Chapter IV (part 7)

In addition to all this it is necessary to remember that through the same slit through which we see the world we observe ourselves and see in ourselves changes similar to the changes in the rest of things. 2. Why can we not extend that slit? p. 48 It is necessary to answer these questions. First of all it is important to note that within the limits of our usual observation our receptivity is always conditioned in the same way and cannot escape these conditions. In other words, it is chained, as it were, to some plane above which it cannot rise. These conditions , or that plane we call, in the inner world, consciousness or level of consciousness; in the outer world we call them matter or the density of matter. (The word density is used in this connection not in the sense of a solid, liquid or gaseous state, but in the sense of the physical, the astral and the mental plane—accepting temporarily the terminology employed in contemporary theosophical literature.) Our usual psychic life proceeds upon some definite plane (of consciousness or matter) and never rises above it. If our receptivity could rise above this plane it would undoubtedly perceive simultaneously , below itself, a far greater number of events than it usually sees while on a plane. Just as a man, ascending a mountain, or going up in a balloon, begins to see simultaneously and at once many things which it is impossible to see simultaneously and at once from below—the movement of two trains toward one another between which a collision will occur; the approach of an enemy detachment to a sleeping camp; two cities divided by a ridge, etc.—so consciousness rising above the plane in which it usually functions, must see simultaneously the events divided for ordinary consciousness by periods of time . These will be the events which ordinary consciousness never sees together, as: cause and effect ; the work and the payment; the crime and the punishment; the movement of trains toward one another and their collision; the approach of the enemy and the battle; the sunrise and the sunset; the morning and the evening; the day and the night; spring, autumn, summer and winter; the birth and the death of a man. The angle of vision will enlarge during such an ascent, the moment will expand. If we imagine a receptivity which is on a level higher than our consciousness , possessing a broader angle of view, then this receptivity will be able to grasp, as something simultaneous, i.e., as a moment , all that is happening for us during a certain length of time—minutes, hours, a day, a month. Within the limits of its moment such a receptivity will not be in a position to discriminate p. 49 between before , now , after ; all this will be for it now . Now will expand. But in order for this to happen it would be necessary for us to liberate ourselves from matter, because matter is nothing more than the conditions of space and time in which we dwell. Thence arises the question: can consciousness leave the conditions of a given material existence without itself undergoing fundamental changes, or without disappearing altogether, as men of positivistic views would affirm? This is a debatable question, and later I shall give examples and proofs, speaking on behalf of the idea that our consciousness can leave the conditions of a given materiality. For the present I wish to establish what must proceed during this leaving. There would ensue the expansion of the moment , i.e., all that we are apprehending in time would become something like a single moment, in which the past, the present, and the future would be seen at once. This shows the relativity of motion, as depending for us upon the limitation of the moment, which includes only a very small part of the moments of life perceived by us. We have a perfect right to say, not that " time " is deduced from "motion," but that motion is sensed because of the time-sense .