First of all, we are inclined to regard man as a certain unity, and to regard all the different parts and functions of man as being bound together and dependent upon one another. Moreover, in the physical apparatus, in visible man, we see the cause of all his properties and actions.
In reality, man is a very complicated something, and complicated in various meanings of the word. Many sides of the life of a man are not bound together among themselves at all, or are bound only by the fact that they belong to one man; but the life of a man goes on simultaneously on different planes, as it were, while the phenomena of one plane only partially and occasionally touch those of another, and may even not touch at all. The relations of the same man to the various sides of himself and to other men are entirely dissimilar.
Man includes within himself all three of the above-mentioned orders of phenomena [See Three Orders of Phenomena Ed.], i.e., he represents in himself the combination of physical phenomena with those of life and psychic phenomena. The mutual relations between these three orders of phenomena are infinitely more complex than we are accustomed to think. Psychic phenomena we feel, sense, and are conscious of in ourselves; physical phenomena and the phenomena of life we observe and make conclusions about on the basis of experience.
Suppose that I should live among men without the possibility of communicating with them and having no way to make conclusions based upon analogy; in that case I should be surrounded by moving and acting automatons, the cause, purpose, and meaning of whose actions would be perfectly incomprehensible to me. Perhaps I would explain their actions by "molecular motion", or by the "influence of planets", or of "spirits", or possibly by "chance" or by a haphazard combination of causes: but in any case I should not and could not see the psychic life in the depth of these men's actions.
Concerning the existence of thought and feeling I can usually only conclude by analogy with myself. I know that certain phenomena are connected in me with my possession of thought and feeling. When I see the same phenomena in another man, I conclude that he also possesses thought and feeling: but I cannot convince myself directly of the existence of psychic life in another man. Studying man from one side only, I stand in the same position in relation to him as, according to Kant, we stand with relation to the world around us. We know only the form of our knowledge of it. We do not know the world-in-itself.
Thus, with regard to another man's psyche, with all its functions and with all its contents, I have only two methods of obtaining information: analogy with myself and intercourse with him by the exchange of thoughts. Without this, man is for me merely a phenomenon, a moving automaton.
In "man" are opened to us both worlds, though the noumenal world is opened only slightly, because it is cognised by us through the phenomenal.
Noumenal means apprehended by the mind. The characteristic property of the things of the noumenal world is that they cannot be comprehended by the same method by which the things of the phenomenal world are comprehended.
We may speculate about the things of the noumenal world; we may discover them by a process of reasoning, and by means of analogy; we may feel them, and enter into some sort of communion with them: but we cannot see, hear, touch, weigh, or measure them; neither can we photograph them or decompose them into chemical elements or number their vibrations.
Thus the psyche, with all its functions and with all its contents thoughts, feelings, desires, will does not relate itself to the world of phenomena. We cannot know even a single element of the psyche objectively. Emotion as such is impossible to see, just as it is impossible to see the value of a coin. You can see the stamp upon a coin, but you will never see its value. It is just as impossible to photograph thought as it is to imagine "Egyptian darkness" in a vial. To think otherwise, to experiment with the photographing of thought, simply means to be unable to think logically. On a phonograph record are the tracings of the needle. elevations and depressions, but there is no sound. He who holds a phonograph record to his ear, hoping to hear something, will be sure to listen in vain. [Current (2007 CE) recording media exhibit no visual clues whatever. Ed.]
We have already arrived at the conclusion [See Chapter XIV. Ed.] that the noumenon of a thing consists in its function in another sphere in its meaning which is incomprehensible in a given section of the world. [The expression "section of the world" is taken as an indicator of the unreality of the forms of each section. The world is infinite, and all forms are infinite, but to grasp them with the finite brain-consciousness, i.e., by consciousness reflected in the brain, we must imagine the infinite forms as being finite, and these are "sections of the world". The world is one, but the number of possible sections is infinite. Let us imagine an apple: it is one, but we may imagine an infinite number of sections in all directions, and these sections will differ from one another. If instead of an apple we take a more complicated body, for instance the body of some animal: then the sections taken in different directions will be even more unlike one another. PDO]
Next [See Chapter XV Ed.] we came to the conclusion that the number of meanings of one and the same thing in different sections of the world must be infinitely great and infinitely various; that it must become its own opposite, return again to the beginning (from our standpoint), infinitely expanding, contracting, and so forth.
