The Conquest of Illusion THE CONQUESTOFILLUSIONThis book is remarkable forits very clear exposition of the nature of illusion and the need to pierceits veil and find the reality that exists at every moment of time. "Wealways seek in the wrong direction," says Dr. van der Leeuw, "we alwayswant more time; we demand even endless time in our quest of immortality.Yet the infinitely greater Reality is ever ours to enter if we but will."Dr. J. J. van der Leeuw,the author of this book, received his Doctorate of Letters at Leyden Universityin the Netherlands. After serving as head of the Theosophical society inthe Netherlands and actively working for the Society in various parts ofthe world, he came in the thirties to the United States of America, wherehe was a university lecturer and a field organizer for the New EducationFellowship. "The author has somethingto say, which he perceives to be true and useful, or helpfully beautiful.So far as he knows, no one has yet said it; so far as he knows, no oneelse can say it. He is bound to say it, clearly and melodiously if he may;clearly, at all events. In the sum of his life he finds this to be thething, or group of things, manifest to him--this, the piece of true knowledge,or sight, which his share of sunshine and earth has permitted him to seize.He would fain set it down for ever; engrave it on the rock, if he could;saying, "This the best of me; for the rest, I ate, and drank, and slept,loved, and hated, like mother; my life was as the vapour, and is not; butthis I saw and know; this, if anything of mine, is worth your memory."RUSKIN, Sesameand Lilies. THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TOJ. KRISHNAMURTIAND TO THE MEMORY OF HISBROTHERNITYANANDAIN TOKEN OF AN UNVARYINGFREINDSHIPAND IN REMEMBRANCE OFOJAI DAYS TABLE OF MATTERCHAPTER ONE THE QUEST OFLIFEThe Philosophy of Experience--TheBirth of Wonder--The Mystery of Life--The Vision on the MountCHAPTER TWO FROM THE UNREALTO THE REALOur Dual Universe--The Way ofSense-Perception--Our Body too Part of our World-Image--Our World and The world--Illusion and Reality--The Experience of the World of the RealCHAPTER THREE INTUITION ANDINTELLECTThe Twofold Mind--Intuitive Knowledgeand Logical Proof--Science and Philosophy---Occultism & MysticismCHAPTER FOUR THE ABSOLUTEAND THE RELATIVEThe Realization of the Absolute--Canthe Absolute be Known?--Absolute and Relative in Religion--The Absolute and the Relative in Man--WrongProblems in Philosophy--Esoteric and ExotericCHAPTER FIVE THE MYSTERYOF CREATIONThe Problem of Origins--The ScientificAnswer--The Insufficiency of the Scientific Answer--Wrong Problems and Wrong Answers--Time andthe Eternal--The Rhythm of Creation--The Absolute as CreationCHAPTER SIX SPIRIT AND MATTERThe Problem of Duality--MonisticSolutions--Matter and Spirit as `Aspects'--The Problem Itself Erroneous--The Experience in the Worldof the Real--Matter and Spirit as RelationsCHAPTER SEVEN THE PHANTOMOF EVILThe Opposites, Good and Evil--Good,Evil and Reality--Good and Evil in the World of the Relative--Our Social Code of EthicsCHAPTER EIGHT THE FREEDOMOF THE WILLFreedom and Necessity--Analysisof the Freedom of Choice--Freewill and License--The Problem in the World of the Real--Misinterpretationby the Intellect--The Reality of Freedom---Partial ViewsCHAPTER NINE THE JUSTICEOF LIFEThe Problem of Injustice--Substitutesfor Justice--The Doctrine of Karma and the Justice of Life--The Erroneous Nature of the Problem--Justicein the World of the RealCHAPTER TEN THE IMMORTALITYOF THE SOULThe Quest of Immortality--TheDenial of Immortality by Materialism--The relation between Body and Soul--Survival not Immortality--TheIllusion of Immortality--Eternal RealityCHAPTER ELEVEN IN THE LIGHTOF THE ETERNALThe Meaning of Life--PracticalPhilosophy--World-Affirmation and World-Denial--The Practice of Reality--In the Light of the Eternal CHAPTER ONETHE QUEST FOR LIFEFor this feeling of wondershows that you are a philosopher, sincewonder is the only beginningof philosophy. --PLATO, Theatetus.THE PHILOSOPHY OF EXPERIENCEIt is one of the platitudesof our age to say that the time for words is past and the time for actionhas come. All around us is this clamour for action, all around the contemptfor mere words, however verbose the exponents of the action cult may be.But then, even action needs expounding.Yet there is sound reasonunderlying this impatience with words that are not vitally connected withaction. Especially in philosophy we have suffered for many years from adeluge of words, barren of action, and consequently the man in the streethas come to look upon philosophy as a pretentious speculation leading nowhere,an intellectual game, subtle and clever, sometimes not even that, but alwayswithout practical value for the life of everyday. Often it has been such;disguising its lack of reality under the cloak of a difficult and technicalterminology it frightened away the investigating layman and made him feelthat it was his fault, his shortcoming which prevented him from understandingits profound mysteries. Only the bold and persevering investigator discoversthat its cloak often hides but a pitiful emptiness.The profoundest minds haveever spoken the simplest language. The thought of Plato may be deep; hislanguage is ever simple and may be understood by any cultured man. HereOriental philosophy may well teach the West. Lao Tze, Patanjali, Gautamaspeak a language of utter simplicity, by the side of which Kant or Hegelappears ponderous and confused. When a thing is clear to a philosopherhe must be able to say it in simple and intelligible language. If he failsto do so and if many volumes must be written to expound what he might havemeant, it is a certain sign that his knowledge was confused. Only imperfectknowledge goes hidden under a load of words.But apart from its intricateand unbeautiful language philosophy has often been a stranger to life.See again how the truly great touch life at every step and ever bring intothis world of daily life the fire, which they steal, from the gods. Ifour philosophy leads to wisdom and not merely to knowledge it must bearfruit in action. Hear Epictetus the Stoic:The first and most essentialpart of philosophy is that concerning the application of rules, such asfor instance: not to lie. The second part is that concerning proofs such,as for instance: whence does it follow that one should not lie?The third part is theconfirmation and analysis of the first two parts, for instance: how doesit follow that this is a proof? For what is a proof? What is a consequence,what a contradiction? What truth, what error? Hence the third part is necessarybecause of the second and the second because of the first; but the mostnecessary and that in which we must find peace, is the first. We, however,do the opposite; for we stop at the third part and all our interest concernsit; but the first we neglect entirely. Hence we do lie, but we know byheart the proof that we should not lie. (Eucheiridion, 52.)It is in the acid test ofdaily life that the worth of a philosophy is proved. Morality is neverthe beginning, but always the end. While knowledge may remain a strangerto action, wisdom being experience of life, can never fail to stamp ourevery word and action with its seal.Morality, however, or ethics,is but one-way in which wisdom becomes action; true philosophy inspirescivilization at every point. There was never a Platonist worthy of thename who did not leave the world the better for his philosophy, whetherhe was a poet or politician. But it is only when philosophy has ceasedto be merely intellectual and has become experience of living truth thatit can be thus creative.It is possible, with infalliblelogic, to build up an intellectual structure that has the appearance ofa philosophy of life, but is in reality a phantasm of death. Only whenphilosophy as experience is rooted in our consciousness, and thence drawsthe life-giving force that makes of it a living organism, can it bear fruitsthat nourish man. Thus the facts on which a vital philosophy is based mustneeds be of a psychological nature or, using a much-dreaded word, `subjective.'But then even though we may be happily oblivious of it, all facts are ofa psychological nature, since we do not know a thing except in so far asit becomes awareness in our consciousness. The division of knowledge ortruth into subjective and objective is misleading; the moment a thing becomesknowledge it is subjective, though its validity may well be objective.A fact of our consciousness or psychological truth may well be of objectivevalue in so far as it is not a merely personal appreciation, but of universalapplication. In that case the method is subjective, the value objective.On the other hand there are facts which we call objective since they belongto what we call the outer world, but which are subjective in value sincethey apply to us only. It is the confusion of the two ways in which theword subjective is used, the one pertaining to method, when subjectivemeans "belonging to the consciousness," and the other pertaining to validity,when subjective means `of personal value only,' which makes us dread theterm subjective. There are many facts of the consciousness which we cometo know in a subjective way, but which yet are objective in validity sincethey hold good not only for us, but for all men.It is therefore no disparagementof philosophy to say of it that, in contrast with science, its method issubjective. Did we but realize it; there is greater safety in the knowledgeof our own consciousness, which is direct, than in the knowledge of theworld around us, which is indirect.In this book the philosophicalmethod will be psychological and based on experience of consciousness ratherthan argumentative and based on logical proof. I do not hesitate to usethe central reality of mystical experience, namely the experience of whatBucke calls `cosmic consciousness,' as a fact of the uttermost consequencein philosophy. The imposing testimony of all ages, which Bucke has gatheredin his well-know book, goes far to prove the universal validity of an experiencewhich some would discredit as `merely subjective; It is subjective in sofar as we approach it through our own consciousness, it is more than subjective,since in cosmic consciousness we share a Reality of which we are but aninfinitesimal part. The race is growing towards this cosmic consciousness,which is, but the concluding chapter in an evolution of consciousness,leading from unconsciousness through self-consciousness to cosmic consciousness.It is in this mystical experience that the intellect is transcended andknowing becomes being. Far from being the vague emotionalism or the hystericaltransports which at times have usurped the name of mysticism, true mysticalexperience is a most definite reality. A philosophy based on it is no longera philosophy of reasoning only, but primarily a philosophy of experience,reasonably expounded.It is here that philosophycan break through that ring-pass-not which Kant drew round the thing initself, proclaiming it unknowable by reason. No doubt he was right, butthis does not mean that the thing in itself cannot ever be known in anyway. In a later chapter it will be shown how the experience of the thingin itself in the world of the Real is a possibility and how through thatexperience philosophy can be liberated from the Kantian doom. In this liberationthe faculty of the intuition, or knowledge by experience, is consciouslyused and with this a new world opens for philosophy, in fact, a new philosophyis born. No longer is philosophy then a matter of intellectual belief,a result of irrefutable argument and convincing proof; it has become theexperience of living man, life of his life, being of his being, the experienceof truth.THE BIRTH OF WONDERThere is no more patheticspectacle than that of an age which is bored with life. Materially ourmodern world is richer than perhaps any preceding age; spiritually we arepaupers. Not all our truly wonderful physical accomplishments, not allour abundance of amusements and sensations can hide the fact that we arepoor within. In fact, the task of the latter is but to hide the povertywithin; when our inner life is arid we must needs create artificial stimulifrom without to provide a substitute, or at least cause such an unbrokensuccession of ever varying sensations that we have no time to notice theabsence of life from within.There are but few who canhear either solitude or silence, and find a wealth of life arising in themselveseven when there is naught from without to stimulate. Yet such alone arehappy, such alone truly live; where we find the craving for amusement andsensation from without we see an abject confession of inner lifelessness.There lies the difference between the quick and the dead, some are deadeven in life, others can never die since they are life. We all seek life,since life is happiness and life is reality. But it is only when we havethe courage to cease from sensationalism and outer stimulants that we maybe successful in our quest.Philosophy is the quest oflife. It is more than a love of wisdom, unless we understand wisdom asbeing different from knowledge, as different as life is from death. Wisdomis knowledge which is experience and therefore life; the quest of wisdomis in reality the quest of life. It is true that the name of philosophyhas often been used to corer a game of intellectual question and answerwhich leaves men no richer than before. Thus the average man distrust philosophyand accuses it of giving stones for bread. But real philosophy is not theintellectual solving of problems; in the words of Plato, philosophy isthe birth of wonder, and he is the true philosopher who begins to wonderabout life, not he who is certain of having solved that which is beyondsolution. It is profoundly true that, until we can see the wonder of lifeall around us, unless we see ourselves surrounded by a mystery that challengesour daring exploration, we have not entered on the path of philosophy.Unawakened man knows onlyfacts, no mysteries, to him things are their own explanation; the worldis there and what else is there to know? Such is the animal outlook; tothe bovine mind pastures may be good or bad, but they need no