The Mystery of Space

The Thinker and the Ego—Increscent Automatism of the Intellect—The Egopsyche and the Omnipsyche—Kosmic Order or Geometrism—Life as Engendering Element—The Mystery of Space Stated—Kathekos and Kathekotic Consciousness—Function of the Ideal—The Path of Search for an Understanding of the Nature and Extent of Space Must Proceed in an Inverse Direction.

The fragmentariness of the Thinker's outlook upon the universe of spatiality is due to the inhibitive action set up by the constrictive bonds which his complicate mechanism of intellectuality interposes between himself and reality. The Thinker, who stands back of and uses the various media of objective consciousness, such as the neural mechanisms, brain, emotions, his individualized life-force and the mind which together make up the instruments with which he contacts the sensuous domain, by adapting his consciousness to these means, as the artisan utilizes his tools, constitutes his own intellectuality. The intellectuality, then, is the totality of media by which consciousness effects its entrance into the sensuous world and by which it receives impressions therefrom. In other words, it is the sum of all those qualities, operations, processes and mechanisms which are recognized as constituting the modus vivendi of man's intellectuality, and these are, in reality, nothing more than the ego himself.

Many have been inclined to regard that which has been called the ego as the highest sovereign power in the state of manhood. He has been looked upon as the final consideration in the constitution of the human being. But the ego is an evolutionary product and the concomitant of self-consciousness which is the I-making faculty in man's psychic life. It is that quality of consciousness which makes man conceive of himself as a separate, detached and independent being. It is a purely intellectual or tuitional product, and, as such, is to be differentiated from the intuitional or life-quality which is the essence of man's real selfhood. With respect to the Thinker, the ego occupies precisely the same status as the agent to his principal. As the agent is the representative of the principal in all matters which come within the scope of his prescribed jurisdiction so is the ego the agent of the Thinker who is a spiritual intelligence. Accordingly, from an ethical viewpoint the Thinker is responsible for the acts of the agent and can in no wise escape the penalties accruing as a result of the agent's violations. Just as a commercial firm sends out a representative for the collection of data concerning certain phases of its business or it may be of any business or the entire world market so the Thinker projects his own consciousness into the mechanisms which are in their totality the egoic life. That is, he sends out his agent, the ego, into life and into the objective world of facts and demands that he shall convey to him, from all points of the territory which he is expected to cover, reports of his findings. Of course, these reports which are transmitted by the ego (the intellectual mechanism of the Thinker) are more or less well prepared summations of his individual observations and deductions. These are the percepts which the ego presents to the Thinker's consciousness. Concepts are formed by the Thinker in his treatment of these sense-presentations. It very frequently happens that the ego transmits reports which, for one reason or another, give very imperfect knowledge of the matter which his reports are designed to cover. Often it is necessary that additional and supplemental reports be made about the same thing, and even then, it is well-nigh impossible, if not quite so, for him fully to cover every detail of the matter under consideration and in no case is it possible for him to do more than report on the superficialities of the question under scrutiny. If the ego, in his operations, be imagined to be hampered by similar circumstances and difficulties as those which would ordinarily beset a commercial attachÉ it will then be clear that his reports must ever be fragmentary because of the inaccessibility of much of the data which would be necessary for a full report, and further, because of the inadequacy of his methods and means of gathering data due to the inherent limitations of his capabilities, endurance and perspicacity and innumerable other limitations and difficulties which must be faced in all search for the real. So that, while the sufficiency of the means which the ego enjoys at this stage for all practical purposes is granted no hesitancy is entertained when it comes to a discovery of the reals of knowledge in declaring their insufficiency.

Then, too, when it is remembered that these egoic reports are in the nature of neurographical communications which are similar to telegraphic despatches and must pass through several stations, as ganglia, etc., often being relayed from one to another, it will be quite apparent that much, even of the original quality of the missives forwarded, will have been lost or radically changed in some way before it is finally delivered for the inspection of the Thinker himself. It not infrequently happens, even in perfectly normal beings, that the ego in filing, recording, transcribing, interpreting, translating and otherwise preparing these data for the Thinker's use, lets a cog slip, misplaces some of the data, loses or destroys fragments of it and so is unable to maintain a complete portfolio of his materials.

As the Thinker is entirely dependent upon his agent, the ego, for the trustworthiness of his information covering the matter of the sensuous world it is obvious that at best his information is very fragmentary indeed, and necessarily so when it is considered that the modus operandi of his agent and the difficulty of his operations are so complicate as to magnify the obstructions in the way to complete freedom in this regard.

To continue the similitude of principal and agent it may be asserted that it is also true that the commercial house that sends out its attaches frequently will send letters containing directions as to procedure, sometimes censuring for past delinquencies and sometimes commending for praiseworthy deeds; and this, too, in addition to the original instructions which were given at the outset. It even comes to pass that the home office, because of some meretricious accomplishment, as the marked increase of efficiency shown by the agent's close application to his duties and the consequent success of his operations, confers certain favors upon the agent or removes some of the restrictions which were originally imposed, gives an increase in salary or promotes the agent to a higher and more lucrative office with larger powers and greater authority. This is analogous to what the Thinker does for the ego. For he not only receives reports from the ego, but often, in the shape of intuitions, gives additional information as to the proper manner of doing things, sheds more light upon some obscure operation, commends for duty well performed, condemns for failures or for wrong-doing, rewards arduous toil with greater powers of vision, keener insight, greater capabilities; in fact, promotes the ego in the sight of other egos by marking him out as an exceptional ego. But the curious aspect of this procedure is that, in time and after the ego has been repeatedly commended and promoted and otherwise favored by the Thinker, he begins to think that he owns the firm, that he is the life and main support of the whole corporation. He becomes arrogant, self-willed and finally falls into the illusion that he alone is responsible for the phenomenal success of the firm. This is the source of that illusion of the intellect which makes itself think that it, the ego, is all there is to man, that his instruments of operation in the objective world are the only kind of instruments that may be used; that his method of gathering data about things is the only safe and sure method; and so it develops that the intellectuality is the source of man's separateness, his individuality and his apparent aloofness from other men and things. It is, of course, needless to point out that in this way the intellect comes to be the tyrant of man, ruling with a rigid monopoly and as an all-exclusive autocracy.

