Tertium Organum

parts of the body of 
higher animals and 
Simple consciousness and 
flashes of thought. 
Thinking, moments of 
self-consciousness and 
flashes of cosmic con­
sciousness. 
Self-consciousness and 
beginning of cosmic 
consciousness. 
Animals possessing 
complex organisms. 
Absence of awareness of 
death. 
Man. 
Awareness of death, 
or fantastic theories of 
immortality. 
Higher type of man. 
Beginning of immor­
tality. 
Body, instinct, appetites, 
voices of the body. 
Emotions. 
Simple emotions and 
logical reason. 
Higher emotions, higher 
intellect, mystical 
knowledge. 
The simultaneous existence of all the four forms of consciousness at once, 
both in nature and in the higher type of man renders the exclusively 
evolutionary point of view too strained and artificial. The evolutionary point 
of view is often simply a refusal to face a difficult problem, a desire to avoid 
thinking too much. This is the reason why the evolutionary point of view is 
often applied where there is no need of it whatever. Very often it is a 
compromise of thought. Not understanding the existing variety of forms and 
their interconnections, and not knowing how to think of it all 
as a unity
, 
people seize upon the evolutionary view and regard the variety of forms as an 
ascending 

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ladder. This view is, of course, derived not from real facts but from the desire 
at all costs to systematize what they observe, be it even on entirely artificial 
grounds. People think that if they construe a system, they already know 
something. But in reality absence of a system is very often nearer to true 
knowledge than an artificial system. 
'Evolutionists' who are incapable of understanding the whole, without 
representing it to themselves as a chain, each link of which is derived from 
another link, are like the blind men in an Eastern tale who feel an elephant 
from different sides and assert, one that the elephant is like pillars, another 
that he is like a thick rope, and so on. Only, evolutionists add to this that the 
elephant's trunk must have 
evolved
from his legs, the ears from the trunk, and 
so on. But, after all, we know that all this is -
an elephant, i.e.
one single 
being, unknown to the blind men. Just such a single being is the living world. 
And with regard to forms of consciousness, it is much more correct to regard
them not as consecutive stages, nor as phases of evolution, distinct from one 
another, but as different sides or pans of one 
whole,
which we do not know. 
In 'man' this unity is self-evident. All the forms of consciousness can exist 
in him simultaneously: the life of the cells and the organs with their 
consciousnesses; the life of the whole body, taken as one; 
the life of emotions and logical reason, and the life of higher forms of 
consciousness. 
The higher form of consciousness is necessary for the organization of life 
on earth, as we are already beginning to see. For a long time, under the rule of 
materialism and positivist thought, people forgot or distorted religious ideas 
and thought it possible to live by logical reason alone. But now, little by little, 
it becomes evident to those who have eyes to see, that people, left to the 
mercy of logical reasoning only, are incapable of organizing their life on 
earth, and if they do not finally exterminate one another as did some 
Polynesian tribes, they will at any rate create (and have already created) 
utterly impossible conditions of life in which everything gained will be lost, 
i.e. everything that was given them by men of self-consciousness and of 
cosmic consciousness. 
The living world of nature (including man) is analogous to man, and it is 
much more convenient and correct to regard the different forms of 
consciousness in the different parts and strata of living nature not as separate
and evolving from one another, but as belonging to