The Mystery of Space

trical Ne

meter, Instruments for the Measurement of the Passage of Space and the Flow of Life-The Disposal of Life and the Power to Create-Space a Dynamic, Creative Process-Numbers and Ko

es, starlight, are reflections of sunlight, if not of our sun, some other in the universe. But it is only at certain times and under certain conditions that we can see the sun which is the source of the other kinds of light. The stars which owe their light to suns are so many facets of sunlight. The moon is a facet of sunlight also. Facts are facets of truth. They are so many faces of eternal truth. They re

a single face, or any number of faces, less the total number, we arrive at no satisfactory knowledge of the magnitude or its substance. We must first become conscious of all the faces, holding them in mind as a composite picture, before we can even begin to have anything like a complete notion of the icosahedron. Then by continuing the examination we may find

and impalpable aspects, may be said to be the book of life wherein are recorded the movements, the expressions, and the diacritics of life. The whole is a magnitude of many facets (little faces). We shall have to know all the faces before we can say that we have a comprehensive knowledge of nature. For so long as we have only a fragmentary knowledge of the whole, so long even as we have merely a superficial knowledge of any aspect of nature, just so long will our knowledge be in vain. Just as it frequently happens that, on account of the partial view of things, we are led to make incorrect judgments concerning them, so when we come to make assertions about life or nature in general, we are apt to fall into the error of rendering judgments upon insufficient data. And it is not at all likely that judgments thus arrived at can possess true validity because it may happen, and undoubtedly does always so happen under the present limitations of human knowledge, that the very elements which are ignored

of facts; it is static, immobile, fixed. All truly logical processes need a starting point, a foundation, a premise, a base. Truth, being eternal, mobile, dynamic, vital, needs no starting point; needs no foundation because it is itself fundamental; it requires no premise because no premise is comprehensive enough to encompass it. There is only one way of arriving at truth and that is not to arrive at all-just to recognize it without procedure. The fact that facts are, and the fact of their relations and inter-relations, their sequence and implications, can be arri

our philosophies? How much, then, of the facts of these would be left when the light of omniscience had been turned on-when truth itself could be perceived and interiorly realized? Not much, to be sure. We should undoubtedly have to dispense with the entirety of our fact-mass, for it should then be entirely useless and meaningless in the light of the resplendent omniscience of truth. As at present constituted consciousness is focused upon the material plane for the purposes of superficial observances. But if the focus of consciousness should be changed so as to reveal conditions upon what must be a higher and more interior level, the aspect of things would be entirely changed and the whole of our theory of knowledge would have to be reconstituted. It is conceivable, yea obvious, that the stern reality of being is far removed into the Great Interior of that which is; and there is a point in the path to the interiority of being where there is no illusion, no appearance, indeed, nothing but the cold, illuminating body of reality itself. It must appear also that along the journey interior-ward there are many apparent levels or planes, each of which requires a new focus. It is unreasonable, then, to suppose that the conclusions arrived at as a result of purely logical processes, confined to the lowest levels of reality, are pertinent and valid for the entirety of realism which is neither of mathematical nor logical import. For instance, if we take the purely axiomatic assertion: x equals x, the intellect is at once certain that this is so, and cannot be otherwise, and yet a proposition of this kind is purely conceptual, conventional and arbitrary. x may also equal 1, 2, 3, 4, or any other quantity. Then, if each x in the above equation be re

The human intellect is, therefore, the bridge over which is made the passage from the individual consciousness to the All-Consciousness; simultaneously, the medium whereby the physics of the brain are converted into the psychics of unconsciousness. It may be likened to a pair of specially constructed tongs which are so formed as to fit exactly the objects which a higher intellectuality has made. It is without the province of the intellect to take note of what intervenes between physics and psychics; it is always oblivious of interstices while taking

mation as to how one may proceed to arrive at the new land, what changes are to be made en route, nor the slightest suggestion as to the direction one should take in setting out for it? It is not likely that the report of such an explorer, in practical life, would be taken seriously; and yet, there are those who, relying utterly upon similar reports made by certain enthusiastic analysts, dare to place credence in their asseverations. Not only have they given wide credence to these reports, but have, indeed, sought to rehabilitate their own territory in accordance with the strange descriptions given by unhappy analytical explorers. Now the question of greatest concern, granting for the nonce that t