explanation.Thus unawakened man is content with the facts of existence--his environment,his food, his work, his family and friends are so many facts surroundinghim, pleasant or unpleasant, but never in need of explanation. To speakto him of mystery hidden in his life and his world would not convey anymeaning; he exists and the fact of his existence is sufficient unto him.Death and life themselves may for a while cause him anxiety or joy, buteven then they do not arouse any questions; they are familiar and customary.It is the very familiarity of life which hides its mystery to the animalmind. That which seen once would be a marvel becomes familiar when seena hundred times and ceases to suggest the possibility of further explanation;have we not switched on the electric light so many times that the unexplainedwonder of electricity is lost in the familiarity of the action and thefact has become its own explanation?There was a time, in thechildhood of humanity, when primitive man lived in a world of mystery movingamong dark fears and unknown terrors. But even them, though the mysterywas felt and the world was seen as in a dream, the possibility of questioningthe mystery did not suggest itself--primitive man was too much part ofnature to question and investigate. With the dawn of intellect the mysteryof primitive man is lost and naught but facts in their vulgarity remain;in the sublime ignorance of a self-satisfaction, which doubts neither itselfnor the world, man moves among mysteries which, could he but realize them,would strike terror into his heart. And should he occasionally catch aglimpse of the mystery of life he but hastens to cover it up and even denyit, lest the comfort of his intellectual slumber should be disturbed. Ratherthan risk the chance of an upheaval of the familiar and comfortable factsof his existence he will shut his eyes to the unexplained and burn at thestake those who persist in seeing and questioning.The time, however, comesfor most of us, when catastrophe and suffering shock us out of the rutsof familiarity, when our old world is destroyed beyond hope of recovery.It is as if the universe, in which, but a few days before, we moved aboutwith the easy certainty of unawakened man, had disappeared overnight andeach familiar object and event had become a dark and terrible mystery.Thus would the traveler feel who, waking from a dreamless slumber, findsthat he has slept by the side of deadly reptile, unaware of its proximityand happy in his ignorance.The awakening to the mysteryof life is a revolutionary event; in it an old world is destroyed so thata new and better one may take its place, and all things are affected bythe change. We ourselves have become mysterious strangers in our own eyesand tremblingly we ask ourselves who we are, whence we came, whither weare bound. Are we the being who is called by our name, whom we thoughtwe knew so well in the past? Are we the form we see in the mirror, ourbody, offspring of our parents? Who, then, is it that feels and thinkswithin us, that wills and struggles, plans and dreams, that can opposeand control this physical body which we thought to be ourselves? We wakeup to realize that we have never known ourselves, that we have lived asin a blind dream of ceaseless activity in which there was never a momentof self recollection.Our very consciousness isterra incognita; we know not the working of our own mind. What isit that happens when we think or feel, when a moral struggle takes placein us, when we are inspired, respond to beauty or sacrifice ourselves forothers? It is as if we were prisoners in the vast palace of our consciousness,living confined to a small and bare room beyond which stretch the manyapartment of our inner world, into which we never penetrate, but one ofwhich mysterious visitors--feelings, thoughts, ideas and suggestions, desiresand passions--come and pass through our prison, without our knowing hencethey come or whiter they go. In our consciousness we knew but results,we saw but that which rose to the surface and became visible; now we beginto realize a vast and unexplored world of mystery which, mirabile dictu,is the world of our own inner life. We are discovering the wonder of life.It is everywhere around us,this wonder of life, nothing now is common or familiar, everything throbswith a mysterious life which is there for us to explore. The sacred enthusiasmof the investigator claims us, we desire to know as a starving man desiresfood, we cannot live unless we know; we will know if it must cost our lives.Thus are we born as philosophers.THE MYSTERY OF LIFEThe mystery of life is nota problem to be solved; it is reality to be experienced. Beware of theman who claims to have solved the problem of life, who would explain itscomplexities and, with deadly logic, build a system in which all the factsof our existence may be pigeon-holed and neatly stored away. He standscondemned by his own claim. The child which sees wonder in all the worldaround it, to whom the shells with which it plays on the beach are objectsbreathless excitement and thrilled amazement, is nearer to divine truththan the intellectualist who would strip a world of its mystery and takespride in showing us its anatomy in ruthless dissection. For a while itmay satisfy evolving man to know that the splendors of a sunset are butthe breaking of light-rays in a moist atmosphere; he will come to realizethat he may have explained the method, but has not touched the mysteryat all. Recovering from the sureness of youth, never doubting itself, awakenedman returns to the wonder of childhood and once again sees a world, which,as the years pass by, deepens in mystery and beauty, but is never exhaustedor explained.Many are the systems claimingto explain life, contradictory in their premises and consequently in theirconclusions. They may be clever, they may fit perfectly in all their details,but life itself never evades them; were it possible to contain life ina system it would no longer be life, but death. Life is ever changing,ever becoming, yet eternal in its abiding reality and the desire to graspand hold it, to see it stretched out before us, as a butterfly in its glasscase is destined ever to be disappointed. Our systems of theology and philosophy,yes, even science, are but as momentary glimpses of a rapid movement; theymay show us an instant of that movement in frozen immobility, the movementitself can never be contained in them. And yet, even though the attemptto solve the problem of life and explain it logically is doomed to failurestill the yearning to understand more, to know our own meaning and purposeis so irresistible that even the thought of failure cannot hold it back.The thirst for truth is asacred aspiration; like water seeking to gain its true level its onwardpressure is unending until its purpose is fulfilled, its object achieved.Such a fundamental desire cannot exist only to be frustrated; the veryexistence of the desire for truth is the promise of its fulfillment andprophesies achievement. Fundamental instincts are never wholly mistaken;if truth were not for man the desire for truth would not be as a burningunrest in his heart, the eagle ever eating out Prometheus' liver whichever grows again. That man should desire truth above all things is right,that he should be willing to sacrifice himself, his years, yes, his verylife, to achieve does but show the nobility of the desire. But when, inblindness of materialism, he wants to have truth, to grasp and holdher, to lock her between the pages of a book, to make an object, a thingof that which is the heart of things, then the nobility of his aspirationis lost and the hero of yesterday becomes an object of pity, at whom thegreat gods smile in compassion.Though ever again men mayclaim to have found truth and to possess her, truth herself remains untouched;truth is the mystery of life, which the hand of man can never reach. Truthnever descends to our world of error, he who would know must ascend towardsthat world of Reality where he can see face to face and, for a while, becomesliving truth. But it is ever man who must climb the mountain of reality;the Vision on the Mount does not descend into the valley. Thus it is possiblefor man to know the mystery of life; solve it he never can, still lesscontain it in an intellectual system, however logical. Life is not logical;thought logic is the alphabet, which we must learn if we would speak thelanguage of life, which is truth. And yet no intelligible language cantell of the vision to him who has not seen it; each must tread the wearypath up the mountainside by himself and reach the bare and lonely top wherealone the vision can be seen. We may point out the path, tell of the hardshipson the way, the dangers to be avoided and the obstacles to overcome, butnone may tell the final mystery--its name is experience.The mystery of life in nota problem to be solved, it is a reality to be experienced.THE VISION ON THE MOUNTOnce we begin to questionthe world, to demand an answer from our daily existence, we embark on along and perilous voyage of exploration. Not too lightly should we leavethese familiar shores; unless we are willing to suffer hardship, to toiland persevere when all seems lost, to sail on towards the unknown eventhough death may be our share, we had better stay at home and hug the shoreswe know. Yet, if we dare and persevere what glories open up before us,what undreamed joys become ours! All achievement is to be paid in toiland hardship; that which comes easily and is given to us, is never thetreasure that is lasting.He who would leave the valleyof familiar life in order to climb the far off mountain has to buy hisachievement with unknown dangers and continual hardship. His friends willmock at him when he leaves the village of his youth, the place of sunshineand familiar sights, the home and fireside where he is safe from the dangersof the world. Why should he leave all that makes life dear and risk itin futile endeavors after the impossible? But he in whom the yearning hasbeen born does not heed the mockery; there is that within him which willnot let him rest until he has achieved. And yet, when once he has leftthe haunts of man and has entered the dense and tangled woods that coverthe foothills, he may well doubt whether he has done right. Here is nopath to guide him, no sunshine to give him his bearings; the dense vegetationaround seems to shut out the very world and for weary days he hews hisway through the tangled growth.Gradually he ascends andreaches the higher slopes where new and more terrible dangers await him--barrenrocks and deadly precipices, cold and piercing winds, treacherous snowfieldsto be traversed with chasms hidden beneath their smooth surface. His veryfootsteps dislodge the snow and avalanches threaten with sudden death,yet he climbs on, frost and starvation have no terrors for him, for farahead shows the mountain top which he must reach. Many a time would hegive up his struggle and succumb to the weariness that envelops him, butever again the voice from within urges him on, the voice that promisesachievement.Then come the last and fearfulhours when his lungs can hardly breathe the rarefied air and progress becomesever slower and more painful. His hands bleed where the sharp rock hastorn his flesh, his every step is a burden, in agony he climbs the finalslope and reaches the top, where he sinks down, panting and exhausted.But when he lifts his headand looks around, a new world meets his eye. Far below he sees the woodswhere he struggled in darkness, lost and erring, beyond again he sees thevillage of his youth, further yet other villages and cities. But he himselfis now lord of all, he has forsaken his world to find a greater World,renounced the familiar sights of life to find the Vision of the mountaintop.Forgotten now his hardships, forgotten the long and painful struggle; inthe light of this new world he knows but the bliss which the Vision bringsto those who gain it. Henceforth this is his world, the world of the mountaintop;henceforth this is his inspiration, the Vision on the Mount. He who hasseen it can never again be the same man, he has the world stretched outat his feet, has know himself the conqueror of life and death and, whereverhe goes, his eyes behold that Vision.When he descends again andreturns from the heights to the valleys in which men live he comes witha new joy singing in his heart and with a solitude, which henceforth willmake him lonely even in the crowded city. For he moves amongst men whoknow not the Vision of the mountain top, men whose sight does not reachfurther than their neighbour's street, and how can he speak to them ofthe unutterable things which be beheld in the solitude and splendor ofthe mountain top? Those who knew him see that he has come back a changedman, that, like the Ancient mariner, he has a look in his eyes which makesmen feel less certain of themselves and causes them to pause for a whilein their hurried stride. And he, in whatsoever place he finds himself,ever sees the Vision before him, he sees it even in the ugliness and miseryof the lives of men, he hears the Song of Joy singing even through theircries of pain, whatever he beholds is illumined by the glory he has seen.The familiar sights of hisyouth have now gained a new and sometimes terrible meaning. Nothing canbe commonplace or meaningless to him who has seen the Vision on the Mount.The mystery of life is as a secret Voice within, telling of new and wonderfulmeanings in all that surrounds him. To some he speaks of the Vision hehas seen, of the terrible path he has trodden, and possibly they too feelthe yearning for the mountaintop and leave life in order to find it againin fuller measure. But thought he may tell of his experience, tell of thevision he has seen, each man to whom he speaks must in solitude make the`flight of the alone to Alone' and gain the Vision of which no words canever tell.Truly, not lightly shouldwe question and explore the world with which we are familiar, which weseem to know so well, for once we have begun this voyage of explorationthere is no turning back to the state of content which knew not doubt orquestion. It is a great but terrible thing when doubt is born, terriblein that it destroys the old world, great in that it opens the way to anew and nobler one. CHAPTER TWOFROM THE UNREAL TO THE REAL Woe! Woe!Thou hast destroyed it!The beautiful world!Woe! Woe!Thou hast destroyed!Destroyed!Create! Create!Build it againIn shy heart,The beautiful world!Create! Create! Create!