(1) Now on the subject of a “Void,” —which seems to almost all a thing of vast importance,—I hold the following view. Naught is, naught could have been, naught ever will be void. For all the members of the Cosmos are completely full; so that Cosmos itself is full and [quite] complete with bodies, diverse in quality and form, possessing each its proper kind and size. And of these bodies—one’s greater than another, or another’s less than is another, by difference of strength and size. Of course, the stronger of them are more easily perceived, just as the larger [are]. The lesser ones, however, or the more minute, can scarcely be perceived, or not at all—those which we know are things [at all] by sense of touch alone. Whence many come to think they are not bodies, and that there are void spaces,—which is impossible.

(25) That Voidness is not of the nature of the voidness of nothingness, but a Voidness at the true nature of which thou feelest awed, and before which thine intellect shineth clearly and more lucidly; that is the [state of] mind of the Sambhoga-Kaya.

(3) Because of this, Asclepius, thou shalt call nothing void; unless thou wilt declare of what that’s void, which thou dost say is void;—for instance, void of fire, of water, or things like to these. For if it should fall out, that it should seem that anything is able to be void of things like these,—though that which seemeth void be little or be big, it still cannot be void of spirit and of air. XXXIV

(14) Nakiketas said: 'That which thou seest as neither this nor that, as neither effect nor cause, as neither past nor future, tell me that.'

(10) A: Yea, O Thrice-greatest one, things moved must needs be moved in something void. H: Thou sayest well, O [my] Asclepius! For naught of things that are is void. Alone the "is-not" is void [and] stranger to subsistence. For that which is subsistent can never change to void. A: Are there, then, O Thrice-greatest one, no such things as an empty cask, for instance, and an empty jar, a cup and vat, and other things like unto them? H: Alack, Asclepius, for thy far-wandering from the truth! Think'st thou that things most full and most replete are void?

(6) Moreover, as Infinite Space is invisible and beyond the other senses, it cannot be "known" or cognized as a Thing. Thought regarding it must always report "not this; not that" regarding it; and it answers to the ancient sage's statement of Reality that: "The Essence of Being is without attributes, formless, devoid of distinctions, and unconditioned. It is different from that which we know, and from that which we do not know. Words and thought turn from it without finding it. The wise answer only by silence all questions concerning its nature. To all suggestions concerning its qualities, properties, and attributes, the wise simply answer: 'neti, neti'—'not this, not that!' Of THAT the wise assert simply 'It IS.'" And as other ancient sages have said: "The imagination, the understanding, and abstract thinking will always strive in vain to represent the Infinite; for no form of finiteness (to which thought and speech also belong) can express the Infinite; nor can that which was timed express the Timeless and Eternal; nor can thought resultant from the chain of causation grasp the Causeless or Self-Existent." So, in every way, and from every angle of view, we discover that the concept of Infinite Space is a noble and worthy symbol of THAT which we mean when we try to think of the Infinite Unmanifest—of the Essence of Being before Manifestation into Activity and Form.

(476) of absolute beauty and is able to distinguish the idea from the objects which participate in the idea, neither putting the objects in the place of the idea nor the idea in the place of the objects—is he a dreamer, or is he awake? He is wide awake. And may we not say that the mind of the one who knows has knowledge, and that the mind of the other, who opines only, has opinion? Certainly. But suppose that the latter should quarrel with us and dispute our statement, can we administer any soothing cordial or advice to him, without revealing to him that there is sad disorder in his wits? We must certainly offer him some good advice, he replied. Come, then, and let us think of something to say to him. Shall we begin by assuring him that he is welcome to any knowledge which he may have, and that we are rejoiced at his having it? But we should like to ask him a question: Does he who has knowledge know something or nothing? (You must answer for him.) I answer that he knows something. Something that is or is not? Something that is; for how can that which is not ever be known? And are we assured, after looking at the matter from many points of view, that absolute being is or may be absolutely known, but that the utterly non-existent is utterly unknown? Nothing can be more certain. Good. But if there be anything which is of such a nature as to be and not to be, that will have a place intermediate between pure being and the absolute negation of being? Yes, between them. And, as knowledge corresponded to being and ignorance of necessity to not-being, for that intermediate between being and not-being there has to be discovered a corresponding

