The mystery of space

by Robert T. Browne

Consciousness the Norm of Space Determinations

Realism Is Determined by Awareness—Succession of Degrees of Realism—Sufficiency of Tridimensionality—The Insufficiency of Self-Consistency as a Norm of Truth—General Forward Movement in the Evolution of Consciousness Implied in the Hyperspace Concept—The Hypothetical Nature of Our Knowledge—Hyperspace the Symbol of a More Extensive Realm of Awareness—Variations in the Method of Interpreting Intellectual Notions—The Tuitional and the Intuitional Faculties—The Illusionary Character of the Phenomenal—Consciousness and the Degrees of Realism.

Things have value for us only to the extent to which we can become aware of their being. The appraisement of all objects, conditions, states or qualities is determined directly by the degree or quality of awareness with which we apprehend them. Those elements which are without the intellect's scope of awareness have no interest and hence no value so far as the individual intellect is concerned. And this is true of all degrees and states of consciousness from the lowest to the highest, from the human to the divine.

There enter into all conscious determinations three factors, namely: (a) the scope, or totality, of adaptations which an organism can make in the sensible world, (b) the power of consciousness to make adaptations and (c) environment. These three are interdependent. The totality of adaptations depends primarily, of course, upon the quality of conscious powers or faculties, and also, in a lesser degree, upon opportunities afforded by environment. Faculties of consciousness are derived directly from the influences exerted upon the organism by his environment and the results of the struggle to overcome them. Environment is of two kinds, artificial and natural. The artificial environment is such as has been modified by our conscious action upon external phenomena. The residue is natural. And thus the scope of adaptability becomes an unvarying witness to the quality of consciousness manifesting through a given organism.

The universe is so constructed that the essential character of its various states and qualities is a fixed quantity for a given scope of consciousness and varies only as the sphere of consciousness varies. States of existence or scopes of adaptation which are registering upon a higher plane or in a more subtle sphere of existence than that in which we may at any time be functioning can only appear evidential to us when the mechanism of our consciousness becomes congruently adjusted therewith. So that the focus of consciousness must always be a variable quantity adaptable, under proper conditions, to any plane in the kosmos. Consciousness, then, becomes the sphere of limits both of knowledge and adaptability. But lest we seem to admit implicitly part of the contentions which mathematical publicists have made in postulating the unodim and duodim consciousness, it is necessary carefully to differentiate between the results arrived at as a result of the two procedures. In the first place, analysts assume the existence of a unodim and duodim plane of consciousness and proceed to construct thereon an analogy designed to show the feasibility of another assumption, the fourth dimension. While, in laying the foundation of consciousness upon a tridimensional plane we do not start with an assumption, but with a fact. Therein lies the difference. Enormous advantages inhere in a procedure based upon facts, but in a series of planes built upon assumptions no such advantages are discovered. For however much the series of hypothetical planes may be extended or elaborated there must inhere necessarily throughout the series an assumptional value which vitiates the conclusions no less than the premises. The sanity and integrity of intellectual operations depend almost entirely upon the differentiation which we make between the necessities arising out of assumptions and those which spring up empirically from established facts. No procedure is necessary to establish the value of such a differentiation, nevertheless it may be suggested that it is allowable, under the rules of logic, to make any assumption whatsoever so long as care is taken to see that the conclusions embody in themselves the characteristics of the original premise. For instance, it is permissible to assume that space is curved. Under such an assumption, it is only necessary that the constructions which follow shall be self-consistent. But the case is different when we come to deal with spatiality and vitality. These are quantities which cannot, in the last analysis, be made to conform to the rules of the game of logic.

Thus, when it is intimated that realism lends itself to an apparent division into degrees, and that each degree has a corresponding state of consciousness, it is by no means to be inferred that such apparent divisions are of mathematical import. For, in reality, i.e., when the consciousness has expanded so as to become congruent with the limits of even the space mind (vide Fig. 20), there appear to be no divisions in realism. It is only because of the fragmentariness of our outlook upon the kosmos that realism appears to be divided into various planes; for all of these planes are one. The divisions exist for relative knowledge, but not for complete knowledge; they exist for a finite intelligence, but not for a transfinite intelligence. That is why we view realism as a series of planes. It is because we discover that, as we proceed, as our consciousness expands and we take in more and more of the vital activities of the kosmos and understand better the causes underlying that which we contact, we have passed from a state of lesser knowledge to one of greater knowledge. And so we say we have passed from one degree of realism to another, whereas, really we have not passed from one degree of realism to another degree. Instead, it is our consciousness that has expanded.