It is necessary to remember that the noumenon and the phenomenon are not different things, but rather different aspects of one and the same thing. Thus, each phenomenon is the finite expression of something infinite, as it appears in the sphere of our knowledge through the organs of sense.
A phenomenon is the three-dimensional expression of a given noumenon.
The three-dimensionality depends upon the three-dimensional forms of our knowledge, i.e., speaking simply, upon our brains, nerves, eyes, and finger-tips.
That which is inaccessible to the direct method of investigation, but exists, is noumenal. Consequently we shall not be in a position to define the functions and meanings of man in a section of the world other than the world of Euclidean geometry, which alone is accessible to "direct methods of investigation". Therefore we have a perfect right to regard "the psyche of man" as his function in some section of the world different from that three-dimensional section wherein "the body of man" functions?
Having established this much, we may ask ourselves the further question: Have we not the right to make a reverse conclusion, and regard as a psyche of its own kind the otherwise unknown function of the "world" and of "things" outside their three-dimensional section?
Max Nordau [1849-1923, Jewish physician and writer. Ed.], when he wanted to imagine the world's consciousness (in Paradoxes), was obliged to say that we cannot be certain that somewhere in the infinite space of the Universe is not repeated on a grandiose scale the same combination of physical and chemical elements as constitutes our brains. This is very characteristic and typical of "positive science". Desiring to imagine the "world's consciousness", positivism is first of all forced to imagine a gigantic brain. Does not this at once savour of the two-dimensional or plane world? Surely the idea of a gigantic brain somewhere beyond the stars reveals the appalling poverty and impotence of positivistic thought. This thought cannot leave its usual grooves; it has no wings for a soaring flight.
Let us imagine that some curious inhabitant of Europe in the seventeenth century should try to foresee the means of transportation in the twentieth century, and should picture to himself an enormous stage-coach, large as an hotel, harnessed to one thousand horses; he would be pretty near to the truth, but also at the same time infinitely far from it. And yet, even in his time, some minds which foresaw along correct lines already existed: already the idea of the steam engine had been broached and models were appearing.
The thought expressed by Nordau reminds one of a favourite concept of popular philosophy relating to an accidentally caught idea, that the planets and satellites of the Solar System are merely molecules of some tremendous organism, an insignificant part of which that system represents.
Perhaps the entire universe is located on the tip of the little finger of some great being, says such a philosopher, and perhaps our molecules are also worlds.
The deuce! Perhaps on my little finger are several universes too! And such a philosopher gets frightened. But all such reasoning is simply the gigantic stage-coach over again. [The incorrectness here is not in the idea itself, but in a literal analogy. The thought itself, that molecules are worlds and worlds are but molecules, deserves attention and study. PDO]
This is the way a little girl about whom I was reading in, if I mistake not, The Theosophical Review, was thinking. The girl was sitting near the fireplace, with a cat asleep beside her. "Well, the cat is sleeping", she reflected. "Perhaps she sees in a dream that she is not a cat, but a little girl. And maybe I am not a little girl at all, but a cat, and only see in a dream that I am a little girl...". The next moment the house resounds with a violent cry, and the parents of the little girl have a hard time to convince her that she is not a cat but really a little girl.
All this shows that it is necessary to philosophise with a certain amount of skill. Our thought is encompassed by many blind alleys and positivism, always attempting to apply the rule of proportion, is itself in such a blind alley.
The phenomena of life are the higher in comparison with physical phenomena.
Psychic phenomena are the higher in comparison with the phenomena of life and physical phenomena.
Which must be the function of which is clear.
Without making a palpable logical mistake we cannot declare life and the psyche to be functionally dependent upon physical phenomena, i.e., to be a result of physical phenomena. The truth is quite the opposite of this: everything forces us to recognise physical phenomena as the result of life, and life (in a biological sense) as the result of some kind of psychic life, which is perhaps unknown to us.
But the question now is: Of which life, and of which psyche?
