Rudhyar on New Age II

[Guest guest]

[This is the last chapter of Rudhyar's book... published 25 years ago.]

 

14. AT THE THRESHOLD OF

OCCULT KNOWLEDGE

 

 

The impetus given by a quantitative mathematics has led to the development

of a quantitatively minded world; it is an essential task for the future to

develop the qualitative aspect of mathematics, so that the generations to

come may in time achieve a true science of the living, conscious aspect of

the world.

 

Olive Whicher

Emerson College, Sussex, England

Author of _Projective Geometry_, etc.

 

In this century, the main focus of the transformative process is the

mind. It was to "change the mind of the twentieth century" that - as she

herself stated - H. P. Blavatsky was sent among the proud and egocentric

individualists of our Western society by those who were able to work

through her. From 1775 to 1875 the basic change in the physical and social

way of life had already begun to occur in its initial germinative

developments. But at the mental level these hundred years represent

essentially a spiritually negative, because materialistic phase dominated

by a narrow and inflated sense of cultural-intellectua1 and racial

superiority. That phase was meant to destroy the foundation of the European

Medieval order with its religious dogmatism and obscurantism; but it also

fostered a dogmatism of its own. It produced a somewhat fanatical reliance

upon the empirical method exclusively concerned with sense-data totally

dominated by an Aristotelian rationalism and an intellectual

equalitarianism according to which no fact was admissible unless it could

be validated by the laboratory experiments of any trained observers

whenever and wherever performed.

As matters today stand, the collective mentality of our Western

peoples and of all other races which have accepted Western indoctrination

(which of course includes also all Communist countries) is still deeply

conditioned by the basic concepts and methodology of nineteenth century

science. These concepts and methods still determine our present "official"

approach to knowledge; they determine not only our education, but also our

academic priorities and governmental regulations of many sensitive

professions allowed to control basic social and biological processes.

Recent discoveries and electronic technology, on the one hand, have given

far more power and virulence to the Establishment's ability to control

these processes and various aspects of our individual lives; on the other

hand, these new discoveries, especially in atomic physics, biology, and

psychology, have compelled the most progressive scientists in many fields

to at least tentatively develop various "meta-sciences" which are leading

to the very threshold of occult knowledge.

It is not the purpose of this book, nor do I feel qualified, to

discuss in any detail what has been happening in many fields of scientific

research, as well as of philosophical or psychic speculation attempting to

explain all the data revolutionizing last century concepts and our "common

sense" view of the world. It seems necessary, however, to point to perhaps

the most fundamental changes having occurred in Western man's approach to

knowledge and the methods for obtaining that knowledge, because it

inevitably is in response to these changes and to the possibilities that

have opened up that a new influx (or "descent") of occult knowledge will

take form, granted that such an influx is to be expected during the next

two decades.

It was in response to what the Industrial Revolution and science and

technology developed between 1825 and 1875 that H. P. B.'s message was

given its particular form, from _Isis Unveiled_ to _The Secret Doctrine_.

It was in response to what had been achieved by the pioneering and critical

minds of the Enlightenment and the Masonic Lodges that the new American

nation and the French Revolution took their respective forms; and the

apparent failure of the work of Mesmer and others was conditioned by the

narrowness of the official eighteenth century rationalism. We now may think

that we have already witnessed a great transformation of Western man's

collective mentality, but actually what has occurred even in the most

advanced scientific fields is only the prelude to the expectable

transformation which will come as an answer to the ineffectual because

biased approach to knowledge which has characterized and still officially

characterizes our new globally spread Western civilization.

In spite of recent developments the most basic characteristic of our

modern scientific approach is still a rigid empiricism which refuses to

admit as evidence anything but perceptions based on sense data, augmented

now by an immense variety of instruments. Sense data are accepted solely as

facts - proving or disproving theories; and these theories are structured

along strictly quantitative and rationalistic either/or lines. The

analytical and reductionistic mind with its atomistic outlook is still in

control of by far the larger body of official thinking, even though a

holistic way of thinking (and of feeling or intuiting) concerning man and

his relation to the universe has recently spread among progressive

scientists. These scientists nevertheless form still a relatively uneasy

minority, usually on the defensive. In order gradually to convince the old

guard of official thinkers in control of most social and educational

processes, and particularly of the distribution of grants for research,

they feel obliged to compromise and tone down their direct intuitive

realizations by using indirect techniques in order to quantitatively and

empirically prove the validity of their hypotheses. References to

metaphysical principles unfamiliar to the European tradition are avoided.

