THE EQUINOX
Thus we find that “duality” in the East is synonymous
with “a mere matter of words,”* and further, that, when
anything is (or can be) described by a word or a name, the
knowledge concerning it is Avidyd, “ignorance.”
No sooner are the eyes of a man opened + than he sees
“good and evil,” and becomes a prey to the illusions he has
set out to conquer. He gets something apart from himself,
and whether it be Religion, Science, or Philosophy it matters
not; for in the vacuum which he thereby creates, between him
and it, burns the fever that he will never subdue until he has
annihilated both.{ God, Immortality, Freedom, are appear-
ances and not realities, they are Maya and not Atman; Space,
Time and Causality§ are appearances and not realities, they
also are Maya and not Atman. All that is not Atman is
Maya, and Maya is ignorance, and ignorance is sin.
Now the philosophical fall of the Atman produces the
Macrocosm and the Microcosm, God and not-God—the Uni-
verse, or the power which asserts a separateness, an indi-
by different names: Liber, Hercules, Mercury, are but different names of the
same divine being” (Seneca, iv, 7. 8).
* “Chandogya Upanishad,” 6. 1. 3. Also of “form,”
+ That is to say, when he gains knowledge.
t This is the meaning of “Nequaquam Vacuum.”
§ Modern Materialism receives many a rude blow at the hands of Gustave
le Bon. This great Frenchman writes: “These fundamental dogmas, the bases
of modern science, the researches detailed in this work tend to destroy. If the
principle of the conservation of energy—which, by the by, is simply a bold
generalization of experiments made in very simple cases—likewise succumbs to
the blows which are already attacking it, the conclusion must be arrived at that
nothing in the world is eternal.” (“The Evolution of Matter,” p. 18.) In other
words, all is full of birth, growth, and decay, that is Maya. Form to the
Materialist, Name to the Idealist, and Nothing to him who has risen above
both.
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