Of course it would be absurd to regard our planetary sphere as a function of the vegetable and animal life proceeding upon it and the visible stellar Universe as a function of the human psyche. But nothing of this sort is meant. In the occult understanding of things, we speak always of another life and another psyche, the particular manifestation of which is our life and our psyche. It is important to establish the general principle that physical phenomena, being the lower, depend upon the phenomena of life and of the psyche, which are higher.
If we admit this principle as established, then it is possible to proceed further.
This question has been answered differently in different times. Psychic life has been regarded as a direct function of the brain ("Thought is the motion of brain substance"), thus of course denying any possibility of thought without the existence of a brain.
Then followed an attempt to establish a parallelism between psychic activity and the activity of the brain, but the nature of this parallelism has always remained obscure. Yes, evidently, the brain works parallel to thinking and feeling: an arrest or disorder of the activity of the brain brings as a consequence a visible arrest or disorder of psychic activity. But, after all, the activity of the brain is merely motion, i.e., an objective phenomenon, whereas the activity of the psyche is a phenomenon objectively undefinable, and at the same time more powerful than anything objective. How shall we reconcile this?
Let us endeavour to consider the activity of the brain and the activity of the psyche from the standpoint of the existence of two data, the "world" and "consciousness", accepted by us at the very beginning.
If we consider the brain from the point of view of consciousness, then the brain will be part of the "world", i.e., part of the outer world lying outside of consciousness. Therefore the psyche and the brain are different things. But the psyche, as experience and observation shoes, can act only through the brain. The brain is that necessary prism, passing through which part of the psyche manifests itself to us as intellect. Or, to put it a little differently, the brain is a mirror, reflecting psychic life in our three-dimensional section of the world. This last means that in our three-dimensional section of the world, not all of the psyche (the true dimensions of which we do not know) is acting, but only so much of it as can be reflected in a brain. It is clear that if the mirror be broken, then the image will be broken too; or if the mirror be injured or imperfect, then the reflection will be blurred or distorted. But there is absolutely no reason to believe that when the mirror is broken the object which it reflects is thereby destroyed, i.e., psychic life in the given case.
The psyche cannot suffer from any disorder of the brain, but the manifestations of it may suffer very much or may even disappear altogether from the field of our observation. Therefore it is clear that a disorder in the activity of the brain causes an enfeeblement or a distortion, or even a complete disappearance, of the psychic faculties manifesting in our sphere.
The idea of the comparison between a three-dimensional body and a four-dimensional one enables us to affirm that not all, but only a part, of the psychic activity goes through the brain.
[In An Essay on the Subliminal Consciousness, Frederick Myers [1843-1901, English poet and essayist Ed.], wrote:
Each of us is in reality an abiding psychical entity far more extensive than he knows an individuality which can never express itself completely through any corporeal manifestation. The self manifests through the organism; but there is always some part of the self unmanifested. Quoted in William James: The Varieties of Religious Experience. PDO]
[In all the above it would be more correct to substitute for the word brain the word body-organism. The present trend of scientific psychology leads to an understanding of the psychic importance of diverse physiological functions, previously unknown and even now but little investigated. The psychic life is connected not with the brain only, but with the entire body, all its organs, all its tissues. The study of the activity of glands, and of many other things with which science is now concerning itself, shows that the brain is by no mans the only conductor of the psychic activity of man. PDO]
The "positivist" will remain unconvinced. He will say: prove to me that a thought can act without a brain; then I will believe it.
I shall answer him by asking: What, in the given case, will constitute a proof?
There are no proofs and there cannot be any. The existence of the psychic without a brain (without a body), if that be possible, cannot be proven like a physical fact.
If my opponent will reason sincerely, then he will be convinced that there can be no proof because he himself has no means of being convinced of the existence of a psyche acting independently of a brain. Let us assume that the thought of a dead man (i.e., of a man whose brain has ceased to act) continues to function. We cannot convince ourselves of this by any possible means. We have no means of communication (speech, writing) with beings which are in conditions similar to our own i.e., acting through brains; concerning the existence of the psyche of those same beings we can conclude by analogy with ourselves; but concerning the existence of the psychic life of other beings, whether they do or do not exist is immaterial: we cannot by ordinary means convince ourselves that they exist.
It is exactly this that gives us a key to the understanding of the true relation of psychic life to the brain. Our psyche being a reflection from the brain, we can observe only those reflections which are similar to itself. We have already established that we can make conclusions concerning the psychic life of other beings from the exchange of thoughts with them and from analogies with ourselves. Now we may add that for this very reason we can know only about the existence of psychic lives similar to our own, and we cannot know any other at all, whether they exist or not, unless we ourselves enter their plane.
Should we ever realise our psychic life (not only as it is reflected from a brain but in a more universal condition) the possibility would simultaneously open up of discovering things with a psychic life independent of a brain analogous to ours should any such exist in Nature.
Do such things exist? How can we gain information of this point with our thought such as it is now?
Even from the positivistic standpoint, there is something naοve in such a division of observed actions into rational and mechanical. For if we have learned anything from the study of Nature, if the positivistic method has given us anything at all, it is the assurance of the necessity for the uniformity of phenomena. We know, and with great certainty, that fundamentally similar things cannot proceed from dissimilar causes. Our scientific philosophy knows this too. Therefore it also regards the foregoing division as naοve and, conscious of the impossibility of such dualism that one part of observed phenomena proceeds from rational and conscious causes and another part from unreasoned and unconscious ones positivistic philosophy finds it possible to explain everything as proceeding from mechanical causes.
Scientific observation holds that the seeming rationality of human actions is an illusion and a self-deception. Man is a toy in the hands of elemental forces. All that which it seems to him he is doing is in reality done instead by external forces which enter him through air, food, sunlight. Man does not perform a single action by himself. He is merely a prism in which a line of action is refracted in a certain manner. But just as the beam of light does not proceed from the prism, so action does not proceed from the reason of man.
The "theoretical experiment" of certain German psycho-physiologists is usually advanced in confirmation of this. They affirmed that if it were possible to deprive man from birth of all external impressions: light, sound, touch, heat, cold, etc., and at the same time preserve him alive, then such a man would not be able to perform even the most insignificant action.
From this it follows that man is an automaton, like that automation projected by the American inventor Tesla [Nikola Tesla, 1856-1943, Croatian physicist and electrical engineer. Ed.], which, obeying electric currents and vibrations from a great distance without wires, was calculated to execute a whole series of complicated movements.
It follows from all this that all the actions of a man depend upon outer impulses. For the smallest reflex, outer irritation is necessary. For more complex action a whole series of preceding complex irritations is necessary. Sometimes between the irritation and the action a considerable time elapses, and a man does not feel any connection between the two. Therefore he regards his actions as voluntary, though in reality there are no voluntary actions at all man cannot do anything by himself, just as a stone cannot jump voluntarily: it is necessary that something should throw it up. Man needs something to give him an impulse, and then he will develop exactly as much force as such an impulse (and all preceding impulses) put into him, and not a trifle more. Such is the teaching of positivism.
From the standpoint of logic such a theory is more correct than the theory of two classes of actions reasoned and unreasoned. It at least applies the principle of necessary uniformity. It is really impossible to suppose that in an immense machine, certain parts move according to their own desire and reasoning; there must be something uniform either all parts of the machine possess a consciousness, or all are worked from one motor and are driven by one transmission. The enormous service performed by positivism is that it established this principle of uniformity. It is left to us to define in what this uniformity consists.
This view has already been investigated [See Chapter XIII Ed.] and the conclusion reached that it is impossible to regard physical phenomena as the cause of psychic phenomena while, on the other hand, psychic phenomena serve as the undoubted cause for a great number of the physical phenomena observed by us. The observed process of origination of psychic phenomena under the influence of outside mechanical impulses does not at all mean that physical phenomena create psychic phenomena. Such do not constitute the cause, but are merely a shock, disturbing the balance. In order that outer shocks may evoke psychic phenomena, an organism is necessary, i.e., a complex and animated life. The cause of psychic life lies in the organism, in its animation, which can be defined as a potential of psychic life.
Then, from the very essence of the idea of motion which is the foundation of the psycho-mechanical world was deduced the conclusion that motion is not an entirely obvious truth, that the idea of motion arose in us because of the limitation and incompleteness of our sense of space (a slit through which we observe the world). And it was established, not that the idea of time is deduced from the observation of motion, but that the idea of motion results from our "time-sense" that it is, indeed, quite definitely the function of the "time-sense", which in itself is a limit or boundary of the space-sense belonging to a being of a given psyche. It was also established that the idea of motion could arise out of a comparison between two different fields of consciousness. In general, all analysis of the fundamental categories of our knowledge of the world space and time showed that we have absolutely no data whatever for accepting motion as the fundamental principle of the world.
