Page:The Dial (Volume 68).djvu/227

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CLAUDE BRAGDON
191

lution in philosophical thought considerably greater than that caused by the displacement of the earth from the center of the universe by Copernicus. Time becomes space, and space becomes a mathematical abstraction! Mathematics in some of its more modern developments requires neither time, space, number, nor quantity. Are we on the point of discovering that the only reality is thought—consciousness?

If so, by a long detour, Western science arrives at the same conclusion as Eastern mysticism: that materiality is only maya, illusion—the mirror of consciousness.

In studying phenomena by the objective method we are perhaps in the position of a spectator at a moving-picture show, who, knowing nothing of the mechanism by which the images are produced, tries to unravel the mystery by confining his attention to the screen. What he should do is to turn his back upon the screen, and follow the cone of light until it leads him to the booth, and finally to the film and the lantern. The Theory of Relativity may have the effect of leading us to seek the explanation of phenomena, not in other phenomena of a similar order, for that is a fruitless quest, but to seek it in a higher order of phenomena altogether—in consciousness. For the world-secret dwells not in the world, but in the self.