From the above implications it would appear that the intellect and the intuitive faculty are two separate and distinct processes, and so they are. One is the inverse of the other. The tendence of the egoic life or the intellect is for the external while the intuition is an internal process. The intellect acts from without towards the interior while the intuition acts from within outward. The intellect is the product of the intuition which is another term for the consciousness of the Thinker on his own plane. Just as the child lives a separate and distinct, though dependent, life from the parents so the intellect has a modus vivendi which is distinct and separate from that of the Thinker, and yet it is in all points dependent upon the life of the Thinker. Here again, we find an analogy in the relation of the child to the parent. As some children are more amenable to the will of the parent than others, so, in some persons, the intellect is more amenable to the action of the intuition than in others. Yet it is a certain fact that the more the outward life is governed by the intuition, i.e., the more the intellect responds to the intuitive faculty of the Thinker, the higher the order of the life of the ego and the more accurate his decisions and judgments. In fact, it assuredly may be asserted that the place of every individual in the scale of evolution is determined in a very large measure by the degree of agreement between the intuition and the intellect or by the ease with which the intuition may operate through the intellect as a medium. At least, the quality of one's life may be determined directly by these considerations.

The Thinker being himself a pure spiritual intelligence, living upon the plane of spirit and therefore unhampered by the difficulties which the ego meets in his operations in the objective sensorium, and possessed of far greater knowledge, is correspondingly free from the limitations of the ego and very naturally closer to kosmic realities. Hence, he is better situated for the procurement of correct notions of relations, essentialities and the like. It is believed, therefore, that in the proportion that these two processes, the intellectual and the intuitional, are brought, in the course of evolution, to a closer and more rigid agreement, in the proportion that the Thinker is able to transmit the intuitograms in the shape of concepts or that the intuition is made more and more conceptual, in just that proportion is humanity becoming perfect and its evolution complete. The difficulty found to inhere in the conceptualization of intuitions so that they may be propagated from man to man seems not to lie in the Thinker himself, but more essentially in the ego, in the intellectuality and its complicate schematism or plan of action. It would appear, therefore, that the only way of escaping or transcending this difficulty is for the ego so to refine his vehicles or so facilitate his plan of action by eliminating the numerous relays or sub-stations intervening between the consciousness of the Thinker and that which may be said to be his own that the transmission of intuitograms may be accomplished with the greatest ease and clearness. While no attempt will be made to indicate the probable line of action which the ego or objective man will adopt for this purpose, it is believed that it may be said without pedanticism that the only true method of attaining unto this much desired state of things is, first of all, by assuming a sympathetic attitude not only towards the question of the intuition itself but to all phenomena which are an outgrowth of, or incident to, the manifestations of the intuitive faculty through the intellectuality, and second, by the practice of prolonged abstract thought, this latter procedure effecting a suspension of the intellectuality temporarily at the same time allowing it to experience an undisturbed contact with the intuitional consciousness, thereby laying the basis for future recognition of its nature and quality. It would seem that these two conditions are absolutely necessary in order that a more congruent relationship may be promoted between these two cognitive faculties. Ordinarily, it would appear that the philosopher who is undoubtedly inured to the necessities of continuous abstraction or the mathematician whose most common tasks naturally fall in this category would be among all men most apt to develop to the point of conceptualizing intuitograms readily, yet it seems that this is not the case. And there is good reason for it. The mind of the philosopher and the mathematician is intellectual rather than intuitional and is, therefore, wedded to matter, to the action and reaction of matter against matter and hence operating in a direction at variance with the trend of an intuitional mind. And this condition is undoubtedly due to a lack of a sympathetic attitude towards this species of consciousness. At any rate, it is thought that a too great anxiety in this respect need not be entertained by humanity at all, for the reason that in the case of a faculty, the rudimentary outcroppings of which are so marked and universally observable and existing in greater or lesser degrees in various human beings, there is ample evidence for the belief that it is being carefully and duly promoted by a well-directed evolution of psychic faculties and powers, so that at the proper time, determinable by the state of perfection reached by the intellectuality or the ego in the operation of his cognitive processes, the much desired agreement of these two faculties will have been realized and the conceptualization of intuitograms into propagable conceptions an accomplished fact. Until this goal shall have been reached and the intuition shall have overshadowed the intellect as the intellect now overshadows the intuition; or the consciousness of the ego, derived from the interplay of the Thinker's consciousness among the various elements which constitute the ego himself, shall have been merged with that of the Thinker, the outlook must remain fragmentary, only becoming a well-ordered whole as the barriers of dissidence are broken down in succession.

The evolution of consciousness, from the simple, undifferentiated moneron to the differentiated cell and from that to the cell-colony and from the cell-colony to the organism, traversing in successive paces through all the stages of lower life—mineral, vegetable and animal—to the stages of the simple, communal consciousness of the higher animals, to the self or individual consciousness of the human being, each requiring millions of years for its perfection before a more advanced stage is entered, has been one continuous relinquishment of the lower and less complicate for the higher and more complex expression of itself through the given media. When a newer and higher stage of consciousness is being entered by humanity its appearance or manifestation is first made in the most advanced of the race and that only in a dim, vague way. This rudimentary condition persists for some time, perhaps many thousands of years, then the faculty becomes more general in appearance, the number of advanced individuals increases, and consequently, as in the case of the intuitive faculty, it becomes universally prevalent in all humanity; becomes transmissible as so-called "acquired characters," and then appears as the normal faculty of the entire human family cropping out in each individual. Thus, in passing from the few advanced ones in the beginning to that stage where it becomes the common possession of all, a faculty requires many thousands of years for its perfection, and especially has this been true in the past history of the development of human faculties. But it is believed that the sweep of the life current as it proceeds from form to form, from faculty to faculty, gains in momentum as it proceeds, so that in these latter years due to the already highly developed vehicular mechanisms at its disposal not so great a period of time as formerly is required for the out-bringing of a new faculty. It might well be that while in the past hundreds of thousands of years were necessary in the perfection of organs and faculties, in these latter days only a few thousand, perhaps hundreds, may be necessary and that in the days of the future not even so many years may be required to universalize a faculty. And especially does this appear to be true in a state of affairs where so large a number of persons are beginning consciously to take their evolution in hand and by volitional activities are supplying greatly increased impetus to their psychic processes which under ordinary, natural methods would be considerably slower in their development. It is quite obvious that all cultural efforts when applied to the betterment of a given plant, animal or faculty result in a corresponding hastening of the process of growth far in excess of what that growth would be under normal, natural conditions. All the present faculties possessed by man are remarkably susceptible to cultural influences; in fact, the standing edict of ethical and social law is that the human faculties must be cultivated as highly as possible, thereby giving the spirit a more perfect medium of expression. These observations, therefore, lead irresistibly and unavoidably to the conclusion that the time for the upspringing of the intuitional faculty in the human organism is even now upon us, that undoubtedly in certain very advanced ones it has already reached a notable degree of perfection and is rather more general than would appear in the absence of careful investigation.