If this is so if it is impossible to assume the presence of an unconscious motor behind the scenes of the creation of the world then it is necessary to consider the world as living and rational. One or the other of two things must be true: either the world is mechanical and dead "accidental" or it is living and animated. There can be nothing dead in living Nature, and there can be nothing living in dead nature.
In his Counsels and Maxims, Schopenhauer [Arthur Schopenhauer, 1788-1860, German philosopher. Ed.] writes:
Nature exhibits a continual progress, starting from the mechanical and chemical activity of the inorganic world, proceeding to the vegetable with its dull enjoyment of self, from that to the animal world where intelligence and consciousness began at first very weak and only after many intermediate stages attaining its last great development in man whose intellect is Nature's crowning point, the goal of all her efforts, the most perfect and difficult of all her works.
This is indeed very effectively expressed, but we have no foundation whatever for regarding man as the summit of that which nature has created. This is only the highest that we know.
We are forced to admit either the existence of two principles "spirit" and "matter" or to select one of them.
Then dualism annihilates itself, because if we admit the separate existence of spirit and matter, and reason further on this basis, it will inevitably be necessary to conclude either that spirit is unreal and matter real; or that matter is unreal and spirit real i.e., either that spirit is material or that matter is spiritual. Consequently it is necessary to select one thing spirit or matter.
But to think really monistically is considerably more difficult than it seems. I have met many men who have called themselves "monists" and sincerely considered themselves as such, but in reality they never departed from the most naοve dualism, and no spark of understanding the world's unity ever flashed upon them.
Positivism, regarding "motion" or "energy" as the basis of everything, can never be "monistic". It is impossible to annihilate the fact of psychic life. If it were possible not to take this fact into consideration at all, then everything would be splendid, and the Universe could be something like an accidentally self-created mechanical toy. But to its sorrow, positivism cannot deny the existence of the psyche. It can only try to degrade it as low as possible, calling it the reflection of reality, the substance of which consists of motion.
But how to deal with the fact that the "reflection" in this case possesses an infinitely greater potentiality than the "reality"? How can this be? From what does this reality reflect, or what is it refracted in, that in its reflected or refracted state it possesses infinitely greater potentiality than in its original state?
The consistent "materialist-monist" will be forced to say that "reality" reflects from itself, i.e., "one motion" reflects from another motion. But this is merely dialectics, and fails to make clear the nature of psychic life, for it is something other than motion.
We cannot escape this fact and, thinking logically, we must inevitably recognise two principles. But if we begin to consider the very recognition of two principles as illogical, then we must recognise thought as a single principle, and motion as an illusion of thought.
But what does this mean? It means that there can be no "monistic materialism". Materialism can be only dualistic, i.e., it must recognise two principles: motion and thought.
Our concepts are limited by language. Our language is deeply dualistic. This is indeed a terrible obstacle. I showed previously how language retards our thought, making it impossible to express the relations of a being Universe. In our language only an eternally becoming Universe exists. The "Eternal Now" cannot be expressed in language.
Thus our language pictures to us beforehand a false universe dual, when in reality it is one; and eternally becoming when it is in reality eternally being.
If we come to realise the degree to which our language falsifies the real view of the world, then the understanding of this fact will enable us to see that it is not only difficult, but absolutely impossible to express in language the correct relation of the things of the real world.
This difficulty can be conquered only by the formation of new concepts and by extended analogies.
Later on the principles and methods of this expansion of what we already have, and what we can extract from our stores of knowledge will be made clear. For the present it is important only to establish one thing the necessity for uniformity: the monism of the Universe.
As a matter of principle it is not important which one we regard as first cause, spirit or matter. It is essential to recognise their unity.
From one point of view, it is a logical concept, i.e., a form of thinking. Nobody ever saw matter, nor will he ever it is possible only to think matter. From another point of view it is an illusion mistaken for reality. Even more truly, it is the incorrectly perceived form of that which exists in reality. Matter is a section of something; a non-existent, imaginary section. But that of which matter is a section exists. This is the real, four-dimensional world.
