In Search of the Miraculous

"In analyzing the various subjective meanings of the word 'man' we have seen how

varied and contradictory, and, above all, how concealed and unnoticeable even to the

speaker. himself are the meanings and the shades of meaning created by habitual

associations that can be put into a word.

"Let us take some other word, for example, the term 'world.' Each man understands

it in his own way, and each man in an entirely different way. Everyone when he hears

or pronounces the word 'world' has associations entirely foreign and incomprehensible

to another. Every 'conception of the world,' every habitual form of thinking, carries

with it its own associations, its own ideas.

"In a man with a religious conception of the world, a Christian, the word 'world'

will call up a whole series of religious ideas, will necessarily become connected with

the idea of God, with the idea of the creation of the world or the end of the world, or

of the 'sinful' world, and so on.

"For a follower of the Vedantic philosophy the world before anything else will be

illusion, 'Maya.'

"A theosophist will think of the different 'planes,' the physical, the astral, the

mental, and so on.

"A spiritualist will think of the world 'beyond,' the world of spirits.

"A physicist will look upon the world from the point of view of the structure of

matter; it will be a world of molecules or atoms, or electrons.

"For the astronomer the world will be a world of stars and nebulae.

"And so on and so on. The phenomenal and the noumenal world, the world of the

fourth and other dimensions, the world of good and the world of evil, the material

world and the immaterial world, the proportion of power in the different nations of the

world, can man be 'saved' in the world, and so on, and so on.

"People have thousands of different ideas about the world but not one general idea

which would enable them to understand one another and to determine at once from

what point of view they desire to regard the world.

"It is impossible to study a system of the universe without studying man. At the

same time it is impossible to study man without studying the universe. Man is an

image of the world. He was created by the same laws which created the whole of the

world. By knowing and understanding himself he will know and understand the whole

world, all the laws that create and govern the world. And at the same time by studying

the world and the laws that govern the world he will learn and understand the laws

that govern him. In this connection some laws are understood and assimilated more

easily by studying the objective world, while man can only understand other laws by

studying himself. The study of the world and the study of man must therefore run

parallel, one helping the other.

"In relation to the term 'world' it is necessary to understand from the very outset

that there are many worlds, and that we live not in one world, but in several worlds.

This is not readily understood because in ordinary language the term 'world' is

generally used in the singular. And if the plural 'worlds' is used it is merely to

emphasize, as it were, the same idea, or to express the idea of various worlds existing

parallel to one another. Our language does not have the idea of worlds contained one

within another. And yet the idea that we live in different worlds precisely implies

worlds contained one within another to which we stand in different relations.

"If we desire an answer to the question what is the world or worlds in

which we live, we must first of all ask ourselves what it is that we may call 'world' in

the most intimate and immediate relation to us.,

"To this we may answer that we often give the name of 'world' to the world of

people, to humanity, in which we live, of which we form part. But humanity forms an

inseparable part of organic life on earth, therefore it would be right to say that the

world nearest to us is organic life on earth, the world of plants, animals, and men.

"But organic life is also in the world. What then is 'world' for organic life?

"To this we can answer that for organic life our planet the earth is 'world.'

"But the earth is also in the world. What then is 'world' for the earth?

" 'World' for the earth is the planetary world of the solar system, of which it forms a part.

"What is 'world' for all the planets taken together? The sun, or the sphere of the

sun's influence, or the solar system, of which the planets form a part.

"For the sun, in its turn, 'world' is our world of stars, or the Milky Way, an

accumulation of a vast number of solar systems.

"Furthermore, from an astronomical point of view, it is quite possible to presume a

multitude of worlds existing at enormous distances from one another in the space of

'all worlds.' These worlds taken together will be 'world' for the Milky Way.

"Further, passing to philosophical conclusions, we may say that 'all worlds' must

form some, for us, incomprehensible and unknown Whole or One (as an apple is one).