that it contacts conform to these logical necessities. But, if the analyst were to make careful discrimination as to the respective categories-that into which life falls and that in which the intellect is forced by its nature to proceed-he not so easily would be led into the fault of attempting to shape realities upon models which being strictly conventional were not meant for such uses. But neither the logician nor the mathematician can be condemned for such generosity if such condemnation were justifiable. For they everywhere and at all times insist upon realizing abstractions and abstractionizing realities, and they do this with an insouciance that is at times surprising. Yet it is in this very vagary that is discovered the true nature of the intellect. There is a sort of

the statement that the one is adaptable to the other at all. And as this is really the view which we assume it would perhaps be more strict to regard the adaptation as subsisting between the human intellect and materiality both of which having been constructed by kosmic intellectuality. Pursuant to the diversity of uses to which materiality lends itself there arises in the intellect a supreme tendency to segment, to break up into separate parts, to multiply and diversify. It is not content unless it is at this favorite and natural pastime. It delights in taking a whole and dividing it into innumerable parts. This it will do aga

to be despaired of that some one shall find a suitable means for this purpose. Seriously, however, it is not without possibility that should some subtle mind devise an instrument for marking the passage of space as we have for denoting the passage of time a great stride forward would be accomplished in the evolution of the human intellect. For the general outcome of the intellect's attention being turned to the passage of space would undoubtedly be to recognize not only its dynamism but its becoming-ness, as a process of kosmogenesis. Because such an instrument would have to be so constructed as to take note of the movement of life, and for this reason, it would have to be extremely sensitive necessarily and keyed to the subtleties of vitality and not to materiality. Mathematics shall have failed utterly in the utilitarian aspects of this phase of its latest diversion if it do not justify its claims by crowning its work in the fie

ll not be gainsaid that the telescope has served actually to lay bare to the consciousness an immeasurable realm of knowledge nor that the microscope, turning its attention in an opposite direction, marvelously has enlarged and enrichened our knowledge of the world about us. And similar declaration may be made anent almost every invention, discovery and conquest which man has made over natural phenomena. Thus, by externally applying mechanical implements to the subject of his consciousness, man has extended actually his consciousness, his sphere of knowledge; has greatly enhanced its quality, and, in the process, has urged the intellect to endeavors that have wrought its present unequaled mastery of things. Nor have the spiritual aspects of our advance along these lines been the least notable. For these have enjoyed the essence of all that has been gained in the process and have, therefore, kept pace with the onward movement of

ntellect fractionalize in the hope that by doing so it shall come to the solid substructure of life; in vain does the analyst segment space into any number

iply our dimensions, leads us farther and farther away from the truth. This is a simple truism. If we take, for instance, a wooden ball and cut it up into four quarters, and divide each one of these quarters into eighths, into sixteenths, thirty-seconds, sixty-fourths, etc., indefinitely, we shall have a multiplicity of parts, each one unlike the original ball. But from no examination of the multipartite segments can we derive anything like an adequate conception of the original ball. Something, of

point out that this universal tendency to segment and fragmentate which rigorously characterizes intellectual operations upon every phenomenon with which it deals is a culmination of the primordial tendency among cells to divide, inasmuch as this phase of cell life must be the work of the kosmic intellect. The natural inference is that from the extreme of individualization there shall be a gradual turning, whether of the intellect per se or of the intellect joined to the intuition does not matter, towards that other extreme of communalization. And from this latter shall grow up, as one of the inevitable and ineluctable tendencies of the

the same measure as other phases have been outgrown. And notwithstanding the fact that judgments of the intellect with respect to inter-factual relations or the ens of facts themselves are as valid as its judicial determination of self-consciousness, no more and no less, we are, by the very rigor and exclusiveness of this logical necessity and inherent limitation, led to view the intellect's interpretation of phenomena as partial and fragmentary; for the reason that the necessitous confinement of its understanding and interpretative powers to fact-relations quite effectively inhibits the use of these powers for the contemplation of the deeper causative agencies which have operated to produce the phenomena. But it is apparent that just as the transmuted results of other phases of psychogenesis are now being utilized as a basis for the efficient operation of the intellect in the sensuous world, thereby enabling the attainment of a very hig

gradual turning away from the exclusive occupation of organizing a multitude of separate and apparently unrelated facts to a monistic view which at once recognizes the unitariness and co-originality of all things, of life, mind and form, the intellect will need the train

