Observations placeholder
Ouspensky, P D - Tertium Organum - Lobachevsky and Kant
Identifier
006307
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
What is the material layer? Mystics try to explain by saying that it is coalesced energy, but it might be more accurate to say it is a convenient set of mathematical formula that our perception uses to build its perception. In a sense it is a virtual world as much as the other layers are virtual. It is valid to express it mathematically using geometry for example, because our perception sees it that way, but we are imposing the mathematics our senses use on the world, we thus impose a certain geometry on what exists ‘outside’ our perception
A description of the experience
Tertium Organum – P D Ouspensky
Lobachevsky’s merit consists in that he found it necessary to revise the fundamental concepts of geometry. But he never went so far as to revalue these concepts from Kant’s standpoint. At the same time he is in no sense contradictory to Kant. A surface in the mind of Lobachevsky, as a geometrician, was only a means for the generalisation of the properties of certain given lines. About the reality or the unreality of a surface, he probably never thought.