Tertium Organum (P.D. Ouspensky) · 182 of 225 · tr. Nicholas Bessaraboff and Claude Bragdon
Chapter XXII (part 10)
But it does not bear fruit presently; and, though it blossoms, they fall off; also many a cold wind, frost and snow, puff upon it, before it comes to any growth and bearing of fruit.
Boehme's books are full of wonderment before these mysteries with which he was confronted.
I was as simple concerning the hidden mysteries as the meanest of all; but my vision of the wonders of God taught me, so that I must write of his wonders; though indeed my purpose is to write this for a memorandum for myself.
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Not I, the I that I am, know these things: but God knows them in me .
If you will behold your own self and the outer world, and what is taking place thereon, you will find that you, with regard to your external being, are that external world.
The Dialogues between Disciple and Master are remarkable (Disciple p.
283 and Master should be understood to refer to the lower and the higher consciousness of man).
The Disciple said to his Master: How may I come to the supersensual life, that I may see God and hear him speak?
His Master said: When thou canst throw thyself but for a moment into that where no creature dwelleth, then thou hearest what God speaketh.
Disciple —Is that near at hand or far off?
Master —It is in thee.
And if thou canst for a while but cease from all thy thinking and willing, then thou shalt hear the unspeakable words of God.
Disciple —How can I hear him speak, when Ii stand still from thinking and willing?
Master —When thou standest still from the thinking of self, and the willing of self; "When both thy intellect and will are quiet, and passive to the impressions of the Eternal Word and Spirit; And when thy soul is winged up, and above that which is temporal, the outward senses, and the imagination being locked up by holy abstraction," then the Eternal hearing, seeing, and speaking, will be revealed in thee; and so God "heareth and seeth through thee," being now the organ of his spirit; and so God speaketh in thee, and whispereth to thy spirit, and thy spirit heareth his voice.
Blessed art thou therefore if that thou canst stand still from self-thinking and self-willing, and canst stop the wheel of imagination and senses; forasmuch as hereby thou mayest arrive at length to see the great salvation of God, being made capable of all manner of Divine sensations and heavenly communications.
Since it is naught indeed but thine own hearing and willing that do wonder thee, so that thou dost not see and hear God.
Disciple —Loving Master, I can no more endure anything should divert me, how shall I find the nearest way to him?
Master —Where the way is hardest there walk thou, and take up what the world rejecteth; and what the world doth, that do not thou.
Walk contrary to the world in all things.
And then thou comest the nearest way to him.
______ Disciple —.
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Oh how may I arrive at the unity of will, and how come into the unity of vision?
Master —.
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Mark now what I, say: The Right Eye looketh in thee into Eternity.
The Left Eye looketh backward in thee into time.
If now thou sufferest thyself to be always looking into nature, and the things of time, it will be impossible for thee ever to arrive at the unity, which thou wishest for.
Remember this; and be upon thy watch.
Give not thy mind p.
284 leave to enter in, nor to fill itself with, that which is without thee; neither look thou backward upon thyself .
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Themes
◆Apophatic Theologytheology
Describing the divine only by negation—God transcends all positive categories and concepts; the via negativa.
God's words are described as unspeakable and found where no creature dwelleth.
Eckhart's signature doctrine that the Father eternally begets the Son in the ground of the soul; the human interior as the actual site of the divine generative act, distinct from inner_light's static indwelling.
God speaks in the spirit and whispers to it, revealing the Eternal Word within.
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 structure of the self is presented as a reflection of the external world.
Sufi self-effacement in God — the via by which the lover is unmade as a separate ego and recovered as God's act; specifies the practice/event rather than mystical_union's resulting state.
Self-thinking and self-willing must be stopped for God to speak in the individual.
Disciplined inward attention — sitting, focused, or open-awareness practice — as a stand-alone term that umbrellas active_contemplation, inner_silence, and dhyana-style sitting.
Holy abstraction and locking up the imagination are prescribed practices for revelation.
Eckhart's radical reading of Matthew 5:3 — the saint as one who wants nothing, knows nothing, and has nothing, having emptied even the will and the self with which to receive God; distinct from renunciation_of_wealth (material poverty).
Stopping the wheel of imagination and senses implies an emptying of self.
The doctrine — central to Eastern Orthodox and Maximian theology — that the human person is progressively transformed into a partaker of the divine nature by grace, not merely justified or united in passing ecstasy.
The human becomes capable of Divine sensations and acts as an organ for God's spirit.
Effortless action aligned with the spontaneous flow of the Dao; non-coercive, non-striving conduct that yields results without forcing — the sage acts without acting.
Ceasing from willing and thinking aligns with the concept of non-striving action.
Eckhart's Abgeschiedenheit/Gelassenheit — radical letting-go of will, image, and grasping that opens the soul to God; distinct from inner_silence (quietness) and from material renunciation, and adjacent to Sufi tark and Buddhist non-grasping as a practice rather than a metaphysical claim.
[auto] The text emphasizes standing still from self-thinking and self-willing as a path to salvation.
Salvation through direct experiential knowledge of the divine nature, not through faith, ritual, or moral works alone.
[auto] The passage emphasizes salvation through direct experiential knowledge of the divine nature, such as seeing and hearing God directly through inner silence.
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.
[auto] The passage explicitly states that the individual's external being is identical to the external world.