Tertium Organum

perpetuum mobile,
i.e. a 
violation of the fundamental laws of the three-dimensional world as we know it, would 
represent a victory over the three-dimensional world 
in the three-dimensional world 
itself. 
However, it is necessary to remember that objective knowledge does not study facts, 
but only 
representations of facts. 
IN ORDER THAT OBJECTIVE KNOWLEDGE SHOULD TRANSCEND THE LIMITS OF THE THREE-
DIMENSIONAL SPHERE, IT IS NECESSARY THAT THE CONDITIONS OF REPRESENTATION SHOULD 
CHANGE. 
So long as this does not take place, our objective knowledge is confined within the 
limits of an 
infinite three-dimensional sphere.
It can advance 
ad infinitum
along the 
radii of that sphere,
but it will not pass over into the domain of which our three­
dimensional world represents 
a section.
And we know from what has gone before that 
if our perception were still more limited, objective knowledge would be 
correspondingly limited. It is impossible to convey to a dog the idea that the earth is 
round; to make it remember the weight of the sun and the distances between the 
planets. Its objective knowledge is much more 
personal
than ours. And the cause of this 
lies in its limited mind. 
Thus we see that objective knowledge depends on the properties of the mind. 
Of course, there is a tremendous difference between the objective knowledge of a 
savage and that of Herbert Spencer. But neither the one nor the other oversteps the 
limits of the three-dimensional sphere, i.e. the domain of the 'conditional', the unreal. In 
order to get out of the three-dimensional sphere, it is necessary to expand or change the 
forms of perception. 
Is it possible to expand perception? 
The study of complex forms of cognition tells us that it is possible. 
The famous Alexandrian philosopher of the third century, Plotinus, affirmed that for 
perfect cognition the subject and the object should be 

---

united - that the rational agent and the thing which is being perceived should not be 
separated. 'For that which 
sees is
itself and the thing which 
is seen.'* 
Naturally one should understand here 'seeing' not in a literal sense. 'Seeing' changes 
with the change of the state of consciousness in which it occurs. 
What forms of consciousness are there? 
Indian philosophy distinguishes four states of consciousness: 
sleep, dreams, waking state and the state of absolute consciousness — 'Turiya'** 
(The 
Ancient Wisdom,
Annie Besant). 
G. R. S. Mead, in the preface to Taylor's translation of Plotinus, connects the 
terminology of Shankaracharya, master of the 
Advaita-Vedântin
school of ancient 
India, with the terminology of Plotinus: 
The first or spiritual state was ecstasy, from ecstasy it forgot itself into deep sleep; 
from profound sleep it awoke out of unconsciousness, but still within itself, into the 
internal world of dreams, from dreaming it passed finally into the thoroughly waking 
state, and the outer world of sense 
Ecstasy is a term used by Plotinus. It is completely identical with the term Turiya of 
Indian psychology. 
In the so-called waking state consciousness is surrounded by things constructed by 
the organs of sense and the perceiving apparatus in the phenomenal world; it 
distinguishes the 'subjective' from the 'objective' and differentiates its own images of 
representation from the 'reality'. It accepts the phenomenal objective world as reality 
and dreams as unreality. At the same time it seems to regard as unreal the whole 
subjective world. Its dim sensation of the real things lying beyond that which is 
constructed by the organs of sense, i.e. sensations of