---Goethe, Faust I. OUR DUAL UNIVERSEIt is in the most familiarthings of life that the deepest mystery lies hidden. If there is anythingabout which we feel sure, with which we think ourselves fully and entirelyfamiliar, it is this world surrounding us, the world of our daily life.Around us we are aware of this world, solid and visible, a world so realto us that it would seem madness to doubt its reality. We can see and feelthat world, lift the heavy and solid objects in it, hurt ourselves againsttheir unyielding immobility and are impressed all the time by this fundamentalfact of our existence--that there, opposite us, independent and apart fromus, stands a physical world, utterly and entirely real, solid and tangible.Within ourselves we are awareof another world, equally real to us, equally accepted as a basic factof our existence. But it is a world of consciousness, of life, of awareness,a world which we associate with the feeling that we are `we'. As a rule,however, our attention is not directed towards that world within, and formost of us it remains a vague and mysterious realm, out of which thoughtsand feelings, desires and impulses, flashes of inspiration and sudden ideasseem to emerge, entering into our daily existence with a compelling powerthat will not be denied. These strange inner happenings also we acceptas facts, knowing even less about them than about the solid world of `materialrealities', in which we are so immersed and engrossed. We are thus facedby this strange fact--that the world of our own consciousness is unfamiliarto us, even through it is our very self, and that the world outside, whichwe assume to be not self, seems quite familiar and well known.Such then is the fundamentalstructure of our daily life--a solid, tangible, material world without anda mysterious realm of consciousness within, forming a duality which mostof us never come to doubt. In this primitive dualism we live our livesan we look upon our perceptions and our actions as an interplay betweenthose worlds--sensations coming to us from the world outside and formingperceptions in our consciousness, from which again volition and actiongo forth to change and influence that outer world.This sense of duality, ofan outer and an inner world, is so familiar to us, enters so much intoevery moments of our lives, that, whenever questions arise with regardto the problems of life, we always, in those questions, assume and presupposeof this primitive duality as a fact which needs no proving, withouteven being aware that we introduce it. We unconsciously base our reasoning,yes, the very methods of our analysis and logic, on this fundamental dualitywhich we accept because we have never thought about it. In the quest oftruth, however, we must be utterly free from prejudice and ruthlessly sincere,never accepting a fact, cherished though it may be and hallowed by universalrecognition, without first challenging its reality, even though such achallenge might appear superfluous. Only thus can we prevent error fromentering into our very questions.  DIAGRAM ONE -- Interaction between the world and myself. Let us then consider thetwo elements of our universe, the world of consciousness within and theworld of appearances without, and see how we come to know of them. Withregardto the consciousness or life side of our twofold universe there can beno doubt; the fact that we are something and somehow, is the basis of allour knowledge, of all our awareness. 'Cogito, ergo sum' is still the startingpoint of all investigations, the very words `I think' already imply thebasic fact, `I am'.In ordinary consciousnessall I know is an unceasing, everflowing modification of my inner life,of my very being; my awareness, or state of consciousness, is differentat every moment. I know nothing but these states of consciousness or awareness;nothing, idea or object, exists for me unless I am aware of it, that isto say, unless it is awareness in my consciousness.It is difficult to realizethis simple fact that, when we say we know a thing, whether as a senseof perception or as an idea, all we do really know is a state of consciousnesscorresponding in some way to the object or to the idea. We live and moveand have our being in the world of our consciousness and it is the onlyworld we know directly, all else we know through it. This means that allknowledge; we experience an awareness in our consciousness and thence derivethe existence of something that has produced the awareness.Hence our relation to theappearance side of our universe, the outer world, is very different fromour relation to the consciousness side of it; the last we know directly,it is our very being, the other we know only indirectly, in so far as ourbeing is modified by it in what we call `awareness'. Therefore, while wecannot doubt the fact that we are aware of things and that we are experiencingmodifications of consciousness, we must carefully scrutinize our conclusionsabout an objective universe around us which produces the perceptions inour consciousness. The latter are indubitable, the former but a conclusionwhich we rightly or wrongly derive from them. Yet, curiously enough, wefeel perfectly confident about the objective universe around us, even thoughit is a derived knowledge, and feel somewhat uncertain as to the worldof consciousness within; the stone at our feet is ever more real to usthan our consciousness within. Yet we only know that stone in and throughour consciousness.THE WAY OF SENSE-PERCEPTIONYet we feel convinced ofthe objective reality of the world surrounding us, `just as we see it,'in fact, we forget all about our consciousness as intermediary betweenourselves and the object and look upon the awareness in our consciousnessas identical with the object itself. Thus, when we see a green tree, wedo not doubt for a moment that the tree stands there, a hundred yards awayfrom us, exactly as we see it, and we have gone a long way in philosophicalrealization when we can realize and not merely believe that thetree which we see is but the image produced in our consciousness by thetree which is and that the two are by no means identical.The primitive and unthinkingway of explaining sense-perception implies that, through the senses, afaithful image of the world around us is reproduced in our consciousnessin such a way that image and reality are exactly alike see Plate I). Inorder to explain this process still further we compare it to the actionof a photographic camera, where through the lens an entirely accurate andfaithful picture is reproduced on the sensitive plate. Satisfied with theexplanation we sink back into our unquestioning acceptance of the worldaround us, glad that everything is so simple and never suspecting thatwe have not explained anything at all. How the image reaches our consciousnessthrough the darkness of the sensory nerves and the brain matter is a questionwhich does not even occur in the primitive explanation. And yet, even ifthe senses produced a faithful image of the world surrounding us, thatimage again would have to be perceived by the consciousness and with regardto the perception of that image we should find ourselves faced by exactlythe same difficulty as with regard to the perception of the outer worlditself. We have merely shifted the problem one step, and, to the unthinkingmind, such a shifting or re-statement of a problem is generally quite acceptableby way of explanation.  However, the image whichthe senses give us of the world around can never be a faithful one; oursenses are selective and can only interpret those elements of the worldaround us to which they are able to respond. Thus, in the case of soundand light, we need only look at a table of vibrations in air and etherto realize how extremely small the groups of vibrations are to which eyeand ear react. With regard to all the other vibrations we are practicallyinsensitive, we only know them by inference.It is a very useful exerciseto think ourselves into a state of consciousness, where those elementsof the world around us, to which our senses respond now, would be non-existentand the contents of our world-image would be furnished by elements to whichour present senses do not respond. Imagine two beings meeting and comparingtheir knowledge of the world, a human being with our five senses and animaginary being with the senses we lack. Each of them would be aware ofa world around him, each of them, unless they were philosophers, wouldbe quite certain that he perceived the world exactly as it was there, outside,and that he perceived all there was to be perceived of it. Yet their twoworlds would be utterly unlike; could we for a moment perceive the otherbeing's world there would be nothing in it familiar to us or resemblingany feature of our world. And yes, the other being would have as much rightto call his world the real world, as we should have to call ours the worldas it really is. But from the standpoint of reality no one has a rightto call his world the world; it is his world and nothingmore, his selective interpretation of reality.With the understanding ofthis truth our primitive explanation of sense-perception as a faithfulreproduction of the world around us collapses, and our world-image, farfrom being identical with the real world, becomes but our specific interpretationof that world; our world is but our version of the world.It is well to ponder deeplyover this very simple fact of the selectivity of our senses and thoroughlyfamiliarize ourselves with the idea that what we see around us is not theworld at all, but rather the peculiar interpretation of that world whichwe as human beings, because of the nature of our five senses, make. Itis not sufficient to agree intellectually with this and say that the argumentis clear and that we acknowledge it to be true; philosophy must be realizationif it is to be worth anything, and the truth we realize must become partof our very consciousness. Our innate superstition that the world we seeis the world indeed is so deeply ingrained in our nature that itwill rise again and again and make us believe that our world-image is theworld in reality. Our primitive illusions need to be rudely shaken beforea wider knowledge can be born.Even if our senses are selectiveand do but interpret certain features of the world around us we might yetbe tempted to say that, in so far as they do interpret that world, theyinterpret it faithfully and that the colours we see or the sounds we hearare there, around us, exactly as we are aware of them. Even a superficialstudy of the physiology of sense-perception, however, is sufficient tobreak down this last stronghold of sense-realism. Since the problem isthe same for all our senses we may take the eye, and the sense of visionconnected with it, as representative of the principles of sense-perceptionin general.The light-vibrations whichreach the eye are focused through the lens and act on the retina behindthe eyeball, causing structural and chemical changes in it. If, at thisstage of the process of seeing, we, as it were, tapped the wire, we shouldas yet find no trace of that which later on will become our awareness ofthe green tree; all we find are structural and chemical changes in therods and cones which form the upper layer of the retina. It is of the utmostimportance to realize that the knowledge, so far conveyed to the body fromthe outer world, is contained in these chemical and structural changes,which in turn affect the optic nerve along which a message is conveyedto that area in the brain which corresponds to the sense of vision. Stillthere is no question of a blue sky or a green tree; all we can hope tofind in the brain, if we tap the wire at this stage of the process, isthe change in the particles of the brain matter which are affected by themessage conveyed along the optic nerve.Then suddenly we, the livingindividual, in our consciousness, are aware of the green tree or, as weexpress it, we `see' the green tree. (Plate II.) This last stage is thegreat mystery of sense-perception, and neither physiology nor psychologyhas yet bridged for us that gap between the last perceptible change inthe brain and our awareness of the object with its colours and shapes.Even in the final stage ofthe physiological process, which is the change in the brain matter, thereis no question whatsoever of colour, shape or form, there are only structuraland chemical changes in the optical apparatus. It is only when we, theliving creature, interpret in our own consciousness that final stage thatthere is the green tree, the whole world of light and colour around us.Butthere is no green tree until we reach that consciousness stage;thereis, no doubt, some unknown reality which reacts on our senses and somehowproduces in our consciousness the awareness of the green tree and willproduce that awareness each time it reacts on our consciousness, but thereis nothing to show that this unknown reality in any way looks like a greentree. For all we know it may be a mathematical point, having within itselfcertain properties which, react on a human consciousness, produce therethe different qualities which make up the image of the green tree as wesee it. We, however, substitute the image produced in our consciousnessfor the unknown reality without an make believe that we are perceivingthat selfsame green tree which is the image produced in our consciousness,that is to say, we think we are perceiving as an objective realitythat which we are projecting as an image in the world of our consciousness.We, as it were, clothe the nakedness of the unknown reality with the imageproduced in our consciousness.The same facts, which aretrue for the sense of vision, hold good for our perception through anyof the senses; thus there is no question of should but in our consciousness,no question of taste or smell but in our consciousness, no question ofhardness or softness, of heaviness or lightness but in our consciousness;our entire world-image is an image arising on our consciousness becauseof the action on that consciousness by some unknown reality.OUR BODY TOO PART OF OURWORLD-IMAGEIt is clear from a studyof the physiology of sense-perception that all we know of the realitieswithout, or of things in themselves, are the images produced by them inthe world of our consciousness. But, curiously enough, even where we findthis recognized and understood, we often find the physical body itselfand the vibrations reaching it from the unknown objects outside, treatedas if they were not images in our consciousness, but as if concerningthem we knew everything. But how do we know of the existence of any vibration?By sense-perception, aided by scientific instruments which help us to seeeither the vibration itself or the effect produced by that vibration, showingus its nature. But surely this again is sense-perception and our perceptionof the vibration which reaches the eye, of the eye itself, the retina andthe changes produced in it, of the optic nerve, and of the brain itself,takes place in exactly the same way as our perception of any object belongingto this mysterious outer world. They two: vibration, eye, retina, nerveand brain belong to that world of unknown quantities which in us producesimages. Whether the image is that of a green tree, an optic nerve, or thegrey matter in the brain does not matter, the relation of image to unknownreality is the same for all. The eye, the optic nerve, the brain and ourphysical body in general should not be singled out from this world surroundingus; they one and all belong to the world of unknown reality without, whichproduces in our consciousness that image which we call the world, but whichis only our world-image.  It is the peculiar relationin which we stand to our own body, the intimate link we have with it andwhich we do not have with regard to any other object in the outer world,which makes us feel that we know all about its reality, even though otherthings may be full of mystery. We have an inside feeling of our body whichwe do not have with regard to a stone or a tree, our body appears to usas part of ourselves and we forget that is as much part of that outer worldas the tree or the stone, and that our perception of it as a visible andtangible object takes place in just the same way as our perception of thetree or of the stone. Even the inner feeling we have of our body is buta variety of sense-perception which exists for our body alone. It too isbut an awareness produced in our consciousness by an unknown reality, andwith regard to it the same mystery exists as with regard to our perceptionof any other object in the outer world.  This means that we must somewhatrevise our conception of the process of sense-perception. In it the objectoutside was supposed to be unknown, but the vibration which it sent out,the eye reached by that vibration and the nerve and brain affected in consequence,were all accepted as known and familiar quantities and never doubted asobjective realities existing there, exactly as we perceive them. It wasthis ready assumption of the physical body as an independent reality existingwithout, which caused the gap between the last change in the brain andthe image arising in our consciousness. This gap disappears when we realizethat our physical body too, as we know it in its shape and colours, withall its qualities, is also an image produced in our consciousness by anunknown reality. Thus the situation becomes that shown in Plate III, wheretree, vibration, eye, retina, optic nerve, brain and physical body in general,are one and all shown as images arising in the world of our consciousness.OUR WORLD AND THE WORLDThere is never a truth butcarries in it the possibility of misconception. Thus it is true that theworld which we `see around us' is an image arising in our consciousness,with which image we subsequently deal as if it were an objective reality,existing apart from our consciousness. But there have been those who, catchinga glimpse of this truth, have drawn the conclusion that therefore nothingbut their own consciousness was real and that the world-image arising intheir consciousness was in some way their own creation, in fact, that theylived in a world of their own making. This misconception, called solipsism(fromsolus, alone and ipse, self, meaning the outlook which recognizesonly my own consciousness as real) is manifestly absurd; were it true thatthis world surrounding me is my own spontaneous creation. I should be capableof varying that creation at will, and if a tree, or a stone, or any ofmy fellowmen displeased me I should be able to eliminate them by an effortof the will ceasing in fact to create them. The solipsist is right in sayingthat what most people conceive to be an objective reality surrounding themis in reality their world-image, but he omits the second and greater truth,namely--that this world image is produced in our consciousness by the actionupon that consciousness of an unknown reality, the real world or worldof things in themselves. It is perfectly true that what I take to be anobjective world is only the world-image produced in my consciousness, butit is equally true that this world-image is determined in its characterby the nature of the things in themselves; it is my interpretation of them,partial and imperfect, but not containing anything which is not determined,in principle or in essence, by the thing in itself. Every phenomenon onmy world-image is intimately and continually connected with a very realthing or event in the world of reality, and the fact that at some momentI might cease to produce a world-image in my consciousness does not fora moment affect conditions in the world of the Real.  The conception of all thatsurrounds us as image in our consciousness was represented in Plate III;we must now go a step further and recognize that there is a world of theReal, which, through my consciousness, produces the different images init. In Plate IV the world of our consciousness with its many images isshown in its relation to the world. The smaller circles a' the endof the rays from the center symbolize the consciousness-worlds ofdifferent creatures, more or less limited according to their stage of evolution.In each of these consciousness-worlds a world-image is produced by theaction of the things in themselves on that particular consciousness; eachcreature only knows its own world-image.When, therefore, an eventtakes place in this world of Reality there is produced in the consciousnessof each creature concerned an awareness, or image, which is the event aswe `see' it.We must not misunderstandthis. When I take up a book and drop it on the ground only one event takesplace and that is the event as it is in the world of the Real. There isnothing unreal about that event; it is entirely, wholly and thoroughlyreal. But my awareness of the event, the way in which it presents itselfin my world-image is my interpretation of the real event, and that interpretationis only relatively real, real for me, not real in itself. When then, inmy world-image, I am aware of my hand grasping the book and dropping iton the ground, what really happens is that in the world of the Real aninteraction takes place between that which I am in that world, the at whichmy body and consequently my hand is in that world, and that which the bookand the ground are in that world, and that interaction or event is theone and only real event which takes place. What appears in my world-imageis my version of it, in which version the unity of the event is brokenup in measures of time and space and in a multitude of qualities. ThenI externalize my awareness of the event in itself and that externalizedimage becomes for me the event itself. Unreality or illusion neverresides in the event, or thing in itself, nor even in my interpretationof it, which is true enough for me, but in the fact that I takemy interpretation to be the thing in itself, exalting it to the statureof an absolute and independent reality. Referring again to Plate IV wecan see how an event, affecting all the creatures would produce a differentversion or image in the consciousness of each, though the event itselfremains one and the same. In fact, though the real world is necessarilythe same for all beings, the interpretation of that world must always bedifferent for each.  The relation of the realworld to our consciousness and the image produced in it, is again shownin Plate V, but only for one particular consciousness. In it we see howthe things in themselves, as they exist in the world of the Real, act onour center of consciousness and, through it, are projected as images inthe world of consciousness, thus forming our world-image. It is clear how,through our consciousness, all things are as it were turned inside out;insteadof being aware that they act on us from within we gaze upon the image wehave produced and wonder how it influences us from without.It hasbecome our fatal habit thus to look outwards upon the images produced inour consciousness and to forget entirely that they are projected thereby the action upon our consciousness of things in the world of the Real.Thus, we are only aware of our own world, and, like the prisoners in Plato'scave, we are so used to gaze upon the back wall of our cave and see theshadows moving there, that we forget and even deny the possibility of turninground and knowing the reality which casts the shadows.It is in his RepublicthatPlato uses this image, in which he compares men to prisoners who live ina cave and are bound in such a way that they can only see the back of thecave, not its opening. Behind them the procession of life moves by, differentcreatures pass and different events take place. The prisoners cannot seeall this, but they do see the shadows cast upon the back of the cave. Theseshadows are reality to the prisoners, for they are the world, and sincethey have never seen anything else, it does not even occur to them thatthere can be another world. They may have come to know the different shadowsby name and may even have built up certain knowledge on their observationof the regularly recurring shadows. But all the time, though their knowledgeand their observation must necessarily have a certain relation to the realityoutside, they deal with shadows and not with real things.From time to time a prisonerfeels the urge to free himself from his bonds and explore the other sideof the cave. If he succeeds in doing so he discovers the great secret;that there, outside the mouth of the cave, is a magnificent world of reality,a world of dazzling light and beauty, and that which he used to see onthe back wall of the cave were not real things at all, but only shadows.In the beginning his eyes, unused to the light of the real world, wouldbe as blinded; he would only be aware of light everywhere. But gradually,as he begins to get used to this new world, he learns to distinguish betweenits creatures and objects, is colours and shapes, and comes to know thatworld in all its rich variety. Can we not imagine how, inspired by thewonderful discovery he has made, the erstwhile prisoner would go back tothose who are still imprisoned in the cave and tell them, full of joy,of the glorious world he has found outside? But they would only laugh andcall him mad; they know well enough that the only world is the world theysee on the back of the cave and that those who would discover other worlds,and call their world a shadow-world, are but dreamers.Our life is like that ofthe prisoners in the cave; we too see only the back of the cave, the wallof our own consciousness on which dance the shadows, the images cast thereby the reality which we do not behold. We have come to know the play ofthese shadows so well that we have been able to build up an entire scienceconcerning them. This science is right in so far as the shadows have avital relation to the reality that cast them, but it is ever doomed tofind itself confronted by mysteries, which in the world of shadows cannever be solved, unless some who have seen the real world introduce intothese sciences a wider knowledge. But we are impatient and incredulouswhen anyone would tell us that the world upon which we gaze is not theworld of her Real, but only our world-image. Yet among us too evidenceis not lacking of men, who, throughout the ages, have found freedom fromtheir bondage, who have conquered illusion and discovered that world ofReality of which this world of ours is but a shadow or image, cast in thecave of our consciousness.ILLUSION AND REALITYWe must, however, be carefulabout the way in which we characterize this our world as illusion, in fact,the danger of an incomplete statement and subsequent misunderstanding isso great that it hardly seems possible to state the relation as it trulyis.When we say, `this worldaround us is unreal, it is illusion,' we make a misleading statement; whenwe say `this world is real, it is not illusion,' we are even more misleading.Yet, if we were to think of this world as a strange mixture of real andunreal, that thought would be the most misleading of all.To begin with, the worlditself is real; there is nothing unreal whatsoever about a chair or a table,a tree or a stone, about all that which we call the physical world. Itis a common mistake to characterize the physical world as unreal, or lessreal, and some mental or spiritual world as more real. The physical worldinitself, the chair and the table in themselves, the stone orthe tree in itself, are one and all as real as I am myself. Butwhat I usually call the table, the chair, the stone or the treeis the image produced in my consciousness by the table, chair, stone ortree as it exists in the world of the Real. These images are only relativelyreal, that is to say they are real for me, in so far as they are my interpretationof the thing in itself, the shadow cast in my cave. It is when I beginto look upon this image in my consciousness as an outside reality, andanidentify it with the thing in itself that illusion enters. Then, in contemplatingmy image of the thing, I believe myself to be dealing with the thing initself. This illusion, therefore, is neither in the thing in itself,nor in the image produced in my consciousness by that thing, but in myconception of the image in my consciousness as the thing in itself; asan object existing independent of my consciousness.This then is the structureand relation of the real world and our world. There is a world of Reality,which would, for the purposes of distinction may have to be subdividedinto different `worlds' later on, but it is essentially one world,the only world, and whatever subdivisions we may find fit to make in itare not marked by labels in that real world, but are marked by our ownassociations and relative standpoint. That one world is the world as itis; in it things are as they truly are. That world is Life or Truth, orwhatever else we may call ultimate Reality; that world is the Absolute,for there is all that is or was or shall be. In that world there is interactionbetween the different creatures and objects and as a result of that interactionevery creature becomes aware in his consciousness of a world-image, theshadow cast by reality. Since, however, that shadow play is all we normallyknow of the real world we identify it with that real world and look uponit as a reality independent of our consciousness and standing outside us.That is the great Illusion.Our world-image is thus theway in which we interpret reality. The many qualities of material objects,their distances and dimensions in space and their change in time, all thatbelongs to our interpretation, to our image. The tree in the world of theReal is not fifty feet high, its leaves are not green and smooth, its trunkis not rough to the touch and hard and it does weigh so many hundredweights.All these qualities are my interpretation of the tree in itself and areelements of my world-image. The tree in itself as it exists in the worldof the Real may be pictured as a mathematical point, but there is thatwithin it which, each time it reacts upon me, produces in my world-imagea certain group of qualities of sound, touch, weight and certain measurementsin space together with a certain change or growth in time. It is my particularconstitution as a human being which causes me to produce just this typeof image; the same tree in itself no doubt produces a different image inother creatures of whose existence I may not even know.Because of the fundamentalillusion which considers my world-image as an independent reality I cometo look upon my image of the tree as if it were the tree itself, I assumespace and time and the rich variety of sense-qualities to be independentrealities existing there outside me, and I imagine events to be happeningwithin their framework. Having thus objectivated and separated from myconsciousness that which is indissolubly part of it I find myself hedgedin by problems which no master-mind can ever solve, since they, one andall, are wrong problems, vitiated from the start by illusion. That is whythe beginning of philosophy must be a clear understanding and even experienceofthe relation of our world-image to ourselves and to the world of the Real.Unless that is thoroughly clear to us from the beginning and becomes invery truth part of our consciousness we shall find ourselves led astrayat each subsequent step. But our philosophy must be more than a mere intellectualunderstanding, every truth to which we attain must become an experiencein our consciousness; thus alone can philosophy be vital and of real valuein human life.THE EXPERIENCE OF THEWORLD OF THE REALIf it is true that our world-imageis indeed an image produced in the cave of our consciousness by a realitybeyond, it is evidently our first task, to thread, not merely in thoughtbut in reality, the path leading to the world of the Real. It is herethat so many philosophies fall short; they seem satisfied with having propoundedtheir doctrine and do not feel the necessity of the doctrine becoming realityand experience. Often such philosophical doctrines are but an intellectualstructure, strange to life and not the outcome of experience in our ownconsciousness. Yet such experience should not only be the basis of anyphilosophical assertion, it should also be the final test of any doctrine.If once again we look uponPlate V and see how our world-image is projected around us in our consciousnesswe can see the way we have to go; we must withdraw ourselves from the enticingimages of our own production and turn towards that center through whichthe production of our world-image takes place--the depth of our consciousness.That, in the beginning, will be the most difficult part--to abandon fora while our world-image, to relinquish this gay spectacle of time and spaceand the endless variety of sense-qualities. We must renounce all that,renounce sight and hearing, touch and taste and smell, renounce all thatis phenomenon, appearance, image: this entire outer world. But even thatis not enough. Our world-image is threefold, there is what we call thephysical world, there is the world of our emotions and there is the worldof thought. Most of us have not yet developed waking consciousness or self-consciousnessin the world of emotions and in the world of thought, but even so theyare as much or as little an outside world as what we turn the physicalworld. In the simple experiment of thought-transference we can test forourselves the relative objectivity of a thought-image; in the impartingof a strong emotion from one person to another, a thing we often experiencewhere masses of people are gathered, we can see that an emotion is notthe vague inner thing we often think it to be, but objectively real. Thuswe must not only renounce the physical world with its sense-qualities,but also the crowded worlds of our emotions and thoughts--we must ceasefor a while to allow any emotion to move us or any thought to modify ourconsciousness. Difficult as is the renunciation of our physical world-image,the withdrawing from the worlds of our emotions and thoughts is harderstill and requires regular and repeated attempts, stretching sometimesthrough many years until success is gained.Let us then do what so fewever do in our hurried civilization--be alone and be silent. So should relaxall effort, and renounce all sensation coming to us from without, stillour emotions and our thoughts and sink back into the depth of our own consciousness,like a diver sinking deep into the cool dark waters.When thus we sunk back intothe depth of our own consciousness we come to a state in which nothingseems to be any more, in which we ourselves seem to have lost name andform and all characteristics. We come to the great Void. It is the `greyvoid abysm' of which Shelley sings in his "Prometheus Unbound,' in thehaunting "Song of the Spirits' which leads Asia and Panthea down into thedepths of consciousness:To the deep, to the deep,Down, down!Through the shade ofsleep,Through the cloudy strifeOf Death and of Life;Through the veil andthe barOf thing which seem andare,Even to the steps ofthe remotest throne,Down, down!Through the grey, voidabysm,Down, down!Where the air is no prism,And the moon and starsare not,And the cavern cragswear notThe radiance of Heaven,Nor the gloom to Earthgiven,Where there is One pervading,One alone,Down, down!When we reach the Void within,the state in which nothing more seems to be, it would appear as if we weresurrounded on all sides by a blank wall and as if it were impossible toproceed any further. Then comes the moment when we must break the habitof ages and, like the prisoner in the cave, dare to turn our faces theother way and find the way out of the cave, find reality, freedom.We have to move in a dimensionwe did not know before; the prisoner in the cave never realized that therewas such a thing as a world behind him and we can well imagine how,when first he strives towards freedom and ceases to contemplate his shadow-playon the back wall of his cave, nothing seems to remain to him and he toofinds himself in the great Void.The first part of our journeytowards reality is the surrendering of our world-image and the turninginwards until we reach the center of consciousness, the second is to piercethrough that center and find the reality which, acting on that center producesthe world-image in the cave of our consciousness. The experience of goingthrough the center of consciousness and emerging, as it were, on the otherside very much one of turning inside out. In our ordinary consciousnesswe are turned outwards towards the world-image which we externalized aroundus. In going through our consciousness the entire process is reversed,we experience an inversion, or conversion, in which that which was withoutbecomes within. In fact, when we succeed in going through our center ofconsciousness and emerge on the other side, we do not so much realize anew world around us as a new world within us. We seem to be on the surfaceof a sphere having all within ourselves and yet to be at each point ofit simultaneouslyIt is impossible to describethe world of Reality in the terms of our world-image, which is the onlylanguage at our command. As Kabir says: `That which you see is not, andfor that which is, you have no words' (Tagore, 49). It is a worldof pure Beauty, yet, how express beauty without shape, colour or sound,the Beauty unbeheld' of which Shelley sings? When we experience it we feelthat now we know beauty for the first time and that what we used to callbeauty in our world image was but a distorted shadow. But the outstandingreality of our experience in the world of the Real is the amazing factthat nothing is outside us. There is distinction between different beings,the things in themselves, there is multiplicity, there is all that whichin our world-image produces the rich variety of outer forms and yet itall is within ourselves; and when we desire to know we are thatwhich we know.Throughout the ages mysticshave attempted to describe their vision of reality and in Bucke's work,CosmicConsciousness, he gives at length the descriptions of the mystic stateby those who have experienced it. The evidence is too great to speak ofthese experiences as being of a `merely subjective' value; they are subjective,as all true experience, is, but, like all great experience, they are objectivein value and validity.Plotinus, the father of intellectualmysticism, thus describes the vision of Reality, or the `Intelligible "World'as he call its, in Ennead v. 8, 4:In this intelligible Worldeverything is transparent. No shadow limits vision. All the essences seeeach other and interpenetrate each other in the most intimate depth oftheir nature. Light everywhere meets light. Every being contains withinitself the entire Intelligible World, and also beholds it everywhere, everything there is all, and all is each thing; infinite splendour radiatesaround. Everything is great, for these even the small is great. This worldhas its sun and its stars; each star is a sun and all suns are stars. Eachof them, while shining with its own due splendour reflects the light ofthe others. There abides pure movement; for He who produces movement, notbeing foreign to it does not disturb it in its production. Rest is perfect,because it is not mingled with any principle of disturbance. The Beautifulis completely beautiful there, because it does not dwell in that whichis not beautiful.In the mystical experienceof the world of reality we use a faculty of knowledge which is only beginningto be born in humanity. It is intuition, knowing by being, realization,the `Tertium Organum' of Ouspensky. Without the use of that faculty theworld of the Real cannot be know, but we must not say that the things inthemselves cannot be known at all. The ring-pass-not, which Kant drew aroundthe thing in itself exists only for those in whom the new faculty or organof knowledge is not awakened, it is by means a spell laid on all futurehumanity, denying to them for ever the possibility of knowing the Real.One truth emerges from ourexperience like a mountain peak from a surrounding plain. We now realizethat no philosophical problem whatsoever can ever be approached in ourworld-image, that there is but one way of approaching these problemswhich is: to conquer the illusion of our world-image, to enter the worldof the Real and, in that Reality, to experience living Truth.It is only in the Visionfrom the mountain top that we know reality. But when we climb The Mountof Reality we must leave behind us all the load of illusion which wouldweigh us down in our climb and prevent us from ascending. The burden ofour cherished illusions cannot pass through the customs of the real World,we must leave behind all that belongs to our world-image, else we shallnot reach the mountain top, we shall not see the Vision.That Vision alone is life,the Vision is Truth, Beauty, Peace and Joy, having seen it we have enteredthe world where we truly belong. When again we return to our daily lifeand play the game of time and space in our world-image, as we needs mustdo, we shall yet, through the world-image, ever see the Vision of Realitywhich we have gained; through every creature, every object, every eventof our world-image a new meaning and a new beauty will shine forth. Suchis the gift of Reality even to our world of illusion. CHAPTER THREEINTUITION AND INTELLECT Theprinciple cause of our uncertainty is that our comprehension of the Onecomes to us neither by scientific knowledge, nor by thought, as the knowledgeof other intelligible things, but by a Presence which is superior to science.When the soul acquires the scientific knowledge of something, she withdrawsfrom unity and ceases being entirely one; for science implies discursivereason and discursive reason implies manifoldness. To attain Unity we musttherefore rise above science, and never withdraw from what is essentiallyone; we must therefore renounce science, the objects of science, and everyother right except that of the One. -- PLOTINUS, Ennead VI., 9, 4.THE TWOFOLD MINDILLUSION is only then partof reality when it is recognized as illusion. It is when we forget theelement of relativity in our world-image and exalt the latter to the statureof an independent reality, forgetting subsequently that we have done so,that illusion begins. Then we begin to ask questions which are born ofillusion and permeated by it in every fibre, it is then that we begin toabuse the nobility of our minds by applying the intellect to the solutionof such pseudo-problems. Then we, and our intellects with us, are boundto our own world-image, become slaves of our own creation, victims of ourown error and henceforth our nature is twofold, on the one hand our truebeing in the world of the Real, functioning freely with unclouded vision,on the other hand our being externalized in our own world-image, boundto its illusion and doomed to join in the danse macabre of our phenomenalworld. In that world, our own world-image, our thought is devitalized,our method of knowing a clumsy process in which we study the shadow-playsurrounding us and learn to discriminate between its different features.That uninspired and unproductive functioning of the mind in the bondageof our own world-image I call the intellect, the free use of theliving mind in the world of the Real I call the intuition.The difference between intuitionand intellect is the difference between life and death; the intuition isimmediate, certain, creative and progressive, the intellect is barren,sterile, indirect in its methods, uncertain in its conclusions and incapableof seeing truth. In the earlier stages of our evolution our way to knowledgeis that of instinct, which Is unreasoning and direct in its knowledge.Thus primitive man knows the ways of Nature in a way we cannot rival, thusthe animal knows instinctively things which it takes man days or oftenyears to reason out. We need but compare the unerring certainty with whichmigrating birds find their home, a matter of square feet on the entiresurface of our globe, to the clumsy methods which intellectual man needsto find his bearings--maps and compasses, sextants and intricate calculations,the movements of the heavenly bodies and landmarks on the surface of theearth, failing which he is helpless.With the birth of the intellectinstinctive knowledge disappears; the unconscious unity of life which madethe instinct possible is temporarily shut off by the increasing sense ofseparateness and individuality which makes the birth of the intellect possible.When man no longer hears the voice of instinctive knowledge speaking tohim from within, he must needs orientate himself by the laborious methodof gathering facts about the world surrounding him and through analysisand discrimination of these, come to the knowledge of indwelling principles.The way of the intellect is thus a necessary stage, but there is no doubtthat man's knowledge in this period lacks creative life. His own worldimage holds him in bondage, imprisons the mind in its limitations and illusions.That imprisoned mind, or intellect is consequently ever subject to thegreat illusion of the world-image as an objective reality.Yet there comes a time whenthe power of illusion weakens and the freed mind once again sees the Visionof the Real. With that the intuition begins to develop as a way of knowledge,combining in itself the directness of the instinct and the conscious knowledge,which the intellect gave. Instinct is an unconscious knowledge; primitiveman knows, but knows not why, cannot express consciously, that which speaksto him from within. In the intuition there is the same flash of directknowledge, but now the great structure of the intellect has been builtup through intervening ages and by its means the intuitive knowledge candescend to our daily life in full consciousness. Without the at structure,without the intellect as instrument, the thinker within would not be ableto interpret his vision in intelligible language to his fellow-men; theartist may be ever so great, but he needs an instrument to play on.It is well to analyze whythe indiscriminate use of the intellect in philosophy is so full of dangers.In so far as the intellect is enslaved by the illusion of the world-imageas an external reality it does not doubt the objective existence of thatworld-image as a substantial outside world around us. This means that itaccepts all the characteristics of our world-image as objective realities--thequalities of matter, the substantiality of objects, the objective realityof time and space, the diversity and separateness of manifested creatures,all these are elements, the objective reality of which is not doubted aslong as the mind is enslaved by illusion. When, subject to illusion, neversuspecting even its existence, man begins to ask questions concerning thegreat problems of life it is inevitable that everyone of these questionsis asked from the standpoint of the world-image as external reality, thatis to say, every question is permeated by that which we have found to bethe fundamental illusion of our daily lives. Hence that illusion not onlycolours every question we thus ask, but is often the very heart of sucha question. This means that, unsuspected by us, there enters into the veryfabric of our philosophical questions and problems an element of illusionby which these questions become monstrosities, by which they are vitiated,incapable of solution since they are rooted in error.All questions, for instance,which have to so with a beginning of time or a beginning of creation, showin the very nature of the problem they touch the unthinking acceptanceof time as an objective reality and are consequently problems about whichwe may think for many years, but which we can never solve. In fact, ifwe do claim to have solved such a problem we stand condemned by our ownclaim. It is the same with regard to the unthinking acceptance of spiritand matter, or self and not-self, as a real duality. Endless theories havebeen advanced to reconcile these two, either by the elimination of oneof them or by a kind of compromise in which both are seen as eternallyopposite aspects of one great reality. However clever such solutions maybe they one and all are doomed to be wrong, since they unquestioninglyaccept the problem as it is stated without first investigating whetherit is not in itself the product of misconception. We might add many suchproblems and shall in later chapters have ample opportunity to show examplesof such wrong questions which yet form the stock problems of philosophy.But at present it is necessary to see why the intellect is insufficientas a philosophical method and approach to truth.The intellect, as the mindbound to illusion, can but work under the limitations of our world-image.The fundamental structure of that world-image is that of a duality, withmyself on the one side and everything else on the other side--self and not-self.The intellect thus necessarily accepts the separateness of all things asa basic fact, accepts the `otherness' of the world around me as undeniableand in all its cogitations can never free itself from the burden of thatbasic structure in which it is imprisoned. It is possible for the intellectto recognize theoretically the existence of unity, unity of life, unityof energy, or what else we may call that which unites all things, but eventhen separateness and multiplicity impress themselves so very much moreforcibly upon the intellect, that the conception of a fundamental unitybecomes but a pale shadow by the side of their varied and coloured interplay.The very methods of the intellect--distinguishing between one thing andanother, analyzing a thing into its component elements, learning to observethe minutest differences between one case and another--all these point toseparateness and multiplicity as the domain of the intellect. For its datathe intellect has to rely on sense-perception and deduction from basicprinciples, out of these it builds its theories and systems.In so far as science claimsbut to investigate and explore this outer world surrounding us, the intellectis a sufficient instrument for science, though even in the conclusionsof scientific investigations the intuition plays a far greater part thanwe are apt to credit. Fundamentally, however, sense-perception, analyzedand co-ordinated by the intellect is the method of science and, since sciencedoes not concern itself primarily with the fundamental problems of life,there is no objection to be made against the important place the intellecttakes in its work. It is only when we enter the domain of philosophy withis pursuit of ultimate reality that we must recognize the insufficiencyof the intellect and consciously use the intuition as a way to knowledge.For in philosophy we have to do with those very relations of ourselvesto the world surrounding us and of this world again to ultimate reality,about which the intellect is so confident, accepting them as they appearto be. By its acceptance of a dual structure of the world and of multiplicityas the character of this universe the intellect can never do more thansee one thing or another as true. To it the world cannot be one and manyat the same time and, even if it might theoretically recognize such a possibility,it cannot realize it as a fact. Consequently it can never recognize morethan half-truths and will defend these with the uttermost vigour.It is essential that in philosophywe should be aware of the method we use, aware of the organ with whichwe work in the realization of truth, and aware of both its possibilitiesand limitations. Intuition and intellect both have their place in the methodof philosophy, both have their task and both have their limitations. Theintellect, being the mind functioning in the limitations of the world-image,can and must serve as a technique by means of which the artist within,the intuition, can make visible his perception of beauty or of truth. Theintuition, realizing truth in the world of the Real, is the true organof philosophy, without its creative light the intellect would be but techniquewithout inspiration, lifeless and barren. On the other hand, the visionof truth which is obtained in the world of the Real, and there alone,needs the technique of the intellect if it is to be conveyed in intelligiblelanguage to others or even to ourselves in our everyday consciousness.But we must realize the distinctive duties and functions of intellect andintuition. If we fail to do so we are apt to make of the intellect thediscoverer of truth instead of the expositor, and of philosophy an intellectualgame, lacking creative life.The tragedy is that mostpeople are unable to discriminate between the life-giving bread of theintuition and the barren stones of the intellect; in their studies theyconsume with equal impartiality the one and the other and are as readyto condemn the work of the intuition as `merely intellectual' as they areto worship the husks of the intellect as if they were the fruits of theintuition. The intellect is but a skeleton, but to many the rattling ofits bones is as sweet a language as the voice of the intuition, they listenwith equal reverence to both or else condemn both in the same breath. Weshall find many such instances where either the intellect impersonatesthe intuition or else the voice of the intuition is confused with thatof the intellect.Yet there is far more ofintuitive knowledge in the lives of all of us than we realize. How often,when meeting a person or entering a place, do we not have a flash of intuitionwhich, with unerring certainty, leads us to the very heart of things andgives us a far deeper knowledge of the person's character or that of theplace than any lengthy process of reasoning or deduction from externalscould ever give us. Our first impressions are often of that nature; beforea person has even spoken we already know what they will mean to us, whetherwe like him or not, whether we trust him or would follow him as a leader.All this is intuitive knowledge, and, naturally, in the earlier statesof the development of the intuition apt to be confused with mere prejudice.Yet it plays a far greater role in our lives than we realize. The sameholds good for our scientific knowledge, even there it is the flash ofintuition which will make the scientist see the truth which then inspireshis further experiments. We shall come to realize that philosophy and alsoscience, in so far as they have been truly constructive, have ever usedthe method of the intuition, through at times unconsciously, and that theintellect is largely but the technique by means of which the realizationwhich the intuition gives is imparted to others of made clear to ourselves.INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE ANDLOGICAL PROOFThere are two fallacies whichat this stage we must face--the fallacy of logical proof leading to truth,and the fallacy that the intuition had no part to play in the truth thusrevealed.The logical method ofexposition of any doctrine or theory is one in which each statementfollows from the previous one in such a way that what is said in the laterstatement is contained in principle in the previous ones and nothing newis introduced without being properly linked up. Logic as such, with allits rules and principle in the previous ones and nothing new is introducedwithout being properly linked up. Logic as such, with all its rules andprinciples, is obedience to a law of mental cause and effect, the entirechain of reasoning being causally connected with certain premises or axiomata,which are thus worked out logically. Logic is the method of the intellect,it is intellectual technique and in itself always unproductive. It is essential,for without it we cannot explain to our ordinary consciousness the truthwhich the intuition may have seen, but logic never brings forth truth byits own power.Mathematical reasoning isperhaps the purest example of the logical method; yet in mathematics nothingnew is produced as truth and the conclusions to which we come are containedin the principles or axiomata from which we started, even though we maynot recognize them there. These axiomata themselves are self-evident tous; we do not feel that they need proving and recognize them intuitively.Thus all mathematical proof is based on principles which cannot be provedand, since, when working on a mathematical problem we never contributeanything new, but rather develop in a process of argumentation certainconclusions from our principles, these conclusions ultimately rest on theintuition which accepted without proof the truth of the axiomata. Hence,if we accept different axiomata as true our mathematics and our conclusionsare correspondingly different. Of this the new mathematics presents