Wood, the substance from which, for example, this table is made, exists; but the true nature of its existence we do not know. All that we know about it is just the form of our receptivity of it. And if we should cease to exist, it would continue to exist but only for a receptivity acting similarly to ours.
However, in itself, this substance exists in some other way how, we do not know. Certainly not in space and time, for we ourselves impose these forms upon it. Probably all similar wood, of different countries and different parts of the world, constitutes one mass, one body perhaps even one being. Certainly that substance (or that part of it) of which this table is made, has no separate existence apart from our receptivity. We fail to understand that a particular thing is merely an artificial definition by our senses of some indefinable cause infinitely surpassing that thing.
But a thing may acquire its own individual and unique soul; and in that case the thing exists quite independently of our receptivity. Many things possess such souls, especially old things old houses, old books, works of art, etc.
First of all, of course, the thought that everything in the world is alive and animated and that manifestations of life and animatedness would naturally exist on all planes and in all forms. But we can discern psychic life only in forms analogous to ours.
The question stands in this way: how could we know about the existence of the psychic life of other sections of the world if they exist? Only two methods are available: through communication, exchange of thoughts; and through conclusion by analogy.
For the first, it is necessary that our psyche should become similar to theirs, should transcend the limits of the three-dimensional world; i.e., it is necessary to change the form of receptivity and perception.
The second may arise as a consequence of the gradual expansion of the faculty of drawing inferences by analogy. By trying to think outside of the usual categories, by trying to look at things and at ourselves from a new angle and simultaneously from many angles, by trying to liberate our thinking from its accustomed categories of perception in space and time, little by little we begin to notice between different things analogies which we did not notice before.
Our mind grows, and with it grows the power to discover analogies. With each new step attained, this ability expands and enriches the mind. Each minute we advance more rapidly, each new step makes the next more easy. Our psyche becomes different. Then, applying to ourselves this expanded ability to construct analogies and looking about us, we suddenly perceive all around ourselves a psychic life of whose existence we were previously unaware. And we understand the reason for this unawareness: this psychic life belongs to another plane, not that to which our psychic life is native. Thus, in this case, the ability to discover new analogies is the beginning of changes which translate us into another plane of existence.
The thought of a man begins to penetrate into the world of noumena, which is in affinity with it. Then his point of view changes likewise with regard to the things and events of the phenomenal world. Phenomena may suddenly assume, to his eyes, quite a different grouping. As already said, similar things may be different from one another in reality, and different things may be similar; quite separate, apparently disconnected, things may be parts of one great whole of some entirely new category; and things which appear inextricably united in one, constituting one whole, may in reality be manifestations of different beings having nothing in common among themselves even knowing nothing about each other's existence. Such, indeed, may be any whole of our world man, animal, planet, planetary system i.e., consisting of different psychic lives, a battlefield, as it were, of warring entities.
In each whole of our world we perceive a multitude of opposing tendencies, aspirations, efforts. Each aggregate is, as it were, an arena of struggle for multitudes of opposing forces, each of which acts by itself, is directed to its own goal, usually to the disruption of the whole. But the interaction of these forces represents the life of the whole; and in everything something is always acting which limits the activity of separate tendencies. This something is the psychic life of the whole.
We cannot establish the existence of such a life by analogy with ourselves, or by intercourse with it, or by exchange of thoughts; but a new path opens before us. We perceive a certain separate and quite definite function the preservation of the whole. Behind this function we infer a certain separate something. A separate something having a definite function is impossible without a separate psychic life. If the whole possesses its own psychic life, then the separate tendencies or forces must also possess a psychic life of their own. A body or organism is the point of intersection of such lines of forces, a place of meeting, perhaps a battlefield. Our "I" is also that battlefield on which this or that emotion, this or that habit or inclination, gains an advantage, subjecting to itself all of the rest at every given moment, and identifying itself with the "I". Our "I" is a being, having its own life, imperfectly conscious of that of which itself consists, and identifying itself with this or another portion of itself.
Have we any warrant for supposing that the organs and members of a body, thoughts, and emotions are beings also? We have, because we know that nothing that exists can be purely mechanical, and that any something having a separate function must be animated and can be called a being.