Now, just as the intellect has made for individuality, has emphasized the separateness of the Thinker's existence from that of other thinkers, has developed self-consciousness to a very high degree, even pushing it far over into the domain of the higher consciousness to the temporary obscuration of the latter, so the intuitional will make for union, for the brotherhood of man, for co-operation and for the common weal. Through it man will come gradually into the consciousness that fundamentally, in his inner nature, in every respect of vital concern, he is at-one with his fellowmen and not only with the apparent units of life but with all life as expressed in whatsoever form throughout the universe. Then, too, he will be closer to the reality of things, of actions and natural processes; in fine, he will have begun the development of the space-mind which will bring him to the knowledge that he is one with space also and, therefore, with the divine life of the world.

One of the peculiarities of the vital force which shows itself in the consciousness as man's intellect, is its growing automatism, or that tendency which enables the consciousness to perform its functions automatically and thus allow opportunity for the development of newer and higher faculties. Actions, oft repeated, tend to become automatic. This is also true of thought and consciousness. It is one of the beneficent results of abstract thought that it develops, or tends to develop, a kind of automatism whereby a marked saving in time and energy is effected. This affords opportunity for other things. It is undoubtedly true that in the days of the truly primitive man his consciousness was more completely engaged in the execution of the ergonic functions of cells, organs and tissues; that all those processes which are now said to be involuntary and reflexive were at one time, in the distant past of man's evolution, the results of conscious volitions. This is a condition which must have preceded even the development of the intellect itself. Indeed, there could be no intellect in a state where the entire modicum of consciousness was being utilized in the performance of cellular and histologic functions.

The rise of the intellect must have been in direct ratio to the development of automatism among the cells, tissues and organs, so that as these came gradually to perform their special labors reflexively the intellect began to be formulated and to grow, at first only incipiently, then more and more completely until it reached its present state. At the present stage of its evolution, a great deal of the labor of the intellect is beginning to fall into a kind of increscent automatism, although only rudimentarily, in many instances. Yet, as a result of this tendency, quite the whole of the phenomena of perception is characterized by a sort of automatic action. And the mind perceives without conscious volition. Many of the steps of conceptualization are automatic, in part, if not wholly. Certain it is that impulses once set in operation whether consciously or unconsciously continue to act along the same line until exhausted or until the end has been attained. Consequently, it is a proven fact that often serious mathematical and philosophic problems have been solved by the mind long after any conscious effort to solve them had ceased. Often solutions have been arrived at during sleep. Many such cases might be cited, but the phenomenon is now so common that almost every one can cite some experience in his own life that will substantiate the claim.

There is no doubt but that these phenomena are evidences of a reflexive development in the intellect. The time will come undoubtedly, and necessarily so if the intellect is to give way to a higher faculty, which shall be as much above the intellect in its grasp of things as the intellect is now above the simple consciousness of the lower animal, when quite the entirety of our intellectual processes will become automatic or self-performing. What then remains of the egoic schematism, after its transmutation or elevation as the organ of the intuitional consciousness will be utilized as the organ of the Thinker's involuntary cognitive processes. This will mean that all of that laborious ideation which is now the abstract thought of the Thinker will be performed automatically, leaving the higher aspect of the egoic consciousness free to conceptualize or intuitograph the intuitions. Perceptualization then will be replaced by conceptualization. This latter will occupy about the same status as the former does now. And necessarily, perception will become more complex. In other words, while we now perceive simple percepts which are again arranged into concepts making a composite picture of the object, we shall then be taking in the composite picture of the object at first hand, thereby dispensing with the rather slow process of perception as it now operates. We shall still be perceiving, but what we perceive will be concepts rather than percepts, as at present.

The increased powers of intellection gained as a result of the increscent automatism in the intellect, the flowering forth of the intuitive faculty and the general enhancement of the intellect throughout all its processes will enable it to entertain concepts or composite pictures of things just as readily and as perfectly as it can at present deal with a single percept. Concepts will be replaced by super-concepts or intuitographs. Increased perspicacity will enable the Thinker to manipulate the concepts and intuitographs with the same ease and readiness and withal the mind will have attained unto an almost unrealizable freedom in its search after truth.

The outcome of this new adjustment which, of course, will not spring up at once, but by insensible degrees, will be the clarification and unification of our knowledge. It will mean also the simplification of it; the obviation of diversities of opinions, the springing up of a new and winnowed system of philosophy which shall be the true one; further, it will imply the lessening of the probability of error in our judgments and conclusions; the removal of illusion to a much larger degree than to-day is possible and the realization by every one of something of the essence of things, of causes and effects, of actions, operations, natural forces and laws; in fact, a condition of mind which will present to the consciousness the simple truth above every conceivable phase of kosmic life which may come within the scope of the Thinker's observation.

The further implications of this view are that there is a difference between the Thinker and the intellectuality. The Thinker is eternal and partakes, therefore, of the very essence of primordial originality while the mentality is an artificial process, the resultant of the adaptation of the Thinker's consciousness to his vehicular contrivances of objective cognition and the interplay of his life among them.

If the appearance of a choppy sea disturbed by the passage of a brisk breeze over its surface be imagined, a similitude of the great ocean of life may be envisaged. The wavelet crests symbolize the egos; the base of the wavelet which is one with the great sea of water represents the Thinker which is one with the divine life and consciousness of the kosmos. Just as wavelet crests are continually springing up and falling back into the sea, so are egos continually being cast forth and reabsorbed into the universality of life only to be recast, as a wavelet crest or ego, upon the surface of the moving ocean of life. And so, in this respect, the universum of life and consciousness which are essentially one is in a constant state of ever-becoming, un-becoming and re-becoming.