(7) "An owl can catch fleas at night, and see the tip of a hair, but if it comes out in the daytime its eyes are so dazzled it cannot see a mountain. Different creatures are differently constituted. "Thus, as has been said, those who would have right without its correlative, wrong; or good government without its correlative, misrule,—they do not apprehend the great principles of the universe nor the conditions to which all creation is subject. One might as well talk of the existence of heaven without that of earth, or of the negative principle without the positive, which is clearly absurd. Such people, if they do not yield to argument, must be either fools or knaves. "Rulers have abdicated under different conditions, dynasties have been continued under different conditions. Those who did not hit off a favourable time and were in opposition to their age,—they were called usurpers. Those who did hit off the right time and were in harmony with their age,—they were called patriots. Fair and softly, my River friend; what should you know of value and worthlessness, of great and small?" "In this case," replied the Spirit of the River, "what am I to do and what am I not to do? How am I to arrange my declinings and receivings, my takings-hold and my lettings-go?" "From the point of view of Tao," said the Spirit of the Ocean, "value and worthlessness are like slopes and plains.

(6) the Intellectual Essence, wholly of the order of Ideal-form, must be taken as impassive has been already established.

But Matter also is an incorporeal, though after a mode of its own; we must examine, therefore, how this stands, whether it is passive, as is commonly held, a thing that can be twisted to every shape and Kind, or whether it too must be considered impassive and in what sense and fashion so. But in engaging this question and defining the nature of matter we must correct certain prevailing errors about the nature of the Authentic Existent, about Essence, about Being.

The Existent- rightly so called- is that which has authentic existence, that, therefore, which is existent completely, and therefore, again, that which at no point fails in existence. Having existence perfectly, it needs nothing to preserve it in being; it is, on the contrary, the source and cause from which all that appears to exist derives that appearance. This admitted, it must of necessity be in life, in a perfect life: if it failed it would be more nearly the nonexistent than the existent. But: The Being thus indicated is Intellect, is wisdom unalloyed. It is, therefore, determined and rounded off; it is nothing potentially that is not of the same determined order, otherwise it would be in default.

Hence its eternity, its identity, its utter irreceptivity and impermeability. If it took in anything, it must be taking in something outside itself, that is to say, Existence would at last include non-existence. But it must be Authentic Existence all through; it must, therefore, present itself equipped from its own stores with all that makes up Existence so that all stands together and all is one thing. The Existent must have thus much of determination: if it had not, then it could not be the source of the Intellectual Principle and of Life which would be importations into it originating in the sphere of non-Being; and Real Being would be lifeless and mindless; but mindlessness and lifelessness are the characteristics of non-being and must belong to the lower order, to the outer borders of the existent; for Intellect and Life rise from the Beyond-Existence - though Itself has no need of them- and are conveyed from It into the Authentic Existent.

If we have thus rightly described the Authentic Existent, we see that it cannot be any kind of body nor the under-stuff of body; in such entities the Being is simply the existing of things outside of Being.

But body, a non-existence? Matter, on which all this universe rises, a non-existence? Mountain and rock, the wide solid earth, all that resists, all that can be struck and driven, surely all proclaims the real existence of the corporeal? And how, it will be asked, can we, on the contrary, attribute Being, and the only Authentic Being, to entities like Soul and Intellect, things having no weight or pressure, yielding to no force, offering no resistance, things not even visible?

Yet even the corporeal realm witnesses for us; the resting earth has certainly a scantier share in Being than belongs to what has more motion and less solidity- and less than belongs to its own most upward element, for fire begins, already, to flit up and away outside of the body-kind.

In fact, it appears to be precisely the most self-sufficing that bear least hardly, least painfully, on other things, while the heaviest and earthiest bodies- deficient, falling, unable to bear themselves upward- these, by the very down-thrust due to their feebleness, offer the resistance which belongs to the falling habit and to the lack of buoyancy. It is lifeless objects that deal the severest blows; they hit hardest and hurt most; where there is life- that is to say participation in Being- there is beneficence towards the environment, all the greater as the measure of Being is fuller.

Again, Movement, which is a sort of life within bodies, an imitation of true Life, is the more decided where there is the least of body a sign that the waning of Being makes the object affected more distinctly corporeal.

The changes known as affections show even more clearly that where the bodily quality is most pronounced susceptibility is at its intensest- earth more susceptible than other elements, and these others again more or less so in the degree of their corporeality: sever the other elements and, failing some preventive force, they join again; but earthy matter divided remains apart indefinitely. Things whose nature represents a diminishment have no power of recuperation after even a slight disturbance and they perish; thus what has most definitely become body, having most closely approximated to non-being lacks the strength to reknit its unity: the heavy and violent crash of body against body works destruction, and weak is powerful against weak, non-being against its like.