All the beings assumed by us to exist in the world of many dimensions cannot know one another, i.e., cannot know that we are binding them together in different wholes in our phenomenal world and its relations. But they must know themselves, although it is impossible for us to define the degree of clarity of this consciousness. It may be clearer than ours, and it may be more vague dreamlike, as it were. Between these beings there may be a continuous but imperfectly perceived exchange of thoughts, analogous to the exchange of substances in a living organism. They may experience certain feelings in common, certain thoughts may spontaneously arise in them under the influence of general causes.
Upon the lines of this inner communion they must divide themselves into different wholes of some categories entirely incomprehensible to us, or only guessed at. The essence of each such separate being must consist in its knowledge of itself and its nearest functions and relations; it must feel things analogous to itself, and must have the faculty of telling about itself and them, i.e., this consciousness must always behold a picture of itself and its conditioning relations. It is eternally studying this picture and instantly communicating it to another being coming into communion with it.
Whether or not these consciousnesses exist in sections of the world other than ours we, under the existing conditions of our receptivity, cannot say. They can be sensed only by the changed psyche. Our usual receptivity and thinking are too absorbed by themselves and by the sensations of the phenomenal world, and therefore do not reflect those from other beings, or reflect them so weakly that they are not fixed in our consciousness in any intelligible form.
Moreover we do not recognise the fact that we are in constant communion with the noumena of all surrounding things, near and remote; with beings like ourselves and others entirely different; with the life of everything in the world and of all the world. But if the impressions coming from other beings are so forceful that the consciousness feels them, then our mind immediately projects them into another world of phenomena and seeks for their cause in the phenomenal world in exactly the same manner that a two-dimensional being, inhabiting a plane, seeks in its plane for the cause of the impressions which come from a higher world.
But if the psyche succeeds in escaping out if this limiting circle, it will invariably see in the world much that is new to it.
In A New Era of Thought, Hinton writes:
If we will separate self-elements in our perception, then it will be found that the deadness which we ascribe to the external world is not really there, but is put in by us because of our own limitations. It is really the self-elements in our knowledge which make us talk of mechanical necessity, dead matter. When our limitations fall, we behold the spirit of the world as we behold the spirit of a friend something which is discerned in and through the material presentation of a body to us.
Our thought means are sufficient at present to show us human souls; but all except human beings is, as far as science is concerned, inanimate. Our self-element must be got rid of from our perception, and this will be changed.
But is the unknowableness of the noumenal world as absolute for us as it sometimes seems?
In The Critique of Pure Reason and in other writings, Kant denied the possibility of "spiritual sight". But in Dreams of a Ghost-seer, he not only admitted this possibility, but gave to it one of the best definitions we have ever had up to now. He clearly affirms:
I confess that I am very much inclined to assert the existence of immaterial natures in the world, and to put my soul itself into that class of beings. These immaterial beings ... are immediately united with each other; they might form, perhaps, a great whole which might be called the immaterial world. Every man is a being of two worlds: of the incorporeal world and of the material world ... and it will be proved, I don't know where or when, that the human soul also in this life forms an indissoluble communion with all immaterial natures if the spirit-world; that, alternately, it acts upon and receives impressions from that world of which nevertheless it is not conscious while it is still man as long as everything is in proper condition....
We should, therefore, have to regard the human soul as being conjoined in its present life with two worlds at the same time, of which it clearly perceives only the material world, in so far as it is conjoined with a body, and thus forms a personal unit....
It is therefore, indeed, one subject, which is thus at the same time a member of the visible and of the invisible world, but not one and the same person; for on account of their different quality, the conceptions of the one world are not ideas associated with those of the other world; thus, what I think as a spirit is not remembered by me as a man and, conversely, my state as a man does not at all enter into the conception of myself as a spirit.
Birth, life, death are the states of the soul only.... Consequently, our body only is perishable, the essence of us is not perishable, and must have been existent during that time when our body had no existence. The life of the man is dual. It consists of two lives one animal and one spiritual. The first life is the life of man, and man needs a body to live this life. The second life is the life of the spirit; his soul lives in that life separately from the body, and must live on in it after the separation from the body.
