Tertium Organum (P.D. Ouspensky) · 130 of 225 · tr. Nicholas Bessaraboff and Claude Bragdon
Chapter XVII (part 3)
The snail is a complex centre of transmutation of some physical energies into others.
This centre possesses a consciousness of its own.
It is for this reason that the snail is indivisible.
Its psyche is infinitely higher than that of the stone.
The snail has the consciousness of form , i.e., the form of a snail is conscious of itself, as it were.
The form of a stone is not conscious of itself.
In organic nature where we see life, it is easier to assume the existence of a psyche.
In the snail, a living creature, we already admit without difficulty a certain kind of psyche.
But life belongs not alone to separate, individual organisms—anything indivisible is a living being.
Each cell in an organism is a living being and it must have a certain psychic life.
Each combination of cells having a definite function is a living being also.
Another higher combination—the organ—is a living being no less, and possesses a psychic life of its own.
Indivisibility in our sphere is the sign of a definite function.
If a given phenomenon in our plane is a manifestation of that which exists on another plane, then on our side evidently, indivisibility corresponds to individuality on that other side.
Divisibility on our side shows divisibility on that side.
The rationality of the divisible can express itself in a collective, non-individual reason only.
But even a complete organism is merely a section of a certain magnitude, of what we may call the life of this organism from birth to death.
We may imagine this life as a body of four dimensions extended in time.
The three-dimensional physical body is merely p.
202 a section of the four-dimensional body, Linga-Sharîra .
The image of the man which we know, his "personality," is also merely a section of his true personality, which undoubtedly has its separate psychic life.
Therefore we may assume in man three psychic lives: first, the psychic life of the body , which manifests itself in instincts, and in the constant work of the body; second, his personality, a complex and constantly changing I, which we know, and in which we are conscious of ourselves; third, the consciousness of all life —a greater and higher I.
In our state of development these three psychic lives know one another only very imperfectly, communicating under narcosis only, in trance, in ecstacy, in sleep, in hypnotic and mediumistic states, i.e., in other states of consciousness.
In addition to our own psychic lives, with which we are indissolubly bound, but which we do not know, we are surrounded by various other psychic lives which we do not know either.
These lives we often feel , they are composed of our lives.
We enter into these lives as their component parts, just as into our life enter different other lives.
These lives are good or evil spirits, helping us or precipitating evil.
Family , clan, nation, race—any aggregate to which we belong (such an aggregate undoubtedly possesses a life of its own), any group of men having its separate function and feeling its inner connection and unity, such as a philosophical school, a "church," a sect, a masonic order, a society, a party, etc., etc., is undoubtedly a living being possessing a certain rationality.
A nation, a people, is a living being; humanity is a living being also.
This is the Grand Man , ADAM KADMON of the Kabalists.
ADAM KADMON is a being living in men, uniting in himself the lives of all men.
Upon this subject, H.
P.
Blavatsky, in her great work, The Secret Doctrine (Vol.
III, p.
146), has this to say: .
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Themes
◆Alchemical Workpraxis
The transformation of base substance — outer matter or the inner soul — into a purified, perfected, or 'gold' state; the magnum opus as both laboratory practice and spiritual allegory.
The text describes the snail as a centre of transmutation of physical energies, using alchemical terminology for biological processes.
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 suggests we enter into other psychic lives as component parts and feel them, implying hidden affinities.
Ecstatic, non-rational receptivity to the divine figured as drunkenness — Plato's symposium wine, Rumi's sukr, Eckhart's 'sober drunkenness'; the passive/receptive metaphor for divine encounter, distinct from divine_madness's active possessing rapture.
Communication between psychic lives is described as occurring under narcosis, trance, ecstasy, or hypnotic states.
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 passage notes that in our current state of development, the three psychic lives know one another only very imperfectly.
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 describes the human personality as a section of a true personality and humanity (Adam Kadmon) as a living being uniting all men.
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.
[auto] The passage explicitly states that indivisibility on our plane corresponds to individuality on another plane, reflecting the Hermetic axiom of structural reflection across levels.
A chain of divine beings or principles flowing downward from a single transcendent source (the One or the Father), each level less perfect than the one above.
[auto] The text describes a hierarchy of living beings from cells to organs to organisms to collective psychic lives.