But this also shows the inconsistency of the opposite spiritual attitude, which fears the path into the depths as an escape from the objective reality common to all into the closed sphere of individual subjectivity. The opposite is true. Only through delving into this primary reality do we find for the first time our true, inner connection with objective reality. The path into the depths, into oneself, is not a path to some dark, enclosed dungeon – it is, on the contrary, a path that connects us with the boundless expanse of all that exists – just as the descent into the underground railway is a way of reaching the remote parts of a huge city as quickly and directly as possible. This analogy, however, is incomplete: the "metro" has as its sole purpose the acceleration and simplification of our connection with the remote parts of the urban surface; And the deepening into the primary reality, uniting us with the whole expanse of objective reality, has, in addition to this utilitarian and derivative purpose, another, more primary, self-sufficient, and immeasurably more important value in our life: it reveals to us our connection with the supermundane basis of being, thus infinitely expanding our spiritual horizon, freeing us from the deceptive appearance of our unconditional subordination to "objective reality" as something that oppresses us. to the almighty in relation to us fait accompli. [16] An inner connection with the primary reality gives us both freedom from the power of the world over us and the opportunity to be its creative participant.

This achieves an understanding (so far only preliminary) of the fundamental duality of human existence, which follows from its connection with objective reality and with primary reality.

Through his body and carnal life, through the outer, external layer of his psychic life, determined by his connection with the body, man is himself a part of "objective reality", a part – and moreover an insignificant and subordinate part – of the "world" in which and from which he is born and in which he dwells, partly passively determined by heredity, upbringing, environment and all the processes and events of this world around him. partly actively, in turn, building and modifying it. Through its depths – through the core or root of its being, and in this sense through its true being – it belongs to the composition of the supermundane primary reality (in which, as we have seen, the world itself, "objective reality", is rooted and from which the "objective reality" itself ultimately derives). Man is thus a two-nature being, and any doctrine of life which does not take into account these two aspects of human existence at the same time would be inadequate to his true being. But this duality is not pure dualism, a simple coexistence or even a confrontation of two heterogeneous principles. Man is not just a dual, but a dual being: the coexistence and confrontation of these two natures is combined with a certain harmony of them, with a certain intimate unity of them, and this unity must be taken into account in the same way as duality. Participation in objective reality, belonging to the "world," which is directly determined by our "carnal," mental-bodily nature, flows simultaneously from our supra-worldly, spiritual life, and therefore is or can at least be under its control and guidance, and in this sense be the self-expression of our super-worldly being. The structure of our being is complex, antinomic, and any artificial simplification and schematization of it distorts it. In order to avoid this, we must now understand in more detail the uniqueness of the deepest layer of being which has been revealed to us in the face of the primordial reality.

CHAPTER II

REALITY AND ITS COGNITION

1. COGNITION OF REALITY AS A CONCRETE DESCRIPTION AND SOPHISTICATED IGNORANCE

But how can we understand more precisely what we mean by reality? And is it possible to define this idea at all in the same way as we define any other concept?

If the considerations of the preceding chapter have achieved their purpose, they have led the reader to become convinced that, in addition to the whole sphere of objective reality, there is something that truly exists—something that truly exists, not less, but rather more, than objective reality—which we have agreed, unlike the latter, to call reality. It is directly revealed in the person of the inner spiritual life of man; and at the same time it necessarily goes beyond the purely inner, personal world of the "I", uniting it from within with what is already outside the "I", and in the end forms an all-embracing and all-pervading unity and the basis of all existence in general.

At first glance it seems that this is an impossible and, so to speak, pointless task. Every description and definition, every logical analysis, presupposes a certain variety, and consists in dividing it, in pointing out the difference between one part and another, and in discerning the relations between them. Something absolutely primary and simple, and at the same time all-embracing, can be experienced, but it cannot be described, expressed in words, or defined; it is possible to know it, but it is impossible to know anything about it – except that it is given to us, that it is present, that it is. This, it seems, is the property of what we have designated under the name of "reality." Just as we know very well—we know immeasurably more deeply and intimately than anything else—what we mean when we speak of our own existence, and yet we are unable to express it in words and concepts, to describe the content of what we are thinking, so we, having attained in inner experience the discernment of what we have called reality (in its general all-embracing sense), we know what this common soil and atmosphere, this basis or background of our own existence is, and at the same time we are powerless to express this knowledge, to define it, to analyze its content. In the very essence of the matter, it would seem to be a kind of mute, ineffable knowledge; Since to understand, to comprehend, means precisely to express in concepts, i.e., to establish the difference between one and the other and the connection between them, to "explain" one by indicating its relation to another, "reality" in its very essence coincides with the "incomprehensible." [17] "Incomprehensible," as is self-evident from what has just been said, does not mean, of course, "unknown," "unfamiliar," "hidden." On the contrary, it is quite clear, remaining mysterious only in its inexplicability, irreducibility to anything else, in its inaccessibility to logically analytic thought. It is what Goethe called the "manifest mystery" (offenes Geheimnis). Our consciousness, our experience, is wider than the sphere of our thought; Thought helps us to orient ourselves in the diversity of its content, but it does not extend to that ultimate something that forms the primary basis and general essence of our experiential heritage. This can be expressed in another way. We mean something and say about it or see something in it; logically this is the difference between the subject and the predicate of the judgment; And it is this duality between reality itself and its content that determines the fact that our knowledge has the character of a judgment – the character of saying something about something. [18] From this it would seem obvious that it would be a logical contradiction to try to "know", "understand", "explain" reality itself, the subject itself (the subject) in its categorical difference from the predicate. For to "know," to "understand," is nothing else than to see the "contents" inherent in this reality, to see what it "has" or of which it is the bearer. The attempt to "know" reality itself in the same way, precisely that which constitutes its very essence, as distinct from its inherent "contents," seems to be fundamentally untenable, containing a contradictio in adjecto. [19]

