Chapter VIII — Experimental Mysticism
Propositions, Definitions and Objectives
In 1910 and 1911, as a result of a fairly complete acquaintance with existing literature on "theosophy" and "occultism", and also with the not very numerous scientific investigations of phenomena of witchcraft, sorcery, magic, etc., I came to certain definite conclusions which I was able to formulate in the following propositions:- All manifestations of any unusual and supernormal forces of man, both internal and external, should be divided into two main categories — magic and mysticism. Definition of these concepts presents great difficulties because, first, in general as well as in special literature, both terms are very often used in an entirely wrong sense; second, there remains much that is unexplained in respect of both magic and mysticism taken separately; and third, the relation of magic and mysticism to one another remains similarly unexplained.
- Having ascertained the difficulty of exact definition I decided to accept an approximate definition.
- I called magic all cases of intensified doing or of concrete knowing through other than ordinary means, and I divided magic into objective, i.e., with real results, and subjective, i.e., with imaginary results.
- I called mysticism all cases of intensified feeling and abstract knowing.
- I called objective magic intensified doing and concrete knowing. "Intensified doing" means in this case the real possibility of influencing things, events, and people without the aid or ordinary means, at a distance, through walls, or in time, that is, either in the past or in the future; and further, the possibility of influencing the "astral" world, if such a world exists, that is, the souls of the dead, "elementals", forces unknown to us, whether good or evil. Concrete knowing includes clairvoyance in space and time, "telepathy", thought-reading, psychometry, seeing "spirits", "thought-forms", "auras", and the like — again if all these exist.
- I called subjective magic all cases of imaginary doing and imaginary knowing; in this are included artificially evoked hallucinations, dreams taken as reality, the reading of one's own thoughts taken as communications, the semi-intentional creation of astral visions, "Akashic records", and similar miracles.
- Mysticism is in its nature subjective. I did not therefore put objective mysticism into a special group. I nevertheless sometimes found it possible to call subjective mysticism the false mystical states or pseudo-mystical states which are not connected with intensified feeling, but come near to hysteria and pseudo-magic; in other words religious visions or religious dreams in concrete forms, that is, all that in Orthodox literature is called "beauty". [Beauty is the translation of a Greek word meaning temptation, seduction, or charm. It shows clearly the character of the experiences preferred in Catholic mysticism and in pseudo-occultism, that is, their external formal "beauty" as opposed to their inner meaning and content. — PDO]
- The existence of objective magic cannot be considered established. Scientific thought has long denied it and recognised only subjective magic, that is, a kind of hypnosis or self-hypnosis. In recent times certain admissions are met with in scientific literature or in literature that is intended to be scientific, for instance in the direction of "spiritualism", but these latest admissions are as unreliable as previous denials. "Theosophical" and "occult" thought recognises the possibility of objective magic but in some cases evidently confuses it with mysticism and in other cases opposes it to mysticism as a useless and immoral, or at any rate a dangerous, phenomenon not only for the man who practises "magic" but also for other people and even for the whole of humanity. But all this is affirmed in the absence of satisfactory proofs of the real existence and possibility of objective magic.
- Of all the unusual states of man, there can be regarded as fully established only mystical states of consciousness and certain phenomena of subjective magic — these latter being almost all confined to the artificial creation of the desired visions.
- All the established facts relating to the manifestations of any unusual forces of man, both in the domain of magic (even though subjective) and in the domain of mysticism, are connected with greatly intensified emotional states of a particular kind and never occur without them.
- The greater part of the religious practice of all religions, and also various magic rituals, ceremonies, and the like, have as their aim the creation of these emotional states to which, according to the original intention, either "magical" or "mystical" powers are ascribed.
- In many cases of deliberate creation of mystical states or production of magical phenomena, the use of narcotics can be traced. In all religions of ancient origin, even in their modern form, there still survives the use of incense, perfumes, unguents, which may primarily have been connected with the use of drugs affecting the emotional and intellectual functions of man. As can be traced, drugs of that kind were very largely used in the ancient Mysteries. Many authors have pointed out the rôle of the sacred drink which was given to candidates for initiation, for instance in the Eleusinian Mysteries, and which may have had a very real and not in the least a symbolical meaning. The legendary sacred drink, the "Soma", which plays a very important part in Indian mythology and in the description of various kinds of mystical ceremonies, may have actually existed as a drink which brought people into a definite desired state. In all descriptions of witchcraft and sorcery in all countries and among all peoples, the use of narcotics is invariably mentioned. The witches' ornaments which served for flying to the Sabbath, different kinds of enchanted and magical drinks, were prepared either from plants possessing stimulant, intoxicant, and narcotic properties, or from organic extracts of the same character, or from those vegetable or animal substances to which these properties were ascribed. It is known that in these cases as well as in all kinds of sorcery, belladonna, datura, extracts of poppy (opium), and especially of hemp (hashish) were used. All this can be traced and verified, and leaves no doubts as to its meaning. The African wizards, with regard to whom it is possible to find very interesting descriptions in the accounts of modern explorers, use hashish very largely. Siberian Shamans make use of poisonous mushrooms (crimson fly-agaric) in order to produce in themselves a particular excited state in which they can foretell the future (real or imaginary), or influence those about them.
Interesting observations on the meaning of mystical states of consciousness and on the part which may be played by narcotics in the creation of mystical states can be found in Prof. James' book, Varieties of Religious Experience, (New York, 1902).
Various exercises of Yogis: breathing exercises, different postures, movements, etc., and the sacred dances of dervishes have the same object, that is, the creation of mystical states of consciousness. But these methods are still very little known.
The following is a description of the effects I obtained by applying to myself certain methods, the details of which I had partly found in the literature on these subjects, and partly derived from all that has been set forth above.
I do not describe the actual methods I used: first, because it is not the methods but the results that matter and, second, because the description of methods would divert attention from the facts I intend to examine.
I hope some time later to return specially to these "methods".
My task, as I formulated it to myself at the beginning of my experiments, was to elucidate the questions of the relation of subjective magic to objective magic and then of the relation of objective and subjective magic, taken together, to mysticism.
All this took the shape of three questions:
- Can the real existence of objective magic be recognised?
- Does objective magic exist without subjective?
- Does objective magic exist without mysticism?
Difficulties Encountered
The very first experiments showed me the difficulty of the task I had set myself and partly explained to me the failure of many experiments which had been tried by others before me.A change in the state of consciousness as a result of my experiments began to take place very soon, much more quickly and easily than I thought. But the chief difficulty was that the new state of consciousness which was obtained at once gave so much that was new and unexpected, and these new and unexpected experiences came upon me and flashed by so quickly that I could not find words, could not find forms of speech, could not find concepts, which would enable me to remember what had occurred even for myself, still less to convey it to anyone else.
The first new psychic sensation which appeared was a sensation of strange duality in myself. Such sensations occur, for instance, in moments of great danger or, in general, under the stress of strong emotions, when a man does or says something almost automatically and at the same time observes himself. This sensation of duality was the first new psychic sensation which appeared in my experiments, and it usually remained throughout even the strangest and most fantastic experiences. There was always a certain point which observed. Unfortunately, it could not always remember what it had observed.
The changes in psychic states, this "duality of personality" that occurred, and many other things which were connected with it, usually began about twenty minutes after the beginning of the experiment. When this change came I found myself in a world entirely new and entirely unknown to me, which had nothing in common with the world in which we live, still less with the world which we assume to be the continuation of our world in the direction of the unknown.
That was one of the first strange sensations which struck me. Whether or not we confess it to ourselves, we have a certain conception of the unknowable and the unknown or, to be more exact, a certain expectation of it. We expect to see a world of the same kind of phenomena we are accustomed to, or which exists according to the same laws, or has at least something in common with the world we know. We cannot imagine anything new, just as we should not be able to imagine an entirely new animal which does not in any way resemble any of the animals we know.
In this case I saw from the very beginning that all we half-consciously construct with regard to the unknown is completely and utterly wrong. The unknown is unlike anything we can suppose about it. The complete unexpectedness of everything that is met with in these experiences, from great to small, makes it difficult to describe them. First of all, everything is unified, everything is linked together, everything is explained by something else and, in its turn, explains another thing. There is nothing separate, that is, nothing that can be described separately. In order to describe the first impressions, the first sensations, it is necessary to describe all at once. The new world with which one comes into contact has no sides, so that it is impossible to describe first one side and then the other. All of it is visible at every point; but how in fact to describe anything in these conditions is a question I could not answer.
