57 lines
3.8 KiB
Plaintext
57 lines
3.8 KiB
Plaintext
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UNDERSTANDING.
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The nature of Knowledge, the culmination and stasis of the Intellectual
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faculties, has been discussed in the previous essay. It implies a
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contradiction in terms. Understanding is the resolution of this antinomy.
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It is the chief quality of Neschamah, the Intelligence -- an idea
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insusceptible of true definition because suprarational, and only
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appreciable by direct experience. One can say, at most, that it is
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independent of any of the normal modes of motion of the mind.
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(It is a significant illustration of the truth of this Qabalistic
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theory, that women often possess most excellent Intelligence, while totally
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incapable of the Knowledge and Reason on which, logically, it is founded.)
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Samadhi, at first onset productive of bewildering Ecstasy, ultimates in
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this Understanding; one may say, therefore, that Understanding implies a
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certain ~Samadhic quality of apprehension. Duality is (perhaps) not
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absolutely abolished save in the superstructure of the state; but it
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assumes a form which it would be absurd to call dualistic.
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(It will be noticed that violation of logic is essential to every true
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effort to convey the conception.)
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This fact lies at the root of all Trinitarian symbolism; the scheme is
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geometrical in idea, and even arithmetical, as shewn by the attribution of
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Binah to the number 3. But the solution of every dyad in a Triune Triad is
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misleading, in so far as it purports to interpret the phenomenon in terms
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of intellect, and only useful as it may train the reasoning faculties to
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supersede themselves in a sublime suicide upon the Altar of the Mystic
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Intuition -- though this, after all, is a mean imitation of the proper
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process. For it is, firstly, unscientific in method; and secondly,
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illegitimate in its denial of its own validity.
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The only correct and adequate mode of the Attainment of Understanding is
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to shut off and to inhibit the rational mind altogether, thus leaving a
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<EFBFBD>MDUL<EFBFBD>Tabula rasa<73>MDNM<4E> upon which the entirely alien faculty -- <20>MDUL<55>de
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novo<EFBFBD>MDNM<EFBFBD> and <20>MDUL<55>sui generis<69>MDNM<4E> -- can write its first word.
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But then (it will surely be said) what is more unintelligent than this
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supposed Intelligence? than this formless, even delirious Ecstasy which
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sweeps away all shapes of thought? No sane man would deny this premiss: but
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the explanation is that this Ecstasy is (so to say) the throe of Birth of
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the new faculty. It is surely natural for an observer to be startled, for
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the moment, by the discovery of a new Universe. <20>MDUL<55>Ananda<64>MDNM<4E> must be
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mastered manfully, not indulged as a vice in the manner of the Mystic!
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<EFBFBD>MDUL<EFBFBD>Samadhi<EFBFBD>MDNM<EFBFBD> must be clarified by <20>MDUL<55>Sila,<2C>MDNM<4E> by the stern
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virtue of constraint: and then appears the paradox that the new Law of the
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Mind has "come not to destroy but to fulfil" the old. The Understanding
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takes full cognizance of all that vast material which the Reason was unable
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to build into any coherent structure. The contradictions have disappeared
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by absorption; they have been accepted as essential factors in the nature
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of Truth, which without them were a mere congeries of Facts.
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It will be clear from all these considerations that there need be no
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surprise at this primordial paradox: that Scepticism, absolute in every
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dimension, is the sole possible basis of true Attainment. All attempts to
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shirk the issue by appeals to "faith," by mystic transcendental
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sophistries, or any other spiritual varieties of the Three-Card-Trick, are
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devoted to the most abject destruction.
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One cannot "find the Lady" by any other way than that of the
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Knight-Errant, of the Great Fool -- the Way of the Eagle in the Air --
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whose Sacred Number is the Sacred Zero. Yea also, Naught being All, and All
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being Pan, the only due address to Godhead is in the dual form
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[GRK WRDS] PAMPHAGE PAGGENETOR.
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For all must be destroyed that All may be begotten.
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