/ PHENOMENA NOT ISOLATED

155 pear to us as complete and indivisible, may be in reality exceedingly complex, may include within themselves different elements, having nothing in common. And all these together may be one whole in a category quite incomprehensible to us. Therefore, beyond our view of things another view is possible—a view, as it were, from another world, from "over there," from "the other side."

Now "over there" does not mean some other place, but a new method of knowledge, a new understanding. And should we regard phenomena not as isolated, but bound together with inter-crossing chains of things and events, we would begin to regard them not from over here, but from over there.

CHAPTER XIV

The voices of stones. The wall of a church and the wall of a prison. The mast of a ship and a gallows. The shadow of a hangman and of an ascetic. The soul of a hangman and of an ascetic. The different combinations of known phenomena in higher space. The relationship of phenomena which appear unrelated, and the difference between phenomena which appear similar. How shall we approach the noumenal world? The understanding of things outside the categories of space and time. The reality of many "figures of speech." The occult understanding of energy. The letter of a Hindu occultist. Art as the knowledge of the noumenal world. What we see and what we do not see. Plato's dialogue about the

I'

cavern.

T seems to us that we see something and understand something. But in reality all that proceeds around us we sense only very confusedly, just as a snail senses confusedly the sunlight, the darkness, and the rain.

Sometimes in things we sense confusedly their difference in function, i. e., their real difference.

On one occasion I was crossing the Neva with one of my friends, A, with whom I happened to have had many conversations upon the themes touched on in this book. We had been talking, but both fell silent as we approached the fortress, gazing up at its walls and making probably the same reflection. "Right there are also factory chimneys!" said A. Behind the walls of the fortress indeed appeared some brick chimneys blackened by smoke.

On his saying this, I too sensed the difference between the chimneys and the prison walls with unusual clearness and like an electric shock. I realized the difference between the very bricks themselves, and it seemed to me that A realized this difference also.

Later in conversation with A, I recalled this episode, and he told me that not only then, but always, he sensed these differences and was deeply convinced of their reality. "Positivism assures itself that a stone is a stone and nothing more," he said, "but any

SUBSTANCE AND SHADOW

157

simple woman or child knows perfectly that a stone from the wall of a church and one from a prison wall are different things."

It seems to me also, that in considering a given phenomenon in connection with all the chains of sequences of which it is a link, we shall see that the subjective sensation of the difference between two physically similar objects—which we are accustomed to think of only as poetic expression, metaphor, and the reality of which we deny—is entirely real; we shall see that these objects are really different, just as different as the candle and the coin which appear as similar circles (moving lines) in the two-dimensional world of the plane-man. We shall see that things of the same material constitution but different in their functions are really different, and that this difference goes so deep as to make different the very material which is physically the same. There are differences in stone, in wood, in iron, in paper, which no chemistry will ever detect: but these differences exist, and there are men who feel and understand them.

The mast of a ship, a gallows, a crucifix at a cross-roads on the steppes—these may be made of the same kind of wood, but in reality they are different objects made of different material. That which we see, touch, investigate, is nothing more than "the circles on the plane" made by the coin and the candle. They are only the shadows of real things, the substance of which is contained in their function. The shadow of a sailor, of a hangman, and of an ascetic may be quite similar—it is impossible to distinguish them by their shadows, just as it is impossible to find any difference between the wood of a mast, of a gallows and of a cross by chemical analysis. But they are different men and different objects—their shadows only are equal and similar.

And if we take men as we know them—the sailor, the hangman, the ascetic: men who seem to us similar and equal—and consider them from the standpoint of their differences in function, we shall see that in reality they are entirely different and that there is nothing in common between them. They are quite different beings, belonging to different categories, to different planes of the world between which there are no bridges, no avenues at all. These men seem to us equal and similar because in most cases we see only the shadows of real facts. The "souls" of these men are actually quite different, different not only in their quality, their

magnitude, their "age," as some people like now to put it, but as different in the very nature, origin and purpose of their existence as things belonging to entirely different categories can be.

When we shall begin to understand this, the general concept man will take on a different meaning.

And this relation holds in the observation of all phenomena. The mast, the gallows, the cross—these are things belonging to such different categories, the atoms of such different objects (known only by their functions), that there cannot be a question of any similarity at all. Our misfortune consists in the fact that we regard the chemical constitution of a thing as its most real attribute, while as a matter of fact its true attributes must be sought for in its functions. Could we broaden and deepen our vision of the chains of causation the links of which are forged by our action and our conduct; could we learn to see them not only in their narrow relation to the life of man—to our personal life—but in their broad cosmical meaning; could we succeed in finding and establishing a connection between the simple phenomena of our life and the life of the cosmos; then without doubt in these "simplest" phenomena would be unveiled for us an infinity of the new and the unexpected.

For example, in this way we may come to know something entirely new about those simple physical phenomena which we are accustomed to regard as natural and obvious and about which we think we know something. Then, unexpectedly, we may find that we know nothing, that everything heretofore known about them is only an incorrect deduction from incorrect premises. There may be revealed to us something infinitely great and immeasurably important in such phenomena as the expansion and contraction of solids, electrical phenomena, heat, light, sound, the movements of the planets, the coming of day and of night, the change of seasons, a thunderstorm, heat-lightning, etc., etc. Generally speaking, we may find explained in the most unexpected manner the properties of phenomena which we used to accept as given things, as not containing anything within themselves that we could not see and understand.

The constancy, the time, the periodicity or unperiodicity of phenomena may take on quite a new meaning and significance

THE NEWNESS IN FAMILIAR THINGS 159 for us. The new and the unexpected may reveal itself in the transition of some phenomena into others. Birth, death, the life of a man, his relations with other men; love, enmity, sympathies, antipathies, desires, passions—these may unexpectedly receive illumination by an entirely new light. It is impossible now to imagine the nature of this newness which we shall sense in familiar things, and once felt it will be difficult to understand.

But it is really only our inaptitude to feel and understand this "newness" which divides us from it, because we are living in it and amidst it. Our senses, however, are too primitive, our concepts are too crude, for that fine differentiation of phenomena which must unfold itself to us in higher space. Our minds, our powers of correlation and association are insufficiently elastic for the grasping of new relations. Therefore, the first emotion at the rising of the curtain on "that world"—i. e., this our world, but free of those limitations under which we usually regard it—must be of wonderment, and this wonderment must grow greater and greater according to our better acquaintance with it. And the better we know a certain thing or a certain relation of things—the nearer, the more familiar they are to us—the greater will be our wonder at the new and the unexpected therein revealed.

Desiring to understand the noumenal world we must search for the hidden meaning in everything. At present we are too heavily enchained by the habit of the positivistic method of searching always for the visible cause and the visible effect. Under this weight of positivistic habit it is extremely difficult for us to comprehend certain ideas. Among other things we have difficulty in understanding the reality of the difference in the noumenal world between objects of our world which are similar, but different in function.

But if we desire to approach to an understanding of the noumenal world, we must try with all our might to notice all those seeming, "subjective" differences between objects which astonish us sometimes, of which we are often painfully aware—those differences expressed in the symbols and metaphors of art which are often revelations of the world of reality. Such differences are the realities of the noumenal world, far more real than all maya (illusion) of our phenomena.

We should endeavor to notice these realities and to develop