I understood why all descriptions of mystical experiences are so poor, monotonous, and obviously invented. A man becomes lost amidst the infinite number of totally new impressions for the expression of which he has neither words nor forms. When he wishes to express or convey them to somebody else, he involuntarily uses words which in his ordinary language correspond to the greatest, the most powerful, the most unusual, and the most extraordinary, though these words do not in the least correspond to what he sees, learns, or experiences. The fact is that he has no other words. But in most cases the man is not even aware of this substitution because his experiences are preserved in his memory as they actually were for only a few moments. They very soon fade, grow flat, are replaced by the words which were hurriedly and accidentally attached to them to keep them in memory. Very soon nothing remains but these words. This explains why a man who has had mystical experiences expresses and tries to transmit them in forms of images, words, and speech which are best known to him, which he is accustomed to use most often, and which are the most typical and characteristic for him.
In this way it may easily happen that different people describe and convey an entirely identical experience quite differently. A religious man will make use of the usual clichés of his religion. He will speak of the Crucified Jesus, of the Virgin Mary, of the Holy Trinity, and so on. A philosopher will try to render his experiences in the language of the metaphysics to which he is accustomed. For instance he will speak of "categories", or of a "monad", or of "transcendental qualities", or something of that sort. A theosophist will speak of the "astral" world, of luminous bodies, of "Teachers". A spiritualist will speak of the spirits of the dead, of the world beyond. A poet will try to interpret his experiences by re-creating pictures of fairy-tales or ancient myths, or by describing the sensations of love, rapture, ecstasy.
My personal impression was that in the world with which I came into contact, there was nothing resembling any of the descriptions which I had read or heard of before.
One of the first impressions which astonished me was that in this world there was absolutely nothing in any way resembling the theosophical or spiritualistic astral world. I say "astonished", not because I actually believed in this astral world, but because I had probably unconsciously thought about the unknown in forms of the astral world. As a matter of fact, I was at that time to some extent under the influence of theosophical literature — possibly more so than I thought. To put it more correctly, I evidently thought, without formulating it quite clearly, that something must lie behind those perfectly concrete descriptions of the invisible world which are to be found in theosophical books, so that at first it was difficult for me to admit that the whole astral world that was described in such detail by different authors did not exist at all. Later, I found that many other things also did not exist.
I will try to describe in short what I met with in this strange world in which I saw myself.
What I first noticed, simultaneously with the "division of myself into two", was that the relation between the objective and the subjective was broken, entirely altered, and took certain forms incomprehensible to us. But "objective" and "subjective" are only words. I do not wish to hide behind these words, but I wish to describe as exactly as possible what I really felt. For this purpose I must explain what it is that I call "objective" and "subjective". My hand, the pen with which I write, the tables — these are objective phenomena. My thoughts, my mental images, the pictures of my imagination — these are subjective phenomena. For us, the world is divided along these lines when we are in our ordinary state of consciousness and all our ordinary orientation works along the lines of this division. In the new state all this was completely upset. First of all we are accustomed to the constancy of the relation between the subjective and the objective — what is objective is always objective, what is subjective is always subjective. Here I saw that the objective and the subjective could change places. The one could become the other. It is very difficult to explain this. The habitual mistrust of the subjective disappeared; every thought, every feeling, every image, was immediately objectified in real substantial forms which differed in no way from the forms of objective phenomena; and at the same time objective phenomena somehow disappeared, lost all reality, appeared entirely subjective, fictitious, invented, having no real existence.
World of "Mathematical" Relations and "Wordlessness"
This was the first experience. Further, in trying to describe this strange world in which I saw myself, I must say that it resembled more than anything a world of very complicated mathematical relations.Imagine a world in which all relations of quantities, from the simplest to the most complicated, have a form.
Certainly it is easy to say "Imagine such a world".
I understand perfectly well that to "imagine" it is impossible. Yet at the same time what I am saying is the closest approximation to the truth which can be made.
"A world of mathematical relations" — that means a world in which everything is connected, in which nothing exists separately and in which at the same time the relations between things have a real existence apart from the things themselves; or, possibly, "things" do not even exist and only "relations" exist.
I am not deceiving myself, and understand that my descriptions are very poor and will probably not convey what I myself remember. But I remember seeing mathematical laws in operation, and the world as the result of the operation of these laws. Thus the process of the world's creation, when I thought of it, appeared to me under the aspect of the differentiation of some very simple basic principles or basic quantities. This differentiation always proceeded before my eyes in certain forms, sometimes for instance taking the form of a very complicated design developing out of a very simple basic motif which was continually repeated and entered into every combination throughout the design. Thus the whole of the design consisted of nothing but combinations and repetitions of the basic motif and could at any point, so to speak, be resolved into its component elements. Sometimes it was music, which began similarly with some very simple sounds and gradually passed into complicated harmonious combinations expressed in visible forms resembling the design which I have just described, or completely merging into it. The music and the design made a single whole; the one as it were expressed the other.
Throughout the strangest experiences I always felt that nothing of them would remain when I returned to my ordinary state. I understood that in order to remember what I had seen and felt, it had all to be translated into words. But for many things there were no words, while other things passed before me so quickly that I had no time to connect them with any words. Even at the time, in the middle of these experiences, I felt that what I was remembering was only an insignificant part of what had passed through my consciousness. I continually said to myself: "I must at least remember that this is, that this was, and that this is the only reality, while everything else in comparison with it is not real at all."
Solitude and Expansion of Time
I tried my experiments under the most varied conditions and in the most varied surroundings. I gradually became convinced that it was best to be alone. Verification of the experiments, that is, observation by another person, or the recording of the experiences at the very moment they took place, was quite impossible. In any case I never obtained any results in this way.When I tried having someone near me during these experiments, I found that no kind of conversation could be carried on. I began to say something, but between the first and second words of my sentence such an enormous number of ideas occurred to me and passed before me that the two words were so widely separated as to make it impossible to find any connection between them. The third word I usually forgot before it was pronounced, and in trying to recall it I found a million new ideas, but completely forgot where I had begun. I remember for instance the beginning of a sentence: "I said yesterday"...
No sooner had I pronounced the word "I" than a number of ideas began to turn in my head about the meaning of the word in a philosophical, psychological, and every other sense. This was all so important, so new and profound, that when I pronounced the word "said", I could not in the least understand what I meant by it. Tearing myself away with difficulty from the first cycle of thought about "I", I passed to the idea "said", and immediately found in it an infinite content. The idea of speech, the possibility of expressing thoughts in words, the past tense of the verb, each of these ideas produced an explosion of thoughts, conjectures, comparisons, and associations. Thus, when I pronounced the word "yesterday" I was already quite unable to understand why I had said it. But it in its turn immediately dragged me into the depths of the problems of time — of past, present and future — and such possibilities of approach to these problems began to open up before me that my breath was taken away.
It was precisely these attempts at conversation, made in these strange states of consciousness, which gave me the sensation of change in time which is described by almost everyone who has made experiments like mine. This is a feeling of the extraordinary lengthening of time, in which seconds seem to be years or decades.
Nevertheless the usual feeling of time did not disappear; only together with it or within it there appeared as it were another feeling of time, and two moments of ordinary time, like two words of my sentence, could be separated by long periods of another time.
I remember how much I was struck by this sensation the first time I had it. My companion was saying something. Between each sound of his voice, between each movement of his lips, long periods of time passed. When he had finished a short sentence, the meaning of which did not reach me at all, I felt I had lived through so much during that time that we should never be able to understand one another again, that I had gone too far from him. It seemed to me that we were still able to speak and to a certain extent understand one another at the beginning of this sentence, but by the end it had become quite impossible because there were no means of conveying to him all that I had lived through in between.
Attempts at writing gave no results except on two or three occasions when short formulations of my thoughts, written down during the experiment, enabled me afterwards to understand and decipher something out of a series of confused and indefinite recollections. But generally everything ended with the first word. It was very rarely that I went further. Sometimes I succeeded in writing down a sentence, but usually as I was finishing it I did not remember and did not understand what it meant or why I had written it, nor could I remember this afterwards.
