Upon the mystery of Nirvana the Higher Space Hypothesis casts not a little light.  To “approach the Eternal” can only be to approach a condition where time is not.  Because there is an escape from time in proportion as space dimensions are added to, and assimilated by, consciousness, any development involving this element of space conquest (and evolution is itself such a development) involves time annihilation also.  To be in a state of desire is to be conditioned by a limitation, because one can desire only that which one has not or is not.  The extinction of a desire is only another name for the transcending of a limitation—­of all desires, of all limitations.  If these limitations are of space they are of time also; therefore is the “approach to the Eternal” through the “extinction of all desire.”  Christ said, “Him that overcometh will I make a pillar of the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out”—­go out, that is, into incarnation—­into “time, besprent with seven-hued circumstance.”

Such are the testimonies of the world-saviors regarding the means and end of liberation.  Below them on the evolutionary ladder stand the mystics, earth-bound, but soul-free; below them, in turn, yet far above common humanity, stand the men of genius, caught still in the net of passion, but able, in their work, to reflect something of the glory of the supernal world.  Let us consider, in the next two chapters, each of these in turn.

IX THE MYSTICS

HERMES TRISMEGISTUS

The mystic, however far removed he may be from Nietzsche’s ideal of the Superman, nevertheless represents superhumanity in the domain of consciousness.  By means of quotations, taken almost at random from the rich literature of mysticism, the author will attempt to show that the consciousness of the mystic involves the awareness of dimensionally higher worlds.  The first group of quotations is culled from certain of the Sacred Books of Hermes Trismegistus.

“Comprehend clearly” (says Hermes to Asclepios) “that this sensible world is enfolded, as in a garment, by the supernal world.”

We think of our three dimensional space, “the sensible world,” as immersed in higher space; “enfolded as in a garment,” therefore.  And we think of the objects of our world as having extension in a dimensionally higher region, that “supernal world” in which the phenomena of this sensible world arise.  For: 

“Celestial order reigns over terrestrial order:  all that is done and said upon earth has its origin in the heights, from which all essences are dispensed with measure and equilibrium:  nor is there anything which does not emanate from one above and return thither”

THE PAGE AND THE PRESS

The idea of an all-embracing unity within and behind the seeming manifoldness of life forms the ground rhythm of all inspired literature, sacred and profane alike.  For clarity and conciseness it would be difficult to improve upon the formulation of this idea contained in the following fragment: