Thus we can imagine a plane world, in which all the variety of motion
is the phenomenon of structures consisting of filamentary atoms
traversed by a plane of consciousness. Passing to four dimensions and
our space, we can conceive that all things and movements in our world
are the reading off of a permanent reality by a space of consciousness.
Each atom at every moment is not what it was, but a new part of that
endless line which is itself. And all this system successively revealed
in the time which is but the succession of consciousness, separate
as it is in parts, in its entirety is one vast unity. Representing
Parmenides’ doctrine thus, we gain a firmer hold on it than if we
merely let his words rest, grand and massive, in our minds. And we have
gained the means also of representing phases of that Eastern thought
to which Parmenides was no stranger. Modifying his uncompromising
doctrine, let us suppose, to go back to the plane of consciousness
and the structure of filamentary atoms, that these structures are
themselves moving—are acting, living. Then, in the transverse motion
of the film, there would be two phenomena of motion, one due to the
reading off in the film of the permanent existences as they are in
themselves, and another phenomenon of motion due to the modification of
the record of the things themselves, by their proper motion during the
process of traversing them.
Thus a conscious being in the plane would have, as it were, a
two-fold experience. In the complete traversing of the structure, the
intersection of which with the film gives his conscious all, the main
and principal movements and actions which he went through would be the
record of his higher self as it existed unmoved and unacting. Slight
modifications and deviations from these movements and actions would
represent the activity and self-determination of the complete being, of
his higher self.
It is admissible to suppose that the consciousness in the plane has
a share in that volition by which the complete existence determines
itself. Thus the motive and will, the initiative and life, of the
higher being, would be represented in the case of the being in the
film by an initiative and a will capable, not of determining any great
things or important movements in his existence, but only of small and
relatively insignificant activities. In all the main features of his
life his experience would be representative of one state of the higher
being whose existence determines his as the film passes on. But in his
minute and apparently unimportant actions he would share in that will
and determination by which the whole of the being he really is acts and
lives.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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