manyexamples and its conclusions are necessarily different from those of theEuclidian mathematics and the classical mechanics based on the latter.Hence also the difference between the new physics, based on the new mathematics,and the older physics.As it is in mathematics soit is also in philosophy--according to the principles from which we startand which we assume as self-evident we reach certain conclusions whichappear to be logically true, but which in reality are already conceivedin the principles from which we started and which we recognized intuitively.Thus, in philosophy too, logic is the method of exposition and assuch exceedingly valuable, but it does not lead to truth or produce truth;it is only the intuition which recognizes truth.We have a craving to seeour favourite beliefs logically proved; in fact, most of us are addictedto proof, it is for us the hallmark of intellectual respectability. A doctrinepresented to us without proof is as a stranger without papers or introductions;we look at him askance and can hardly bring ourselves to accept him athis own value as a human being. He too must be `proved' for us, he mustbe linked up in the chain of known quantities of which our conventionallife is composed. A doctrine or truth, presenting itself without proofon the bare value of its own nobility it as disturbing a factor to themajority of men as would be the stranger without name or country. We areafraid of it; it is to us as an invasion from an unknown world. And suchit is, it is an invasion from another world, from the only real world,the world of Reality; it is the vision of truth, or intuition, which, inthat world, knows with lightning-like rapidity and with immediate certaintyand which flashes down its message of truth into the dullness of our illusion-boundintellect. The intellect stands bewildered at such a visitation from onhigh. It is as if a God from high Olympus descended into a suburban drawing-room;consternation and a helpless impotence in the face of the unknown wouldfollow. We should be afraid of the naked stranger who, from the world ofdivinity, descended in our midst and hurriedly clothe him in the garmentsof respectability and usher him into the world of convention as our cousinfrom abroad. Thus he is linked up with our conventional world, he is somebody'sson, he has a name and a country.In the same surreptitiousway does our bewildered intellect clothe the visiting stranger from onhigh--Intuition. When the intuition flashes down into our comfortable andwell-ordered world of logic he is hurriedly clothed in the garments oflogic before our neighbours have seen him and he is introduced to the expectantworld as the logical offspring of premises well known to them. Then, andthen alone, do we fell that we can safely accept him and shall not be compromisedby our association with divinity.There is not a philosophyof importance that has not known such visitation from on high, that isnot rooted in revelation. When we read the lives or letters of great philosopherswe find how in their youth, perhaps for many years, they thought aboutthe problems of life, they felt the hunger, the yearning to know, theyknew the craving for truth, and with every atom of their being strainedtowards the unknown. For years they read and studied, if not in the booksof men than in the Book of Life, they gathered the raw material out ofwhich the creative mind might build its structure. But the moment camefor all of them that, for a brief moment, the veil was lifted and theyhad their revelation, they experienced living truth. Does not Nietzschetell us how, when he walked in the woods of Sils-Maris, the heavens openedand the world of truth spoke to him with no little voice? In such moments,often when the intellect is disengaged and dwells but lightly on life,the vision of the intuition breaks like a flash of lightning upon the darknessof our mental life and we know with utter certainty.Thus, in the domain of science,there was the moment of illumination in Newton's life while he watchedthe fall of an apple and found what he had been searching for. No doubthis mind was not dwelling on great and weighty problems at the moment,possibly he was but remembering with contentment some small event of dailylife and giving himself over to the serenity of the moment. But it is justin these rare silences of our busy lives that the intuition can speak tous; it is only when the illusion-bound intellect with its noisy self-assertionis quiet for a while that the voice of living truth can be hard. The momentof illumination may well be the outcome of years of mental search, callingforth, as it were, by induction a corresponding activity in the world ofthe Real, where the untrammeled mind sees the vision and speaks to themind in prison. But it is always the flash of intuition that shows us thetruth and co-ordinates our laboriously gathered intellectual material.It would show a refreshingsincerity if, some day, we found ourselves able to acknowledge these childrenof ours, born of the vision of truth, without feeling the urge of respectabilityto provide them with a legitimate and inevitable outcome of logical reasoning.Instead of saying at the beginning of our exposition--this have I seen,thus do I know--we put on a false air of innocent ignorance and, after reasoninglogically and profoundly through many hundreds of weighty pages, we bringforth as our conclusion the one thing at which we were aiming all the timeand with well simulated surprise we stand amazed at the wonderful outcomeof our logical reasoning. We have `proved' our truth, no trace of the outlawintuition can be found in our logical exposition; is it not clear thatwe started reasoning with an entirely unprejudiced mind and that our doctrineis the logical outcome of our intellectual penetration? We are like theconjurer who produces the rabbit out his top hat where he had it concealedall the time, yet it appears as the marvelous result of his magical passesand incantations. Thus our scientists and philosophers often sign theirwearisome incantations through many heavy tomes and, like the conjurer,produce their little rabbit at the very end, whereas they had it in theirpocket at the beginning of the first chapter.It is very rare, even inscience, that a discovery emerges from experiments which did not tend inthat direction. Generally the intuition sees a possible explanation ortheory and the experiments which afterwards prove it are but a testingout of the hypothesis or theory already present. Columbus knew that hewould reach land sailing West and but proved it by his action.Yet we must not ever disdainlogical exposition and proof. They are valuable, they are essential fora full intellectual appreciation, but they are not productive. It is onlywhen logic and proof claim that they have produced truth and proved thatit cannot be otherwise, that we find quarrel with them, that it becomesnecessary to put them into the humbler, though equally necessary, positionwhich is theirs by nature. What we need to overcome is our unfounded suspicionof the intuition as the stranger from nowhere; we must begin to realize,especially in philosophy, that all man has ever thought of any worth inthe history of philosophy, he has taught as the result of that inner anddirect awareness of truth which we call intuition and not as the prodigiousresult of wearisome reasoning.Oriental philosophy has neverpretended that it obtained its results by logic and proof, but has everplainly stated its doctrines, saying--thus I know. In consequence treatiseslike the Bhagavad Gita or the Tao The King consist of a numberof aphorisms or philosophical axiomata which need to be thought and ponderedover so that we may understand them fully in their context. A great advantageof this method of philosophizing is the extreme briefness of the booksproduced; compared to the ponderous tomes of Western philosophy the briefEastern treatises are like a refreshing breath from heaven.I do not know whether weshould lose anything of real value by following their methods; as it isour logical reasoning, our proof and counter proof, never convince anyone of a theory which he does not recognize within as true. A conclusivereasoning and apparently irrefutable proof may seem successful for themoment and leave us speechless and acquiescent, but when we come home weare as little convinced as we were before; all that has been gained wasour temporary grudging assent for lack of a suitable counter argument.Hence the futility of debates; the nimbler wit and readier answer win theday rather than the greater wisdom.It needs, however, the facultyof discerning and recognizing truth if we are to discriminate between livingwisdom, even when coming to us in simple and unassuming garb, and a brilliantbut empty intellectual scintillation, even though it appears in all therich and ornate garments which clever argument and apt reply provide. Thereare but few in these days of worship of the intellect who are able to recognizethe voice of the intuition, and yet, if the intuition is lacking, it cannotbe replaced by the crutches of logic and argument.To many the intuitive recognitionof truth as the legitimate way to knowledge is associated with ideas ofuncertainty and vagueness. They feel that when a doctrine is presentedon the basis of logical argument and conclusive reasoning there is at leastsomething to support it, and, even if the argument or logic may not quiteprove the point, yet they provide us with a standard for our approval orcondemnation. When, however, all that is presented to us is someone's intuitionthat this or that is right, how are we to distinguish between a right anda wrong intuition, and how are we to guard ourselves against error? But,how do we guard ourselves against error at present, while the intuitionis but disguised by reasoning and so-called proof? In philosophy especiallywe should by now be accustomed to the fact that there is not a doctrineor theory that was not proved at one time as conclusively as it was disprovedat another. In reality, when we come to analyze it, we find our judgmentat present to be as much an intuitive one as it would be if the doctrinewere presented to us on its face value without the pretence of proof. Whathappens now is that we need not fear to acknowledge our beliefs becausethey are clad in the respectable garments of logic. It is fear that holdsus back, fear to let go the one support which our intellect knows, --argumentand logical proof. As the intuition becomes more widely recognized as alegitimate path to knowledge, the uncertainty which at present accompaniesits occasional visitations will disappear; a new organ or function willever be uncertain in its initial workings. It may reassure us, however,to realize that the greatest teachers of all times have ever presentedtheir conclusions on their inner worth as intuitions; we do not find aChrist or Buddha proving conclusively that what he says is right, or reasoningout logically his doctrines. They can disdain to use such make-belief ofproof and yet they spoke as no man ever spoke, and the hundreds of millionswho have followed them have found sufficient conviction in their wordsthrough the very spirit of truth and spoke through them. It is only whenthat spirit is absent that proof and logical reasoning must fill the gapand disguise the emptiness within.Yet we should ever recognizethe value of logical reasoning and intellectual proof as a techniqueof communicating to our fellow-men that which we know within. It enrichesthe doctrine we bring forward and links it up to all that is familiar andknown to us, when it is presented, not as a naked fact, in the domain ofscience this will ever be the appropriate way of presenting a doctrineor truth, since there the experiment which corroborates the assertion constitutesthe proof; in philosophy such experimental proof is but rarely, if ever,possible.SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHYIt is essential that we shouldunderstand the respective domains of science and philosophy. Science investigatesthe world as it appears in our world-image and is not especially concernedwith the relation of that world-image to some ultimate reality or the wayit is produced in our consciousness. Thus science does not deal with theworld of the Real so much as with the appearances or phenomena in our consciousness.It is satisfied to accept this world-image of ours as an independent realityand to forget or even to deny its vital relation to our consciousness.The result is that science to a large extent is still subject to the limitationsof our world-image and shares in its illusion. It does not deal with thingsas they are so much as with things as they appear; its laws are the shadowsof living truth.We must not make the mistakeof confusing the domains of science and philosophy, however much they aremutually illuminating and supply one another deficiencies. Philosophy dealswith the ultimate principles and realities which are the eternal foundationof our world, science deals with the multitude of phenomena in which theseprinciples appear to us; philosophy deals with the why, science with thehow; philosophy searches for the ultimate nature of being, science is concernedwith the functions and workings of this world of forms surrounding us.If science deals with the form-side which our world-image presents, philosophydeals with the life-side to be approached in and through our own consciousness.Introspection is as much the method of the philosopher as observation ofouter phenomena is that of the scientist. Thus the two, dealing respectivelywith phenomena or appearances without and with the realities or final principleswithin, are supplementary and equally necessary to a full understandingof the world.It is only a childish intolerancewhich, on the one hand, would make the scientist disdain philosophy asvain speculation, or on the other hand cause the philosopher to look downupon the work of the scientist as dealing merely with the unreal. For theknowledge of ultimate reality the scientist will ever have to run to thephilosopher as much as the philosopher will have to apply to the scientistfor information and knowledge concerning the manifold details of the worldof appearances and the way