Tertium Organum

I 
became all.
The waves - they were myself. The violet mountains in the distance - they 
were myself. The wind - it was myself. The clouds, hurrying from the north, the rain ­
were myself. The huge ship, rolling indomitably forward - was myself. I felt that huge 
iron body as 
my body; 
all its movements, waverings, rollings and shudderings, the fire, the pressure of 
steam, the engine - all this was 
inside
me. The relentless, inexorable screw which 
pushed me on and on with every turn, the rudder which never let go 
of me
for an 
instant, watching my every movement 
-
all this was I.
The mate on duty on the bridge was I; and two sailors . . . and the 
black smoke, billowing from the funnel . . . everything. 
It was a moment of extraordinary liberation, joy and expansion. A second 
- and the spell was broken. It vanished as the beginning of a dream fades as soon as 
one thinks of it. But the sensation was so powerful, vivid and unusual, that I was 
afraid to move and waited for it to come back. But it did not come back, and a 
minute later I could no longer say whether it had been or not, whether I had really 
experienced all this or only 
thought,
looking at the waves, that it might be so. 
Two years later, the yellowish waves of the Gulf of Finland and the green 
* The Varieties of Religious Experience. 

---

sky overhead gave me a faint taste of the same sensation. But this time it 
broke off before anything materialized. 
The examples given in this chapter are far from exhausting the mystical 
experience of humanity. 
But what do we see in them? 
First of all, 
unity of experience.
In mystical sensations all men definitely
feel something similar, something that has the same meaning and connection 
with one another. Mystics of different centuries and nations speak the same 
language and use the same words. This is the first and most important thing
which speaks for the reality of mystical experience. Next is the complete 
agreement of the results of this experience with the theoretically deduced 
conditions of the world of causes -
the sensation of the 
unity of all, 
characteristic of mysticism; a new sense of 
time;
the sense of 
infinity,
joy or 
terror; the knowledge of the whole in the part; infinite life and infinite con­
sciousness. All these are real facts 
of sensation
in mystical experience. And 
these facts are 
theoretically correct. 
They are such as they should be 
according to the deductions of the 
MATHEMATICS OF THE INFINITE 
and of 
HIGHER LOGIC
. This is all that can be said about them. 

---

CHAPTER 23 
Cosmic Consciousness of
Dr Bucke. The three forms of consciousness according to 
Bucke. Simple consciousness, or the consciousness of animals. Self-consciousness, 
or the consciousness of men. Cosmic consciousness. In what is it expressed? 
Sensation, representation, concept, higher 
MORAL 
concept - creative understanding. 
Men of cosmic consciousness. The fall of Adam. The knowledge of good and evil. 
Christ and the salvation of man. Comments on Dr Bucke's book. Birth of the new 
humanity. Two races. 
SUPERMAN
. 
TABLE OF THE FOUR FORMS 
OF MANIFESTATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 
Many people think that the fundamental problems of life are absolutely
insoluble, that mankind will never learn why or for what it is striving, why it 
is suffering, where it is going. It is considered almost indecent to raise these 
questions. One is supposed to 'take life as it comes', without thinking, or 
thinking only about those things which are capable of solution, be it only 
externally. Men have despaired of finding answers to the principal questions 
and have given up bothering about them. 
At the same time men have a very vague idea of what it is that has 
produced in them this sense of hopelessness and insolubility. Whence comes 
this feeling that about many things