Tertium Organum (P.D. Ouspensky) · 187 of 225 · tr. Nicholas Bessaraboff and Claude Bragdon
Chapter XXII (part 15)
If it had this likeness, long ago would its smallness have been known.
The sage attends to the inner and not to the outer; he puts away the objective and holds to the subjective.
The sage occupies himself with inaction, and conveys instructions without words.
Who is there that can make muddy water clear?
But if allowed to remain still it will gradually become clear of itself.
Who is there that can secure a state of absolute repose?
But let time go on, and the state of repose will gradually arise.
Tao is eternally inactive, and yet it leaves nothing undone.
The pursuit of book-learning brings about daily increase (i.e., the increase of knowledge).
The practice of Tao brings about daily loss (i.e., the loss of ignorance).
Repeat the loss again and again, and you arrive at inaction.
Practice inaction, and there is nothing which cannot be done.
Practice inaction, occupy yourself with doing nothing.
Leave all things to take their natural course, and do not interfere.
All things in Nature work silently.
Among mankind, the recognition of beauty as such implies the idea of ugliness, and the recognition of good implies the idea of evil.
Cast off your holiness, rid yourself of sagacity, and the people will benefit a hundredfold.
Those who know do not speak; those who speak do not know.
He who acts, destroys; he who grasps, loses.
Therefore the sage does not act, and so he does not destroy; he does not grasp, and so he does not lose.
The soft overcomes the hard; the weak overcomes the strong.
There is no one in the world but knows this truth, and no one who can put it into practice.
A Meditation of Chuang-Tzu^ You cannot speak of ocean to a well-frog—the creature of a narrower sphere.
You cannot speak of ice to a summer insect—the creature of a season.
You cannot speak of Tao to a pedagogue, his scope is too restricted.
p.
291 But now that you have emerged from your narrow sphere and have seen the great ocean, you know your own significance, and I can speak to you of great principles.
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Dimensions are limitless; time is endless.
Conditions are not invariable; terms are not final.
There is nothing which is not objective; there is nothing which is not subjective.
But it is impossible to start from the objective.
Only from subjective knowledge is it possible to proceed to objective knowledge.
When subjective and objective are both without their correlates, that is the very axis of Tao.
Tao has its laws and its evidences.
It is devoid both of action and of form.
It may be obtained but cannot be seen.
Spiritual beings draw their spirituality from Tao.
To Tao no point in time is long ago.
Tao cannot be existent.
If it were existent, it could not be non-existent.
The very name of Tao is only adapted for convenience' sake.
Predestination and chance are limited to material existences.
How can they bear upon the infinite?
Tao is something beyond material existences.
It cannot be conveyed either by words or by silence.
In that state which is neither speech nor silence, its transcendental nature may be apprehended.
1 ______ In contemporary Theosophical literature, two little books stand out: The Voice of the Silence by H.
P.
Blavatsky, and Light on the Path by Mabel Collins.
In both of them there is much of real mystical sentiment.
The Voice of the Silence He who would hear the voice of the silence, the soundless sound, and comprehend it, he has to learn the nature of the perfect inward concentration of the mind, accompanied by complete abstraction from everything pertaining to the external Universe, or the world of senses.
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.
The sage is instructed to 'Cast off your holiness, rid yourself of sagacity' and 'do not interfere,' reflecting radical letting-go.
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 states 'Dimensions are limitless; time is endless,' aligning with the doctrine of a boundless universe.
Disciplined inward attention — sitting, focused, or open-awareness practice — as a stand-alone term that umbrellas active_contemplation, inner_silence, and dhyana-style sitting.
[auto] The passage explicitly references 'A Meditation of Chuang-Tzu' and describes 'perfect inward concentration of the mind' as necessary to comprehend the Tao.
The dissolution of binary oppositions (male/female, inner/outer, above/below) as a mark of spiritual completion.
[auto] The passage describes the axis of Tao where subjective and objective are without correlates and urges casting off dualities like holiness and sagacity.
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.
The text describes Tao as 'devoid both of action and of form' and emphasizes the 'loss of ignorance,' paralleling the concept of emptiness.
The doctrine that all existence is ultimately one substance or one divine reality; non-duality as a theological claim.
[auto] The transcendence of dualities and the description of Tao as the source from which spiritual beings draw implies a fundamental non-dual reality.
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.
[auto] The passage explicitly defines the sage's practice as inaction (wu-wei), stating 'Tao is eternally inactive' and 'Practice inaction, occupy yourself with doing nothing.'