Another implication is that, on account of the diversity and complexity of the means of contact with the external world, it is not possible for the ego to arrive at more than a fragmentary understanding of even the latent geometrism of life, mind and materiality. In our examination of the sensuous world, we are very much like the three blind men set to examining an elephant. One set to scrutinizing his trunk by means of his sense of feeling. When asked for his judgment as to what the elephant was he declared it was a snake; a second who began with the legs found it to be like huge pillars; and a third who caught hold of the elephant's tail and declared the elephant to be like a rope. Each one of the blind men described what he was able to perceive. To each what he felt was all there was upon which he could render judgment. And so, artists, philosophers, mathematicians, musicians, mechanicians, religious seers, metaphysicians and all other types of mind, are just so many blind men set to the examination of an elephant, or the sensuous world. Each one confidently believes his view to be correct; each one is satisfied with the deliveries of his senses. Yet no one of them is wholly correct, no one of them has seen every phase and aspect of the problem. Does it not, therefore, appear to be the more reasonable and urgent that the view which synthesizes the judgments of all the possible examiners thereby constructing a composite idea of the entire mass of judgments is the more reliable and the more correct?

Referring again to the dual intelligence, the ego and the Thinker, which together constitute man, it is deemed necessary, in order to present the concept of this duality to the mind of the reader in the way that shall enable him easily to recall it, to designate the egoic intelligence as the egopsyche, and the Thinker's intelligence as the omnipsyche.

The egopsyche is the I-making faculty, the faculty of self-consciousness and the synthesis of all those psychic states and functions known as the intellect or mind and includes the ethical aspect of man's nature. The omnipsyche is the organism of kosmic consciousness, the space-mind, or man's higher self and that which connects with or allies him to all life; it is the basis of human unity and of unity with divinity, just as the egopsyche is the basis of separation and individuality; it is the organ of direct and instantaneous cognition and the permanent essence which has persisted through every form which the being, man, has ever assumed and through every stage of human evolution. In it are stored up the memories of the Thinker's past, the secrets of life, mind, being, reality, and the history of life from the beginning; in it also the plan of action for the future of the life-wave as it passes from plane to plane, from stage to stage, and from form to form. It is the spark from the flame that is never quite free from its source; it is the continuous spark, the prolonged ray which does not go out and cannot be extinguished. It is that in man which when full union therewith has been attained makes him a god in full consciousness.

The omnipsyche is really a neglected and overlooked factor in the doctrine of evolution. Evolutionists, while they claim life to be continuous and that man has come through all the kingdoms of nature in succession and has spent millions of years in the perfection of his various organs, faculties and stages of consciousness, make no ample allowance for what is in reality the basal element in evolution—a continuous, persisting, permanent life-force which does not lose its identity from the beginning to the end of the process. This fact—that that spark of life which set out upon the evolutionary journey as a moneron has glowed steadily from that stage to manhood, maintaining meantime its original purposiveness and intent—seems to be the most obvious consideration of the whole doctrine, yet it has been more or less completely ignored. The elementary requirements of evolution would seem to establish clearly the necessity for some such eternally persisting principle as the omnipsyche which is capable of such subtle adaptations to every conceivable form of life and in which should be gathered up the evolutionary results of every life-cycle. For this purpose the omnipsyche or unifying principle in man was designed from the beginning and it is that which constitutes the basis of his intellectual nature while in a far larger sense it is the divinity in man himself. It is indeed strange that so important a factor as the omnipsyche should have been omitted by evolutionists. Yet it can be accounted for upon the grounds of the purely mechanistic character of all intellectual attempts at solving the problems of vital manifestations. But so long as men rely upon mechanical explanations of such phenomena so long will they be prone to overlook the very essentialities of the problems which they devoutly wish to solve. The continuity of the physical germ-plasm of the human species,[27] now quite generally admitted, would suggest, it seems, an analogous condition to the continuity of the psychic plasm called the omnipsyche, the only difference being that the omnipsyche is an intelligent factor while the physical plasm is a medium of transmission though non-intelligent. The omnipsyche is, therefore, the psychic reservoir of evolution into which are stored the transmuted psychics of moneron, amoeba, jellyfish and every other form which it has ensouled and acts as the storeroom of man's psychic operations as well as the source of his intellectuality.

We turn now from the study of a sketch of the mechanism of man's consciousness which gives at its best only a fragmentary view of the universe of spatiality to a consideration of space itself in the light of its interrelational bearings upon the question of intellectuality.

In the chapter on the "Genesis and Nature of Space" we have, in tracing out the engenderment of space, proved it to be basically one with matter (and indeed the progenitor of matter), also with life and consciousness. Further, it has been shown that all the characteristics of materiality are due to the adaptation of consciousness to it and that out of this adaptation grew the intellectuality. A close approximation to this view was maintained by Kant when he discovered that our faculty of thinking or the intellect only finds again in matter the mathematical order or properties which our faculty of perceiving or consciousness has deposed there. It appears, therefore, that when the intellect approaches matter or spatiality it finds always a ready yieldance to its demands simply because intellectuality has previously established therein the delineation or map of the path over which it necessarily must traverse in its examination of the object of its pursuit. In other words, the kosmic mind in engendering materiality and spatiality has set up therein a kosmic order or geometrism. Both motor and intellectual progress, therefore, can be made through the world of spatiality because of the immanence of this kosmic geometrism which lies latent in the very fabric of the world of substance fashioning both the character and the nature of the intellect as well as of space itself. So that there is a perfect congruity subsisting between spatiality and intellectuality. Accordingly it is impossible for either one or the other to transcend the grim grasp of the mathematical order which binds them in such lasting and fundamental agreement. Extra-spatiality may degrade itself into spatiality, and indeed in the very nature of the case, does so degrade itself, yet spatiality can never raise itself beyond the limits set by its engendering parent. Materiality may become more and more spatialized and consciousness more and more intellectualized, but they must proceed hand-in-hand one not superseding the other.

Being the essence of the natural geometry which is everywhere immanent in the universum of matter, space becomes an organized and ordered extension, in fact is the totality of such organized and ordered extension, which conforms to the latent geometrism the engenderment of which it is the sole cause in the last analysis. Does it not appear then that all that mass of artificial geometry which has sprung up as a result of departures made from this natural geometry is utterly baseless and most certainly lacking in the kosmic agreement which spatiality lends to our primary conceptions? Of course, it is admittedly possible to devise certain conventional forms of logic and endow them with all the evidences of a rigid consistency but which, because of their purely artificial character, will fall far short of any real conformity to the potential geometrism which has been established in spatiality. And this fact is of utmost significance for all those who seek to find justification either logically or naturally for the existence of a multi-dimensional quality in space; for, if a clear, discriminative conception as to the categorical relationship, each to each, of the two kinds of geometry be carried in mind, it will not be easy to confound them neither will it be difficult to discern where the one ends and the other begins.

