Tertium Organum (P.D. Ouspensky) · 205 of 225 · tr. Nicholas Bessaraboff and Claude Bragdon
Chapter XXIII (part 7)
It was in the early spring, at the beginning of his thirty-sixth year.
He and two friends had spent the evening reading Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Browning, and especially Whitman.
They parted at midnight and he had a long drive in a hansom (it was in an English city).
His mind, deeply under the influence of the ideas, images and emotions called up by the reading and talk of the evening, was calm and peaceful.
He was in a state of quiet, almost passive enjoyment.
All at once, without warning of any kind, he found himself wrapped around as it were by a flame-colored cloud.
For an instant he thought of fire, some sudden conflagration in the great city; the next he knew the light was within himself.
Directly afterwards came upon him a sense of exultation, of immense joyousness accompanied or immediately followed by an intellectual illumination quite impossible to describe.
Into his brain streamed one momentary lightning-flash of the Brahmic splendor which has ever since lightened his life; upon his heart fell one drop of Brahmic Bliss, leaving thenceforward for always an after taste of heaven.
Among other things he did not come to believe, he saw and knew that the cosmos is not dead matter but a living Presence, that the soul of man is immortal, that the universe is so built and ordered that without peradventure all things work together for the good of each and all, that the foundation principle of the world is what we call love and that the happiness of everyone in the long run is absolutely certain.
He claims he learned more within the few seconds during which the illumination lasted than in previous months or even years of study and that he learned much that no study could ever have taught.
The illumination itself continued not more than a few moments, but its effects proved ineffaceable; it was impossible for him ever to forget what he at that time saw and knew; neither did he, nor could he, ever doubt the truth of what was then presented to his mind.
There was no return that night or at any other time of the experience.
The supreme occurrence of that night was his real and sole initiation to the new and higher order of ideas.
But it was only an initiation.
He saw the light but had no more idea whence it came and what it meant than had the first creature that saw the light of the sun.
Years afterwards he met a man who had had a large experience in the higher life.
His conversations with this man threw a flood of light upon the meaning of what he had himself experienced.
Looking round then upon the world of man, he saw the significance of the subjective light in the case of Paul and in that of Mohammed.
The secret of Whitman's transcendent greatness was revealed to him.
Personal intercourse and conversations with men, 1 who had similar experiences assisted greatly in the broadening and clearing up of his speculations.
After spending much time and labor in thinking he came to the conclusion p.
316 that there exists a family sprung from, living among, but scarcely forming a part of ordinary humanity, whose members are spread abroad throughout the advanced races of mankind and throughout the last forty centuries of the world's history.
The trait that distinguishes these people from other men is this: Their spiritual eyes have been opened and they have seen.
The better known members of this group who, if they were collected together, could be accommodated all at one time in a modern drawing-room, have created all the great modern religions, beginning with Taoism and Buddhism, and speaking generally, have created, through religion and literature, modern civilization.
Not that they have contributed any large numerical proportion of the books which have been written, but that they have produced the few books which have inspired the larger number of all that have been written in modern times.
These men dominate the last twenty-five, especially the last five centuries as stars of the first magnitude dominate the midnight sky.
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 belief that 'all things work together for the good' implies hidden affinities binding 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 subject was in a state of 'quiet, almost passive enjoyment', suggesting a letting-go of will.
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 experience is likened to a 'drop of Brahmic Bliss' leaving an 'after taste of heaven', suggesting ecstatic receptivity.
Ecstatic irrational rapture — Plato's mania, Bruno's furore — by which the soul transcends ordinary reason and attains direct contact with divine reality; madness reframed as higher knowledge.
The experience involves a 'sense of exultation, of immense joyousness' and a 'lightning-flash', transcending ordinary reason.
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.
[auto] The illumination reveals that 'all things work together for the good of each and all', indicating active divine ordering.
Bruno's eroici furori — a passionate, ennobling spiritual ardor that drives the soul toward divine wisdom; distinguished from base or animal passions by its orientation to infinite truth.
The 'exultation' and 'immense joyousness' reflect a passionate spiritual ardor driving the soul toward wisdom.
The claim that the divine realm is present inside the individual, accessible without external mediation.
[auto] The divine experience occurs inside the individual ('upon his heart fell one drop of Brahmic Bliss'), indicating the divine realm is present within.
Gurdjieff and Ouspensky's claim that ordinary human beings live in a state of waking sleep, reacting mechanically without unified will or consciousness, and that the spiritual path begins with recognising this condition.
[auto] The passage explicitly contrasts 'ordinary humanity' with a spiritual family whose eyes have been opened, reflecting Ouspensky's core distinction between mechanical sleep and awakened consciousness.
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 'light was within himself' reflects the cosmic truth ('Brahmic splendor'), mirroring the cosmos in the human.
The merging of the individual soul or self with the divine, transcending personal identity.
[auto] The subject is 'wrapped around as it were by a flame-colored cloud' and experiences the light within himself, suggesting a merging with the divine.
A spiritual elite who possess the divine spark and are predestined for salvation, contrasted with psychic (faithful) and hylic (material) persons.
[auto] The text describes a 'family' of people with 'spiritual eyes have been opened' who created religions and dominate history, fitting the definition of a spiritual elite.