Part 8 (1/2)
And as the existence of the objective universe is established by a primordial act of faith, so it is also established that these alien bodily personalities, whose outward appearance stands and falls with the objective universe, possess ”souls,” or what we have come to name ”complex visions,” comparable with our own. And this is the case not only with regard to other human beings, but with regard to all living ent.i.ties whether human or non-human. As to how the ”souls” of plants, birds, and animals, or of planets or stars, differ in their nature from human souls we can only vaguely conjecture. But to refuse some degree of consciousness, some measure of the complex vision, to any living thing, is to be false to that primordial act of faith into which the original revelation of the complex vision compels us to plunge.
The inevitableness of this act of faith may be perhaps more vividly realized when we remember that it includes in its revelation the objective reality of our own physical body. Our evidence for the real outward existence of our own body is no surer and no more secure than our evidence for the outward existence of other ”bodies.”
They stand or fall together. If the universe is an illusion then our own physical body is an illusion also.
And precisely as the ”stuff” out of which the universe is made may be named ”energy” or ”ether” or ”force” or ”electricity,” rather than ”matter,” so also the ”stuff” out of which the body is made may be named by any scientific term we please. The term used is of no importance as long as the thing represented by it is accepted as a permanent reality.
We are now able to advance a step further in regard to the revelation of the complex vision. Granting, as we are compelled to grant, that the other ”souls” in the universe possess, each of them, its own ”vision” of this same universe; and a.s.suming that each ”vision” is so coloured by the individuality of the ”visionary” as to be, in a measure, different from all the rest, it becomes obvious that in a very important sense there is not only one universe, but many universes. These many universes, however, are ”caused,” or evoked, or created, or discovered, by the encounter of various individual souls with that one ”objective mystery” which confronts them all.
What a naive confession it is of the limitation of the human mind that we should be driven, after all our struggles to articulate the secret of life, to accept, as our final estimate of such a secret just the mysterious ”something” which is the substratum of our own soul, confronted by that other mysterious ”something” which is the substratum of all possible universes! With the complex vision's revelation that the objective universe really exists comes the parallel revelation that time and s.p.a.ce really exist. Here, for the third time, are we faced with critical protests from the isolated activity of the logical reason.
Metaphysic reduces both time and s.p.a.ce to categories of the mind.
Mathematical speculation hints at the existence of some mysterious fourth-dimensional s.p.a.ce. Bergsonian dialectic regards ordinary ”spatial” time as an inferior category; and finds the real movement of life in a species of time called ”duration,” which can only be detected by the interior feeling of intuition.
But while we listen with interest to all these curious speculations, the fact remains that for the general vision of the combined energies of the soul the world in which we find ourselves is a world entirely dependent upon what must be recognized as a _permanent sensation_ of ”ordinary” s.p.a.ce and ”ordinary” time.
And as we have shown in the case of the objective existence of what we call Nature, when any mental impression reaches the level of becoming a _permanent sensation_ of all living souls it ceases to be possible to speak of it as an illusion.
It is well that we should become clearly conscious of this ”reality-destroying” tendency of the logical reason, so that whenever it obsesses us we can undermine its limited vision by an appeal to the complex vision. Shrewdly must we be on our guard against this double-edged trick of logic, which on the one hand seeks to destroy the basis of its own activity, by disintegrating the unity of the soul, and on the other hand seeks to destroy the material of its own activity by disintegrating the unity of the ”objective mystery.”
The original revelation of the complex vision not only puts us on our guard against this disintegrating tendency of the pure reason, but it also explains the motive-force behind this tendency. This motive-force is the emotion of malice, which naturally and inevitably seeks to hand us over to the menace of nothingness; in the first place of nothingness ”within” us, and in the second place of nothingness ”without” us. That the logic of the pure reason quickly becomes the slave of the emotion of malice may be proved by both introspection and observation. For we note, both in ourselves and others, a peculiar glow of malicious satisfaction when such logic strikes its deadliest blows at what it would persuade us to regard as the illusion of life.
Life, just because its deepest secret is not law, determined by fate, but personality struggling against fate, is always found to display a certain irrationality. And the complex vision becomes false to itself as soon as it loses touch with this world-deep irrationality.
We have now therefore reached the conception of reality as consisting of the individual soul confronted by the objective mystery. That this objective mystery would be _practically_ the same as _nothing_, if there were no soul to apprehend it, must be admitted. But it would not be _really_ the same as _nothing_; since as soon as any kind of soul reappeared upon the scene the inevitable material of the objective mystery would at once re-appear with it. The existence of the objective mystery as a permanent possibility of material for universe-building is a fact which surrounds every individual soul with a margin of unfathomable depth.
At its great illuminated moments the complex vision reduces the limitlessness of s.p.a.ce to a realizable sensation of liberty, and the ”flowingness” of time to an eternal now; but even at these moments it is conscious of an unfathomable background, one aspect of which is the immensity of s.p.a.ce and the other the flowingness of time.