Experiential Order
I will try to describe consecutively how my experiments proceeded.I omit the physiological phenomena which preceded the change in my psychic state. I will mention only that the pulsation now quickened, reaching a very high rate, now slowed down.
In this connection I several times observed a very interesting phenomenon.
In the ordinary state, intentional slowing down or acceleration of the breathing equally accelerated beating of the heart. But in this case, entirely without intention on my part, there was established between the breathing and the beating of the heart a connection which ordinarily does not exist: namely, by accelerating the breathing I slowed down the beating of the heart. I felt that behind this new capacity lay very great possibilities. I therefore tried not to interfere with the work of the organism but to let things follow their natural course.
Left to itself, the pulsation was intensified and was gradually felt in various parts of the body simultaneously, and after that continued as one beat.
This synchronised pulsation went on quickening, and suddenly a shock was felt through the whole body as though a spring clicked, and at the same instant something opened in me. Everything suddenly changed; there began something strange, new, entirely unlike anything that occurs in life. This I call the first threshold.
There was in this new state a great deal that was incomprehensible and unexpected, chiefly in the sense of still greater confusion of objective and subjective; and there were also other new phenomena of which I will now speak. But this state was not yet complete. It should more properly be called the transitional state. In many cases me experiments did not take me further than this state. Sometimes, however, it happened that this state deepened and widened as though I was gradually plunged in light. After that there came a moment of yet another transition, again a kind of shock throughout the body. Only after this began the most interesting state which I attained in my experiments.
The "transitional state" contained almost all the elements of this state, but at the same time it lacked something most important and essential. The "transitional state" did not differ much in its essence from dreams, especially from dreams in the "half-dream state", though it had its own very characteristic forms. Had I not been able to adopt a sufficiently critical attitude, based chiefly on my earlier experiments in the study of dreams, the "transitional state" might perhaps have taken me in by a certain sensation of the miraculous that was connected with it.
In the "transitional state" which, as I learned very soon, was entirely subjective, I usually began almost at once to hear "voices", These "voices" were a characteristic feature of the "transitional state".
The voices spoke to me and often said very strange things which seemed to have a quality of trick in them. Sometimes, in the first moments, I was excited by what I heard in this way, particularly as it answered certain vague and unformulated expectations that I had. Sometimes I heard music which evoked in me very varied and powerful emotions.
But, strangely enough, I felt from the first day a distrust of these states. They contained too many promises, too many things I wanted to have. The voices spoke about every possible kind of thing. They warned me. They proved and explained to me everything in the world, but somehow they did it too simply. I began to ask myself whether I might not myself have invented all that they said, whether it might not be my own imagination — that unconscious imagination that creates our dreams, in which we can see people, talk to them, hear their voices, receive advice from them, etc. After thinking in this way I had to say to myself that the voices told me nothing that I could not have thought myself.
At the same time what came in this way was often very similar to the "communications" received at mediumistic séances or by means of automatic writing. The voices often gave themselves different names, said various flattering things to me and undertook to answer all kinds of questions. I sometimes had long conversations with these voices.
I once asked a question referring to alchemy. I cannot now remember the exact question, but I think it was something either about the different denominations of the four elements, fire, water, air, and earth, or about the relation of the four elements to one another. I put the question in connection with what I was reading at the time.
In reply to this question, a voice which called itself by a well-known name told me that the answer to my question would be found in a certain book. When I said that I did not have this book, the voice told me that I should find it in the Public Library (this happened in St Petersburg) and advised me to read the book very carefully.
I enquired at the Public Library, but the book (published in English) was not there. There was only a German translation of it in twenty parts, the first three being missing.
But soon I obtained the book somewhere else and actually found there certain hints which were very closely connected with my question, though they did not give a complete answer to it.
This instance, and a number of others like it, showed me that in these transitional states I went though the same experiences as do mediums, clairvoyants, and the like. One voice told me something very interesting about the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, something that I thought I did not know before or, if I had ever read it anywhere, had entirely forgotten. Among other things, in describing the temple, the voice said that there were swarms of flies there. Logically this was quite comprehensible and even inevitable. In a temple where sacrifices were made, where animals were killed, and where there was certainly a great deal of blood and every kind of filth, there must undoubtedly have been many flies. At the same time this sounded new and, so far as I remember, I had never read of flies in connection with ancient temples. But not long before that I had been in the East myself and knew what quantities of flies there can be there even under ordinary conditions.
These descriptions of Solomon's Temple, and particularly the "flies", gave me a complete explanation of many strange things which I had come across in my reading and which I could call neither deliberate falsification nor real clairvoyance. Thus the "clairvoyance" of Leadbeater and Dr Steiner, all the "Akashic records", the descriptions of what happened tens of thousands of years ago in mythical Atlantis or in other prehistoric countries, were undoubtedly of the same nature as the flies in Solomon's Temple. The only difference was that I did not believe in my experiences, while the "Akashic records" were and are believed by both their authors and their readers.
It very soon became evident to me that neither in these nor in the other experiences was there anything real. It was all reflected; it all came from the memory, from the imagination. As soon as I passed to something familiar and concrete which could be verified, the voices became silent.
This explained to me why it is that authors who describe Atlantis are unable with the aid of their "clairvoyance" to solve any practical problems relating to the present which are always so easy to find but which, for some reason, they always avoid touching on. Why do they know everything that happened thirty thousand years ago and do not know what is happening at the time of their experiments but in another place?
During all these experiments I felt that if I were to believe these voices I should come to a standstill and go no further. This frightened me. I felt that it was all self-deception; that however inviting all that was said and promised by the voices might be, it would all lead nowhere, but would leave me exactly where I was. I understood that it was precisely this that was "beauty" i.e., that it all came from the imagination.
I decided to struggle with these transitional states, adopting towards them a very critical attitude and rejecting as unworthy of credence all that I might have imagined myself. This immediately began to give results. As soon as I began to reject everything I heard, realising it to be the same "stuff as dreams are made of", and firmly discarded it for some time, refusing to listen to anything or pay attention to anything, my state and my experiences changed.
Beyond the Second Threshold
I passed the second threshold, which I have already mentioned, beyond which a new world began. The "voices" disappeared; in their place there sounded sometimes one voice which could always be recognised whatever forms it might take. At the same time this new state differed from the transitional state by its extraordinary lucidity of consciousness. I then found myself in the world of mathematical relations, in which there was nothing at all resembling what occurs in life.In this state also, after passing the second threshold and finding myself in the "world of mathematical relations", I obtained answers to all my questions, but the answers often took a very strange form. In order to understand them it must be realised that the world of mathematical relations in which I was did not remain immovable; this means that nothing in it remained as it was the moment before. Everything moved, changed, was transformed, and became something else. Sometimes I suddenly saw all mathematical relations disappear one after another into infinity. Infinity swallowed everything, filled everything; all distinctions were effaced. I felt that one moment more and I myself should disappear into infinity. I was overcome with terror at the imminence of this abyss. Sometimes this terror made me jump to my feet, move about, in order to drive away the nightmare which had seized me. Then I felt that I had again fallen into the snare of "beauty", that is, of a wrong approach. Infinity attracted me and at the same time frightened and repelled me. I also came to understand it quite differently. Infinity was not infinite continuation in one direction, but infinite variation at one point. I understood that the terror of infinity results from a wrong approach to it, from a wrong attitude to it. I understood that with a right approach to it, infinity is precisely what explains everything, and that nothing can be explained without it.
At the same time I felt that in infinity there was a real menace and a real danger.
To describe consecutively the course of my experiments, the course of the ideas that came to me, and the course of fleeting thoughts, is quite impossible — mainly because no one experiment was ever like another. Each time, I learned something new about the same thing in such a way as fundamentally to alter all I had learned about it before.
A characteristic feature of the world in which I found myself was, as I have said, its mathematical structure and the complete absence of anything that could be expressed in the language of ordinary concepts. To use the theosophical terminology, I was in the mental world "Arupa", but the peculiarity of my observations was that only this world "Arupa" really existed. All the rest was the creation of imagination. The real world was a "world without forms". It is an interesting fact that in my first experiment I found myself probably at once or almost at once in this world, escaping the "world of illusions". But in subsequent experiments "voices" seemed to try to detain me in the imaginary world, and I was able to get out of it only when I struggled firmly and resolutely with the illusions as they arose. All this strongly reminded me of something I had read before. It seemed to me that, in existing literature, in the descriptions of magical experiments or in the descriptions of initiations and preceding tests, there was something very similar to what I had experienced and felt — but of course this does not refer to modern "séances" or even to attempts at ceremonial magic, which is complete immersion into the world of illusion.
