Chapter XIX (part 1)

p. 232 CHAPTER XIX The intellectual method, objective knowledge. The limits of objective knowledge. The possibility of the expansion of the application of the psychological method. New forms of knowledge. The ideas of Plotinus. Different forms of consciousness. Sleep (the potential state of consciousness). Dreams (consciousness enclosed in itself, reflected from itself). Waking consciousness (dualistic sensation of the world, the division of the I and the Not-I). Ecstasy (the liberation of the self). Turiya (the absolute consciousness of all, as of the self). "The dewdrop slips into the shining sea." Nirvana . HAVING established the principle of the possible unification of the forms of our knowledge, let us discover if this unification is not somewhere realized; how it may be realized; and whether it will be realized in a form entirely new , or in one of the existing forms which shall include all others in itself. For this we shall return to the fundamental principles of our knowledge, and compare the possible chances for the development of different paths, i.e., we shall try to find out as best we may that path which leads to the new knowledge, and in the shortest time. Up to a certain point we have already established this regarding the emotional path ; the growth of the emotions, their purification and their liberation from the materialistic elements of possession and fear of loss must lead to super-personal knowledge and to intuition. But how can the intellectual path lead to the new forms of knowledge? First of all, what is the new knowledge? The new knowledge is direct knowledge , by an inner sense. I feel my own pain directly; the new knowledge can give me the power to sense , as mine, the pain of another man. Thus the new knowledge is the expansion of a direct experience. The question is, can the expansion of objective knowledge be founded upon this p. 233 new experience? Let us analyze the nature of objective knowledge. Our objective knowledge is contained in science and philosophy. Inner experience science has always regarded as a thing given , which cannot be changed, but as something "doubtful," standing in need of verification and affirmation by the objective method. Science has studied the world as an objective phenomenon, and it has striven to study the psyche and its properties as such another objective phenomenon. In another quarter, the study of the psyche from the inside, so to speak, was proceeding simultaneously with this, but to this study no great significance was ever attached. The limits of inner knowledge, i.e., the limits of the psyche, were considered to be strictly definite, established, and unchangeable. Only for objective knowledge, founded upon identical inner experience, was the possibility of expansion admitted. Let us discover if there is not some mistake here: is the expansion of objective knowledge, founded upon a limited experience, really possible, and are the possibilities of experience really limited? _____ Developing science, i.e., objective knowledge, is encountering obstacles everywhere. Science studies phenomena; just as soon as it attempts to discover causes , it is confronted with the wall of the unknown, and to it unknowable. The question narrows itself down to this: is this unknowable absolutely unknowable, or is it so only for the methods of our science? At the present time the situation is just this: the number of unknown facts in every region of scientific knowledge is rapidly increasing; and the unknown threatens to swallow the known—or the accepted as known. One might define the progress of science, especially latterly, as a very rapid growth of the regions of nescience . Nescience of course existed before, and not in less degree than at present. But before, it was not so clearly recognized—at that time science did not know what it does not know . Now it knows this more and more, and more and more knows its conditionality .