The Equinox (Volume I, Number IV)

THE TEMPLE OF SOLOMON THE KING the unknown individual soul into the known, and the unknow- able Supreme Soul into the unknown, and then, from the knowable through the known to the knower, get back to the Atman and Equilibrium—Zero. All knowledge he asserts to be Maya, and only by para- doxes is the Truth revealed. Only he who knows it not knows it, Who knows it, he knows it not; Unknown is it by the wise, But by the ignorant known.* These dark nights of Scepticism descend upon all systems just as they descend upon all individuals, at no stated times, but as a reaction after much hard work; and usually they are forerunners of a new and higher realization of another un- known land to explore. Thus again and again do we find them rising and dissolving like some strange mist over the realms of the Vedanta. To disperse them we must consume them in that same fire which has consumed all we held dear; we must turn our engines of war about and destroy our sick and wounded, so that those who are strong and whole may press on the faster to victory. As early as the days of the Rig Veda, before the beginning was, there was “neither not-being nor yet being.” This thought again and again rumbles through the realms of philosophy, souring the milk of man’s understanding with its bitter scepticism. Not-being was this in the beginning, From it being arose. Self-fashioned indeed out of itself . . . The being and the beyond * Kena Upanishad, 11. 59