An interesting phenomenon in my experiments was the consciousness of danger which threatened me from infinity and the constant warnings received from somebody, as though there was somebody who watched me all the time and often tried to persuade me to stop my experiments, not to attempt to go along this path, which was wrong and unlawful from the point of view of certain principles which I at that time felt and understood only dimly.
What I have called "mathematical relations" were continually changing round me and within me, sometimes taking the form of sounds, of music, sometimes the form of a design, sometimes the form of light filling the whole of space, of a kind of visible vibration of light rays, crossing, interweaving with one another, pervading everything. In this connection there was an unmistakable feeling that through these sounds, through the design, through the light, I was learning something I had not known before. But to convey what I learned, to tell about it or put it into writing, was very difficult. The difficulty of explaining was increased by the fact that words express badly, and really cannot express, the essence of the intense emotional state I was in during these experiments.
This emotional state was perhaps the most vivid characteristic of the experiences which I am describing. Without it there would have been nothing. Everything came through it, that is, everything was understood through it. In order to understand my experiences it must be realised that I was not at all indifferent to the sounds and the light mentioned above. I took in everything through feeling, and experienced emotions which never exist in life. The new knowledge that came to me came when I was in an exceedingly intense emotional state. My attitude towards this new knowledge was in no way indifferent; I either loved it or was horrified by it, strove towards it or was amazed by it; and it was these very emotions, with a thousand others, which gave me the possibility of understanding the nature of the new world I came to know.
The number "three" played a very important part in the world in which I found myself. In a way quite incomprehensible to our mathematics it entered into all the relations of magnitudes, created them, and originated from them. All taken together, that is, the entire Universe, sometimes appeared in the form of a "triad", composing one whole, and looking like some great trefoil. Each part of the "triad" was by some inner process again transformed into a "triad", and this process continued until all was filled with "triads" which were transformed into music, or light, or designs. Once again I must say that all these descriptions express very badly what occurred, as they do not give the emotional element of joy, wonder, rapture, horror, continually changing one into the other.
"Walking" Experiences
As I have already said, the experiments were most successful when I was by myself and lying down. Sometimes, however, I tried being among people or walking in the streets. These experiments were usually unsuccessful. Something began, but ended almost at once, passing into a heavy physical state. But sometimes I found myself in another world, while I was actually in the ordinary world of things and events. On such occasions the whole of the ordinary world changed. Everything became different, but it is absolutely impossible to describe what it became. The first thing that can be said is that there was nothing which remained indifferent for me. All taken together and each thing separately affected me in one way or another. In other words, I took everything emotionally, reacted to everything emotionally. Further, in this new world which surrounded me there was nothing separate, nothing that did not have connection with other things or with me personally. All things were connected with one another, and not accidentally, but by incomprehensible chains of causes and effects. All things were dependent on one another, all things lived in one another. Further, in this world there was nothing dead, nothing inanimate, nothing that did not think, nothing that did not feel, nothing unconscious. Everything was living, everything was conscious of itself. Everything spoke to me and I could speak to everything. Particularly interesting were the houses and other buildings which I passed, especially the old houses. They were living beings, full of thoughts, feelings, moods, and memories. The people who lived in them were their thoughts, feelings, moods. I mean that the people in relation to the "houses" played approximately the same rôle in which the different "I"s of our personality play in relation to us. They come and go, sometimes live in us for a long time, sometimes appear only for short moments.I remember once being struck by the head, the face, of an ordinary cab-horse in the Nevsky. Looking at the horse's face I understood all that could be understood about a horse. All the traits of horse-nature, all of which a horse is capable, all of which it is incapable, all that it can do, all that it cannot do; all this was expressed in the lines and features of the horse's face. A dog once gave me a similar sensation. At the same time the horse and the dog were not simply horse and dog; they were "atoms" — conscious, moving "atoms" of great beings — "the great horse" and "the great dog". I understood then that we also are atoms of a great being, "the great man". Each thing is an atom of "a great thing". A glass is an atom of a "great glass". A fork is an atom of a "great fork".
This idea and several other thoughts that remained in my memory from my experiences entered into my book Tertium Organum, which was actually written during these experiments. Thus the formulations of the laws of the noumenal world and several other ideas referring to higher dimensions were taken from what I learned during these experiments.
In Quest
I sometimes felt during these experiments that I understood many things particularly clearly and I felt that if I could in some way preserve what I understood at this moment, then I should know how to make myself pass into this state at any moment I might want it; I should know how to fix this state and how to make use of it.The question as to how to fix this state arose continually and I had put it to myself many times when I was in the state in which I could receive answers to my questions; but I could never get a direct answer, that is, the answer I wanted. The answer usually began far away and, gradually widening, included everything, so that finally the answer to the question included the answers to all possible questions. For that reason, I naturally could not retain it in my memory.
Once, I remember, in a particularly vividly-expressed new state, that is, when I understood very clearly all I wished to understand, I decided to find some formula, some key, which I should be able, so to speak, to throw across to myself for the next day. I decided to sum up shortly all I understood at that moment and write down, if possible in one sentence, what it was necessary to do in order to bring myself into the same state immediately, by one turn of thought without any preliminary preparation, since this appeared possible to me all the time. I found this formula and wrote it down with a pencil on a piece of paper.
On the following day I read the sentence, "Think in other categories". These were the words, but what was their meaning? Where was everything I had associated with these words when I wrote them? It had all disappeared, had vanished like a dream. Certainly the sentence "think in other categories" had a meaning; only I could not recollect it, could not reach it.
Later on, exactly the same thing happened with this sentence as had happened with many other words and fragments of ideas that had remained in memory after my experiences. In the beginning, these sentences seemed to be entirely empty. I even laughed at them, finding in them complete proof of the impossibility of transferring anything from there to here. But gradually something began to revive in my memory, and in the course of two or three weeks I remembered more and more of what was connected with these words. Though all of it still remained very vague, as if seen from afar, I began to see meaning, that is, special meaning, in words which in the beginning seemed merely abstract designations of something without any practical significance.
The same process was repeated almost every time. On the day after the experiment I remembered very little. Sometimes towards evening, some vague memories began to return. Next day I could remember more; during the following two or three weeks I was able to recollect separate details of the experiences, though I was always perfectly aware that in general only an infinitesimal part was remembered. When I tried to make experiments more often than every two or three weeks, I spoiled the results, that is, everything was confused, I could remember nothing.
Self
But I will continue the description of successful experiments. Many times, perhaps always, I had the feeling that when I passed the second threshold, I came into contact with myself, with the self which was always within me, which always saw me and always told me something that I could not understand and could not even hear in ordinary states of consciousness.Why can I not understand?
I answered — Merely because in the ordinary state thousands of voices sound in me at once and create what we call our "consciousness", our feeling, our moods, our thought, our imagination. These voices drown the sound of that inner voice. My experiments added nothing to the ordinary "consciousness"; they reduced it, yet by reducing it they intensified it to an incomprehensible degree. What did they actually do? They compelled these other voices to keep silence, put them to sleep, or made them inaudible. Then I began to hear the other voice, which came as it were from above, from a certain point above my head. I understood then that the whole problem and the whole object consisted in being able to hear this voice constantly, in being in constant communication with it. The being to whom this voice belonged knew everything, understood everything, and above all was free from thousands of small and distracting "personal" thoughts and moods. He could take everything calmly, could take everything objectively, as it was in reality. At the same time, this was I. How this could be so and why in the ordinary sense I was so far from myself if this was I — that I could not explain. Sometimes during the experiments I called my ordinary self "I" and the other one "he". Sometimes, on the contrary, the ordinary self I called "he" and the other one, "I". But I shall return later to the problem of "I" in general and the realisation of "I" in the new state of consciousness, because all this was much more complicated than the mere superseding of one "I" by the other.
At present I want to try to describe, so far as it has been preserved in my memory, how this "he" or this "I" looked at things as distinct from an ordinary "I".
