A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga: The Yoga of WisdomAtkinson, William Walker
Religion
A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga: The Yoga of Wisdom
Atkinson, William Walker
Yoga, Jñana
And, just as was the case with the idea of Time, we find it most
difficult--if not indeed impossible--to form an idea of an
Omnipresent--of That which occupies Infinite Space. This because
everything that our minds have experienced has had dimensions and
limits. The secret lies in the fact that Space, like Time, has no real
existence outside of our perception of consciousness of the relative
position of Things--material objects. We see this thing here, and that
thing there. Between them is Nothingness. We take another object, say a
yard-stick, and measure off this Nothingness between the two objects,
and we call this measure of Nothingness by the term Distance. And yet
we cannot have measured Nothingness--that is impossible. What have we
really done? Simply this, determined how many lengths of yard-stick
could be laid between the other two objects.
We call this process measuring Space, but Space is Nothing, and we have
merely determined the relative position of objects. To "measure Space"
we must have three Things or objects, _i.e._, (l) The object from which
we start the measure; (2) The object with which we measure; and (3) The
object with which we end our measurement. We are unable to conceive of
Infinite Space, because we lack the third object in the measuring
process--the ending object. We may use ourselves as a starting point,
and the mental yard-stick is always at hand, but where is the object at
the other side of Infinity of Space by which the measurement may be
ended? It is not there, and we cannot think of the end without it.
Let us start with ourselves, and try to imagine a million million
miles, and then multiply them by another million million miles, a
million million times. What have we done? Simply extended our mental
yard-stick a certain number of times to an imaginary point in the
Nothingness that we call Space. So far so good, but the mind
intuitively recognizes that beyond that imaginary point at the end of
the last yard-stick, there is a capacity for an infinite extension of
yard-sticks--an infinite capacity for such extension. Extension of
what? Space? No! Yard-sticks! Objects! Things! Without material objects
Space is unthinkable. It has no existence outside of our consciousness
of Things. There is no such thing as Real Space. Space is merely an
infinite capacity for extending objects. Space itself is merely a name
for Nothingness. If you can form an idea of an object swept out of
existence, and nothing to take its place, that Nothing would be called
Space, the term implying the possibility of placing something there
without displacing anything else.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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