Chapter XVI (part 13)

We do not know the world of causes; we are confined in the jail of the phenomenal world simply because we do not know how to discern where one ends and where the other begins. We are in constant touch with the world of causes, we live in it, because our psyche and our incomprehensible function in the world are part of it or a reflection of it. But we do not see or know it because we either deny it—consider that everything existing is phenomenal, and that nothing exists except the phenomenal—or we recognize it, but try to comprehend it in the forms of the three-dimensional phenomenal world; or lastly, we search for it and find it not, because we lose our way amid the deceits and illusions of the reflected phenomenal world which we mistakenly accept for the noumenal world. In this dwells the tragedy of our spiritual questings: we do not know what we are searching for . And the only method by which we can escape this tragedy consists in a preliminary intellectual definition of the properties of that of which we are in search . Without such definitions, going merely by indefinite feelings, we shall not approach the world of causes or else we shall get lost on its borderland . Spinoza understood this, saying that he could not speak of God, not knowing his attributes . When I studied Euclid, I learned first of all that the sum of three angles of a triangle was equal to two right angles, and this property of a triangle was entirely comprehensible to me, although I did not know its many other properties. But so far as spirits and ghosts are concerned, I do not know even one of their attributes, but constantly hear different fantastic tales about them in which it is impossible to discover any truth. ______ We have established certain criteria which permit us to deal with the world of noumena or the "world of spirits." These we shall make use of now. p. 197 First of all we may say that the world of noumena cannot be three-dimensional and that there cannot be anything three-dimensional in it, i.e., commensurable with physical objects, similar to them in outside appearance, having form —there cannot be anything having extension in space and changing in time. And most important, there cannot be anything dead or inanimate. In the world of causes everything must be alive, because it is life itself: the soul of the world. Let us remember also that the world of causes is the world of the marvelous; that what appears simple to us can never be real. The real appears to us as the marvelous. We do not believe in it, we do not recognize it; and therefore we do not feel the mysteries of which life is so full. The simple is only that which is unreal. The real must seem marvelous. The mystery of time penetrates all. It is felt in every stone, which perhaps might have witnessed the glacial period, seen the ichthyosaurus and the mammoth. It is felt in the approaching day, which we do not see, but which possibly sees us, which per-chance is our last day; or on the other hand is the day of some transformation the nature of which we do not ourselves now know. The mystery of thought creates all. As soon as we shall understand that thought is not a "function of motion," but that motion itself is only a function of thought—and shall begin to feel the depth of THIS MYSTERY—We shall perceive that the entire phenomenal world is some gigantic hallucination, which fails to frighten us, and does not drive us to think that we are mad simply because we have become accustomed to it.