What this actually means is that the equally undemonstrable postulates on

which much of our Western science has been based since Bacon early in the

seventeenth century remain unchallenged. They constitute the sacrosanct

paradigms of our European type of culture.

The type of knowledge characterizing true Occultism - which I repeat

is not to be confused with what popular magazines and many psychics today

call occultism - is essentially based upon the realization that a realm of

energy undertones, directs, controls, or guides the phenomena, events, and

changes which we perceive with our senses and which the Western mind

attributes to a physically material world of objective entities. In _The

Mahatma Letters_ this occult realm is called "the world of force." It is

the dynamic world which opens to the consciousness of the individual who

either is led into it through Initiation or, of his own accord and at his

own risks (and dangerous risks they are!) manages to force his way into it.

What we feel and perceive as our ordinary physical world is the concretized

and material projection of such an "occult'' realm of forces.

_The Secret Doctrine_ asserts that "the Universe is worked and

_guided_ from _within outwards_." (_The Secret Doctrine_ II, page 274) The

intuitive American philosopher, Oliver Reiser, speaks in all his books of

"guiding fields" which pervade, sustain, and control every material body

and, at the cosmic level, the whole universe itself. Occultists - and the

popularizers who often confuse terms and materialize concepts - speak of an

"etheric body" permeating and directing the functional activities of all

living organisms. In the early days of The Theosophical Society it was

often spoken of as the "astral" realm, using the term astral in its

original meaning, the world of light and radiations. This is really the

more adequate term which can be related to the Sanskrit word, _akasha_, the

essence of which is "vibration" or, as Hindu philosophy asserts, SOUND (in

its inaudible far more than in its audible form). By developing the concept

of field modern physicists actually have begun to think of the universe in

astral terms. The atomic physicist hardly thinks of matter any longer, but

only of energy and of their equivalence according to the famous Einstein

formula, e = mc2, where c represents the speed of light which is supposed

to be a constant. (Is it necessarily constant in all phases of cosmic

evolution if we give to light its broadest meaning?)

The physicist faces various difficulties if he considers energy as an

ultimate. Acting through, and in a sense "beyond" (a confusing term), the

astral fields of energy is the realm of what the word Mind can only

awkwardly suggest. In its ultimate sense, _The Secret Doctrine_ speaks of

"Cosmic Ideation" (also in Sanskrit, _Mahat_) and states that "the whole

Kosmos is guided, controlled and animated by almost endless series of

Hierarchies, each having a mission to perform ... (as) the agents of karmic

and Cosmic Laws." What this means is that we are confronted in the

universe, as in man, with three fundamental levels of being: _mind_,

_life-energy_ in all its modes of operation (_prana_, now spoken of in

scientific research as bioenergy), and _molecular substance_ (matter).

The atoms of modern science probably are only condensations of astral

energy according to laws of formation which follow universal principles of

harmonic relationship resulting in specific wave-patterns. Where the waves

interfere (nodes) matter appears and takes geometric shapes. What we call

atoms may thus belong to the world of forces and have correlations with

transcendent or semitranscendent sound formations, or chords of energy. A

scientist, Donald Hatch Andrews in his book _The Symphony of Life_, said

that the universe is not made of matter, but of music - linking modern

thought to the periodically revived ideas of Pythagoras, some twenty-five

centuries ago.1

When one speaks of Mind one should refer to a _universal principle of

formation_. Wherever we witness form, there Mind is at work. Many

progressive scientists today insist that what science ultimately deals with

is form rather than matter or even energy-matter. The German physicist

Schrodinger, in his well-known little book _What is Life?_, pointed out

that in modern physics the stuff of what is observed tends to vanish, the

only essential factor being its structure (or _gestalt_), and he ends by

evoking a universe that is Mind rather than matter. Other physicists with

holistic leanings have stressed the overwhelming importance of the concept

of form;2 and form implies relatedness. It is by the intermediary of form

that potentiality becomes actuality. There can be no actual existence

without some kind of form. Out of form consciousness arises, because

consciousness at any level is the product of relationship, the relationship

between what we call spirit and matter, or what the Chinese call Yang and

Yin, being the ultimate cosmic relationship.

Because _the process qf actualization of potentiality necessitates

forms, the quality of this process depends upon thc adequacy, purity, and

perfection of the forms it uses_. It is this fact which gives its true

significance to the concept of "the Beautiful," in the purest and universal

sense of the word; because whatever perfectly serves the purpose of

actualizing a new potentiality is by this very fact beautiful. If the

mathematician speaks of the "elegant solution" of a problem, and the German

philosopher Count Keyserling stresses that the value and impact of an idea

depends essentially upon its formulation, it is because form is first of

all a product of the activity of the Mind. However, what is meant here by

Mind is the creative Mind, mind in its _involutionary_ aspect. It must be

differentiated from the classifying, interpreting, generalizing cogitative

mind which operates in response to the forces active in terms of the

_evolutionary_ development of living organisms.

