Tertium Organum (P.D. Ouspensky) · 196 of 225 · tr. Nicholas Bessaraboff and Claude Bragdon
Chapter XXII (part 24)
The comparison of the sensation of woman experienced by man, or vice versa , with the feeling for nature is met with very often.
And it is really the same sensation as is given by forest, prairie, sea, mountains, only in this case it is even more intense, awakens more inner voices, forces the sounding of more inner strings.
Animals often give the mystical sensation of nature to men.
Almost everyone has his favorite animal, with which he has some inner affinity.
In these animals, or through them, men sense nature intimately and personally.
In Hindu occultism there is the belief that every man has his corresponding animal, through which it is possible to act upon him magically, through which he himself can act upon others, and into which he can transform himself or be by others transformed.
Each Hindu deity has his own particular animal.
Brahma has a goose; Vishnu an eagle; Shiva a bull; Indra an elephant; Kali ( Durga ) a tiger; Rama a buffalo; Ganesha a rat; Agni a ram; Kartikkeya (or Subrananyia ) a peacock, and Kama (the god of love) a parrot.
The same thing is true of Greece: all the deities of Olympus had their animals.
In the religion of Egypt sacred animals played an enormous part, and in Egypt the cat , the most magical of all animals, was held as sacred.
The sense of nature sometimes unfolds something infinitely new and profound in things which seemed to have been known a long time and in themselves contained nothing mystical.
The consciousness of God's nearness came to me sometimes [quotes Prof.
James] .
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a presence , I might say .
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something in myself made p.
304 me feel a part of something bigger than I, that was controlling.
I felt myself one with the grass, the trees, birds, insects, everything in Nature.
I exulted in the mere fact of existence, of being a part of it all—the drizzling rain, the shadow of the clouds, the tree-trunks, and so on.
In my own note book of 1908 I found a description of the same experienced state of consciousness.
It was in the sea of Marmora, on a rainy day of winter, the far-off high and rocky shores were of a pronounced violet color of every shade, including the most tender, fading into gray and blending with the gray sky.
The sea was the color of lead mixed with silver.
I remember all these colors.
The steamer was going north.
I, remained at the rail, looking at the waves.
The white crests of waves were running toward us.
A wave would run at the ship, raised as if desiring to hurl its crest upon it, rushing up with a howl.
The steamer heeled, shuddered, and slowly straightened back; then from afar a new wave came running.
I watched this play of the waves with the ship, and felt them draw me to themselves.
It was not at all that desire to jump down which one feels in mountains but something infinitely more subtle.
The waves were drawing my soul to themselves.
And suddenly I felt that it went to them.
It lasted an instant, perhaps less than an instant, but I entered into the waves and with them rushed with a howl at the ship.
And in that instant I became all .
The waves—they were myself: the far violet mountains, the wind, the clouds hurrying from the north, the great steamship, heeling and rushing irresistibly forward—all were myself.
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 passage details the links between deities and animals in Hindu, Greek, and Egyptian traditions, reflecting the Hermetic axiom of connections across levels of reality.
The Stoic and Plotinian doctrine that all parts of the cosmos are bound by hidden affinities, so that a movement in one part resonates through the whole; the metaphysical basis for astrology, magic, and divination.
The text describes an 'inner affinity' with animals and the waves 'drawing my soul to themselves,' indicating hidden affinities binding parts of the cosmos.
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 soul is 'drawn' by the waves in a passive receptivity, suggesting a letting-go of will to allow the divine or cosmic force to act.
Ecstatic, non-rational receptivity to the divine figured as drunkenness — Plato's symposium wine, Rumi's sukr, Eckhart's 'sober drunkenness'; the passive/receptive metaphor for divine encounter, distinct from divine_madness's active possessing rapture.
The state of 'exulted in the mere fact of existence' reflects an ecstatic receptivity akin to divine intoxication.
Pronoia — the doctrine that the divine actively orders the unfolding of the cosmos and human affairs toward intelligible ends, against pure chance or blind necessity.
The narrator feels a presence that was 'controlling,' implying an active divine ordering of the cosmos and experience.
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.
The narrator describes the ego dissolving into the waves ('I entered into the waves... I became all'), mirroring the Sufi concept of self-effacement.
Disciplined inward attention — sitting, focused, or open-awareness practice — as a stand-alone term that umbrellas active_contemplation, inner_silence, and dhyana-style sitting.
The passage describes a disciplined inward attention and contemplative state focused on the sea and waves.
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 narrator feels 'one with the grass, the trees... everything in Nature,' illustrating the human as a reflection or part of the cosmic whole.