Collected Works (Vol. II)

AN ESSAY IN ONTOLOGY 237 and hungry, he is extended in all these, besides, of course, many more. But let us suppose that these five are all. Call the man X; his formula is then Xttstb+ht, If he now eat, he will cease to be extended in hunger; if he be cut off from time and gravitation as well, he will now be repre- sented by the formula XS+>, Should he cease to occupy space and to exist, his formula would then be X°. This expression is equal to 1; whatever X may represent, if it be raised to the power of 0 (this meaning mathematically ‘‘if it be extended in no dimension or category’), the result is Unity, and the unknown factor X is eliminated. This is the Advaitist idea of the future of man; his personality, bereft of all its qualities, disappears and is lost, while in its place arises the impersonal Unity, The Pleroma, Parabrahma, or the Allah of the Unity - adoring followers”of Mohammed. (To the Musulman fakir, Allah is by no means a personal God.) Unity is thus unaffected, whether or no it be extended in any of the categories. But we have already agreed to look to 0 for the Uncaused. Now if there was in truth 0 ‘‘ before the beginning of years,” THAT 0 WAS Ex- TENDED IN NONE OF THE CATE- GORIES, FOR THERE COULD HAVE BEEN NO CATEGORIES IN WHICH IT COULD EXTEND! If our 0 was the ordinary 0 of mathematics, there was not truly absolute 0, for 0 is, as I have shown, de- pendent on the idea of categories. If these existed, then the whole question is merely thrown back; we must reach a state in which the 0 is absolute. Not only must we get rid of all subjects, but of all predi- cates. By 0 (in mathematics) we really mean 02, where n is the final term of a natural scale of dimensions, categories, or predicates. Our Cosmic Egg, then, from which the present universe arose, was Nothingness, extended in no categories, or, graphically, 0°. This expression is in its present form meaningless. Let us dis- cover its value by a simple |mathematical process! 0! . n 0—gi-l— | _” | 0°=0 =o Multiply by l=> . 1 Then —0ie 70x co, QO! Now the multiplying of the infinitely great by the infinitely small results in SOME UNKNOWN FINITE NUMBER EX- TENDED IN AN UNKNOWN NUMBER OF CATEGORIES. It happened, when this our Great Inversion took place, from the essence of all nothingness to finity ex- tended in innumerable categories, that an incalculably vast system was_ produced. Merely by chance, chance in the truest sense of the term, we are found with gods, men, stars, planets, devils, colours, forces, and all the materials of the Cosmos : and with time, space, and causality, the conditions limiting and involving them all.! Remember that it is not true to say that our 0° existed; nor that it did not exist. The idea of existence was just as much uns formulated as that of toasted cheese. But 0° is a finite expression, or has a finite phase, and our universe is a finite universe ; its categories are themselves finite, and the expression ‘‘ infinite space’ isa contradiction in terms. The idea of an absolute and of an infinite? God is relegated to the limbo of all similar idle and pernicious perversions of truth. Infinity remains, but only as a mathe- matical conception as impossible in nature as the square root of —1. Against all this mathematical, or semi-mathematical, reason- ing, it may doubtless be objected that our 1 Compare and contrast this doctrine with that of Herbert Spencer (‘‘ First Principles,” Pt. I.), and see my ‘‘ Science and Buddhism ”’ for a full discussion of the difference involved. —A.C, 2 If by ‘‘infinitely great’’ we only mean ‘‘ indefinitely great,’’ as a mathematician would perhaps tell us, we of course begin at the very point I am aiming at, viz., Ecrasez l'Infini.