Tertium Organum (P.D. Ouspensky) · 113 of 225 · tr. Nicholas Bessaraboff and Claude Bragdon
Chapter XV (part 6)
I shall quote in this connection a poem in prose by Edward Carpenter, from the book Towards Democracy .
THE OCEAN OF SEX To hold in continence the great sea, the great ocean of Sex, within one, With flux and reflux pressing on the bounds of the body, the beloved genitals, Vibrating, swaying emotional to the star-glint of the eyes of all human beings, Reflecting Heaven and all Creatures, How wonderful!
Scarcely a figure, male or female, approaches, but a tremor travels across it.
As when on the cliff which bounds the edge of a pond someone moves, then in the bowels of the water also there is a mirrored movement, So on the edge of this Ocean.
The glory of the human form, even faintly outlined under the trees or by the shore, convulses it with far reminiscences; (Yet strong and solid the sea-banks, not lightly overpassed); Till maybe to the touch, to the approach, to the incantation of the eyes of one, p.
175 It bursts forth, uncontrollable.
O wonderful ocean of Sex, Ocean of millions and millions of tiny seed-like human forms contained (if they be truly contained) within each person, Mirror of the very universe, Sacred temple and innermost shrine of each body, Ocean-river flowing ever on through the great trunk and branches of Humanity, From which after all the individual only springs like a leaf-bud!
Ocean which we so wonderfully contain (if indeed we do not contain thee), and yet who containest us!
Sometimes when I feel and know thee within, and identify myself with thee, Do I understand that I also am of the dateless brood of Heaven and Eternity.
Returning to that from which I started, the relation between the fundamental laws of our existence, love and death , the true mutual correlation of which remains enigmatical and incomprehensible to us, I shall merely recall Schopenhauer's words with which he ends his Counsels and Maxims .
I should point out how Beginning and End meet together, and how closely and intimately Eros is connected with Death; how Orcus, or Amenthes, as the Egyptians called him, is not only the receiver but the giver of all things .
.
.
Death is the great reservoir of Life.
Everything comes from Orcus—everything that is alive now and was once there.
Could we but understand the great trick by which that is done, all the world would be clear.
1 Footnotes 166:1 Mitchell Kennerly, 1912, New York and London.
167:1 A Russian journalist and author.
Transl .
172:1 In the first Russian edition of this book, in those sketches which took the place of the present chapter, among other things I made the attempt to classify love, and to differentiate between "love" (individualized feeling) and "sexual emotion" (not individualized and undiscriminating in its longing for the satisfaction of the purely physical desire).
But it seems to me now that this division, like all similar divisions, is unsatisfactory.
The difference is not in facts but in men .
On earth there are living two entirely different races of men; and the difficulty of making psychological distinctions depends, in great measure, upon the fact that we endeavor to impose on all men common characteristics which they do not possess.
172:2 F.
Nietzsche: "Thus spake Zarathustra." (Boni and Liveright New York), pp.
195, 196.
175:1 Transl.
by T.
B.
Saunders, M.
A.
Macmillan Co., New York.
The Hermetic axiom that the structure of the cosmos is reflected at every scale — 'as above, so below; as within, so without' — making each level a legible map of the others.
The text states that the human form reflects 'Heaven and all Creatures' and describes mirrored movements between the cliff and the water, illustrating structural reflection across scales.
The Stoic and Plotinian doctrine that all parts of the cosmos are bound by hidden affinities, so that a movement in one part resonates through the whole; the metaphysical basis for astrology, magic, and divination.
The metaphor of movement on a cliff causing mirrored movement in the water illustrates the doctrine that all parts of the cosmos are bound by hidden affinities.
Gurdjieff and Ouspensky's claim that ordinary human beings live in a state of waking sleep, reacting mechanically without unified will or consciousness, and that the spiritual path begins with recognising this condition.
The footnote explicitly discusses 'two entirely different races of men' and the error of imposing common characteristics, reflecting Ouspensky's core teaching on consciousness levels.
The human being as a small-scale image of the entire cosmos; the body, soul, and intellect mirroring the structure of the heavens and the divine — distinct from correspondence in that it makes the human the privileged mirror.
[auto] The passage explicitly describes the human body as a 'Mirror of the very universe' and an 'Ocean' containing millions of forms, establishing the human as a privileged reflection of the cosmos.
The soul's journey back to its divine origin, reversing the fall into matter through stages of purification or illumination.
The text speaks of 'Returning to that from which I started' and describes Death as the reservoir from which Life comes, implying a cyclical return to origin.
The doctrine that all existence is ultimately one substance or one divine reality; non-duality as a theological claim.
[auto] The passage asserts the individual springs from the Ocean 'like a leaf-bud' and that the Ocean is a 'Mirror of the very universe', suggesting non-duality.