The mystery of space

by Robert T. Browne

It has been shown that the flow of life, as it describes that movement which we call evolution, engenders simultaneously and consubstantially spatiality, materiality and intellectuality, and these, in turn, the natural order or geometrism everywhere immanent in the universe; and that automatically, one out of the other and each out of the all, these constitute the totality of kosmic fundamentals. Also we have sketched the mechanism of man's consciousness and discovered how, in its evolutionary development it has divided into two aspects, the egopsychic and the omnipsychic, and these two factors ally him definitely and adequately to the world of the senses and to the world of supersensuous cognitions. And thus we have cleared up some of the misconceptions which had to be confronted and made more easy the approach to the central idea, thereby conserving the substantiating influence which a general and more comprehensive view of the whole would naturally give.

The totality of kosmic order is space. It is circumscribed by an orderless envelope of chaos just as the germ of an egg is surrounded by the egg-plasm. The organized kosmos is the germ, kernel or central, nucleated mass, enduring in a state of becoming. Involutionary kathekos or primordial chaos is the egg-plasm which nourishes the germ or the kosmos and is that out of which the germ evolves. Kathekos or chaos is the unmanifest, unorganized, unconditioned, unlimited and undifferentiated plasm. Space is the manifest, limited, finite, organized germ that, feeding upon the enveloping chaos, exists in a perpetual state of alternate manifestation and non-manifestation—appearing, disappearing and reappearing indefinitely.

The appearance of the kosmos as an orderly elaboration of the involutionary phase of kosmogenesis, in so far as kosmic order may be said to be an accomplished fact, marked the turning point in that procedure whose function it was to make manifest a universe possessing certain definite characteristics of orderliness; but the kosmos, as it now stands, may not be thought of as having attained unto a state of ultimate orderliness. The idea meant to be conveyed is that between the point of becoming and the actually pyknosed, or solidified stage in the process of creation there is a more or less well defined line of demarkation cutting off that which is spatiality from that which is non-spatiality. Beyond the limits of spatiality is an absence of geometric order. Here geometry breaks down, becomes impotent, because it is an intellectual construction; at least, it is not so apparent as in the manifested kosmos. It is a state about which it is utterly futile to predicate anything; because no words can describe it. The most that may be said is that it is absence of geometric order as it inheres in space. And if so, all those movements comprehended under the general notions of spatiality, materiality, intellectuality and geometricity have both their extensive and detensive or inverse movements nullified in their approach to it. Involutionary Kathekos, therefore, may be said to be the primordial wilderness of disorder which outskirts the well laid-out and carefully planned garden of the spatial universe. We may excogitate upon some of the obvious functions of this kathekotic world-plasm; but in doing so we must leave off all attempts at a description of its appearance, its magnitude, extent or other qualities, and think only of its kosmic function. We cannot say that there is back of it a spatiality nor can we say that it is a spatiality; for whatever may be its extent or volume, it suffices that it may not be said to be space. It is chaos. Space is order, organization, geometricity. It cannot be said that there is a latent geometrism in chaos; because geometric order is found only in spatiality and is that which distinguishes spatiality from kathekosity or non-spatiality. Chaos is the lack of spatiality. This, of course, implies that it is impenetrable to the intellectuality or to vitality. All inverse movement such as is discovered as taking place in spatiality and which results in the phenomenalization of space runs aground when it strikes against the rock-bound coast of kathekosity. We can only say that it is both the point of origin for the evolving universe of life and form and its terminus. It is the nebulosity out of which the whole came and into which all is ultimately occluded.

A great and far-reaching error is made in all our thinking with respect to the kosmogonic processes when we postulate the complete absorption of chaos as an early act of kosmogony. Customarily, we think of kosmic chaos as a primordial condition whose existence was done away as soon as the universe came into active manifestation. This because it has been exceedingly difficult, if not quite impossible, for those whose privilege it was to determine the trend of philosophic thought to free themselves from the bondage of a dogma which owed its existence to a traditional or legendary interpretation of facts that ought never have been so interpreted. Chaos IS and EVER SHALL BE, so long as the universe itself lacks completion, fullness or perfection in purpose, extent and possibility. It is undoubtedly being diminished, however, in proportion as the kosmos is approaching absolute perfection. And when the last vestige of chaos disappears from the outerskirts of the maturing kosmos there shall appear a glorified universe of indescribable qualities.

Space being a perception a priori cannot be determined wholly by purely objective methods. The yard-stick, the telescope and the light-year are objects which belong exclusively to the phenomenal and with them alone never can we arrive at a true conception of the nature of space. We can no more demonstrate the nature of space by the use of objective instruments and movements than we can measure the spirit in a balance. Certainly, then, it cannot be hoped that by taking the measurement of space-distances in light-years, or studying the nature of material bodies, we shall be able to fathom this most objectively incomprehensible and ineluctable thing which we call space. It is such that every Thinker must, in his own inner consciousness, come into the realization of that awfully mysterious something which is the nature of space both as to existence and extent by his own subjective efforts unaided, uncharted and alone. When we measure, weigh, apportion and otherwise try to determine a thing we are dealing with the phenomenal which is no more the thing itself than a shadow is the object which casts it.

What does it matter that metageometricians shall be able to demonstrate that space exhibits itself to the senses in a four- or n-dimensional manner? Granting that they may be able to do this, if merely for the sake of the discussion, when they have finished, it will not be space that they have determined, but the phenomena of space, its arborescence, while space itself remain indeterminate and unapproachable by phenomenal methods. If there are curvature, manifoldness and n-dimensionality these are not properties of space, but of intellectuality in its cultured state and when it is, therefore, removed from the native state of conception. Scientists may be able to weigh the human body, count every cell, name and describe every nerve, muscle and fiber; they may even be able to know it in every conceivable part and from every physical angle and relationship, and yet know nothing of the life which vitalizes that body and makes it appear the phenomenal thing that it is. So it is not by instruments which man may devise that we shall be able to determine the true nature and purpose of space. We must adopt other methods and means and assume other angles of approach than the purely objective in order to comprehend space which, being the sole inherent aspect of consciousness, can be understood best by applying the measures which the latter provides for its understanding. It would appear, therefore, that the best study of space is the consciousness itself, knowing which we shall know space.

The universum of space, including the phenomenal universe, and its relation to consciousness may be likened to a conical funnel whose base represents the phenomenal world of the senses and whose apex or smallest point represents ultimate reality.

In Figure 20, we have endeavored to symbolize graphically this conception of space. The base marked "Sensorium" represents the sensible world. That marked "Realism" symbolizes the ultimate plane of reality, the inner essence of the world, the plane of "things-in-themselves."

The cone arising from the base "sensorium" symbolizes the objective world as compared with consciousness; the subverted cone, with apex in the sensorium, represents the evolving human consciousness.

The successive bases have the following symbology: Self-consciousness, Communal Consciousness, Mikrocosmic Consciousness, Makrokosmic or Universal Consciousness, the Plane of the Space-Mind Consciousness, Divine Consciousness, Kathekotic Consciousness, or the Plane of Final Union with the Manifest Logos.