Now, the fourth dimension and the entirety of those mathematical speculations touching upon the question of hyperspace, dimensionality, space-curvature and the manifoldness of space are purely conventional and arbitrary contrivances and do not meet with any agreement or authority in the native geometrism which we find inhering in space and which the intellect recognizes there. This conclusion seems to be obvious for the reason that, in the first place, the non-Euclidean geometries have been constructed upon the basis of a negation of the latent geometrism of space and intellectuality; and if so, is it reasonable to expect that either they or any of their conclusions should accord with the nature of that form of geometry so admirably delineated by Euclid? Obviously not. It is a matter of historical knowledge that the whole of the artificial non-Euclidean geometries consists of those purely conventional results which investigators arrived at when they denied or controverted the norms supplied by the natural geometry. When metageometricians found that they could neither prove nor disprove the Euclidean parallel-postulate they then set upon the examination of idealized constructions which negatived the postulate. The results, thus obtained, although self-consistent enough, were compiled into systems of geometry which naturally were at variance with each other and with this inherent geometrism which is found in spatiality and answered to by the intellect both normally and logically.

Furthermore, there is another consideration which to us seems to be equally if not more forbidding, in its objections to the coÖrdination of the two systems of geometry, and that is the fact that the geometry of hyperspace is denied the corroborative testimony of experience and this is true of practically the whole of its data. Indeed, there is perhaps no single element in its entire constitution which claims the authority of experience. This is undoubtedly the weakest point in the structure of the hyperspatial geometries. Contrarily, such is not the case with the natural geometry; for, in this, the intellect in retracing its steps over the path laid out by that movement which has at the same time created both the intellect and spatiality, finds an orderly and commodious arrangement into which it naturally and easily falls. So exact is this agreement of the intellect with the kosmic order that if it were possible to remove the whole of spatiality and materiality there would still be left the frame work which is this latent geometrism of kosmogenesis. But the fact that the intellect naturally fills all the interstices of materiality and spatiality, fitting snugly into all of them as if molded for just that purpose, by no means warrants the assumption that it would or does also fit the engendering factor which has created these interstices. The frame work, the order or the geometrism of the kosmos has been established by life acting consciously upon the universum of materiality. And in order to establish this geometrism life had to be mobile, active, creative. It could not remain static, immobile, and accomplish it. Being mobile, dynamic, creative, it passes on. It is like a fashioning tool which the cabinet makers use in cutting out designs upon a piece of wood. It moves, and keeps moving until the design is finished, and then it is ready for more designing. Life is like that. It cuts out the designs in materiality, fashions the form, molds the material, and passes on to other forms. The intellect fits into these designs gracefully. But what it finds is not life itself, only the design which life has made. Hence, as there is neither an empirical spatiality nor materiality in conformity with which the artificial geometry of the analyst may be said to exist, and as it may not be said to conform to the path which life has made in passing through either of these, it is absurd to predicate it upon the same basis as the natural geometry. And so, we are forced, in the light of these considerations to deny the validity and hence the acceptability of the non-Euclidean geometries as either reasonable or warrantable substitutes for the Euclidean, and denying which we also formally ignore the claims of the fourth dimension, as mathematically designed, to any legitimate anchorage in either our vital or intellectual movements.

It has been shown that the flow of life, as it describes that movement which we call evolution, engenders simultaneously and consubstantially spatiality, materiality and intellectuality, and these, in turn, the natural order or geometrism everywhere immanent in the universe; and that automatically, one out of the other and each out of the all, these constitute the totality of kosmic fundamentals. Also we have sketched the mechanism of man's consciousness and discovered how, in its evolutionary development it has divided into two aspects, the egopsychic and the omnipsychic, and these two factors ally him definitely and adequately to the world of the senses and to the world of supersensuous cognitions. And thus we have cleared up some of the misconceptions which had to be confronted and made more easy the approach to the central idea, thereby conserving the substantiating influence which a general and more comprehensive view of the whole would naturally give.

The totality of kosmic order is space. It is circumscribed by an orderless envelope of chaos just as the germ of an egg is surrounded by the egg-plasm. The organized kosmos is the germ, kernel or central, nucleated mass, enduring in a state of becoming. Involutionary kathekos or primordial chaos is the egg-plasm which nourishes the germ or the kosmos and is that out of which the germ evolves. Kathekos or chaos is the unmanifest, unorganized, unconditioned, unlimited and undifferentiated plasm. Space is the manifest, limited, finite, organized germ that, feeding upon the enveloping chaos, exists in a perpetual state of alternate manifestation and non-manifestation—appearing, disappearing and reappearing indefinitely.

The appearance of the kosmos as an orderly elaboration of the involutionary phase of kosmogenesis, in so far as kosmic order may be said to be an accomplished fact, marked the turning point in that procedure whose function it was to make manifest a universe possessing certain definite characteristics of orderliness; but the kosmos, as it now stands, may not be thought of as having attained unto a state of ultimate orderliness. The idea meant to be conveyed is that between the point of becoming and the actually pyknosed, or solidified stage in the process of creation there is a more or less well defined line of demarkation cutting off that which is spatiality from that which is non-spatiality. Beyond the limits of spatiality is an absence of geometric order. Here geometry breaks down, becomes impotent, because it is an intellectual construction; at least, it is not so apparent as in the manifested kosmos. It is a state about which it is utterly futile to predicate anything; because no words can describe it. The most that may be said is that it is absence of geometric order as it inheres in space. And if so, all those movements comprehended under the general notions of spatiality, materiality, intellectuality and geometricity have both their extensive and detensive or inverse movements nullified in their approach to it. Involutionary Kathekos, therefore, may be said to be the primordial wilderness of disorder which outskirts the well laid-out and carefully planned garden of the spatial universe. We may excogitate upon some of the obvious functions of this kathekotic world-plasm; but in doing so we must leave off all attempts at a description of its appearance, its magnitude, extent or other qualities, and think only of its kosmic function. We cannot say that there is back of it a spatiality nor can we say that it is a spatiality; for whatever may be its extent or volume, it suffices that it may not be said to be space. It is chaos. Space is order, organization, geometricity. It cannot be said that there is a latent geometrism in chaos; because geometric order is found only in spatiality and is that which distinguishes spatiality from kathekosity or non-spatiality. Chaos is the lack of spatiality. This, of course, implies that it is impenetrable to the intellectuality or to vitality. All inverse movement such as is discovered as taking place in spatiality and which results in the phenomenalization of space runs aground when it strikes against the rock-bound coast of kathekosity. We can only say that it is both the point of origin for the evolving universe of life and form and its terminus. It is the nebulosity out of which the whole came and into which all is ultimately occluded.

