TAO IN ITS TRANSCENDENTAL ASPECT, AND IN ITS PHYSICAL MANIFESTATION
The Tao which can be expressed in words is not the eternal Tao; the name which can be uttered is not its eternal name. Without a name, it is the Beginning of Heaven and Earth; with a name, it is the Mother of all things. Only one who is eternally free from earthly passions can apprehend its spiritual essence; he who is ever dogged by passions can see no more than its outer form. These two things, the spiritual and the material, though we call them by different names, in their origin are one and the same. This sameness is a mystery,— the mystery of mysteries. It is the gate of all spirituality.
How unfathomable is Tao! It seems to be the ancestral progenitor of all things. How pure and clear is Tao! It would seem to be everlasting. I know not of whom it is the offspring. It appears to have been anterior to any Sovereign Power.[1]
- ↑ This sentence is admittedly obscure, and it may be an interpolation. Lao Tzŭ's system of cosmogony has no place for any Divine Being independent of Tao. On the other hand, to translate ti by "Emperor," as some have done, necessarily involves us in an absurd anti-climax.
19
