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Page 1 of 11903 · PDF PAGE 4
… the Christian is infinite, and yet discussing the alternative if we could suppose him to be a finite God. In any equilibrated system of forces, we may sum and represent them as a triangle or series of triangles which again resolve into one. In any moving system, if the resultant motion be applied in a contrary direction, the equilibrium can also thus be represented. And if any one of the original forces in such a system be removed, that one is equal to the resultant of the remainder. Let «, the purpose of the universe, be the Tesultant of the …
1903 · PDF PAGE 5
3) joss of Genesis to the intangible, but still self-contradictory spectre of to-day. But ifG be infinite, the other forces can have no possible effect on it. As Whewell says, in the strange accident by which he anticipates the metre of In Memoriam: “No force on earth, however great, can pull a chord, however fine, into a horizontal line that shall be absolutely straight.” The definition of God as infinite therefore denies man implicitly; while if he be finite, there is an end of the usual Christian reasons for worship, though I dare- say I cou…
1903 · PDF PAGE 24
…ort of all the apparently fantastic directions of Solomon, Abramelin, and other sages of repute. When a man has evoked and mastered such forces as Taphtartarath, Belial, Amaimon, and the great powers of the elements, then he may safely be permitted to begin to try to stop thinking. For, needless to say, the universe, including the thinker, exists only by virtue of the thinker’s thought.
1903 · PDF PAGE 25
23 In yet one other way is magic a capital training- ground for the Arahat. True symbols do really awake those macrocosmic forces of which they are the cidola, and it is possible in this manner very largely to increase the magical “ potential,” to borrow a term from electrical science. Of course, there are bad and invalid processes, which tend rather to disperse or to excite the mind-stuff than to control it; these we must discard. But there is a true magical ceremonial, the central Arcanum alike of Eastern and Western practical transcendentali…
1903 · PDF PAGE 16
…ousness. ‘As Schopenhauer, following Buddha, points out, suffering is a necessary condition of this existence. The war of the contending forces as they grind themselves down to the final resultant must cause endless agony. We may be able to transform the categories of emotion as certainly and easily as we now transform the categories of force, so that in a few years Chicago may be importing suffering in the raw state and turning it into tinned salmon: but at present the reverse process is alone practicable. How, then, shall we escape? Can we ex…
1903 · PDF PAGE 18
…destructive Advaitist muddle The precepts of morality and religion are thus of use, of vital use to us, in restraining the thore violent forces alike of nature and of man. For unless law and order prevail, we have not the necessary quiet and resources for investigating, and learning to bring under our control, all the divergent phenomena of our prison, a work which we undertake that at last we may be able to break down the walls, and find that freedom which an inconsiderate Inversion has denied. ‘The mystical precepts of pseudo-Zoroaster, Buddh…
1903 · PDF PAGE 14
12 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 inyolving 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 unformulated as that of toasted cheese. But0? is a finite expression, or has a finite phase, and our universe is a finite universe ; its categories are themselves finite, and the e…
1903 · PDF PAGE 19
…ally mystical in the truest sense; for, as I have shown, the Atman is not infinite and eternal: one day it must sink down with the other forces. But by creating in thought an infinite Impersonal Personality, by defining it as such, all religions except the Buddhist, and as I believe, the Qabalistic, have sought to annihilate their own personality. The Buddhist aims directly at extinction; the Hindu denies and abolishes his own finity by the creation of an absolute, As this cannot be done in reality, the process is illusory, yet itis useful in t…