A great and far-reaching error is made in all our thinking with respect to the kosmogonic processes when we postulate the complete absorption of chaos as an early act of kosmogony. Customarily, we think of kosmic chaos as a primordial condition whose existence was done away as soon as the universe came into active manifestation. This because it has been exceedingly difficult, if not quite impossible, for those whose privilege it was to determine the trend of philosophic thought to free themselves from the bondage of a dogma which owed its existence to a traditional or legendary interpretation of facts that ought never have been so interpreted. Chaos IS and EVER SHALL BE, so long as the universe itself lacks completion, fullness or perfection in purpose, extent and possibility. It is undoubtedly being diminished, however, in proportion as the kosmos is approaching absolute perfection. And when the last vestige of chaos disappears from the outerskirts of the maturing kosmos there shall appear a glorified universe of indescribable qualities.

Space being a perception a priori cannot be determined wholly by purely objective methods. The yard-stick, the telescope and the light-year are objects which belong exclusively to the phenomenal and with them alone never can we arrive at a true conception of the nature of space. We can no more demonstrate the nature of space by the use of objective instruments and movements than we can measure the spirit in a balance. Certainly, then, it cannot be hoped that by taking the measurement of space-distances in light-years, or studying the nature of material bodies, we shall be able to fathom this most objectively incomprehensible and ineluctable thing which we call space. It is such that every Thinker must, in his own inner consciousness, come into the realization of that awfully mysterious something which is the nature of space both as to existence and extent by his own subjective efforts unaided, uncharted and alone. When we measure, weigh, apportion and otherwise try to determine a thing we are dealing with the phenomenal which is no more the thing itself than a shadow is the object which casts it.

What does it matter that metageometricians shall be able to demonstrate that space exhibits itself to the senses in a four- or n-dimensional manner? Granting that they may be able to do this, if merely for the sake of the discussion, when they have finished, it will not be space that they have determined, but the phenomena of space, its arborescence, while space itself remain indeterminate and unapproachable by phenomenal methods. If there are curvature, manifoldness and n-dimensionality these are not properties of space, but of intellectuality in its cultured state and when it is, therefore, removed from the native state of conception. Scientists may be able to weigh the human body, count every cell, name and describe every nerve, muscle and fiber; they may even be able to know it in every conceivable part and from every physical angle and relationship, and yet know nothing of the life which vitalizes that body and makes it appear the phenomenal thing that it is. So it is not by instruments which man may devise that we shall be able to determine the true nature and purpose of space. We must adopt other methods and means and assume other angles of approach than the purely objective in order to comprehend space which, being the sole inherent aspect of consciousness, can be understood best by applying the measures which the latter provides for its understanding. It would appear, therefore, that the best study of space is the consciousness itself, knowing which we shall know space.

The universum of space, including the phenomenal universe, and its relation to consciousness may be likened to a conical funnel whose base represents the phenomenal world of the senses and whose apex or smallest point represents ultimate reality.

In Figure 20, we have endeavored to symbolize graphically this conception of space. The base marked "Sensorium" represents the sensible world. That marked "Realism" symbolizes the ultimate plane of reality, the inner essence of the world, the plane of "things-in-themselves."

The cone arising from the base "sensorium" symbolizes the objective world as compared with consciousness; the subverted cone, with apex in the sensorium, represents the evolving human consciousness.

The successive bases have the following symbology: Self-consciousness, Communal Consciousness, Mikrocosmic Consciousness, Makrokosmic or Universal Consciousness, the Plane of the Space-Mind Consciousness, Divine Consciousness, Kathekotic Consciousness, or the Plane of Final Union with the Manifest Logos.

Self-consciousness is that form of consciousness which enables the ego to become aware of himself as distinguished from other selves or the Not-self; the Omnipsychic or Communal Consciousness is that form of consciousness from which arises the realization by the Thinker of his oneness with all other thinkers and with other forms of life. Mikrocosmic consciousness denotes a still higher form of consciousness, as that which enables the Thinker to become conscious of his living identity with the life of the world or the planet on which he lives. It represents a stage in the expansion of consciousness when it becomes one with the consciousness of the planet upon which it may[Pg 271]
[Pg 272] be functioning. Makrokosmic consciousness accomplishes the awareness of the Thinker's unity with the life of the kosmos or universe. The space-mind and the consciousness which constitutes it enable the Thinker to comprehend the originality and the terminality of kosmic processes. It is archetypal so far as the life-cycle of the universe is concerned because the beginning, the intermediate portion and the ending of the kosmos are encompassed within it. Divine consciousness is that form of consciousness which arises upon the unification of the Thinker's consciousness with that of the manifest deity; it is, in fact, omniscience. The kathekotic consciousness belongs to the ultimate plane of reality; to kosmic origins and chaogeny, and therefore, pertains to the plane of non-manifestation.

The implications are that in comparison with the sensorium, the Thinker's consciousness is a mere point in space. It is, in reality, so small and insignificant that the extensity of the physical world or universe seems unlimited, unfathomable in meaning and infinite in extent. But as his consciousness expands, as it passes, in evolutionary succession from one plane of reality to another and higher one, the illimitability, the incomprehensibility and infinity of the universe grow ever smaller and smaller, until the plane of divine consciousness is reached. Then the previously incomprehensible dwindles into insignificance, lost in the real illimitability, infinity and unfathomability of consciousness itself. Kosmic psychogenesis, as exhibited and specialized for the purposes of the evolution of the Thinker, can have no other destiny than the flowering forth as the ne plus ultra of manifestation which is nothing short of unification with the highest form of consciousness existent in the kosmos.