Infinite Objectivity
I remember once sitting on a sofa and looking at an ash-tray. Suddenly I felt that I was beginning to understand what the ash-tray was and at the same time, with a certain wonder and almost with fear, I felt that I had never understood it before and that we do not understand the simplest things around us.The ash-tray roused a whirlwind of thoughts and images. It contained such an infinite number of facts, or events; it was linked with such an immense number of things — first of all, with everything connected with smoking and tobacco. This at once roused thousands of images, pictures, memories. Then the ash-tray itself: how had it come into being? Of what materials could it have been made? This being a copper ash-tray, what was copper? How had people discovered copper for the first time? How had they learned to make use of it? How and where was the copper obtained which made up this ash-tray? Through what kind of treatment had it passed, how had it been transported from place to place, how many people had worked on it or in connection with it. How had the copper been transformed into an ash-tray? These and other questions about the history of the ash-tray up to the day when it had appeared on my table ran through my mind.
I remember writing a few words on a piece of paper in order to retain something of these thoughts on the following day. Next day I read: "A man can go mad from one ash-tray".
The meaning of all that I felt was that in one ash-tray it was possible to know all. By invisible threads the ash-tray was connected with everything in the world — not only with the present but with all the past and with all the future. To know an ash-tray meant to know all.
My description does not in the least express the sensation as it actually was, because the first and principal impression was that the ash-tray was alive, that it thought, understood, and told me all about itself. All I learned I learned from the ash-tray itself. The second impression was the extraordinarily emotional character of all connected with what I had learned about the ash-tray.
"Everything is alive", I said to myself in the midst of these observations; "there is nothing dead; it is only we who are dead. If we become alive for a moment, we shall feel that everything is alive, that all things live, think, feel, and can speak to us."
The case of the ash-tray reminds me of another instance in which the answer to my question came in the form of a visual image, very characteristic in its structure.
Once when I was in the state into which my experiments brought me, I asked myself, "What is the world?"
Immediately, I saw a semblance of some big flower, like a rose or a lotus, the petals of which were continually unfolding from the middle, growing, increasing in size, reaching the outside of the flower, and then in some way returning again to the middle and starting again at the beginning. Words in no way express it. In this flower there was an incredible quantity of light, movement, colour, music, emotion, agitation, knowledge, intelligence, mathematics, and continuous unceasing growth. While I was looking at this flower someone seemed to explain to me that this was the "World" or "Brahma" in its clearest aspect and in the nearest possible approximation to what it is in reality — "If the approximation were made still nearer, it would be Brahma himself, as he is", said the voice.
These last words seemed to contain a kind of warning, as though Brahma in his real aspect was dangerous and could swallow up and annihilate me. This again was "infinity".
This incident and the symbol of Brahma or "the world", which remained in my memory, greatly interested me because it explained to me the origin of other symbols and allegorical images. I thought later that I understood the principle of the formation of the different attributes of gods and the meaning of many myths.
Telepathic Communication
Moreover, this incident brings me to another very important feature of my experiments, namely to the method by which ideas were communicated to me in these strange states after the second threshold.As I have said, ideas were transmitted not in words but in sounds, forms, "designs", or symbols. Usually, everything began with the appearance of these forms. As was mentioned before, "voices" were the characteristic feature of the transitional state. When they ceased they were replaced by these forms, i.e., sounds, "designs", etc.; and after these followed visual images possessing very special properties and demanding detailed explanation. Brahma seen as a flower might serve as an example of these visual images, though ordinarily they were much simpler, sometimes in the nature of conventional signs or hieroglyphs.
These signs constituted the form of speech or thought, or of what corresponded to speech or thought, in the state of consciousness which I attained. Signs or hieroglyphs moved and changed before me with dizzy rapidity, expressing in this way transitions, changes, combinations, and correlations of ideas. Only this manner of "speech" was sufficiently quick for the quickness of thought which was here arrived at. No other forms were quick enough. These moving signs of things indicated the beginning of new thinking, a new state of consciousness. Thinking in words became quite impossible. As I have already said, between two words of the same sentence long periods of time passed. Thinking in words could never keep pace with thought as it worked in this state.
"Signatures"
It is curious that a number of references to these "signatures of things" can be found in mystical literature. I use the name which was given to them by Jacob Boehme. I do not doubt that Boehme spoke of exactly the same signs that I saw. For myself I call them "Symbols". By their outer form it would be more correct to call them moving hieroglyphs. I tried to draw some of them and, though I sometimes succeeded in it, on the following day it was difficult to connect the figures obtained with any ideas. Once, however, I obtained something very interesting.I drew a figure like this:
The number of lateral projections is immaterial, but the important point is that they are disposed at unequal distances from one another along the horizontal line.
I obtained the figure in the following way.
In connection with certain facts in the lives of people whom I knew, which happened to come into my mind, I asked myself the rather complicated question as to how the fate of one man might influence the fate of another man. I cannot now reconstruct my question exactly, but I remember that it was connected with the idea of the laws of cause and effect, of free choice or accident. While still continuing to think in an ordinary way, I imagined the life of a man I knew and the accident in his life through which he had come across other people whose lives he had most decisively influenced, and who in their turn had changed many things in his own life. Thinking in this way I suddenly noticed, or caught myself seeing, all these inter-crossing lives in the form of simple signs, namely in the form of short lines with small projections on one side. The number of these projections diminished or increased; they either approached one another or separated. In their appearance, in their approach or separation, and also in the combination of different lines with different projections, were expressed the ideas and laws governing men's lives.
I will return later to the meaning of the symbol. At present I wish only to explain the actual method of obtaining new ideas in the state of consciousness described.
A separate part of my experiences constituted what I would call my relation to myself or, more correctly, to my body. It all became alive, became thinking and conscious. I could speak to any part of my body as if it was a separate being, and could learn from it what attracted it, what it liked, what it disliked, what it was afraid of, what it lived by, what were its interests and needs. These conversations with the consciousnesses of the physical body revealed a whole new world.
I have tried to describe some of the results of these impressions in Tertium Organumin speaking of consciousnesses not parallel to our own.
These consciousnesses, which I now call the consciousnesses of the physical body, had very little in common with our consciousness which objectivises the external world and distinguishes "I" from "not-I"; "not-I" did not exist for them. They could think only of themselves — they could speak only of themselves. But, as against that, they knew everything about themselves that could be known. I then understood that their nature and the form of their existence consisted in their continually speaking of themselves — what they were, what they needed, what they wished, what was pleasant for them, what was unpleasant, what dangers threatened them, what could ward off or remove these dangers.
In the ordinary state we do not hear these voices separately; only the noise generated by them or their general tone is felt by us as our physical state or mood.
I have no doubt that if we could consciously enter into communication with these "beings" we should be able to learn from them all the details of the state of every function of our organism. The first idea that comes to mind in this connection is that this would be particularly useful, in the case of diseases and functional disorders, for right diagnosis, for the prevention of possible illnesses, and for the treatment of those already existing. If a method could be found for entering into communication with these consciousnesses and for receiving from them information as to the state and demands of the organism, medicine would stand on firm ground.
Practical Experiments
In continuing my experiments I tried all the time to find a means of passing from abstract to concrete facts. I wanted to find out whether there was not a possibility of strengthening the ordinary powers of perception or of discovering new powers, especially with regard to events in time, to the past or future. I definitely put to myself the question whether the power can exist of seeing without the aid of eyes, or at a great distance, or through a wall, or of seeing things in closed receptacles, reading letters in sealed envelopes, reading a book on a shelf between other books, and so on. It had never been clear to me whether such things were possible. On the contrary, I knew that all attempts at verification of the phenomena of clairvoyance, which are sometimes described, invariably ended in failure.During my experiments I many times attempted to "see", for instance, when I was myself in the house, what was happening in the street, which I could not see in the natural way, or to "see" some man or other whom I knew well, what he was doing at that moment; or to reconstruct fully scenes from the past of which I knew only some parts.
Then, I sealed some old photographs from an album into envelopes of the same size, mixed them up, and tried to "see" whose portrait I held in my hand. I tried the same thing with playing-cards.
When I became convinced that I was not succeeding, I tried to reconstruct as a clear visual image what was undoubtedly in my memory though in the ordinary state I could not visualise it at will. For instance, I tried to "see" the Nevsky, beginning from Znamensky Square, with all the houses and shop-signs in their order. But this also was never successful when done intentionally. Unintentionally and in various circumstances I more than once saw myself walking along the Nevsky, and then I "saw" both the houses and the signs exactly as they would be in reality.
