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Page 1 of 11903 · PDF PAGE 6
…rowded out, and the possibility of religion is equally excluded. We may now shift our objective. The Hindus cannot account intelligibly, though they try hard, for Maya, the cause of all suffering. Their position is radically weak, but at least we may say for them that they have tried to square their religion with their common sense. The Christians, on the other hand, though they saw whither the Manichean Heresy * must lead, and crushed it, have not officially admitted the precisely similar conclusion with regard to man, and denied the existence…
1903 · PDF PAGE 10
… circle opening out into the line.” The Christian dogma is really identical, for both conceive of a previous and eternally existing God, though the Qabalists hedge by describing this latent Deity as “Nor”. Later commentators, notably the illustrious MacGregorMathers, have explained this Not as Snegatively-existing”. Profound as is my respect for the intellectual and spiritual attainments of him whom I am proud to have been permitted to call my master, I am bound to express my view that when the Qabalists said Not, they meant Not, and nothing el…
1903 · PDF PAGE 9
…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 of the more fantastic Hindu visionaries. 7 Ra…
1903 · PDF PAGE 7
…th in the Christian sense merely amounts to being convinced on insufficient grounds. This is surely the last refuge of incompetence. But though, always on the original hypothesis of the infinity of space, etc., the Advaitist position of the Vedantists and the great Germans is unassailable, yet on practical grounds the Dvaitists have all the advantage. Fichte and the others exhaust themselves trying to turn the simple and obvious position that: “If the Ego alone exists, where is any place, not only for morals and religion, which we can very well…
1903 · PDF PAGE 15
…y 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. There is yet another proof—the proof by exclusion. I have shown, and me…
1903 · PDF PAGE 5
…n of God as infinite therefore denies man implicitly; while if he be finite, there is an end of the usual Christian reasons for worship, though I dare- say I could myself discover some reasonably good ones. I hardly expect to be asked, somehow. The resulting equilibrium of God and man, des- tructive of worship, is of course absurd. We must reject it, unless we want to fall into Positivism, Material- ism, or something of the sort. But if, then, we call God infinite, how are we to regard man, and Satan? (the latter, at the very least, surely no i…
1903 · PDF PAGE 19
… sense; for, as I have shown, the Atman is not infinite and eternal: one day it must sink down with the other forces. But by creating in thought an infinite Impersonal Personality, by defining it as such, all religions except the Buddhist, and as I believe, the Qabalistic, have sought to annihilate their own personality. The Buddhist aims directly at extinction; the Hindu denies and abolishes his own finity by the creation of an absolute, As this cannot be done in reality, the process is illusory, yet itis useful in the early stages—as far at a…
1903 · PDF PAGE 21
…of being on the right side of the fence| The Buddhist leaves no chances of this kind; in all his categories he is infinitely unextended; though the * The Hindus see this as well as anyone, and call Atman Sat ~chit~ ananda, these being alone the pairs of opposites, rather on the Hegelian, Vines of the reconciliation (rather than the identity) of opposites in a We have dismissed infinity as the figment of a morbid ‘mathematic: but in any case the same disproof applies to it as to'God.