It is not to be considered really that the scope of space is diminished but that the growing, expanding consciousness of the Thinker will so reduce the relative extension of it that illimitability will be swallowed up in its extensity. Consciousness, in becoming infinite in comprehension, annihilates the imaginary infinity of space. Accordingly, that which now appears to be beyond mental encompassment undergoes a corresponding diminution in every respect as the consciousness expands and becomes more comprehensive. The mystery of space decreases as the scope of consciousness increases. As the Thinker's consciousness expands the extensity of the manifested universe decreases. Thus the mystery of every aspect of kosmic life lessens, and fades away, as the intimacy of our knowledge concerning it becomes more and more complete. There is no mystery where knowledge is. Mysteriousness is a symbol of ignorance or unconsciousness, and that which we do not understand acts as a Flaming Sword keeping the way of the Temple of Reality lest ignorance break in and despoil the treasures thereof.

Figure 21 is a graph showing a sectional view of consciousness on all planes represented as seven concentric circles. This describes the analogous enveilment of the consciousness when it ensouls a physical body or when bound to the purely objective world of the senses. The overcoming of the barriers of reality, represented by the circumscribing circles is the work of the Thinker who is forever seeking to expand and to know. For only at its center, as symbolized here, is the consciousness at one with the highest aspect of kosmic consciousness and there alone is the mystery of space despoiled of its habiliments.

Accordingly, as consciousness or the Thinker is more and more divested of carnal barriers and illusions there develops a gradual recognition of the unitariness of spatial extent and magnitude; there arises the certain knowledge that space has but one dimension and that dimension is sheer extension. The Thinker's sphere of awareness is represented as if it begins as a point in space and develops into a line which divides into two lines, the boundaries of the space cones. Thus it may be perceived that the ancients had a similar conception in mind when they symbolized kosmogenesis with the dot (.), the line, and the circle with diameter inscribed, which together represent the universe in manifestation.

We realize the impossibility of adequately depicting the full significance of the inverse ratio existing between the extensity of space and the increscent inclusivity of consciousness by means of graphs; for neither words nor diagrams can portray the scope and meaning of the conception in its entirety. Yet they aid the intellect to grasp a ray of light, an intimation of what the Thinker sees and understands interiorly.

In this connection it is interesting to note the function of the ideal in the evolution and expansion of consciousness. The ideal has no perceptual value; it has no status in the world of the senses. It is unapproachable either in thought or action, and therefore, lies beyond the grasp of both the intellectuality and the vitality. It is indescribable, inconceptible and searchless; for the moment that we describe, define, or approach the ideal, either intellectually or vitally, in that moment it ceases to be ideal, but actual. It flees from even the slightest approach; it never remains the same; it cannot be attained, at least its attainment causes it to lose its idealty. It is then no longer the ideal. It is like an ignis fatuus; the closer we come to it the farther away it recedes. It hangs suspended before the mind like the luscious grapes which hung before the mouth of the hungry Tantalus. As the grapes and the water receded from his reach at every effort he made to seize them so the ideal remains eternally unseizable and unattainable. Whatever, therefore, is in our thought processes, or in our knowledge, that may be said to be ideal, does not really exist. The ideal is a phantom growing out of the nature and essence of the intellectuality. Its purpose is to lead merely the mind on; to allure it, to tantalize, and compel it to grow by exertion, by the struggle to attain, by the desire to overcome. In this respect, it serves well its function in the economy of intellectual evolution. It is a mysterious aspect of the original and eternal desire to live which is the kosmic urge present in all organized being and has its roots hidden in the divine purpose of creation.

Idealized constructions, then, are like Arabian feasts conjured up by a famishing mentality. They are like the dreams of a starving man in which he actualizes in phantom-stuff the choicest viands in abundant supply for his imaginary delectation. The mind that is satisfied never idealizes, never makes an idealized construction. It is only when an "aching void" is felt, when a longing for the realization of that which it has not arises within itself, when a feeling of distinct lack, a want, a hankering after something not in its reach, takes possession of the mind that it begins to idealize. That is why some minds are without ideals. It is because they are satisfied with what they have and can understand. They feel no hungering for better and grander things; they have no desire to understand the unknown and the mysterious; hence they do not idealize; they make no attempt to represent unto themselves a picture of that which is beyond them. Such minds are dormant, hibernant, asleep, unfeeling and unresponsive to the divine urge.

But the ideal is neither obtainable objectively nor subjectively, neither phenomenally nor really, so that when we come upon the ideal in our mode of thinking we have arrived not at a finality or end, but at that which is designed to lead us on to something higher, to nobler accomplishments and more extensive conquests. When we have devised idealized constructions, therefore, we should not therewith be content but should scrutinize them, examine and study them for their implications; for thereby we may discover the path and the guide-posts to a new domain, a new ideal, following which we shall, in time, come to a point in our search for the real where the fluxional is at a minimum; we shall reach that something which will admit of no further struggle—the last chasm between the phenomenal and the real—and standing on the bridge, consciousness, which engages the twain, shall have a complete view of that Sacred and Imperishable Land of Kosmic Realism where like a fleeting cloud of sheerest vapor shall be seen the phantom-ideal deliquescing and disappearing in the cold, thin air of the real and the eternal.

Since space is judged to be infinite by the intellect occluded in such clouds of illusion and hampered by such constrictive bonds of limitations, as it now endures, we have no right to conclude that the concept of infinity would still linger before the mind's eyes when the illusionary veil is removed; in fact, there is ample reason to believe, nay for the assertion, that the recession of the veil will reveal just the opposite of this illusion, namely that space is finite, and even bounded by the fringe of chaogenetic disorderliness. Either we perceive the real or we do not; either the pure thingness of all objects can be perceived or it cannot be perceived. If not, granting that there is such a thing as the real, it must be within the ultimate range of conceivability. It also seems reasonable that realism exists somewhere, and if so, must be sought in a direction inverse to that in which we find the phenomenal and the approach thereto must necessarily be gradual, continuous and direct and not by abrupt breaks, by twists and turns. The phenomenal must lie at the terminus of the real, and vice versa. So that by retracing the path blazed out by the real in coming to phenomenalization we shall perhaps find that which casts our shadowy world, just as by tracing a shadow in a direction inverse to that in which it extends we may find the object which projects it.