. Then, confounded by the multiformal characteristics of kosmic truth because of the fact that it presents itself in such numerous ways and forms, men often are induced to attempt the reformation of all facts, or a great mass of kindred facts, in accordance with the newly-found fact or principle. They forget evidently that no fact in the universe can be at variance with any other fact and still be a fact. So that in the totality of facts every sep

ritten or spoken word, to all the rigors of mathetic requirements, fails utterly in perceiving the magnitude of this conception and all its connotations; he fails because his prejudices and the woof and warp of his intellectual habits prevent his assuming a sympathetic attitude toward it and thereby precluding at the start any calm consideration of it. And not only is this true of the mathematician but of all those whose endeavors are confined to the plane of purely sensuous and logical data. It would, therefore, appear that our entire attitude towards things spatial must be changed before we can even begin to perceive the reality which is really the object of all researches in this domain. But, on the surface, there is after all little difference between the ultimate facts involved in these two totally different conceptions. Mathematically speaking, all progression eastward would terminate at the west, and vice versa; and the same would be true regardless of the point from which progression might originate. Always the terminus would be the opposite of the starting point. Then, too, it might be said that if we sought the space-center we should arrive at the circumference. The difficulty with this view is that there is a very remote, though important, connection between it and the truth of the matter. But the partiality of this view, and the absence of either experience or intuition to intimate a more reasonable view, serve effectively to buttress it as a hypothesis acceptable to many. Thus it is ever more difficult to supplant a near-truth than it is to gain credence for the whole truth. On the other hand, according to the view which we maintain here, it is quite true that the seeking of the kosmic space-center will reveal the circumference; that the search for the nadir will uncover the zenith; the east effloresces as the west, and a northward journey will wind up at the south, etc., but in quite a different manner from that which

ible to determine mathematically the exact volume of either complement or the ratio of the one to the other; yet it is conceivable that the chaotic fringe is greater in extent than the ordered portion of the kosmic uni-circle or universe. It is even conceivable that the difference, upon the basis of the meaning of the Pythagorean Tetragrammaton and the view outlined in the Chapter on the "Mystery of Space," is as seven to three wherefrom the conclusion might be drawn that the universe has yet seven complete stages more or less of evolution before the close of the Great Cycle of Manifestation when the fringe of chaos shall have been totally used u

of space, answering tentatively to the numericity of pure being. In fact, being actually expresses number and number itself is an evolution and not a thing posited once for all as a pure, invariable form in the un

he universe as it now stands; it does not represent a snapshot view of the kosmos but the universe as a full. It cannot be a full until it has attained the ne plus ultra of completion; for a kosmic full is that state to be attained by the manifested kosmos upon the termination of all the fundamental processes now in operation. But it is this state that the circle really represents, and by virtue of which it possesses its intrinsic qualities and also in virtue of which the intellect recognizes these qualities. The properties of understand

gration, keep apace with the perfecting process of the kosmos, diminishing, by retrogression to one or increasing, by progression, to ten which, after all, is essentially unity, being the perfect numeral? It is not without the utmost assurance that these queries will be categorically questioned by the orthodox, creed-loyal, strictly intellectual type that we sketch these implications, but it is felt to be an urgent duty to remind all such that the most effective barrier to realization in the field of philosophy is an intolerant attitude towards all lines of thought which suggest the impermanence of conditions as we find them in the kosmos at the present time. The fact is that our lives are so

turies of observation, it has been found to be decreasing at the rate of about 46.3 seconds per century. Yet no intellect is able to perceive in any given lifetime the actual decrement of this angle. It is only by careful measurements after centuries of waiting

te to confirm our belief in the validity of the notion that it actually and literally expresses the key to the evolutionary status of kosmogony. The mathematical determination which limits it as an unchangeable, i

d and that of a peculiar formation. Hence, whatever wares it presents to the consciousness will invariably be found to be molded in conformity with that particular mold. If it were possible to view reality or the essential nature of things the difficulty which now the intellect lays in the path of direct and uncolored cognition would be obviated; for then there no longer would be any necessity of viewing things as they are colored or molded by the intellect. The intuition, being a process of pure consciousness, will, when it has arisen to a position where it may dominate the intellect as the intellect now dominates it, so modify this tendency which we see so ineradicably bound up in the very nature of the intellect that the apparently insurmountable difficulties which it has interposed between mere perception and a direct cognitive operation will be quite completely overcome. Thus, in the above, is discovered another obstacle which posits itself between the notion of space as reality and the intellectual determination of it which the mathematician examines and to which his consciousness is necessarily limited. Furthermore, it may be perceived also how easily the mind may be deluded into thinking that the intellectual notion which it entertains of space is necessarily correct, when obversely, it is simply examining a concept which has been remade by the intellect into a form which is not at all unlike its own peculiar nature, and therefore, as much short of reality as the intellect itself is. Similarly, if the mathematical mind succeed in catching a glimpse

