Tertium Organum (P.D. Ouspensky) · 184 of 225 · tr. Nicholas Bessaraboff and Claude Bragdon
Chapter XXII (part 12)
"The cause of all things is neither soul nor intellect; nor has it imagination, opinion, or reason, or intelligence; nor is it reason or intelligence; nor is it spoken or thought.
It is neither number, nor order, nor magnitude, nor littleness, nor equality, nor inequality, nor similarity, nor dissimilarity.
It neither stands, nor moves, nor rests.
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It is neither essence, nor eternity, nor time.
Even intellectual contact does not belong to it.
Art is neither science nor truth.
It is not even royalty or wisdom; not one; not unity; not divinity or goodness nor even spirit as we know it." ______ The writings of the mystics of the Greek Orthodox Church are collected in the books The Love of the Good , comprising five large and formidable volumes.
I selected several examples of profound p.
286 and fine mysticism from the book, Superconsciousness and the Paths to its Attainment , by M.
V.
Lodizhensky (In Russian), who studied these books and found therein remarkable examples of philosophical thought.
Imagine a circle, says Avva Dorotheus (VII century), and in the middle of it a centre; and from this centre forthgoing radii-rays.
The farther these radii go from the centre, the more divergent and remote from one another they become; conversely, the nearer they approach to the centre, the more they come together among themselves.
Now suppose that this circle is the world: the very middle of it, God; and the straight lines (radii) going from the centre to the circumference, or from the circumference to the centre, are the paths of life of men.
And in this case also, to the extent that the saints approach the middle of the circle, desiring to approach God, do they, by so doing, come nearer to God and to one another.
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Reason similarly with regard to their withdrawing from God .
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they withdraw also from one another, and by so much as they withdraw from one another do they withdraw from God.
Such is the attribute of love: to the extent that we are distant from God and do not love Him, each of us is far from his neighbor also.
If we love God, then to the extent that we approach to Him through love of Him, do we unite in love with our neighbors; and the closer our union with them, the closer is our union with God also.
1 ( Superconsciousness , p.
266) Hear now, says St.
Isaac of Syria (VI century), how man becomes refined, acquires spirituality, and becomes like the invisible forces.
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When the vision soars above things earthly, and above all troubles over earthly doings, and begins to experience revelations concerning that which is within, hidden from sight, and when it will turn its gaze upward, and experiences faith in the guidance of future ages, and the ardent desire for promised things, when it will search for hidden mysteries, then faith itself consumes this knowledge and so transforms and regenerates it that it becomes entirely spiritual.
Then may the vision soar on pinions into regions incorporeal, may touch the depths of an inaccessible sea, participating p.
287 in the mind Divine, and the miraculous acts of guidance in the hearts of thinking and feeling beings, discovering spiritual mysteries which become then comprehensible by the refined and simple mind.
Then the inner senses are awakened to spirituality after the manner that they will be in the life immortal and incorruptible, for even here this redemption of the mind is a true symbol of the general redemption.
( Superconsciousness , p.
370) When the grace of the Holy Spirit, says Maxim Kapsokalivit, descends on anyone, there is shown to him nothing of the sensuous world, but that which he never saw or never imagined.
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.
Isaac uses language of refinement, transformation, and regeneration of the mind into a spiritual state.
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 geometric relationship between the center (God) and circumference (world) suggests a structural mapping.
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.
Isaac describes the vision soaring above earthly troubles and doings to experience hidden mysteries.
Augustinian and Plotinian doctrine that evil has no positive being of its own but is a lack, distortion, or absence of the good — denying ontological dualism while preserving moral seriousness.
Distance from God is equated with a lack of love and unity, suggesting evil is an absence rather than a positive force.
Diotima's staged ascent from love of beautiful bodies → beautiful souls → beautiful pursuits → beautiful knowledge → Beauty itself; the canonical scala amoris that grounds Plotinus's On the Beautiful and Bruno's Eroici Furori — distinct from generic spiritual_ascent in that eros is the specific motive force.
Dorotheus presents love as the specific motive force that drives the ascent toward God and unity with others.
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.
Dorotheus describes withdrawing from God as withdrawing from neighbors, implying a state of exile or distance.
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.
[auto] St. Isaac of Syria's excerpt describes man becoming refined, spiritual, and participating in the Divine mind, which is core Orthodox theosis.