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Page 1 of 11903 · 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 7
…nsel, B. D., * in his piteous and pitiful plaints against the logical results of the Advaitist School. But on his basal hypothesis of an infinite God; infinite space, time, and so on, no other conclusion is possible. Mr. Mansel is found in the impossible position of one who will neither give up his premisses nor dispute the validity of his logical processes, but who shrinks in horror from the inevitable conclusion ; he supposes there must be something. wrong somewhere, and concludes that the sole use of reason is to discover its own inferiority…
1903 · PDF PAGE 21
19 street) gives of the existence of the infinite. ‘“Think of a circle!" says he. ‘You will in a moment become conscious of an infinite circle around your original small one.” The fallacy is obvious. The big circle is not infinite at all, but is itself limited by the little one. But to take away the little circle, that is the method of the esoteric Christian or the mystic. But the process is never perfect, because however small the little circle becomes, its relation with the big circle is still finite. But even allowing for a moment that the A…
1903 · PDF PAGE 6
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 ha…
1903 · PDF PAGE 17
…good, for extricating ourselves from the universe. Closely connected with this question is that of the will of God. People argue that an Infinite intelligence must have been at work on this cosmos. I reply No! ‘There is no intelligence at work worthy of the name. The Laws of Nature may be generalized in one—the Law of Inertia. Everything moves in the direction determined by the path of least resistance; species arise, develop, and die as their collective inertia determines; to this Law there is no exception but the doubtful one of Freewill; the…
1903 · PDF PAGE 23
…rebirth, Providence, prayer, sacrifice, baptism, there is room for all. On the old and, I hope, now finally discredited hypothesis of an infinite being, the sup- porters of these various ideas, while explicitly affirming them, implicitly denied. Similarly, note that the Qaba- listic idea of a supreme God (and innumerable hierarchies) is quite compatible with this theory, provided that the supreme God is not infinite. Now as to our weapons. The more advanced Yogis of the Bast, like the Nonconformists at home, have pra- tically abandoned ceremoni…
1903 · PDF PAGE 4
…y real: we cannot accept mystics of the type of Caird as being orthodox exponents of the religion of Christ. The Hindus enumerate Brahm, infinite in all dimen- sions and directions—indistinguishable from the Pleroma ‘of the Gnostics—and Maya, illusion. This is in a sense the antithesis of noumenon and phenomenon, noumenon being negated of all predicates until it becomes almost ex- tinguished in the Nichts under the title of the Alles. (of Max Muller on the metaphysical Nirvana in his Dhammapada, Introductory Essay.) ‘The Buddhists express no op…
1903 · PDF PAGE 14
…ite expression, or has a finite phase, and our universe is a finite universe ; its categories are themselves finite, and the expression “infinite space” isa contradiction in terms. The idea of an-absolute and ofan infinite God, is relegated to the limbo of all similar idle and pernicious perversions of truth. Infinity remains, but only as a mathematical conception, as impossible in nature as the square root of— 1. Against all this mathema- tical, or semi-mathematical, reasoning, it may doubtless be objected that our whole system of numbers, and…
1903 · PDF PAGE 19
17 The Hindu method is really 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 illus…
1903 · PDF PAGE 3
…he category of the existent, enumerate among other things, whose consideration we may discard for the purposes of this argument, God, an infinite being ; man; Satan and his angels; man certainly, and Satan presumably, finite beings. These are not
1903 · PDF PAGE 8
6 What is the sum total of the Vedantist position ?, 4’ am anillusion, Externally. In reality, the true ‘I’ am the Infinite, and if the illusionary ‘I’ could only realise Who ‘T really am, how very happy we should all be!” ‘And here we have Karma, rebirth, all the mighty laws of nature operating no where in no thing! There is no room for worship or for morality in the Adyaitist system. All the specious pleas of the Bhagavad- Gita, and the ethical works of Western Advaitist philoso- phers, are more or less consciously confusion of thought. But n…
1903 · PDF PAGE 10
…d, or gods, distinet from men and things. In fact personally,I believe in them all, and admit them to possess inconcei- yable though not infinite power. The Buddhists admit the existence of Maha-Brahma, but his power and knowledge are limited and his age- long day must end. I find evidence every-where, even in our garbled and mutilated version of the Hebrew Scriptures, that Jehovah’s power was limited in all sorts of ways. At the Fall, for instance, Tetragrammaton Elohim has to summon his angels hastily to guard the Tree of Life, lest ke should…
1903 · PDF PAGE 20
…zation of the nothingness of yourself by keeping the fourth dimension ever present to your mind.) The illusory nature of this idea of an infinite Atman is well shown by the very proof which that most distin- guished Vedantist, the late Swami Vivekananda (no connection with the firm of a similar name across the