This sounds extremely convincing at first glance. But however true this may be, it is not difficult to see that, if we were to rest on such a negative attitude, we would not have reached the firm ground of sound reasonableness at all, but, on the contrary, would lose sight of the most essential point constituting the idea of reality which we have already reached. Or, since we would continue to be guided by this idea, we would fall into a hopeless logical contradiction.

As we have seen above (Chapter I, 4), reality, as an all-embracing unity, has all negation within itself, simply because it has nothing outside of itself. The moment of negation is only a moment that expresses its inner dismemberment. But if this is so, then by distinguishing reality itself from all its rationally definable contents, by contrasting it with the latter simply as a purely irrational and therefore indefinable something, we actually apply to it the category of logical difference that is not applicable to it. In this way we fall into a peculiar contradiction between the form of our utterance and its content: declaring reality indefinable and incomprehensible, in this sharp and unambiguous distinction between it and everything else, we thereby define it in the same way as we define everything definable in general; and, having in mind the all-embracing unity, we, by logically distinguishing it from all that is particular, i.e., by excluding the latter from it, transform it into something also particular, depriving it of its property of being a truly all-embracing unity; We replace this concrete all-embracing unity with an abstract unity that has a multiplicity outside of itself. In this way we are plunged into a kind of, to use Augustine's apt expression, a fatal and hopeless "confrontation of words" (pugna verborum).

Augustine uses this expression in relation to the idea of the incomprehensibility of God. By recognizing God as "incomprehensible," we thereby define Him, ascribe to Him a certain definite quality, i.e., we diminish His fullness that transcends reason, we replace His superrational being with a logically definite, albeit only negative, concept. In order to clarify our topic, it is useful to continue this analogy by considering the essence of the so-called "negative theology." It goes without saying that we take this trend here only from its purely logical aspect, in its analogy with the course of general thought that occupies us, since at this stage of our reflection we are still far from any theology and have not met with the idea of God at all.

"Negative theology" (the creator of which, as we know, was the unknown Christian mystic of the East, known as Dionysius the Areopagite) asserts that we attain an understanding of God or approach it only through the denial, in relation to God, of all the qualities known to us from our knowledge of the "created" world. And since all our concepts are drawn from our earthly experience, we cannot have any positive definitions of the essence of God at all. We do not know and cannot say what God is; we only know that He is not. We only know that He is something absolutely alien to everything known to us from the experience of created being. Not only do we not have the right to apply to God any spatial or sensuous-visual representations, but we do not even have the right to apply to Him such spiritual or abstract categories as "goodness" or "being," etc., because all these concepts in their usual sense are burdened with their application to earthly, created being, and therefore are inadequate to the supermundane being of God.

But what do we mean when we say that we only know that God is not, but do not know that He is? In our ordinary, logically formed knowledge, negation (on top of its didactic-psychological meaning as the rejection of false opinions) has the meaning of distinction. We know or define something by distinguishing it from something else. Affirmative and negative judgments are only different logical forms, correlative moments of knowledge as determinations, i.e., as the perception of a certain definiteness. From this it is evident that negation in its usual logical sense of distinction is possible only in relation to separate, particular contents, for it means a choice between them. But in this case, what is the meaning of the demand of "negative theology" to reject all known or conceivable signs in relation to God in general? Taking negation in its usual logical sense, it will be necessary to say: the negation of all generally accessible and conceivable attributes in relation to an object makes its object meaningless; to deny everything is simply to affirm nothing; negative theology in this interpretation would be reduced simply to an unconditional agnosticism in relation to God, to the assertion that we can know nothing about God at all.