4
universe be 101° light-years in diameter or half a mile
makes no difference; it is infinitely small—in effect,
Nothing. The unmathematical illusion that it does exist
is what the Hindus call Maya.
If, on the other hand, the matter-universe is infinite,
Brahm and God are crowded out, and the possibility of
religion is equally excluded.
We may now shift our objective. The Hindus cannot
account intelligibly, though they try hard, for Maya, the
cause of all suffering. Their position is radically weak,
but at least we may say for them that they have tried to
square their religion with their common sense. The
Christians, on the other hand, though they saw whither
the Manichean Heresy * must lead, and crushed it, have
not officially admitted the precisely similar conclusion
with regard to man, and denied the existence of the
human soul as distinct from the divine soul.
Trismegistus, Iamblicus, Porphyry, Boehme, and the
mystics generally haye of course substantially done so,
though occasionally with rather inexplicable reservations,
similar to those made in some cases by the Vedantists
themselves.
Man then being disproved, God the Person disappears
for ever, and becomes Atman, Pleroma, Ain Soph, what
mame you will, infinite in all directions and in all
categories—to deny one is to destroy the entire argument
and throw us back on to our old Dvaitistic bases.
* The concey
of the Hexagram,
ion of Satan as a positive evil force; the lower triangle