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PHANTOMS OF THE MIND. 677
assumed the shape of the Pyramid—the symbol of the phenomenal
merging into the noumenal Universe of thought, at the apex of the
four triangles ; and, as an " imaginary figure constructed of three
mathematical lines," it symbolized the subjective spheres—these
lines "enclosing a mathematical space—which is equal to nothing
enclosing nothing." And this because, to the senses and the untrained
consciousness of the Profane and the Scientist, everything
beyond the line of differentiated Matter i.e., outside of, and beyond
the realm of even the most Spiritual S2ibsta7icc—h2iS to remain for ever
Yet these
eqital to nothing. It is the Ain Suph—the N'o Thing.
"phantoms of the mind" are in truth no greater abstractions
than the abstract ideas in general as to evolution and physical
development e.g.. Gravity, Matter, Force, etc.—on which the exact
Sciences are based. Our most eminent Chemists and Physicists are
earnestly pursuing the not hopeless attempt of finally tracing to its
hiding-place the Protyle, or the basic line of the Pythagorean Triangle.
The latter is, as we have said, the grandest conception imaginable, for
it symbolizes both the ideal and the visible universes.* For if
The possible unit is only a possibility as an actuality of nature, as an individual of
any kind, [and as] every individual natural object is capable of division, and by
division loses its unity, or ceases to be a unit,t
this is true only of the realm of exact Science in
a world as deceptive
as it is illusive. In the realm of Esoteric Science the Unit divided
ad infinitiun, instead of losing its unity, approaches with every division
the planes of the only eternal Reality. The eye of the Seer can
follow it and behold it in all its pregenetic glor)\ This same idea of
the reality of the subjective, and the unreality of the objective Universe,
is found at the bottom of the Pythagorean and Platonic Teachings
limited to the Elect alone; for Porphyry, speaking of the Monad and
the Duad, says that the former only was considered substantial and
real, "that most simple Being, the cause of all unit}'^ and the measure
of all
things."
But the Duad, although the origin of Evil, or Matter—hence tmreal
in Philosophy— is still Substance during Manvantara, and is often
called the Third Monad, in Occultism, and the connecting line as
between two Points, or Numbers, which proceeded from That, "which
• In the World of Form, symbolism finding expression in the Pyramids, has in them both triangle
and square, four co-equal triangles or surfaces, four basic points, and the fifth—the apex,
t Pp. 385, 386.