thrown back; we must reach a state in which the 0 is absolute. Not only must we get rid of all subjects, but of all predicates. By 0 (in mathematics) we really mean 0°, where n is the final term ofa natural scale of dimensions, categories, or predicates. Our Cosmic Egg, then, from which the present universe arose, was Nothingness, extended…
1903 · PDF PAGE 9
…ing in one case and the other. We have thus two terms, both unreal, both incon: ceivable, yet both representing intelligible and diverse ideas to our minds (and this is the point!) though identical in reality and convertible by a process of reason which simulates or replaces that apprehension which we can never attain to. Let us apply this idea to the Beginning of all things, about which the Christians lie frankly, the Hindus preva- ricate, and the Buddhists are discreetly silent, while not contradicting even the gross and ridiculous accounts o…
1903 · PDF PAGE 17
…ind myself in a good state, that merely proves that my destiny took me there, We are, as Herbert Spencer observes, self-deluded with the idea of freewill; but if this is so, norhing matters at all. If, however, Herbert Spencer is mistaken (unlikely as it must appear), then our reason is valid, and we should seek out the right path and pursue it. The question therefore need not trouble us at all. Here, then wesee the use of morals and of religion, and all the rest of the bag of tricks. All these are methods, bad or good, for extricating ourselve…
1903 · PDF PAGE 23
…here is room for all. On the old and, I hope, now finally discredited hypothesis of an infinite being, the sup- porters of these various ideas, while explicitly affirming them, implicitly denied. Similarly, note that the Qaba- listic idea of a supreme God (and innumerable hierarchies) is quite compatible with this theory, provided that the supreme God is not infinite. Now as to our weapons. The more advanced Yogis of the Bast, like the Nonconformists at home, have pra- tically abandoned ceremonial as idle. I have yet to learn, however, by what …
1903 · PDF PAGE 15
…as merely another way of expressing the same thing. And “change” is really not my meaning either; for change, to our minds, involves the idea of time. But the whole thing is incon- ceivable — to ratiocination, though not to thought. Note well too that ifI say “Absence-of-book is not on the table” I cannot convert it into “All books are on the table” but only to “some books are on the table”. The proposition is an “E” and not an “*A” proposition. It is the Advaita blunder to make it so; and many a school- boy has fed off the mantelpiece for less…
1903 · PDF PAGE 12
…ly “if it be extended in no dimension or category”) the result is Unity, and the unknown factor X is eliminated. A This is the Advaitist idea of the future of man; his personality, bereft of all its qualities, disappears and is lost, while in its place arises the impersonal Unity, The Pleroma, Parabrahma, or the Allah of the Unity-adoring followers of Mehammed. (To the Musulman fakir, Allah is by no means a personal God.) +I cannot here diseuss the propriety of representing the categories a& dimensfons, It-will be obvious to anystudent of the i…
1903 · PDF PAGE 19
…ecline at present to accept. The task of the Buddhist recluse is roughly as follows; He must plunge every particle of his being into one idea: right views, aspirations, word, deed, life, will- power, meditation, rapture, such are the stages of his liberation, which resolves itself into a struggle against the law of causality. He cannot prevent past causes taking effect, but he can prevent present causes from haying any future results. The exoteric Christian and Hindu rather rely on another person to do this for them, and are further blinded by …