ment of consciousness in its pursuit of life which, as it expands, makes the objective world to appear to be diminished in proportion to the extent of its expansion, it is quite natural, under such circumstances, that parallel lines drawn anywhere in the limits of the objective world should seem to come to a point in the ultimate extension of themselves. While this graph is not meant to depict such a view, it may be found nevertheless, to be a true delineation of the topography of that state of mind into which the metageometrician brings himself when he visualizes space as curved; for there is no doubt but that a state of intellectual ecstasy, such as that in which the mind of the metageometrician must be functioning in order to perceive space in that form, is quite different from the normal and, therefore, in need

ble only in proportion as the understanding is magnified to conform with it. After all, however, it is not improbable that the very objectivism of the universe in manifestation subsists in just the manner in which this intuitive glimpse implies and that the wisdom and utilitariness of the kosmogonic process which engendered spatiality are clearly demonstrated in that arrangement of the contents of the kosmos which presents the grossest elements of phenomena first to the intellect in its most impotent state while reserving the less crass for that time when the Thinker shall have evolved a cognitive organ adaptable to its presentations. Those metageometricians who cling to the idea of the manifoldness of space, based as we have shown upon the pseudo-interpretation of a rather vague hint arising out of an unquestionably true intuition, have allowed themselves to fall into the unconscious error of magnifying the importance of the mere insinuation as to the space-nature to such an extent as wholly to obscure in their own minds and in the minds of those wh

facile expression in analytics. Inadaptability of this sort is especially observable in all problems of arithmetical analysis in which the vital element is a factor. When these analyses are carried to their logical conclusion, as has been shown in the chapter on "The Fourth Dimension," invariably they end in an evident absurdity. But it is at their very conclusion where the life-element is encountered, where reality is approached, that they break down. The failure of analysis, then, to encompass life, to fit into its requirements and to satisfy its natural outcome seems clearly to establish the basis of the perisophical nature of the entirety of analytical claims, especially that species of analysis which seeks the remoter fields of the conceptual for its determinations. Second: the close connection which has been seen to subsist between space and life as joint products of the same movement makes it obvious that the same ultimate rule of interpretation must be applied to both in order to insure correct and dependable judgments regarding them. How different would be the intellectual attitude towards space if it were conside

eas, and cannot penetrate to the interior of these realities. Our art is the reproductions of superfices; our philosophies are the husks of eternalities; our religions, the habiliments of relations, and while it cannot be doubted that this arrangement is pre-eminently the best possible one for the present stage of man's evolution, it is nevertheless worth while to note that it is this very restric

ndeavors it is not thereby meant to be implied that the intellect shall not make more progress nor that other formul?, equally as marvelous as those which Lagrange discovered, may be devised, nor that other laws, heretofore undreamed of, may be found; but what is maintained is the fact that while there will be growth and development these will run along other channels, perhaps in the realm of the intuitable, and not any longer, especially so notably as now, in an opposite direct

d the Kantian and at other times towards Spinoza, Aristotle, Spencer and Socrates, always terminating by multiplying the number of diverse beliefs rather than unifying them that the conclusion is unavoidable that so marked a lack of unanimity is indicative of a profound mental prestriction. It was, therefore, inevitable that mathematics should fall under the same spell and brook no let nor hindrance until it had succeeded in devising several diverse systems of geometry which it has done for the mere joy of doing something, of following its instinctive aptitu

relations into one. All assertions, therefore, which pertain exclusively to either of these elements-to materiality or to life-are necessarily partial, fragmentary and perisophical in nature. Mathematics, because it relates to matter and the mechanical forces set up by matter acting against matter cannot be said to agree with such a criterion; art, because it relates to snapshots or static views of matter is

f cognitive truths owing to insufficiency of data or vision. Such indeed are those metageometrical predicates-n-dimensionality, space-flexure, space-manifoldness and all other assertions based upon these in general and specifically. Any recognition of truth must clearly embrace both the vital and material aspects of its subject in order to be adequately inclusive, that is, it should include the causative, the sustentative, the relational and the developmental factors. These four factors are considered necessary and sufficient to determine the conformity of any view to the criteri

t need be entertained. But in doing so, it is deemed fitting that a note of warning should be sounded against any abortive attempts that may be made to obscure or distort the results of such a close discrimination lest the true import of the examination be lost for, if we emphasize the vanity of the intellect in the pursuit of that which it is by nature unsuited to attain we also equally stress the wise utilitarianism which limits it to the performance of the tasks assigned while at the same time reserving for the function of more highly evolved powers, and indeed, for the intuition itself, the solution of the riddle of spatiality. And if we declare the futility of the mathematical method in all endeavo