Thus far we have been meeting those who, on the evidence of thrust and resistance, identify body with real being and find assurance of truth in the phantasms that reach us through the senses, those, in a word, who, like dreamers, take for actualities the figments of their sleeping vision. The sphere of sense, the Soul in its slumber; for all of the Soul that is in body is asleep and the true getting-up is not bodily but from the body: in any movement that takes the body with it there is no more than a passage from sleep to sleep, from bed to bed; the veritable waking or rising is from corporeal things; for these, belonging to the Kind directly opposed to Soul, present to it what is directly opposed to its essential existence: their origin, their flux, and their perishing are the warning of their exclusion from the Kind whose Being is Authentic.

(8) But there will still be some to deny that it is through this Matter that we ourselves become evil.

They will say that neither ignorance nor wicked desires arise in Matter. Even if they admit that the unhappy condition within us is due to the pravity inherent in body, they will urge that still the blame lies not in the Matter itself but with the Form present in it- such Form as heat, cold, bitterness, saltness and all other conditions perceptible to sense, or again such states as being full or void- not in the concrete signification but in the presence or absence of just such forms. In a word, they will argue, all particularity in desires and even in perverted judgements upon things, can be referred to such causes, so that Evil lies in this Form much more than in the mere Matter.

Yet, even with all this, they can be compelled to admit that Matter is the Evil.

For, the quality that has entered into Matter does not act as an entity apart from the Matter, any more than axe-shape will cut apart from iron. Further, Forms lodged in Matter are not the same as they would be if they remained within themselves; they are Reason-Principles Materialized, they are corrupted in the Matter, they have absorbed its nature: essential fire does not burn, nor do any of the essential entities effect, of themselves alone, the operation which, once they have entered into Matter, is traced to their action.

Matter becomes mistress of what is manifested through it: it corrupts and destroys the incomer, it substitutes its own opposite character and kind, not in the sense of opposing, for example, concrete cold to concrete warmth, but by setting its own formlessness against the Form of heat, shapelessness to shape, excess and defect to the duly ordered. Thus, in sum, what enters into Matter ceases to belong to itself, comes to belong to Matter, just as, in the nourishment of living beings, what is taken in does not remain as it came, but is turned into, say, dog's blood and all that goes to make a dog, becomes, in fact, any of the humours of any recipient.

No, if body is the cause of Evil, then there is no escape; the cause of Evil is Matter.

Still, it will be urged, the incoming Idea should have been able to conquer the Matter.

The difficulty is that Matter's master cannot remain pure itself except by avoidance of Matter.

Besides, the constitution determines both the desires and their violence so that there are bodies in which the incoming idea cannot hold sway: there is a vicious constitution which chills and clogs the activity and inhibits choice; a contrary bodily habit produces frivolity, lack of balance. The same fact is indicated by our successive variations of mood: in times of stress, we are not the same either in desires or in ideas- as when we are at peace, and we differ again with every several object that brings us satisfaction.

To resume: the Measureless is evil primarily; whatever, either by resemblance or participation, exists in the state of unmeasure, is evil secondarily, by force of its dealing with the Primal- primarily, the darkness; secondarily, the darkened. Now, Vice, being an ignorance and a lack of measure in the Soul, is secondarily evil, not the Essential Evil, just as Virtue is not the Primal Good but is Likeness to The Good, or participation in it.

(3) Then Knowledge said to the Yellow Emperor, "I asked Do-nothing Say-nothing, but he did not answer me. Not that he, would not; he could not. So I asked All-in-extremes. He was just going to tell me, but he did not tell me. Not that he would not; but just as he was going to do so, he forgot what he wanted to say. Now I ask you, and you tell me. How then are you wholly wrong?" "Of those two," replied the Yellow Emperor, "the former was genuinely right, inasmuch as he did not know. The latter was near, inasmuch as he forgot. You and I are wholly wrong, inasmuch as we know." When All-in-extremes heard of this, he considered that the Yellow Emperor had spoken well. The universe is very beautiful, yet it says nothing. The four seasons abide by a fixed law, yet they are not heard. All creation is based upon absolute principles, yet nothing speaks. And the true Sage, taking his stand upon the beauty of the universe, pierces the principles of created things. Hence the saying that the per fect man does nothing, the true Sage performs nothing, beyond gazing at the universe. For man's intellect, however keen, face to face with the countless evolutions of things, their death and birth, their squareness and roundness,—can never reach the root. There creation is, and there it has ever been. The six cardinal points, reaching into infinity, are ever included in Tao. An autumn spikelet, in all its minuteness, must carry Tao within itself. There is nothing on earth which does not rise and fall, but it never perishes altogether.

