Part 7 (1/2)
Could we know for certain that the dead were raised up, even that knowledge would not reduce to silence the bitter cry of the outraged generations. So poisonous and so deep is the pain of life that no kind of knowledge, not even the knowledge that annihilation must at last, sooner or later, end it all, can really heal it.
But truth is not knowledge. Truth is not the recognition of an external fact. Truth is a creative gesture. It is a ritual, a rhythmic poise, a balance deliberately sustained between eternal contradictions. It is the magical touch which reduces to harmony the quivering vibrations of many opposites. It is the dramatic movement of a supreme actor at the climax of an unfathomable drama. It is music resting upon itself; music so exquisite as to seem like silence, music so pa.s.sionate as to have become calm.
The apex-thought of that pyramid of conflicting flames which we call the complex vision holds itself together at one concentrated point. And this point is the arrow point of our human soul; that soul which is shot across immensity in the eternal war between life and the opposite of life.
Although for the purpose of emphasizing and elucidating the essential nature of this apex-thought it has been found advisable to use such metaphorical and pictorial images as the one just indicated, it must be remembered that what we are actually and in direct experience confronted with is the mystery of a real human personality inhabiting a real human body.
This real personal soul inhabiting a real objective body and surrounded on all sides by a real unfathomable universe, is the original revelation of the complex vision from which there is no escape except by death.
The philosophy of the complex vision finds its starting point in an acceptance of this situation which is nothing more than an acceptance of the complex vision's own harmonious activity. An acceptance of the reality of the human body is an essential part of this harmonious activity because among the aspects of the complex vision are to be found certain attributes, such as sensation, instinct and imagination, which would be negated and rendered abortive if the human body were an illusion.
If the ”starting point” of our philosophy demands recognition of the reality of the body, the ”ideal” of our philosophy must have a place for the body also. Flesh and blood must therefore play their part in the resultant harmony at which we are all the while aiming; and no contempt for the body, no hatred of the body, no refusal to recognize the supreme beauty and sacredness of the body, can be allowed to distort or pervert our vision.
The activity of the apex-thought, though we have a right to use any metaphorical image we please about it in order to elucidate its nature, must always be considered as using the bodily senses in its resultant rhythm. It must always be considered as using that portion of the objective universe which we name the body as an inevitable ”note” in its musical flight from darkness to darkness. It must always be conceived as following the attraction of an eternal vision, in which ”the idea of the body” is an imperishable element.
This ”eternal vision,” which it is the rhythmic motive of the apex-thought to seek, carries with it the witness and ”imprimatur” of the G.o.ds; and although no man has ever ”beheld” the G.o.ds, and although the G.o.ds by reason of their omnipresent activity, cannot be thought of as being ”incarnated,” yet since they are living souls, even as we are, and since every living soul has, as the substratum of its ident.i.ty, what might be called a ”spiritual body,” there is nothing in the revelation made to us through the activity of our complex vision to forbid our free and even fanciful speculation as to its use, by the very highest of superhuman personalities, even, let us say, by the Christ himself, of this mysterious energy of the soul which I have named the ”apex-thought.”
CHAPTER IV.
THE REVELATION OF THE COMPLEX VISION
Using then, as our instrument of research, that totality of attributes by which the soul in its rare moments of rhythmic consummation visualizes the world, the question arises--what, in plain untechnical terms, is the revelation made to us by this complex medium? Here, as before, I am anxious, before I venture upon such a hazardous undertaking as an answer to this question, to indicate clearly that what I am attempting to state is a revelation which is common to the experience of all souls, wherever such a thing as the soul exists. The question as to whether or not such an universal revelation is an illusion does not concern us. To call any universal experience ”an illusion” is no more and no less illuminating than to call it ”an ultimate truth.” It is the only reality we are at present in possession of; and we must accept it, or remain in complete scepticism; which is only another name for complete chaos.
The first important discovery which the complex vision makes is the fact that the revelation, thus half-offered to it and half-created by it, is presented simultaneously in all its various aspects. It does not appear to us bit by bit or in succession but ”en ma.s.se” and in its complete ”ensemble.” It is of course unavoidable that its aspects should be enumerated one by one and that in such an enumeration one aspect should be placed first and another last.
