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Page 1 of 11909 · PDF PAGE 8
THE EQUINOX it thought ?” The Buddhist may find it easy to image an act without an agent; I am not so clever. It may be possible for a sane man; but I should like to know more about his mind before I gave a final opinion. But apart from purely formal objections, we may still inquire: Is this Cogétatur true? Yes; reply the sages; for to deny it implies thought; Negatur is only a sub-section of Cogitatur. This involves, however, an axiom that the part is of the same nature as the whole; or (at the very least) an axiom that Ais A. Now, I do not wi…
1909 · PDF PAGE 10
THE EQUINOX “existential import” to consider the matter, to that further complexity and contradiction, the syllogism. IV Thought is appears then (in the worst case possible, denial) as the conclusion of the premisses : There is denial of thought. (All) Denial of thought is thought. Even formally, ’tis a clumsy monster. Essentially, it seems to involve a great deal beyond our original statement. We compass heaven and earth to make one syllogism; and when we have made it, it is tenfold more the child of mystery than ourselves. We cannot here disc…
1909 · PDF PAGE 12
…hood of God is but a human type; the idea of a human father con- joined with the idea of immensity. Two for One again! No combination of thoughts can be greater than the think- ing brain itself; all we can think of God or say of Him, so long as our words really represent thoughts, is less than the whole brain which thinks, and orders speech. Very good; shall we proceed by denying Him all think- able qualities, as do the heathen? All we obtain is mere negation of thought. Either He is unknowable, or He is less than we are. Then, too, that which …
1909 · PDF PAGE 11
…of the emptiness of things! Yet, as we go, there grows a sense, an instinct, a premonition—what shall I call it ?—that Being is One, and Thought is One, and Law is One—until we ask What is that One? Then again we spin words—words—words. And we have got no single question answered in any ultimate sense. What is the moon made of? Science replies ‘Green Cheese.” For our one moon we have now two ideas: Greenness, and Cheese. Greenness depends on the sunlight, and the eye, and a thousand other things. Cheese depends on bacteria and fermentation and …
1909 · PDF PAGE 7
…don’t seem to be getting anywhere myself. II A fresh attempt. Let us look into the simplest and most certain of all possible statements. Thought exists, or if you will, Cogitatur. Descartes supposed himself to have touched bed-rock with his Cogito, ergo Sum. Huxley pointed out the complex nature of this proposition, and that it was an enthymeme with the premiss Ommes sunt, gui cogitant suppressed. He reduced it to Cogito, or, to avoid the assumption of an ego, Cogitatur. Examining more closely this statement, we may still cavil at its form. We …
1909 · PDF PAGE 27
…thou shalt sit throned on the Invisible, thine eyes fixed upon That which we call Nothing, because it is beyond Everything attainable by thought, or trance, thy right hand gripping the azure rod of Light, thy left hand clasped upon the scarlet scourge of Death; thy body girdled with a snake more brilliant than the sun, its name Eternity; thy mouth curved moonlike in a smile, in the invisible kiss of Nuit, our Lady of the Starry Abodes; thy body’s electric flesh stilled by sheer might to a movement closed upon itself in the con- trolled fury of …
1909 · PDF PAGE 9
…tence, and there’s no more to be said about it; don’t worry! Ah, but there is more to be said about it! Though we search ourselves for a thought to match the word, and fail, yet we have Berkeley’s perfectly convincing argument that (so far as we know it) existence must mean thinking existence or spiritual existence. Here then we find our Zs¢ to imply Cogitatur,; and Berkeley’s arguments are “‘irrefragable, yet fail to produce conviction” (Hume) because the Cogitatur, as we have shown, implies Zs¢. Neither of these ideas is simple ; each involve…
1909 · PDF PAGE 13
THE SOLDIER AND THE HUNCHBACK to pieces our tower of thought, but rooted up the foundation- stone and ground it into finer and more poisonous powder than that into which Moses ground the calf. These golden Elohim! Our calf-heads that brought us not out of Egypt, but into a darkness deeper and more tangible than any darkness of the double Empire of Asar. Hume put his little ? to Berkeley's God-!; Buddha his ? to the Vedic Atman-!—and neither Hume nor Buddha was baulked of his reward. Ourselves may put? to our own? since we have found no ! to put…
1909 · PDF PAGE 14
…wer of Samadhi stand the assault of Question-time? Is not the idea of Samadhi just as dependent on all the other ideas—man, time, being, thought, logic? If I seek to explain Samadhi by analogy, am I not often found talking as if we knew all about Evolution, and Mathematics, and His- tory? Complex and unscientific studies, mere straws before the blast of our hunchback friend! Well, one of the buttresses is just the small matter of common sense. The other day I was with Dorothy, and, as I foolishly imagined, very cosy: for her sandwiches are cele…
1909 · PDF PAGE 21
…anal and dull; those of Hume are live and virile; there is ajoy in them greater than the joy of the Man in the Street. So too the Buddha-thought, Anatta, is a more splendid conception than the philosopher’s Dutch-doll-like Ego, or the rational artillery of Hume. This weapon, too, that has destroyed our lesser, our illusionary universes, ever revealing one more real, shall we not wield it with divine ecstasy? Shall we not, too, perceive the inter-dependence of the Questions and the Answers, the necessary connection of the one with the other, so …
1909 · PDF PAGE 23
…e length. Good! then it isn’t a pendulum at all but a Mahalingam— The Mahalingam of Shiva (amo Shivaya namaha Aum !) which is all I ever thought it was; all you have to do is to keep swinging hard—I know it’s hook-swinging!—and you get there in the End. Why trouble to swing? First, because you're bound to swing, whether you like it or not; second, because your attention is thereby distracted from those lumbar muscles in which the hook is so very firmly fixed; third, because after all it’s a ripping good game; fourth, because you want to get on,…
1909 · PDF PAGE 18
…ically all about the Malkuth point of view. Consequently he goes about contradicting Malkuth ; he refuses to allow Malkuth to obsess his thought. He keeps on crying out that there is no difference between a goat and a God, in the hope of hypnotising himself (as it were) into that percep- tion of their identity, which is his (partial and incorrect) idea of how things look from Kether. 126
1909 · PDF PAGE 20
…at every moment a soldier is slain by a hunchback; but as we retire there is always a soldier just by us. Until the end. The end? Buddha thought the supply of hunchbacks infinite ; but why should not the soldiers them- selves be infinite in number? However that may be, here is the point; it takes a moment for a hunchback to kill his man, and the farther we get from our base the longer it takes. You may crumble to ashes the dream-world of a boy, as it were, between your fingers; but before you can bring the physical universe tumbling about a man…