(11) A: How meanest thou, Thrice-greatest one? H: Is not air body? A: It is. H: And doth this body not pervade all things, and so, pervading, fill them? And "body"; doth body not consist from blending of the "four" ? Full, then, of air are all thou callest void; and if of air, then of the "four". Further, of this the converse follows, that all thou callest full are void - of air; for that they have their space filled out with other bodies, and, therefore, are not able to receive the air therein. These, then, which thou dost say are void, they should be hollow named, not void; for they not only are, but they are full of air and spirit.

(25) In that state wherein thou art existing, there is being experienced by thee, in an unbearable intensity, voidness and Brightness inseparable — the Voidness bright by nature and the Brightness by nature void, and the Brightness inseparable from the Voidness — a state of the primordial [or unmodified] intellect, which is the Adi-Kaya. And the power of this, shining unobstructedly, will radiate everywhere; it is the Nirmana-Kaya.

(3) I make no claim for either the infallibility or the originality of any statement herein contained. I have studied the fragmentary writings of the ancients sufficiently to realize that dogmatic utterances concerning their tenets are worse than foolhardy. Traditionalism is the curse of modern philosophy, particularly that of the European schools. While many of the statements contained in this treatise may appear at first wildly fantastic, I have sincerely endeavored to refrain from haphazard metaphysical speculation, presenting the material as far as possible in the spirit rather than the letter of the original authors. By assuming responsibility only for the mistakes which may' appear herein, I hope to escape the accusation of plagiarism which has been directed against nearly every writer on the subject of mystical philosophy.

(1) In like way must we also talk concerning “Space,” —a term which by itself is void of “sense.” For Space seems what it is from that of which it is [the space]. For if the qualifying word is cut away, the sense is maimed. Wherefore we shall [more] rightly say the space of water, space of fire, or [space] of things like these. For as it is impossible that aught be void; so is Space also in itself not possible to be distinguished what it is. For if you postulate a space without that [thing] of which it is [the space], it will appear to be void space,—which I do not believe exists in Cosmos.

(7) And whatever things there be— of the nature of sattva, rajas, and tamas— know they are all from Me alone. I am not, however, in them; they are in Me.

(7) We are thus brought back to the nature of that underlying matter and the things believed to be based upon it; investigation will show us that Matter has no reality and is not capable of being affected.

Matter must be bodiless- for body is a later production, a compound made by Matter in conjunction with some other entity. Thus it is included among incorporeal things in the sense that body is something that is neither Real-Being nor Matter.

Matter is no Soul; it is not Intellect, is not Life, is no Ideal-Principle, no Reason-Principle; it is no limit or bound, for it is mere indetermination; it is not a power, for what does it produce?

It lives on the farther side of all these categories and so has no tide to the name of Being. It will be more plausibly called a non-being, and this in the sense not of movement or station (in Not-Being) but of veritable Not-Being, so that it is no more than the image and phantasm of Mass, a bare aspiration towards substantial existence; it is stationary but not in the sense of having position, it is in itself invisible, eluding all effort to observe it, present where no one can look, unseen for all our gazing, ceaselessly presenting contraries in the things based upon it; it is large and small, more and less, deficient and excessive; a phantasm unabiding and yet unable to withdraw- not even strong enough to withdraw, so utterly has it failed to accept strength from the Intellectual Principle, so absolute its lack of all Being.

Its every utterance, therefore, is a lie; it pretends to be great and it is little, to be more and it is less; and the Existence with which it masks itself is no Existence, but a passing trick making trickery of all that seems to be present in it, phantasms within a phantasm; it is like a mirror showing things as in itself when they are really elsewhere, filled in appearance but actually empty, containing nothing, pretending everything. Into it and out of it move mimicries of the Authentic Existents, images playing upon an image devoid of Form, visible against it by its very formlessness; they seem to modify it but in reality effect nothing, for they are ghostly and feeble, have no thrust and meet none in Matter either; they pass through it leaving no cleavage, as through water; or they might be compared to shapes projected so as to make some appearance upon what we can know only as the Void.