Finally I had to recognise as unsuccessful all attempts to pass to concrete facts. Either it is quite impossible, or else I attempted it in the wrong way.
But there were two cases which showed that there is a possibility of a very great strengthening of our capacities of perception in relation to the ordinary events of life.
Once I obtained, not exactly clairvoyance but undoubtedly a very great strengthening of the capacity of vision. It was in Moscow, in the street, half an hour after the experiment which had seemed to me to be entirely unsuccessful. For a few seconds my vision suddenly became extraordinarily acute. I could quite clearly see the faces of people at a distance at which one would normally have difficulty in distinguishing one figure from another.
Another instance occurred during the second winter of my experiments in St Petersburg. Circumstances were such that the whole of that winter I was unable to go to Moscow, although at the time I very much wanted to go there in connection with several different matters. Finally I remember that about the middle of February I definitely decided that I would go to Moscow for Easter. Soon after this I again began my experiments. Once, quite accidentally, when I was in the state in which moving signs of hieroglyphs were beginning to appear, I had a thought about Moscow, or about someone whom I had to see there at Easter. Suddenly, without any warning, I received the comment that I should not go to Moscow at Easter. Why? In answer to this I saw how, starting from the day of the experiment I have described, events began to develop in a definite order and sequence. Nothing new happened. But the causes, which I could see quite well and which were all there on the day of my experiment, were evolving, and having come to the results which unavoidably followed from them, they formed just before Easter a whole series of difficulties which in the end prevented my going to Moscow. The fact in itself, as I looked at it, had a merely curious character, but the interesting side of it was that I saw what looked like a possibility of calculating the future — the whole future was contained in the present. I saw that all that had happened before Easter resulted directly from what had already existed two months earlier.
Then in my experiment I probably passed on to other thoughts, and on the following day I remembered only the bare result, that "somebody" had told me I should not go to Moscow at Easter. Then I forgot all about my experiment. It came to my memory again only a week before Easter, when suddenly a whole succession of small circumstances brought it about that I did not go to Moscow. The circumstances were precisely those which I had "seen" during my experiment, and they quite definitely resulted from what had existed two months before that. Nothing new had happened.
When everything fell out exactly as I had seen, or foreseen, in that strange state, I remembered my experiment, remembered all the details, remembered that I saw and knew then what had to happen.
In this incident I undoubtedly came into contact with the possibility of a different vision in the world of things and events. But, speaking generally, all the questions which I asked myself referring to real life or to concrete knowledge led to nothing.
"New" Thought
I think that this is connected with a principle which became clear to me during my experiments.In ordinary life we think by thesis and antithesis; always and everywhere there is "yes" or "no", "no" or "yes". In thinking differently, in thinking in a new way, in thinking by means of signs of things, I came to understand the fundamental errors of our mental process.
In reality, everywhere and in every case, there were not two but three elements. There were no only "yes" and "no", but "yes", "no", and something else besides. It was precisely the nature of this "third" element, inaccessible to the understanding, which made all ordinary reasonings unsuitable and demanded a change in the basic method. I saw that the solution to all problems always came from a third, unknown, element, that is to say, came from a third and unknown side, and that without this third element it was impossible to arrive at a right solution.
Further, when I asked a question I very often began to see that the question itself was wrongly put. Instead of giving an immediate answer to my question, the "consciousness" to which I was speaking began to move my question around and turn it about, showing me that it was wrong. I gradually began to see what was wrong. As soon as I understood clearly what was wrong in my question, I saw the answer. But the answer always included a third element which I could not see before, because my question was always built upon two elements only — thesis and antithesis.
I formulated this for myself in the following way: that the whole difficulty lay in the putting of the question. If we could put questions rightly, we should know the answers. A question rightly put contains the answer in itself. But the answer will be quite unlike what we expect; it will always be on another plane, on a plane not included in the ordinary question.
In several cases in which I attempted to think with certain ready-made words or with ready-made ideas, I experienced a strange sensation like a physical shock. Complete emptiness opened out before me because, in the real world with which I had come into contact, there was nothing corresponding to these words or ideas. The sensation was very curious — the sensation of unexpected emptiness where I had counted upon finding something which, if not solid and definite, would be at least existent.
I have already said that I found nothing corresponding to the theosophical "astral bodies", or "astral World"; nothing corresponding to "reincarnation"; nothing corresponding to the "future life" in the ordinary sense of the word, that is, to one or another form of existence of the souls of the dead. All this had no meaning; not only did it not express any truth, but it did not directly contradict truth. When I tried to introduce into my thoughts the question connected with these ideas, there were no replies to them; words remained only words and could not be expressed by any hieroglyphs.
The same thing happened with many other ideas, for example with the idea of evolution as it is understood in "scientific" thinking. It did not fit in anywhere and did not mean anything at all. There was no place for it in the world of realities.
I realised that I felt which ideas were alive and which were dead; dead ideas were not expressed in hieroglyphs: they remained words. I found an enormous number of such ideas in the general usage of thought. Besides the ideas already mentioned, all so-called "social theories" belonged to the dead ideas. They simply did not exist. There were words behind which lay no reality; similarly the idea of "justice", as it is ordinarily understood in the sense of "compensation" or "retribution", was utterly dead. One thing could never compensate for another; one act of violence could never destroy the results of another act of violence. At the same time the idea of justice in the sense of "desire for the general good" was also dead. Speaking generally, there was some great misunderstanding in this idea. The idea assumed that a thing could exist by itself and be "unjust", that is, contradict a certain law; but in the real world everything was one, and there were no two things that could contradict each other. Therefore, there was nothing that could be called justice or injustice. The only difference that existed was between dead and living things. But this distinction was exactly what we did not understand, and though we strove to express the same idea in our language, we hardly succeeded in doing so.
All these are only examples. In fact almost all the usual ideas and concepts by which people live proved to be non-existent.
With great amazement I became convinced that only a very small number of ideas correspond to real facts, that is, actually exist. We live in an entirely unreal, fictitious world; we argue about non-existent ideas; we pursue non-existent aims; we invent everything — even ourselves.
But as opposed to dead ideas which did not exist anywhere, there were on the other hand living ideas incessantly recurring always and everywhere and constantly present in everything I thought, learned, and understood at that time.
First there was the idea of the triad, of which I have already spoken and which entered into everything. Then a very important place was occupied and must was explained by the idea of the four elements, fire, water, air, and earth. This was a real idea, and during the experiments, in the new state of consciousness, I understood how it entered into everything and was connected with everything. But in the ordinary state the significance of these two ideas eluded me.
Further, there was the idea of cause and effect. As I have already mentioned, this idea was expressed in hieroglyphs in a very definite way. But it was in no way connected with the idea of "reincarnation", and referred entirely to ordinary earthly life.
A very great place — perhaps the chief place — in all that I had learned was occupied by the idea of "I". That is to say, the feeling or sensation of "I" in some strange way changed within me. It is very difficult to express this in words. Ordinarily we do not sufficiently understand that at different moments of our life we feel our "I" differently. In this case, as in many others, I was helped by my earlier experiments and observations in dreams. I knew that in sleep "I" is felt differently, not as it is felt in a waking state; just as differently, but in quite another way, "I" was felt in these experiences. The nearest possible approximation would be if I were to say that everything which is ordinarily felt as "I" became "not-I", and everything which is felt as "not-I" became "I". But this is far from being an exact statement of what I felt and learned. I think that an exact statement is impossible. It is necessary only to note that the new sensation of "I" during the first experiments, so far as I can remember it, was a very terrifying sensation. I felt that I was disappearing, vanishing, turning into nothing. This was the same terror of infinity of which I have already spoken, but it was reversed: in one case it was All that swallowed me up, in the other case it was Nothing. But this made no difference, because All was equivalent to Nothing.
But it is remarkable that later, in subsequent experiments, the same sensation of the disappearance of "I" began to produce in me a feeling of extraordinary calmness and confidence which nothing in our ordinary sensations can equal. I seemed to understand at that time that all the usual troubles, cares, and anxieties are connected with the usual sensation of "I", result from it, and at the same time constitute and sustain it. Therefore, when "I" disappeared, all troubles, cares, and anxieties disappeared. When I felt that I did not exist, everything else became very simple and easy. At these moments I even regarded it as strange that we could take upon ourselves so terrible a responsibility as to bring "I" into everything and start from "I" in everything. In the idea of "I", in the sensation of "I", such as we ordinarily have, there was something almost abnormal, a kind of fantastic conceit which bordered on blasphemy, as if each one of us called himself God. I felt then that only God could call himself "I", that only God was "I". But we also call ourselves "I", and do not see and do not notice the irony of it all.