It is not out and beyond that we shall find the end of space; it is not by counting tens of thousands of light-years that the supposed limits of space shall be attained. The path of search must project in an opposite direction—not star-ward but Thinker-ward, toward the subtle habitation of the consciousness itself. We err greatly when we think that by measuring distances we shall encompass space; for that which we measure and determine is but the clouds caused by the vapor of reality. It is, therefore, not without, but within, in an inverse direction that the search must proceed. Going back over the life-stream, beginning where it strikes against the shores of solid objectivity, deeper and deeper still, past the innermost mile-stone of the self-consciousness, back into the very heart of the imperturbable interior of being where the Thinker's castle opens its doors to the Great Kosmic Self, from that open door-way we may step out into that great mystery of space—limited, yet not limited, multi-dimensioned, and yet having only one dimension, veritably real and fundamental, the Father-Mother of all phenomena. Here the great mystery of mysteries is revealed as the citadel of the universal and the ultimate real. In this citadel, the plane of kosmic consciousness, space loses its spaciousness and time its timeliness, diversity its multiplicity and oneness alone reigns supreme.

But the movement towards the center and circumference of space, after this manner, requires aid neither from the notion of space-curvature nor that of the space-manifold, except, indeed, only in so far as a state of consciousness or a degree of realism may be said to be a tridimensional manifold. The feeling that space is single-pointed, and yet ubiquitously centered, has been indulged by mathematicians and others in a more or less modified form; but they have imagined it in the terms of an indefinite proceeding outward until in some manner unaccountable alike to all we come back to the point of origin. It has been expressed by Pickering when he says that if we go far enough east we shall arrive at the west; far enough north we shall come to the south; far enough into the zenith we shall come to the nadir. But this conception is based upon a notion of space which is the exclusive result of mathematical determinations and subject to all the restrictions of mathetic rigorousness. It requires that we shall allow space to be curved. This we decline to do for the reason that it is both unnecessary and contrary to the most fundamental affirmations of the a priori faculty of the Thinker's cognitive apparatus. It would seem to be necessary only that we should extend our consciousness backward, revert it into the direction whence life came to find that which we seek. By extension of consciousness is meant the ability to function consciously upon the various superkosmic spheres or planes just as we do on the physical. Yet it should be quite as easy to devise an idealized construction which would imagify the results of this ingressive movement of the consciousness as to represent the results of a progressive outward movement star-ward. Having done so the examination of them could be conducted along lines similar to those followed in the scrutiny of objective results.

What would it mean to the Thinker if he were able to identify his consciousness with the ether in all its varying degrees; what would it mean if he were able to identify his consciousness with life and with the pure mind-matter of the kosmos; and lastly, with the spiritual essence of the universe? What if his various vehicles of awareness were available for his purposes of cognition? What, indeed, if he could traverse consciously the entire gamut of realism and consciousness from man to the divine consciousness? Does it not appear reasonable that as he assumed each of these various vestures of consciousness, in succession, he would gradually and finally, come to a full understanding of reality itself? It seems so. This view is even more cogent when it is considered that the limitations, and consequent obscuration of consciousness are proportional to the number of vehicles or barriers through which the Thinker is required to act in contacting the phenomenal universe. Common sense suggests that freedom of motility is determined by the presence or absence (more particularly the latter) of bonds and barriers; that the less the number of such barriers the greater the scope of motility and consequently greater the knowledge.

Plato evidently had this in mind when he imagined the life of men spent in cave-walled prisons in which their bodies were so fixed that they were compelled to sit in one prescribed position, and therefore, be unable to see anything except the shadows of persons or objects as they passed by. He conceived that men thus conditioned would, in time, suffer the diminution of their scope of consciousness to such an extent as to reduce it to identification with the shadows on the walls. Their consciousness would be mere shadow-consciousnesses the entire data of which would be shadowgraphs. So that for them the only reality would be the shadows which they constantly saw. A similar thing really happens to man's consciousness limited to the plane of the objective world. Things which are not objective do not appear as real to him, if they do appear at all. It is not that there are no other realities than those which appear to the egopsychic consciousness or that fall within its scope; but that this form of consciousness is incompetent to judge of the nature and appearance of those realities which do not answer to the limitations under which it exists. And so, with men whose data of consciousness or whose outlook upon the world of facts, or rather life, are confined to the narrow bounds of mathematic rigor and exclusiveness, there may appear to exist no realities which may not be defined in the terms of mathematics. Similarly, to the empiricist, used to measurements of magnitudes, weights, and rates of motion, there may also appear to be no realities which are not amenable to the mold of his empirical contrivances—the balance, the chromatic and the scalpel. All of these are shadow men constricted to the metes and bounds of shadows which they observe only because they are ignorant of the realities which lie without their plane.

Life has so many ways of exhibiting its remains to the intellect; and these remains have so many facets or viewpoints from which they may be studied, that nothing short of a panoramic view of all the modes of exhibition and of all the facets and angles of appearances will suffice to present a trustworthy and comprehensive view of the whole. Then, life itself is so illusive, so unseizable by the intellect that the testimony of all investigators are required to summarize its modes of appearance. And, therefore, eventual contentment shall be secured only when the mass of diverse testimonies is reduced to the lowest common divisor, and for this purpose the operations of every class of investigators must be viewed as the work of specialists upon separate phases, facets and angles of life's remains.

And so it is manifestly absurd for the empiricists, by taking note of the dimension, extent, quality and character of the shadows, or one single class of angles, to hope to predicate any trustworthy judgments about either the realities which cast the shadows or underlie the angles; because whatever notion or conception they may be able to gain must of necessity be merely fragmentary and entirely inadequate. Despite this fact, however, we still have the spectacle of men who, studying the sensible universum of space-content, endeavor either to make it appear as a finality in itself, or that the world of the real must necessarily be conformable to the precise standards which they arbitrarily set up in their examination of the objective world. It can be said with assurance that we shall never be able even so much as to approach a true understanding of the unseen, real world until we shall have changed our mental attitude towards it and ceased to expect that it shall necessarily be fashioned and ordered in exactly the same way as the world of our senses, or that it shall be understood by applying the same methods of procedure as those which we use in our examination of the phenomenal, sensuous world. It is a matter of logical necessity that, as there are no senses which can respond to the real, as there are no organs which vibrate in accord with the rates of vibration of the real, there can be no reasonable hope of understanding it by means of sensuous contrivances and standards.

Let the consciousness, therefore, be turned not outward, but inward where is situated the temple of divine life; let there be taken away the outward sheaths which enshrine the pure intelligence of the Thinker; let him grow and expand his sphere of awareness; let there be an exploration of the abysmal deeps of mind, of life and consciousness; for buried deeply in man's own inner nature is the answer to all queries which may vex his impuissant intellectuality.