Further: if visible objects were of the rank of the originals from which they have entered into Matter we might believe Matter to be really affected by them, for we might credit them with some share of the power inherent in their Senders: but the objects of our experiences are of very different virtue than the realities they represent, and we deduce that the seeming modification of matter by visible things is unreal since the visible thing itself is unreal, having at no point any similarity with its source and cause. Feeble, in itself, a false thing and projected upon a falsity, like an image in dream or against water or on a mirror, it can but leave Matter unaffected; and even this is saying too little, for water and mirror do give back a faithful image of what presents itself before them.

(11) For, given territory, there is the great thing—Man. Given man, he must not be managed as if he were a mere thing; though by not managing him at all he may actually be managed as if he were a mere thing. And for those who understand that the management of man as if he were a mere thing is not the way to manage him, the issue is not confined to mere government of the empire. Such men may wander at will between the six limits of space or travel over the continent of earth, unrestrained in coming and in going. This is to be distinguished from one's fellows, and this distinction is the highest attainable by man. The doctrine of the perfect man is to him as shadow to form, as echo to sound. Ask and it responds, fulfilling its mission as the help-mate of humanity. Noiseless in repose, objectless in motion, it guides you to the goal, free to come and free to go for ever without end. Alone in its exits and its entrances, it rivals the eternity of the sun. As for his body, that is in accordance with the usual standard. Being in accordance with the usual standard it is not distinguished in any way. But if not distinguished in any way, what becomes of the distinction by which he is distinguished? Those who see what is to be seen,—of such were the perfect men of old. Those who see what is not to be seen,—they are the chosen of the universe.

(8) and consequently ended in the obscurity of the 'hard and white.' Subsequently, his son searched his works for some clue, but never succeeded in establishing the principle. And indeed if such were possible to be established, then even I am established; but if not, then neither I nor anything in the universe is established! "Therefore what the true Sage aims at is the light which comes out of darkness. He does not view things as apprehended by himself, subjectively, but transfers himself into the position of the things viewed. This is called using the light. "There remains, however, Speech. Is that to be enrolled under either category of contraries, or not? Whether it is so enrolled or not, it will in any case belong to one or the other, and thus be as though it had an objective existence. At any rate, I should like to hear some speech which belongs to neither category. "If there was a beginning, then there was a time before that beginning. And a time before the time which was before the time of that beginning. "If there is existence, there must have been non-existence. And if there was a time when nothing existed, then there must have been a time before that—when even nothing did not exist. Suddenly, when nothing came into existence, could one really say whether it belonged to the category of existence or of non-existence? Even the very words I have just now uttered,—I cannot say whether they have really been uttered or not.

(7) That this world has neither beginning nor end but exists for ever as long as the Supreme stands is certainly no novel teaching. And before this school rose it had been urged that commerce with the body is no gain to a Soul.

But to treat the human Soul as a fair presentment of the Soul of the Universe is like picking out potters and blacksmiths and making them warrant for discrediting an entire well-ordered city.

We must recognize how different is the governance exercised by the All-Soul; the relation is not the same: it is not in fetters. Among the very great number of differences it should not have been overlooked that the We lies under fetter; and this in a second limitation, for the Body-Kind, already fettered within the All-Soul, imprisons all that it grasps.

But the Soul of the Universe cannot be in bond to what itself has bound: it is sovereign and therefore immune of the lower things, over which we on the contrary are not masters. That in it which is directed to the Divine and Transcendent is ever unmingled, knows no encumbering; that in it which imparts life to the body admits nothing bodily to itself. It is the general fact that an inset , necessarily shares the conditions of its containing principle , and does not communicate its own conditions where that principle has an independent life: thus a graft will die if the stock dies, but the stock will live on by its proper life though the graft wither. The fire within your own self may be quenched, but the thing, fire, will exist still; and if fire itself were annihilated that would make no difference to the Soul, the Soul in the Supreme, but only to the plan of the material world; and if the other elements sufficed to maintain a Kosmos, the Soul in the Supreme would be unconcerned.

The constitution of the All is very different from that of the single, separate forms of life: there, the established rule commanding to permanence is sovereign; here things are like deserters kept to their own place and duty by a double bond; there is no outlet from the All, and therefore no need of restraining or of driving errants back to bounds: all remains where from the beginning the Soul's nature appointed.

The natural movement within the plan will be injurious to anything whose natural tendency it opposes: one group will sweep bravely onward with the great total to which it is adapted; the others, not able to comply with the larger order, are destroyed. A great choral is moving to its concerted plan; midway in the march, a tortoise is intercepted; unable to get away from the choral line it is trampled under foot; but if it could only range itself within the greater movement it too would suffer nothing.