If now, we conceive reality to be a scale extending from one extremity to another (that is, from supreme consciousness to entire unconsciousness, from final knowledge to total ignorance), and the intellectual consciousness as the indicator which traverses the scale denoting at all times the precise degree of our comprehension of reality, and hence the degree of expansion of consciousness, we shall constitute a similitude closely approximating the real status quo of humanity with respect to the sensible and supersensible worlds. The quantity or force which causes the indicator to move along the scale is the quality of awareness. And this varies directly as the scope of adaptability varies. Realism is homogeneous throughout its extent; but the scale marked upon it registers from naught to unity. And between these every conceivable degree of awareness may be registered. The indicator moves only as the scope widens, and thus is shown a change in the quality of awareness. For, however paradoxical it may seem, the wider the scope of knowledge the better its quality: the more one knows, the more complete and of higher quality becomes that which he knows.

The intellect is of scientific tendence, studiously rejecting all phenomena which do not yield to its senso-mechanisms. Even intuitions suffer the humility of rejection and do not escape the limitations which the intellect imposes upon them. This is so, because, as yet, there is no adequate perceptive and conceptive apparatus for the propagation and classification of intuitions, as apart from concepts. The outcome of these proscriptions is that intuitions—free, mobile, and more or less formless in themselves, must first be rehabilitated and vestured in garments a la intellect to conform to the prevailing mode. But intuitions thus treated are no longer intuitions, but empirical concepts. True intuitions are like aqueous vapor—amorphous, permeating, diffusive: axioms or empirical concepts are like cakes of ice—formal, inflexible and conforming to the shape of the mold into which they are poured. Because of this—the scientific tendence of the intellect and the consequent necessity of reforming so much of the data which constitute its substructure, of pressing, condensing and reshaping it to suit its own ready-made patterns—it can be perceived how profound is the influence of the intellectual consciousness in determining the character of the totality of data which the sensible world, and for that matter, the supersensible, offer us. The intellect is the only means at hand for the interpretation of the meaning and significance of the world of phenomena. Consequently, whatever meaning or significance we are led to attach to that part of the universe which we contact, in any way, is dictated by the intellectual consciousness. There is no escape from the decisions of the intellect so long as the present scheme of things endures.

Thus, by whatever standard of reference the matter may be determined, it remains indisputably established that the intellectual consciousness is the sole determinant of the phenomenal value of everything within our scope of awareness or adaptability. And whatever the fault, incongruity or discrepancy that may be revealed by a more intimate knowledge of the genesis and character of the appearance of the sensible world, it will be found to be due to the peculiar cut and mode of the intellect and not to things themselves. The value, qualitative or existential, which the intellect irrevocably assigns to objects and conditions in the world of the senses is the exclusive norm not only by which these are judged, but also, by which our action upon them and their action upon us are determined. Images or objects which do not act upon us and upon which we cannot act have no interest for us. But as an integral part of the totality of images or objects in the sensible world, we must inevitably act upon all that is outside of ourselves, and these, in turn, must react upon us. On the other hand, there must be objects and images in the universe of life and form upon which, because of their inherent nature and on account of the lack of our interest in them and their interest in us, we can neither act nor become the object of their action.

But herein is a mystery. For, either we act upon and are recipients of the action of the totality of images or objects in both the sensible and supersensible worlds, or we are so placed in the grand scheme of things that both ourselves and the sphere of our interests and possible actions are closed circuits, hermetically sealed and non-communicative with the other like spheres, which do not and cannot act upon us. There is yet a third possibility—that we are so fashioned, in the entirety of our being, that some part of us is exactly congruent with some part of every sphere of possible actions and interests in the kosmos, and therefore, each of us has being or consciousness of a kind that is keyed to and registering in the totality of such spheres; and that, at present, because our interests and possible actions are limited to the plane of sensibility, we are conscious only there. And further, that although those spheres of our consciousness which are fixed to register in other planes do not answer to the lowest on which we now operate, having a character of which we are unaware, they nevertheless cannot be said not to exist, because of the lack of communication between them. Among these three possible choices, we have no hesitancy in expressing a decided preference for the last mentioned—that the range of our being is co-extensive with the range of reality, and like a pendulum, we oscillate, at long intervals, between two kosmic extremities—nescience and omniscience.