Unfortunately the word form in the past has most often referred to

the external shape of an object; and modern writers on esoteric matters

still use it in that sense while they should speak of "particular shapes,"

the shape of a body. A mathematical equation has form. The _shape_ of a

living organism is a projection and concretization of a form by a creative

Mind. At planetary or cosmic levels, forms in what we call the Divine Mind

may be spoken of as "archetypes."

The paradigms and symbolic images of any culture reflect these

archetypes. They are projections upon the collective consciousness of a

human collectivity of archetypal forms which, by "defining " the release of

bio-psychic energies determine the character of the culture. Likewise, it

is the material end result - or the concretization and actualization - of

this _defining_ process at the level of the life-force which biologists see

at work in the "genetic code" impressed at the core of all the cells of a

living organism. In all cases, we are dealing with a process of

"information," to use a currently fashionable term. The involutionary

creative Mind gives form to currents of energy; the evolutionary organic

mind "informs" every component part of an organism with its function in the

whole.

The great images, forms, and paradigms of a culture succumb to the

entropy operating in whatever becomes involved in the frictions and clashes

experienced by material bodies. They lose the sharpness of the defining

outlines; the original information becomes blurred by loss of magnetic

tension between the material units which carry this information (as we see

in magnetic recording tapes) or perverted and confused by external

interferences and statics. Cultural decadence sets in; and, in individual

bodies, organic decay. Fascism or Neo-classicism in a culture corresponds

to sclerosis in a living organism and sclerosis is the desperate attempt to

counteract the gradual loss of the cell's ability to adequately respond to

the genetic "information" and to substitute rigidity (congestive processes

and impairment in the circulation of the _prana_ and blood) for flexible

response and the capacity for self-recuperation through the free absorption

of biopsychic energy.

Once we truly think in terms of formative principles in mental

activity and of information processes, we have to accept a holistic

approach to existence, thus to man, to the universe, and to the

relationship between them. This does not mean that there is no longer any

place for analysis and an atomistic approach to objective material

entities, which, being material, are, according to the definition of the

word, matter, almost infinitely divisible. It means that "the new image of

man" has to include more than that which can be divided, analyzed in its

operation, and dealt with as an isolated entity. It means that in the case

of ill-health no organ of the human body can be significantly treated

except in terms of its functional relationship to the whole organism and no

disease should be seen as an entity in itself, for it involves the whole

man and not merely local symptoms.

Man is not merely _material substance_ within an organized system of

functional activities, but also the _activity_ itself (and the energy

making it possible), and whatever _organizes_ the system: the

formative-creative Mind. What has definitely to be overcome and eradicated

from the scientific mind is the "reductionism" which has dominated many

basic concepts in our Western society. Baconian empiricism and the

abstract equalitarianism of the eighteenth century political theorists and

leaders are products of the same reductionist trend according to which

everything must be reduced to what can be seen and touched; thought could

be explained only in terms of "secretions" (now electric currents) from the

brain and no concept could be valid unless its rationally logical

corollaries could be proved by facts revealing laboratory experiments. The

same type of attitude made us proclaim at the political level that all

human beings are equai, because somehow they have a similar bodily form and

similar bodily functions that can be seen, touched, analyzed, and reduced

to abstract voting units - mere numbers in statistics.

Both the Baconian methodology and political equalitarianism have an

uncontrovertible validity and practical usefulness; nevertheless they are

materializations or intellectualizations of what is true, but true _only_

at a holistic or spiritual level. It is evidently true that theories should

be justified by relevant facts; but not only _one kind_ of facts

artificially produced and analyzed in laboratories and purified by the

Aristotelian logic of a sense-built three dimensional universe postulated

to be "nothing but" matter, as we know matter to be in our earth-bound

human experience. It is also true that spiritually all men are equal and

brothers, in the sense in which all the cells of a living organism contain

at the core of their nuclei _the same_ genetic code _because they had their

origin in only one fecundated ovum_. But every cell (or at least group of

cells) has a different function, and these functions are not of equal

importance in the development, maintenance, expansion, and multiplication

(or self-transcendence) of the organism-as-a-whole.