Nevertheless, this ”first” and ”last” must not be regarded as of any reasonable importance; but as nothing more than an accident of arbitrary choice. All the aspects of this original revelation are linked together. All are dependent upon one another. Among them there is no ”first” and ”last.” All are equally real. All are equally necessary. All are equally inescapable.
The activity of the complex vision, then, makes us aware that we have within us an integral irreducible self, the living personal substratum of our self-consciousness, the ”I” of our primordial ”I am I.” This living personal self is the background of our complex vision. It is the personal ”visionary” whose vision we are using. I say we have ”within us” such a self. This ”within us” is one of the inescapable original revelations. For though our consciousness will be found in its full circle to invade obscure sh.o.r.es and wavering margins, there must always be a return, however far it may wander, to this definite ”something” within us which utters the happy or unhappy ”I am I.”
It is precisely here, in regard to the nature of this ”I am I,” that it is essential to let the totality of our complex vision speak, and not one or other of its attributes. Nowhere has the fantastic and desolating power of pure abstract reason left to itself done more to distort the general situation than in this matter. It has distorted it in two opposing ways.
It has distorted it metaphysically by completely eliminating this revelation of a personal self, ”within us,” and it has distorted it scientifically by reducing this personal self to an automatic mechanical phenomenon produced by the action and interaction of unconscious chemical ”forces.”
To the logic of metaphysical reason there is no concrete living self which can say ”I am I” from that definite point in s.p.a.ce and time which we indicate by the use of the phrase ”within us.” According to such logic our ”I am I” becomes ”an infinity of consciousness”
with no local habitation. It becomes a consciousness which includes both the ”within” and the ”without,” a consciousness in which our actual personal self is nothing but an illusory phenomenon, a consciousness which is outside both time and s.p.a.ce, a consciousness whose centre is everywhere and its circ.u.mference nowhere, a consciousness which is pure disembodied ”thought,” thought without any ”thinker,” thought contemplating itself as thought, thought in an absolutely empty void.
When to this ultimate ”unity of apperception,” suspended in a vacuum, consciousness of self is added; when this ”consciousness-in-the-abstract” is regarded as an universal self-consciousness, the resultant ”I am I” of such an omnipresent being becomes an infinite ”I am I” which is nothing less than the unfathomable universe conscious of itself in its totality. Whether consciousness of self be added to this ”consciousness-in-the-abstract”
or not, it is hard to see how out of this unruffled ocean of ident.i.ty the actual multifarious world which we feel around us, this world of plants and planets and birds and fishes and mortal men and immortal G.o.ds, ever succeeded in getting itself produced at all.
The vague metaphysical phrases about the One issuing forth into the Many, in order to make Itself more completely Itself than it was before, seem to us, when under the influence of our complex vision, no other than the meaningless playing with cosmic tennis b.a.l.l.s of some insane universal Juggler.
The second way in which reason, left to itself, has distorted what the complex vision reveals to us about the ”I am I,” is the scientific or evolutionary way. According to this view which a.s.sumes that the objective process of evolution is our only knowable reality, the individual personal ”I am I” finds itself resolved into a fatal automatic phenomenon of cause and effect; a phenomenon which has as its ”cause” nothing, but the prehistoric chemical movements of ”matter” or ”energy.” The personal self thus considered becomes a momentary vortex in a perpetually changing stream of ”states of consciousness” or ”ripples of sensation” to each of which vast anterior tides of atavistic forces have contributed their mechanical quota.
The chemical fatality of our nerve-tissues, the psychological fatality of our motive-impulses, leave no s.p.a.ce, when they have all been summed up, for any free arbitrary action of an independent self.
And so, just as according to the metaphysical view, the soul disappears in a blur of ideal fatality, according to the scientific view the soul disappears in a nexus of mechanical determinism.
As against both these errors, to the complex vision this ”soul”
within us appears to be something altogether different from the physical body. The experience we have of it, the feeling we have of it, is that it is a definite ”something” dwelling ”within” the physical body.
This revelation with regard to it is as unmistakable as it is difficult to a.n.a.lyze. That it is here, within us, we feel and know; but as soon as we attempt to subject it to any exact scrutiny it seems to melt away under our hands. The situation is indeed a kind of philosophical tragic-comedy; and is only too indicative of the baffling whimsicality of the whole system of things. Contradiction and paradox at the very basis of life mock our attempt to utter one intelligible word about the thing which is the most real of all things to us.