As I have said, the strange experiences connected with my experiments began with the change in the sensation of "I", and it is difficult to imagine that they would be possible in the case of retention of the ordinary sensation of "I". This change constituted their very essence, and everything else that I felt and learned depended upon it.
New Forms of Cognition
With regard to what I learned during my experiments, with regard to the increase of the possibility of cognition, I came to know much that was strange and that did not enter into any theories that I had known before.The consciousness which communicated with me by means of moving hieroglyphs attached the greatest importance to this question and strove to impress on my mind, perhaps more than anything else, all that related to this question, that is, to the methods of cognition.
I mean that the hieroglyphs explained to me that besides the ordinary cognition based on the evidence of the sense organs, on calculation, and on logical thinking, there exist three other different cognitions, which differ from one another and from the ordinary cognition, not in degree, not in form, not in quality, but in their very nature, as phenomena of utterly different orders which cannot be measured by the same measure. In our language, where we recognise their existence, we call these three phenomena together "intensified" cognition, that is, we admit their difference from the ordinary cognition, but do not understand their difference from one another. This, according to the hieroglyphs, is the chief factor in preventing us from rightly understanding our relation to the world.
Before attempting to define the "three kinds of cognition" I must remark that the communication about the forms of cognition always began from some question of mine which had no definite relation to the problems of cognition, but evidently contradicted in some way laws of cognition that were unknown to us. For example, this nearly always happened when from the domain of abstract questions I tried to pass to concrete phenomena, asking questions referring to living people or real things, or to myself in the past, present, or future.
In those cases I received the answer that what I wished to know could be known in three ways or that, speaking generally, there were three ways of cognition, apart of course from the ordinary way of cognition with the help of the sense-organs, calculation, and logical reasoning, which did not enter into the question, and the limits of which were assumed to be known.
Further, there usually followed a description of the characteristics and properties of each way.
It was as though someone anxious to give me right ideas of things found it particularly important that I should understand this rightly.
I will try to set forth as exactly as possible all that refers to this question, but I doubt whether I shall succeed in fully expressing what I understand myself.
The first cognition is learning in an unusual way, as though through inner vision, anything relating to things and events with which I am directly connected and in which I am directly and personally interested. For instance, if I learn something which must happen in the near future to me or to someone closely connected with me, and if I learn it not in the ordinary way but through inner vision, this would be cognition of that kind. If I learn that a steamer on which I have to sail will be wrecked, or if I learn that on a definite day serious danger will threaten one of my friends, and if I learn that by taking such and such a step I can avert the danger — this will be cognition of the first kind or the first cognition. Personal interest constitutes a necessary condition of this cognition. Personal interest connects a man in a certain way with things and events and enable him to occupy in relation to them a definite "position of cognition". Personal interest, i.e., the presence of the person interested, is an almost necessary condition of "fortune-telling", "clairvoyance", "prediction of the future"; without personal interest, these are almost impossible.
The second cognition is also cognition of ordinary things and events in our life, for knowing which we have no ordinary means — just as in the first case — but with which nothing connects us personally. If I learn that a steamer will be wrecked, in the fate of which I am nor personally interested at all, on which neither I nor any of my friends is sailing; if I learn what is happening in my neighbour's house, but which has no relation to myself; if I learn for certain who actually were the persons who are considered historical enigmas, like the Man in the Iron Mask or Dmitry the Pretender or the Comte de Saint-Germain; or if I learn that somebody's future or past, again having no relation to myself, this will be the second kind of cognition. The second kind of cognition is the most difficult, and is almost impossible because if a man, accidentally or with the aid of special means or methods, learned more than other people can know, he would certainly do so in the first way.
The second kind of cognition contains something unlawful. It is "magic" in the full sense of the word. The first and third ways of cognition appear simple and natural in comparison with it, though the first way, based on emotional apprehension, presentiment, or desire of some kind, looks like a psychological trick; and the third way appears as a continuation of ordinary cognition, but along new lines and on new principles.
The third cognition is cognition based on knowledge of the mechanism of everything existing. By knowing all the mechanism and by knowing all the relations of the separate parts, it is easy to arrive at the smallest detail and determine with absolute precision everything connected with this detail. The third cognition is cognition based on calculation. Everything can be calculated. If the mechanism of everything were known it were possible to calculate what kind of weather there will be in a month's or a year's time; it would be possible to calculate the day and hour of every occurrence. It would be possible to calculate the meaning and significance of every small event that is observed. The difficulty of the third order of cognition consists first in the necessity of knowing the whole mechanism for the cognition of the smallest thing, and second, in the necessity for putting into motion the whole colossal machine of knowledge in order to know something quite small and insignificant.
This is roughly what I "learned" or "understood" in reference to the three kinds of cognition. I see quite clearly that in this description the idea is inadequately conveyed; many things, probably the most important, escaped my memory long ago. This is true not only in relation to the question of cognition but, generally, in relation to all that I have written here about my experiments. All these descriptions must be taken very cautiously, on the understanding that ninety per cent of what was felt in the experiments is lost in the description.
The Dead
A very strange place in my experiments was occupied by attempts to know something concerning the dead. Questions of this kind usually remained without an answer, and I was vaguely aware that there was some essential fault in the questions themselves. But I once received a very clear answer to my question. Moreover, this answer was associated with another case of unusual sensation of death, which I experienced about ten years before the experiments described, and which was caused by a state of intense emotion.In speaking of both cases I shall have to touch on entirely personal matters.
The experience was connected with the death of a certain person closely related to me. I was very young at the time and was very much depressed by his death. I could not think of anything else and was trying to understand, to solve the riddle of the disappearance, and of men's connection with one another. Suddenly, there arose within me a wave of new thoughts and new sensations, leaving after it a feeling of astonishing calm. I saw for a moment why we cannot understand death, why death frightens us, why we cannot find answers to any questions which we put to ourselves in connection with the problem of death. This person who had died and of whom I was thinking could not have died because he had never existed. This was the solution. Ordinarily, I had seen not him himself, but something that was like his shadow. The shadow had disappeared. He was bigger than I had seen him — "longer" as I formulated it to myself — and in this "length" of his there was contained, in a certain way, the answer to all the questions.
This sudden and vivid current of thought disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. For a few seconds only, there remained of it something like a mental picture. I saw before me two figures. One, quite small, was like the vague silhouette of a man. This figure represented the man as I had known him. The other figure was like a road in the mountains which you see winding among the hills, crossing rivers, and disappearing into the distance. This was what he had been in reality and this was what I could neither understand nor express. The memory of this experience gave me for a long time a feeling of calm and confidence. Later, the ideas of higher dimensions gave me the possibility of finding a formulation for this strange "dream in a waking state", as I called my experience.
Something closely resembling this happened again in connection with my experiments.
I was thinking about another person closely related to me who had died two years before. In the circumstances of this person's death, as also in the events of the last years of his life, there was much that was not clear to me, and there were things for which I might have blamed myself psychologically, chiefly for my having drifted away from him, not having been sufficiently near him when he might have needed me. There was much to be said against these thoughts, but I could not get rid of them entirely, and they again brought me to the problem of death and to the problem of the possibility of a life beyond the grave.
I remember saying to myself once during the experiment that if I believed in "spiritualistic" theories and in the possibility of communication with the dead I should like to see this person and ask him one question, just one question.
Suddenly, without any preparation, my wish was satisfied, and I saw him. It was not a visual sensation, and what I saw was not his external appearance but the whole of his life, which flashed quickly before me. This life — this was he. The man whom I had known and who had died had never existed. That which existed was something quite different, because his life was not simply a series of events, as we ordinarily picture the life of a man to ourselves, but a thinking and feeling being who did not change by the fact of his death. The man whom I had known was the face, as it were, of this being — the face which changed with the years, but beyond which stood always the same unchanging reality. To express myself figuratively I may say that I saw the man and spoke to him. In actual fact there were no visual impressions which could be described, nor anything like ordinary conversation. Nevertheless, I know that it was he, and that it was he who communicated to me much more about himself than I could have asked. I saw quite clearly that the events of the last years were as inseparably linked with him as the features of his face which I had known during his life. These events of the last years were the features of the face of his life of the last years. Nobody could have changed anything in them just as nobody could have changed the colour of his hair or eyes, or the shape of his nose; and just in the same way it could not have been anybody's fault that this man had these facial features and not others.
