The philosophy of the complex vision differs from the older
philosophies in that it frankly and confessedly starts with that
general situation which is also its goal. Its movement is therefore a
perpetual setting-forth and a perpetual return; a setting forth
towards a newly created vision of the world, and a return to that
ideal of such a vision which has been implicit from the beginning.
And this general situation from which it starts and to which it
returns is nothing less than the huge spectacle of the visible
universe confronting the individual soul and implying the kindred
existence of innumerable other souls. The fact that what the
complex vision reveals is the primary importance of personality
does not detract in the least degree from the unfathomable
mysteriousness of the objective universe And it does not detract
from this because the unfathomableness of the universe is not a
rational deduction drawn from the logical idea of what an
objective universe would be like if it existed, but is a direct human
experience verified at every movement of the soul. The universe
revealed to us by the complex vision is a universe compounded of
the concentrated visions of all the souls that compose it, a universe
which in its eternal beauty and hideousness has received the
"imprimatur of the immortal Gods."
The fact that such a universe is in part a creation of the mind, and
in part a discovery made by the mind when it flings itself upon
the unknown, does not lessen or diminish the strangeness or
unfathomableness of life. The fact that the ultimate reality of such
a universe is to be found in the psycho-material substratum--where
mind and matter become one--of the individual soul, does not
lessen or diminish the magical beauty or cruel terribleness of life.
What we name by the name of "matter" is not less a permanent
human experience, because apart from the creative energy of some
personal soul we are not able to conceive of its existence.
The philosophy of the complex vision reduces everything that
exists to an eternal action and re-action between the individual
soul and the objective mystery. This action and reaction is itself
reproduced in the eternal duality, or ebb and flow, which
constitutes the living soul itself. And because the psycho-material
substance of the soul must be considered as identical, on its
psychic side, with the "spiritual substance" of the universe
"medium" through which all souls come into contact with one
another, and identical on its material side with the objective
mystery which is expressed in all bodies, it is impossible to avoid
the conclusion that the individual personality is surrounded by an
elemental and universal "something" similar to itself, dominated
as itself is dominated by the omnipresent circle of Space.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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