Kindly observe in the first place that a thing is just as wonderful after it is explained as it was before its explanation. A scientific explanation of a thing ought not to do away with our admiration, but only to reduce it to reasonable bounds. The intellect may very well be regarded as something wonderful, but its wondrous quality should be reduced to the measure of all things which are none of them any less wonderful. After you have explained what water is, after you have learned that it is composed of two chemical elements, after you have realized all its qualities thoroughly, it still remains a wonderful, divine, fluid.
"All things have their causes." What are all things? They are attributes, qualities of the universe. It is innate in the intellect to know that the world is one thing, that all things belong, not to any different thing, but to one and the same subject. The intellect is by nature the absolute feeling of unity. It knows of itself that everything is interrelated and that the consciousness of causality is nothing else but the consciousness of cosmic interrelation. And I maintain that the innateness of the consciousness of cosmic interrelation in our brain is explained when we realize that it is an actual thing like all others, a phenomenon which has the same general nature as every other phenomenon.[7]
The fact is undeniable that a certain knowledge is innate in our consciousness. The only difficulty has been to explain this fact. At this point I call your attention to the exaggerated notion entertained in regard to explaining, and understanding, things. By explanations, a thing is not dissolved, but only classified.
The hatching of an egg is explained when you perceive that this process is part and parcel of a whole class of similar processes. If you modify the exalted idea of the effect of explanations in this sense, you must realize that the innate consciousness of the general interrelation of things is natural and intelligible and requires no other explanation than the humidity of the water, the gravity of bodies, or the color of black horses.
Even after it has been explained and understood, the intellect with its logic remains a wonderful thing. Just as clay is by its nature untransparent and pliable, or glass transparent and brittle, so consciousness has its peculiar innate qualities. In this way knowledge comes to the intellect not only by experience, but it is also a sort of receptacle full of wisdom. Still this receptacle would no more contain wisdom without experience than the eye would have impressions without light.
In order to straighten out the intricate windings of our subject, I recapitulate them. We wish to learn the proper use of our intellect, the conscious application of consciousness. To this end we analyze its hitherto hidden mystical nature. So long as we exalt this nature transcendentally to the clouds, we do not acquire its proper use. Therefore the first paragraph of our lesson reads: The intellect belongs in the same category with all things of the universe. And the second paragraph says: If we distinguish two classes of thought radiated by the human intellect, viz., innate thoughts, such as causality, and on the other hand thoughts which come through experience, we must remember that such a distinction is correct only when we realize that in spite of this classification in two kinds they really belong to the same kind. Innate and acquired wisdom, though served on two different plates, still are taken from the same general world dish.
From this it follows that the science of causality, though applicable to all the phenomena of the world, does not apply to the universe. If it is a fact that all wisdom is worldly, then one must not fly outside of the world with the concept of causality.
This is the salient point at issue.
All things are one thing, are interdependent, stand in the relation of cause and effect toward one another, or of genus and species. To say that all things have a cause means that they have a mother. The fact that every mother has a mother finds its final ending in the world mother or mother world, which is absolute and motherless and contains all mothers in its womb.