In an essay on Kant in The Northern Messenger (1988, Russian), A L Volinsky says that both in Vorlesungen and in Dreams of a Ghost-seer, Kant denied the possibility of one thing only the possibility of the physical receptivity of spiritual phenomena.
Thus Kant admitted not only the possibility of the existence of a spiritual conscious world, but also the possibility of communion with it.
Hegel [Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1770-1831, German philosopher. Ed.] built all his philosophy upon the possibility of a direct knowledge of truth, upon spiritual vision.
Approaching the question of two worlds from the psychological standpoint, from the standpoint of the theory of knowledge, let us firmly establish the principle that before we can hope to comprehend anything in the region of noumena, we must define everything that it is possible to define of the world of many dimensions by a purely intellectual method, by a process of reasoning. It is highly probable that by this method we cannot define very much. Perhaps our definitions will be too crude, will not quite correspond to the fine differentiation of relations in the noumenal world: all this is possible and must be taken into consideration. Nevertheless we shall define what we can, and at the outset make as clear as possible what the noumenal world cannot be; then what it can be show what relations are impossible in it, and what are possible.
This is necessary in order that we, coming in contact with the real world, may discriminate between it and the phenomenal world and, what is more important, that we may not mistake simple reflections of the phenomenal world for the noumenal. We do not know the world of causes; we are confined in the jail of the phenomenal world simply because we do not know how to discern where one ends and the other begins.
We are in constant touch with the world of causes, we live in it, because our psyche and our incomprehensible function in the world are part of it or a reflection of it. But we do not see or know it because we either deny it consider that everything that exists is phenomenal and that nothing exists except the phenomenal or we recognise it but try to comprehend it in the forms of the three-dimensional phenomenal world; or, lastly, we search for it and do not find it because we lose our way amid the deceits and illusions of the reflected phenomenal world which we mistakenly accept for the noumenal world.
In this dwells the tragedy of our spiritual quest: we do not know what we are searching for. And the only method by which we can escape this tragedy consists in a preliminary intellectual definition of the properties of that of which we are in search. Without such definitions, going merely by indefinite feelings, we shall not approach the world of causes or else we shall get lost on its borderland.
Spinoza [Benedict de Spinoza (Heb. Baruch), 1632-1677, Dutch philosopher. Ed.] understood this, saying that he could not speak of God, not knowing His attributes:
When I studied Euclid, I learned first of all that the sum of three angles of a triangle was equal to two right angles, and this property of a triangle was entirely comprehensible to me, although I did not know many other properties. But so far as spirits and ghosts are concerned, I do not know even one of their attributes, but constantly hear different fantastic tales about them in which it is impossible to discover truth.
First of all we may say that the world of noumena cannot be three-dimensional and that there cannot be anything three-dimensional in it, i.e., commensurable with physical objects, similar to them in outside appearance, having form there cannot be anything having extension in space and changing in time. And, most important, there cannot be anything dead or inanimate. In the world of causes everything must be alive, because it is life itself: the soul of the world.
Let us remember also that the world of causes is the world of the marvellous; that what appears simple to us can never be real. The real appears to us as the marvellous. We do not believe in it, we do not recognise it; and therefore we do not feel the mysteries of which life is so full.
The simple is only that which is unreal. The real must seem marvellous.
The mystery of time penetrates all. It is felt in every stone, which perhaps might have witnessed the glacial period, seen the ichthyosaurus and the mammoth. It is felt in the approaching day, which we do not see, but which possibly sees us, which perhaps is our last day; or on the other hand is the day of some transformation the nature of which we do not ourselves now know.
The mystery of thought creates all. As soon as we shall understand that thought is not a "function of motion", but that motion itself is only a function of thought and shall begin to feel the depth of this mystery we shall perceive that the entire phenomenal world is some gigantic hallucination which fails to frighten us and does not drive us to think we are mad simply because we have become accustomed to it.
The mystery of infinity the greatest of all mysteries tells us that all the visible Universe and its galaxies of stars have no dimension: that in relation to infinity they are equal to a point, a mathematical point which has no extension whatever, and that points which are not measurable for us may have a different extension and different dimensions.
In "positive" thinking we make the effort to forget about all this: not to think about it.
At some future time positivism will be defined as a system by the aid of which it was possible not to think of real things and to limit oneself to the region of the unreal and illusory.