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A Series of Lessons on the Inner Teachings of the Philosophies and Religions of India1144
still further, and further, until at last was to be found that which was not
capable of further analysis or refinement—and which could not even be
called a Something—and which the Hindu mind has always called that,
because no other term could be applied to it without ascribing attributes
or qualities—that which would be left even after all the universe had been
thought away in the refinement of metaphysical speculation. The early
thinkers asked the questions: “When the universe disintegrates, what is it
that absorbs it? What is the Reality behind, and under the world of change
and destruction? Upon what permanent foundation does the universe of
impermanency rest?”
The old legends tell of the Hindu philosophers thousands of years
before the Roman Empire, asking the ultimate questions, such as: “What
is there that will still exist though there be no universe; no heavens; no
gods; no anything?” The answer agreed upon by the sages being “Infinite
Essential Space.” And so space was considered as a Reality that could not
be thought away even by the use of the most powerful imagination. But
their conception of space was not that of an immense, infinite Nothing—for
the Hindu mind abhors ideas of Nothing, and will not admit that Anything
can proceed from Nothing—instead, their idea of Essential Space was that
of an Actual Reality—an Absolute Substantial Reality from which all Things
were manifestations, emanations, expressions, or thoughts. They thought of
Infinite Essential Space as a No-Thing, but not as Nothing. To them Space
was not only “an infinite capacity for extending objects,” which is the physical
aspect of it—but something more—an Infinite Bare Abstract Subjectivity,
which the human mind was compelled to admit in all of its conceptions, and
yet was unable to think of as “in-itself.”
In the second place, the early Hindu thinkers were compelled to admit
the Reality of Motion, as an aspect of the Ultimate Reality. They reasoned
that there was manifested an Activity which proceeded from that, and
which evidently was not merely a phenomenal manifestation but rather an
inherent and essential aspect of Itself. They held that as all Activity arises