Tertium Organum (P.D. Ouspensky) · 177 of 225 · tr. Nicholas Bessaraboff and Claude Bragdon
Chapter XXII (part 5)
______ Whatever we may think of this philosophy, we cannot deny its metaphysical boldness and its logical consistency.
If Brahman is all in all, the One without a second, nothing can be said to exist that is not Brahman .
there is no room for anything outside the infinite and the Universal, nor is there room for two infinites, for the infinite in nature and the infinite in man.
There is and there can be one infinite, one Brahman only.
This is the beginning and the end of the Vedânta.
As the shortest summary of the ideas of the Vedânta two verses of Sankara , the commentator and interpreter of Vedânta are often quoted: Brahma is true, the world is false.
The soul is Brahma and is nothing else .
[paragraph continues] This is really a very perfect summary.
What truly and really exists is Brahman, the One Absolute Being; the world is false, or rather is not what it seems to be; that is, everything which is present to us by means of sense is phenomenal and relative, and can be nothing else.
The soul again, or rather every man's soul, though it may seem to be this or that, is in reality nothing but Brahma.
In relation to the question of the origin of the world two famous commentators of the Vedânta , Sankara and Râmânuga differ.
Râmânuga holds to the theory of evolution, Sankara —to the theory of illusion.
It is very important to observe that the Vedântist does not go so far as certain Buddhist philosophers who look upon the phenomenal world as simply nothing .
No, their world is real, only it is not what it seems to be.
Sankara claims for the phenomenal world a reality sufficient for all practical purposes, sufficient to determine our practical life, our moral obligations.
There is a veil.
But the Vedânta-philosophy teaches us that the eternal light behind it can always be perceived more or less clearly through philosophical p.
276 knowledge.
It can be perceived, because in reality it is always there.
It may seem strange to find the results of the philosophy of Kant and his followers thus anticipated under varying expressions in the Upanishads and in the Vedânta-philosophy of ancient India.
______ In the chapters about the Logos and about Christian Theosophy Max Müller says that religion is the bridge between the Visible and the Invisible , between Finite and Infinite .
It may be truly said that the founders of the religions of the world have all been bridge-builders.
As soon as the existence of a Beyond, of a Heaven above the earth, of Powers above us and beneath us has been recognized, a great gulf seemed to be fixed.
Among contemporary thinkers the noted psychologist, Prof.
William James, approached nearer than all others to the ideas of Max Müller's theosophy.
In the last chapter of his book, The Varieties of Religious Experience , Prof.
James says: The warring gods and formulas of the various religions do indeed cancel each other, but there is a certain uniform deliverance in which religions all appear to meet—this is the liberation of the soul .
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Man becomes conscious that if his higher part is conterminous and continuous with a MORE of the same quality, which is operative in the universe outside of him, and which he can keep in working touch with, and in a fashion get on board of, he can save himself when all his lower being has gone to pieces in the wreck.
What is the objective "Truth" of content of religious experiences?
Is such a "more" merely our own notion, or does it really exist?
If so, in what shape does it exist?
And in what form should we conceive of that "union" with it of which religious geniuses are so convinced?
The doctrine of the universe as boundless and without center or circumference, populated by innumerable worlds — Bruno's rejection of the closed Aristotelian sphere; the divine and the cosmos as ontologically infinite.
The passage discusses the nature of the Infinite in relation to nature and man, asserting there is only one infinite.
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.
The text discusses the 'infinite in nature and the infinite in man' as being one.
The soul's journey back to its divine origin, reversing the fall into matter through stages of purification or illumination.
[auto] William James's quote describes the soul saving itself by getting 'on board' of a higher operative quality, implying a return or connection to the source.
The felt condition of exile from one's divine origin — Rumi's reed flute torn from its bed, Plotinus's 'we have forgotten,' the Gnostic forgetfulness; the affective wound that complements return_to_source and gives the return its motive.
The text mentions a 'veil' and the 'lower being' that must be transcended to reach the higher part.
The Buddhist doctrine that all phenomena lack independent self-nature; emptiness as the positive recognition that things arise only in dependence on conditions — distinct from kenoma's mere deficiency.
Buddhist philosophers are mentioned for contrast regarding their view of the phenomenal world as 'simply nothing'.