in which things work. Thus we need philosophyfor the ultimate answers; science for detailed knowledge and control ofnatural forces; and it would be equally wrong to ask of philosophy theexact temperature under which at certain pressure water boils as it wouldbe to ask science the meaning of evil or the relation of this world toits ultimate Cause. Philosophy again is as powerless to produce a motor-caror a telescope as science is when asked the purpose of life, the relationof time and the eternal, or the measure of freedom of the human will. Mutualcontempt of philosophy and science is as harmful as it is unfounded, butwe must ever be on our guard against asking of one a question belongingto the domain of the other. A scientific answer to a philosophical questionwill necessarily be unsatisfactory and beside the point, just as a philosophicalsolution to a scientific question would be empty of meaning and scientificallyvalueless. We honour both best by understanding their respective spheresof knowledge and by co-ordinating them to their greatest benefit, neverby confusing their respective tasks.In mediaeval times scienceand philosophy were one in a confusion detrimental to the development ofboth; since the time of Bacon science and philosophy diverged more andmore until in the nineteenth century they seemed mutually exclusive; now,in the twentieth century they are to be co-ordinated, no longer confusedas in the Middle Ages, but seen in a unity in which each has its own taskand function, well defined and distinguished from that of the other.OCCULTISM AND MYSTICISMIt is interesting to seehow the essential difference and mutually supplementary character of philosophyand science are evident also in their respective extensions into mysticismand occultism. It is in modern Theosophy that we find the clearest presentationof these two, especially of the latter--occultism.The claim of occultism isthat this physical world is not the only world which can be investigatedscientifically; it teaches that there are worlds of subtler matter whichcan be explored scientifically by those who have developed the facultiesof perception in those worlds, what we might call the occult senses, suchas clairvoyance at different levels, clairaudience and other similar faculties.There is nothing improbableor impossible in an extension of sense-perception beyond the limits ofour normal five senses. It is common knowledge that even within the rangeof the usual senses there are appreciable differences with regard to thelimits of perception; some will hear a more rapid vibration of the airas sound, or see a more rapid vibration of the ether as light than others.And apart from the greater sensitiveness in ordinary perception there isthe evidence of so-called transposition of the ordinary sense-functionsto almost any part of the body. Thus Richet tells in his work ThirtyYears of Psychical Research (p. 186 ff.) of the case of a person who,in a state of hypnosis, had the faculty of sight temporarily localizedin the finger-tips, so that she could read a page of print with the handsinstead of with the eyes. This and similar experiments point to the possibilityof sense-perception without the use of the ordinary five senses, and tothe existence of a sixth sense not dependent upon the physical sense-organs.We ourselves, in ordinarylife cannot fail to come across instances, where a knowledge of eventsis obtained when there is not sense-evidence whatsoever to provide it.The knowledge of the illness or death of a friend far away, of an accidentor catastrophe taking place at a distance, or even of an event to takeplace in the future, is thus obtained by means of an inner sense whichtranscends the five physical senses. Finally there is the evidence of thosewho claim to have developed consciously senses not normally developed inman, but presumably capable of development by those who follow the necessarytraining.Only with a more widespreaddevelopment of occult faculties can occultism become science, the scienceof worlds of matter subtler than the physical. Meanwhile we must classifywhatever is produced along line of occult investigation as belonging tothe domain of science rather than to that of philosophy. Like science occultismis the investigation of an outside world or of outside worlds in theirmultiplicity of forms and colours, presented in dimensions of time andspace. As such it is the observation and investigation of a world-image;as ordinary science explores the physical world-image so does occultismattempt to explore an etheric, astral or mental world-image. It, therefore,has the same possibilities and limitations which science has, it leadsto knowledge of the how not of the why of things, it leads to knowledgeand control of the outer worlds, not to knowledge of ultimate principles.Occultism, as little as science,has an answer to give to ultimate questions; it may show us the workingand functioning of things--the how--somewhat further than ordinary sciencecan, it may show the way things appear in a world-image beyond the merelyphysical world-image, but essentially it is not the task of either scienceor occultism to answer final questions. To expect such things of them isto misunderstand their mission and their possibility; we do not expectan electric lamp to produce music or a piano to give light. Each has itsown power and value and it would be ignorance on our part and not unsufficiencyon theirs if we expect the wrong thing from them and they fail to supplyit.It is important to understandthis, especially where in modern theosophy the claim is so often made foroccultism that it offers a philosophy and answers the problems of life.It does not offer a philosophy of life any more than science does, andif we expect occultism to answer fundamental problems we misunderstandits function. Occultism offers an extension of science into subtler worlds,mainly the world of emotions and the world of thought, but is investigationsare investigations of a world-image, not experience of reality.This does not in any waybelittle the scope of occultism, it merely corrects a misunderstandingwhich lead us to absurdity. We shall, in later chapters, have occasionto point out various instances where the interesting and valuable productsof occult investigation are mistaken for philosophical truths and presentedas answering ultimate questions. This confusion is detrimental to the developmentof occultism, since, thus, claims are made on its behalf which it can neverfulfil. Occultism has no more an answer for such problems as the natureof evil, the freedom of the will, the justice of life or the relation ofconsciousness to matter, than science. If we would pursue these metaphysicalquestions we must follow a different line.Just as in modern theosophywe find occultism or psychism presented as an extension of science so dowe find a philosophical mysticism presented as an extension of philosophy.The fundamental doctrine of theosophy, that of the unity of all life, belongsto this domain of philosophical mysticism; no clairvoyant investigationat whatsoever level can ever observe the unity of life.In its philosophical mysticismtheosophy transcends intellectual speculation and leads to the experienceof reality. In this it shows its kinship with Neo-Platonic mysticism; Plotinustoo proclaimed that it is possible for philosophy to be more than an intellectualstructure, that it is possible to experience as inner realitiesthose things which ordinary philosophy would present as intellectual beliefs.Thus he says, (Enmead VI., 9,4.).Plato says of Unity thatit is unspeakable and indescribable. Nevertheless we speak of it, we writeabout it, but only to excite our souls by our discussions, and to directthem towards this divine spectacle, just as one might point out the roadto somebody who desired to see some object. Instruction, indeed, goes asfar as showing the road, and guiding us in the way; but to obtain the visionof the Divinity is the work suitable to him who desires to obtain it.Intellectual philosophy maycome to the conclusion that there is a world of reality of which our everydayworld is but the image produced in our consciousness; philosophical mysticismgoes one step further and claims that it is possible for man to enter theworld of reality and experience living truth. Again, not contentwith recognizing, as some philosophies do, that in our normal consciousnesswe are subject to illusion, philosophical mysticism claims the power forman to conquer this illusion and establish himself in Reality. Thus,where philosophy believes, philosophical mysticism experiences, it transcendsbelief in being.In this way philosophicalmysticism is as legitimate an extension of ordinary philosophy as occultismor psychism is of ordinary science. It is interesting to see how the evolutionarytendencies of modern philosophy are towards this philosophical mysticism,even though it may not be mentioned by that name. The recognition of theintuition in Bergson's philosophy as a method of knowledge beyond the intellect;the impatience with intellectual systems of philosophy into which lifeis expected to fit and the attempt at a philosophy which is creative, vitaland based on experience, such as we find in the work of Count Keyserling;the interest of many philosophers in the new mathematics, so evident inBertrand Russell's work; and finally, a definitely mystical philosophylike that of Ouspensky in his Tertium Organum, all these are signsof the gradual evolution from a merely intellectual philosophy into a philosophyof intuition and experience.In modern theosophy it isthrough its aspect as philosophical mysticism that we must approach ultimatequestions. The doctrine of theosophy with regard to the illusion or mayaof the phenomenal worlds, its teaching that the goal of life is the attainingof ultimate reality which can be reached by a process of inner realization,above all its doctrine of the unity of life and of universal brotherhood,all these belong to theosophy as philosophical mysticism. As such it trulyoffers a philosophy of life; as such it lead to the experience of the mysteryof life, as such it may help us with regard to problems such as that ofthe ultimate justice of life, the origin of evil and suffering, or therelation of life to form or of soul to body. But as such it does not andcannot ever answer questions with regard to the detailed forms of our world-image,whether physical, emotional or metal; this detailed knowledge, as wellas the knowledge of the way in which things work, belongs to science andits extension--occultism.In theosophical literaturethere is as yet no clear understanding of and discrimination between thesetwo aspects of its teaching--the occult-scientific and the mystic-philosophical,and consequently we often meet with philosophical heresies on the one hand,where the results of occult investigation are produced as the answers tophilosophical questions, and scientific heresies on the other hand, wherequestions which can only be answered by a precise and scientific occultismare answered by philosophical or mystical statements. The result is thatthe true values of theosophy are obscured both in the eyes of the scientistand of the philosopher, and that the progress of theosophical investigationis impeded.It is curious to see howthrough history the scientific and the philosophical type and also themystic and the occultist have misunderstood and even opposed one another.The age-long struggle between religion and science is rooted in their misunderstanding,a misunderstanding accentuated when religion becomes a dogmatic orthodoxyand science an equally dogmatic materialism, such as they were a centuryago. In principle we find the antithesis of the two types already in thedisapproval on the part of Plotinus, the philosophical mystic, of the writingsof the Gnostics, whose tendencies were definitely in the direction of occultism.In more recent times we find a similar, though more open, warfare betweenthe philosophical mysticism of the Cambridge Platonists of the seventeenthcentury and the occultism of the Rosicrucians and Alchemists of that period.When we study the series of polemical pamphlets interchanged between HenryMore, the Platonist, and Thomas Vaughan, known as Eugenius Philalethes,the famous Rosicrucian, we are struck not only by the misunderstandingof each other's methods and contributions to knowledge, but by the illconcealed bitterness and the mutual contempt which even the titles of theirpamphlets manifest. Yet both were men of understanding nobility of characterand erudition and, seeing the extent of their antagonism, we can well imaginewhat would happen in the case of lesser representatives on both side.We must learn to see thetwo--philosophy and science--as well as their extensions, mysticism and occultism,co-ordinated in a higher unity without confusing their characteristic methodsand aims. The methods of science and occultism will ever be accurate observationby means of our senses and the intellectual elaboration of these sense-data;the method of philosophy and of philosophical mysticism will ever be thatof the intuition or realization in consciousness. And it is that methodof realization which we shall have to use in our exploration of the worldof the Real. CHAPTER FOURTHE ABSOLUTE AND THE RELATIVEThere is an endless world,O my Brother! and there is the Nameless Being, of whom nought can be said.Only he knows it whohas reached that region: it is other than all that is heard and said.No form, no body, nolength, no breadth is seen there: how can I tell you that which it is?--KABIR, Tagore, 76 THE REALIZATION OF THEABSOLUTETHE world of the Real, whichwe enter when we pass through our centre of consciousness, is the Absolute,it is That beyond and beside which nothing exists. In a way it is not evenright to speak of a world which we enter. First of all it is not a world,secondly we do not really enter it and finally it is not really we whoenter that world. No phraseology derived from the experience of our world-imagecan fit the Absolute, ultimate Reality. Down here we speak of a `world'and the word immediately conveys a conception of a universe arranged aroundus, outside us, with spatial separation between its creatures and objects,changin | |
