Tertium Organum (P.D. Ouspensky) · 123 of 225 · tr. Nicholas Bessaraboff and Claude Bragdon
Chapter XVI (part 10)
By trying to think out of the usual categories, by trying to look at things and at ourselves from a new angle and simultaneously from many sides, by trying to liberate our thinking from its accustomed categories of perception in space and time, little by little we begin to notice analogies between things which we did not notice before.
Our mind grows, and with it grows the power to discover analogies.
This ability, with each new step attained, expands and enriches the mind.
Each minute we advance more rapidly, each new step makes the next more easy.
Our psyche becomes different .
Then, applying to ourselves this expanded ability to construct analogies, and looking about we suddenly perceive all around ourselves a psychic life the existence of which we were previously unaware.
And we understand the reason for this unawareness: this psychic life belongs to another plane, and not to that to which our psychic life is native.
Thus in this case the ability to discover new analogies p.
192 is the beginning of changes, which translate us into another plane of existence.
The thought of a man begins to penetrate into the world of noumena , which is in affinity with it.
Then his point of view changes likewise with regard to the things and events of the phenomenal world .
Phenomena may suddenly assume, to his eyes, quite a different grouping.
As already said, similar things may be different from one another in reality, different things may be similar; quite separate, disconnected things may be part of one great whole, of some entirely new category ; and things which appear inextricably united in one, constituting one whole, may in reality be manifestations of different beings having nothing in common among themselves, even knowing nothing whatever about the existence of one another.
Such indeed may be any whole of our world—man, animal, planet, planetary system—i.e., consisting of different psychic lives, a battle-field as it were of warring entities.
In each whole of our world we perceive a multitude of opposing tendencies, aspirations, efforts.
Each aggregate is as it were an arena of struggle for multitudes of opposing forces, each of which acts by itself , is directed to its own goal , usually to the disruption of the whole.
But the interaction of these forces represents the life of the whole; and in everything something is always acting which limits the activity of separate tendencies.
This something is the psychic life of the whole.
We cannot establish the existence of such a life by analogy with ourselves, or by intercourse with it, or by exchange of thoughts, but a new path opens before us.
We perceive a certain separate and quite definite function (the preservation of the whole) .
Behind this function we infer a certain separate something.
A separate something having a definite function is impossible without a separate psychic life.
If the whole possesses its own psychic life then the separate tendencies or forces must also possess a psychic life of their own.
A body or organism is the point of intersection of such lines of forces, a place of meeting, perhaps a battle-field .
Our "I" is also that battle-field on which this or that emotion, this or that habit or inclination gains an advantage, subjecting to itself all of the rest at every given moment, and identifying itself with the I.
Our I is a being , having its own life, imperfectly conscious of that of which it itself consists, and identifying p.
193 itself with this or another portion of itself.
Have we any warrant for supposing that the organs and members of a body, thoughts and emotions , are BEINGS also?
We have, because we know that there exists nothing purely mechanical; and any something, having a separate function , MUST BE animated and can be called a being .
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 emphasizes discovering analogies between things previously unnoticed and the affinity between noumena and thought.
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.
It mentions the world of noumena being in affinity with thought.
Salvation through direct experiential knowledge of the divine nature, not through faith, ritual, or moral works alone.
[auto] The passage states that the ability to discover analogies translates the mind into another plane of existence, emphasizing knowledge as the mechanism for ontological transformation.
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.
[auto] The passage explicitly argues against a purely mechanical view of organs and thoughts, describing the human 'I' as a battlefield of warring forces rather than a unified entity.
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.
It states that any whole of the world—man, animal, planet—consists of different psychic lives in a similar structure.