The features of his face, like the features of his life of the last years — these were his qualities, these were he. To regard him without the events of the last years of his life would have been just as strange as to imagine him with a different face — it would not have been he. At the same time I understood that nobody could be responsible, that he was as he was, and not different. I realised that we depend upon one another much less than we think. We are no more responsible for the events in one another's lives than we are for the features of each other's faces. Each has his own face, with its own peculiar lines and features, and each has his own fate, in which another man may occupy a certain place, but in which he can change nothing.
But having realised this I saw also that we are far more closely bound to our past and to the people with whom we come in contact than we ordinarily think, and I understood quite clearly that death does not change anything in this. We remain bound with all with whom we have been bound. But for communication with them it is necessary to be in a special state.
I could explain in the following way the ideas which I understood in this connection: if one takes the branch of a tree with the twigs, the cross-section of the branch will correspond to a man as we ordinarily see him; the branch itself will be the life of the man, and the twigs will be the lives of the people with whom he comes into contact.
The hieroglyph described earlier [fig. 06], a line with lateral projections, signifies precisely the branch with twigs.
I have endeavoured in Tertium Organum to set forth the idea of the "long body" of man from birth to death. The term used in Indian philosophy, Linga Sarira", designates precisely this "long body of life".
The conception of man or the life of man as a branch, with offshoots representing the lives of people with whom he is connected, linked together many things in my understanding and explained a great deal to me. Each man is for himself such a branch; other people with whom he is connected are his offshoots. But each of those people is for himself a main branch and the first man for him is his offshoot. Each of the offshoots, if attention is concentrated upon it, becomes itself a branch with offshoots. In this way the life of each man is connected with a number of other lives: one life enters, in a sense, into another: and all taken together forms a single whole, the nature of which we do not understand.
The "All"
The idea of the unity of everything, in whatever sense and on whatever scale it is taken, occupied a very important place in the conception of the world and of life that was formed in me in these strange states of consciousness. The conception of the world included something entirely opposed to our ordinary view of the world or conception of the world. Ordinarily each thing and each event has for us some value of its own, some significance of its own, some meaning of its own. This separate meaning that each thing, each event, has, is much more comprehensible and familiar to us than its possible general meaning and general significance. But in this new conception of the world everything was different. Each thing appeared, first of all, not as a separate whole, but as a part of another whole, in most cases incomprehensible and unknown to us. The meaning and significance of the thing were determined by the nature of this great whole and by the place which it occupied in this whole. This completely changed the entire picture of the world. We are accustomed to take everything separately. Here there was nothing separate, and it was extraordinarily strange to feel oneself in a world in which all things were connected one with another and all things followed from one another. Nothing existed separately. I felt that the separate existence of anything — including myself — was a fiction, something non-existent, impossible. The sensation of absence of separateness and the sensation of connectedness and oneness united with the emotional part of my conceptions. At the beginning the combined sensation was felt as something terrifying, oppressive, and hopeless; but later, without changing its nature, it began to be felt as the most joyous and radiant sensation that could exist.Further, there was a picture or mental image which entered into everything and appeared as a necessary part of every logical or illogical construction. This image showed two aspects, both of everything taken together, that is, the whole world, and of every separate part of it, that is, each separate side of the world and of life. One aspect was connected with the First Principle. I saw, as it were, the origin of the whole world or the origin of any given phenomenon or any given idea. The other aspect was connected with separate things: I saw the world, or those events which interested me at the particular moment, in their final manifestation, that is, as we see them around us, but connected into a whole, incomprehensible to us. But between the first aspect and the second, there always occurred an interruption like a gap or a blank space.
Graphically I might represent this approximately in the following way: Imagine that from above three lines appear from one point; each of these three lines is again transformed into three lines; each of these three lines again into three lines. Gradually the lines break more and more, and gradually become more and more varied in properties, acquiring colour, form, and other qualities, but not reaching real facts, and transforming themselves into a kind of invisible current proceeding from above. From below, imagine the infinite variety of phenomena collected and classified into groups; these groups again unite, and as a result great numbers of very varied phenomena are actually bound into wholes and can be expressed by one sign or one hieroglyph. A series of these hieroglyphs represents life or the visible world at a certain distance from the surface. From above goes the process of differentiation, and from below goes the process of integration. But differentiation and integration do not meet. Between what is above and what is below is formed a blank space in which nothing is visible. The upper differentiating lines, multiplying and acquiring different colours, merge quickly together and disappear into a blank space which separates what is above from what is below. From below all the infinitely varied phenomena are very soon transformed into principles, extraordinarily rich in meaning and in hieroglyphic designation, but nevertheless smaller than the last of the visible upper lines.
It was approximately in this graphic representation that these two aspects of the world and things appeared to me. Or I might say that both above and below the world was represented on different scales, and these scales never met for me, never passed into one another, remained entirely incommensurable. The whole difficulty was precisely in this, and this difficulty was felt all the time. I realised that if I could throw a bridge from what was below to what was above or, still better, in the opposite direction, from what was above to what was below, I should understand everything that was below, because starting from above, the fundamental principles, it would have been easy and simple to understand anything below. But I never succeeded in connecting principles with facts because, though all the facts very quickly became merged into complicated hieroglyphs as I have already said, these hieroglyphs still differed very much from the upper principles.
Emotion
Nothing that I am writing, nothing that can be said, about my experiences will be comprehensible if the continuous emotional tone of these experiences is not taken into consideration. There were no calm, dispassionate, unexciting moments at all; everything was full of emotion, feeling, almost passion.The strangest thing in all these experiences was the coming back, the return to the ordinary state, to the state which we call life. This was something very similar to dying or to what I thought dying must be.
Usually this coming back occurred when I woke up in the morning after an interesting experiment the night before. The experiments almost always ended in sleep. During this sleep I evidently passed into the usual state and awoke in the ordinary world, in the world in which we awaken every morning. But this world contained something extraordinarily oppressive: it was incredibly empty, colourless, and lifeless. It was as though everything in it was wooden wheels, wooden thoughts, wooden moulds, wooden sensations; everything was terribly slow, scarcely moved, or moved with a melancholy wooden creaking. Everything was dead, soulless, feelingless.
These were terrible moments in which I awakened in an unreal world after a real one, in a dead world after a living, in a limited world, cut into small pieces, after an infinite and entire world.
Results
I did not obtain particularly new facts through my experiments, but I got many thoughts. When I saw that my first aim, i.e., objective magic, remained unattainable, I began to think that the artificial creation of mystical states might become the beginning of a new method in psychology. This aim would have been attained if I had found it possible to change my state of consciousness while at the same time retaining full power of observation. This proved to be impossible to the full extent. The state of consciousness changed, but I could not control the change, could never say for certain in what the experiment would result, and even could not always observe; ideas followed upon one another and vanished too quickly. I had to recognise that though my experiments had established many possibilities, they did not give material for exact conclusions. The fundamental questions as to the relation of subjective magic to objective magic and to mysticism remained without decisive answers.But after my experiments I began to understand many things differently. I began to understand that many philosophical and metaphysical speculations, entirely different in theme, form, and terminology, might in actual fact have been attempts to express precisely that which I came to know, and which I have tried to describe. I understood that behind many of the systems of the study of the world and man there might lie experiences and sensations very similar to my own, perhaps identical with them. I understood that for thousands of years human thought has been circling around something that it has never succeeded in expressing.
In any case my experiments established for me with indisputable clarity the possibility of coming into contact with the real world that lies behind the wavering mirage of the visible world. I saw that knowledge of the real world was possible but, as became clearer and clearer to me during my experiments, it required a different approach and a different preparation.
Putting together all that I had read and heard of, I could not but see that many before me had come to the same result, and many, most probably, had gone much further than I. But all of them had always been inevitably confronted with the same difficulty, namely the impossibility of conveying in the language of the dead the impressions of the living world. All of them except those who knew another approach.... I came to the conclusion that without the help of those who know another approach it is impossible to do anything.
1912-1929.
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