The revelation of the complex vision which I have thus attempted to indicate will be found identical with the natural conclusions of man in all the ages of his history. The primeval savage, the ancient Greek, the mediaeval saint, the eighteenth century philosopher, the modern psychologist, are all brought together here and are all compelled to confess the same situation.
That we are now living personalities, possessed of soul and body, and surrounded by an unfathomable universe, is a revelation about which all ages and all generations agree, whenever the complex vision is allowed its orchestral harmony. The primeval savage looking up at the sky above him might regard the sun and moon as living G.o.ds exercising their influence upon a fixed unmoving earth. In this view of the sun and the moon and the stars such a savage was perfectly within his right, because always along with it even to the most anthropomorphic, there came the vague sense of unfathomableness.
The natural Necessity of the ancient Greeks, the trinitarian G.o.d of the mediaeval school-man, the great First Cause of the eighteenth-century deist, the primordial Life-Force of the modern man of science, are all on common ground here in regard to the unfathomableness of the ultimate mystery.
But the revelation of the complex vision saves us from the logical boredom of the word ”infinite.” The idea of the infinite is merely a tedious mathematical formula, marking the psychological point where the mind finds its stopping-place. All that the complex vision can say about ”infinite s.p.a.ce” is that it is a real experience, and that we can neither imagine s.p.a.ce with an end nor without an end.
The ”Infinite” is the name which logic gives to this psychological phenomenon. The fact that the mind stops abruptly and breaks into irreconcilable contradictions when it is confronted with unfathomable s.p.a.ce is simply a proof that s.p.a.ce without an end is as unimaginable as s.p.a.ce with an end. It is no proof that s.p.a.ce is merely a subjective category of the human mind. One, thing, however, it is a proof of. It is a proof that the universe can never be satisfactorily explained on any materialistic hypothesis.
The fact that we all of us, at every hour of our common day, are surrounded by this unthinkable thing, s.p.a.ce without end, is an eternal reminder that the forms, shapes and events of habitual occurrence, which we are inclined to take so easily for granted, are part of a staggering and inscrutable enigma.
The reality of this thing, actually there, above our heads and under our feet, lodges itself, like an ice cold wedge of annihilating scepticism, right in the heart of any facile explanation. We cannot interpret the world in terms of what we call ”matter” when what we call ”matter” has these unthinkable horizons. We may take into our hands a pebble or a sh.e.l.l or a grain of sand; and we may feel as though the universe were within our grasp. But when we remember that this little piece of the earth is part of a continuous unity which recedes in every direction, world without end, we are driven to admit that the universe is so little within our grasp that we have to regard it as something which breaks and baffles the mind as soon as the mind tries to take hold of it at all.
The reason does not advance one inch in explaining the universe when it utters the word ”evolution” and it does not advance one thousandth part of an inch--indeed it gives up the task altogether-- when it informs us that infinite s.p.a.ce is a category of the human mind. We must regard it, then, as part of the original revelation of the complex vision, that we are separate personal souls surrounded by an unfathomable mystery whose margins recede into unthinkable remoteness.
The ancient dilemma of the One and the Many obtrudes itself at this point; and we are compelled to ask how the plurality of these separate souls can be reconciled with the unity of which they form a part. That they cannot be regarded as absolutely separate is clear from the fact that they can communicate with one another, not only in human language but in a thousand more direct ways. But granting this communication between them, does the mere existence of myriads of independent personalities, living side by side in a world common to all, justify us in speaking of the original system of things as being pluralistic rather than monistic?
Human language, at any rate, founded on the fact that these separate souls can communicate with one another, seems very reluctant to use any but monistic terms. We say ”the system of things,” not ”the systems of things.” And yet it is only by an act of faith that human language makes the grand a.s.sumption that the complex vision of all these myriad ent.i.ties tells the same story.
We say ”the universe”; yet may it not be that there are as many ”universes” as there are conscious personalities in this unfathomable world? If there were no closer unity between the separate souls which fill the universe than the fact that they are able, after one primordial act of faith, to communicate with one another, these monistic a.s.sumptions of language might perhaps be disregarded and we might have a right to reject such expressions as ”system of things” and ”cosmos” and ”universe” and ”nature.”
But it still remains that they are connected, in s.p.a.ce and in time, by the medium, whatever it may be, which fills the gulfs between the planets and the stars. As long as these separate souls are invariably a.s.sociated as they are, with physical bodies, and as long as these physical bodies are composed of the same mysterious force which we may call earth, fire, water, air, ether, electricity, energy, vibration, or any other technical or popular name, so long will it be legitimate to use these monistic expressions with which human language is, so to speak, so deeply stained. As a matter of fact we are not left with only this limited measure of unity. There are also certain psychological experiences--experiences which I believe I have a right to regard as universal--which bring these separate souls into much closer connection.