Scientists know that the cells of a human body all originated in the

subdivision of the one original cell, yet they so fanatically believe in

the exclusive materiality of the universe - a materiality now modified by

the realization that matter and energy may be interchangeable according to

Einstein's equation - that of course the universe must have begun in an

explosive release of this energy-matter at terrific heat. If modern

scientists thought along the lines of a cosmic vitalism regarding the whole

cosmos as an immense, but finite, organism (or we might say today energy

field) they might rather picture the birth of the universe in the form of a

_cosmic egg_ emerging from an infinite ocean of potential energy. What

would follow is the expansion of this egg or force-field with its

primordial cosmic substance differentiating into galaxies and various star

systems, each with its own potential of functional activity according to a

pattern defined by a metacosmic Mind, a "Logos," to use the term so

strongly featured in Greek influenced Gnosticism.

Here we have two cosmic theories, or let us say hypotheses, and there

is absolutely no absolute or logical reason for the first to be superior to

the second. Yet most Western scientists have postulated that the

"vitalistic" theory is absurd, and that life can only be the result of the

chance confluence and coactivity of chemical molecules having cooled down.

Actually there is no proof for the validity of such a postulate because man

with his brief life-span has no way of experiencing the "heart beats" of

the sun. (H. P. B. relates the Il-year sun-spots cycle to a cosmic, or

rather _heliocosmic_, rhythm which may be analogical and relatively as

rapid as man's heart-beats.) How can man with his short period of

observation perceive any significant indication of the function of a galaxy

in the cosmos; or rather, how could he possibly know it has no function and

the cosmos is not a living organism? Must terrestial forms of life be the

only conceivable life-forms and life _as we know it in our biosphere_ the

only manifestaion of what can be called in a broader sense Life? We have

just discovered that the matter of our ancestors believed to be so dense,

solid, and essentially indestructible in its molecular or even atomic form

can be dematerialized into energy. Why can we not at ]east imagine that

life too may be a condensation of some cosmic element which might simply be

in its ultimate essense pure, eternal motion? Can we not metaphysically

conceive of this motion as the whirling of Yin and Yang within the forever

contracting and expanding circle of Tao - Tao that at the limit could be

conceived as both infinite Space and mathematical point, yet never is

_either one_ of the two, neither being nor not-being, but the cyclically

active rhythm of their interplay?

In saying this I had no intention of introducing a system of

metaphysics - indeed a very ancient system. I wanted only to state that by

_ruling out_ the possibility of such a world-picture, which is based on our

experience of life processes rather than on our premise that nothing but

matter-energy exists, the science that was born in Europe some five hundred

years ago is the result of _only one_ of various possibilities of approach

to knowledge. To speak of it as SCIENCE is as much the sign of a

culture-bound European mentality and intellectual blindness as to regard

Renaissance art as the one and only manifestation of true ART.

Once we sufficiently free ourselves from this mental illusion and

cultural provincialism and accept the implications of being at the

threshold of a global civilization, two main possibilities nevertheless

arise: either we can try so to extend the field of investigation of the

present-day scientific mind that it will burst out of its five-century-old

self-imposed (and also at first Church-imposed) limitations and lead us to

a new realm of undismissable facts, or else we could try to start from

postulates which we accept as basic metaphysical and even metacosmic

Principles which older civilizations have considered to be self-evident and

upon which their greatness was founded. Then by synthesizing essentials and

forgetting superficialities, we could deductively and intuitively build up

the kind of methodology which would lead us not only to the direct

experience of superphysical facts, but also to experiencing in a new light

already known physical facts.

The first alternative is being pursued by many progressive and

dedicated scientists who are working in groups along the lines of

parapsychology and metapsychiatry as well as in the field where atomic

physics slides into metaphysics and mathematics into mysticism. The second

alternative brings us to the threshold of ancient Occultism by way of a

study of concepts and symbols hidden under the chaotic, distorted, and

often bewildering remains of ancient religious, alchemical, and

metaphysical traditions. It is the way which was incorporated in _The

Secret Doctrine_ nearly one hundred years ago.

This incorporation, considering the condition of the society to which

it was addressed, could be only partially successful. Yet, at the core of

its often confusing complexity and lack of over-all philosophical clarity,

definite foundations for the development of a new type of non-Western, or

trans-Western, knowledge are apparent. A way of knowledge is outlined that

directly and unequivocally challenged and still challenges our

Euro-American mentality.

The essential characteristic of a way or path is that one has to walk

and proceed along the course it reveals. It is something to go through, not

to dwell in. But "going through" means to keep one's perceptions clear,

one's mind alert to the possibility of taking apparently similar by-ways

which actually represent branchings-out and lead to long detours if not

disaster. He who treads the occult way, even in its earliest stages, has to

keep his sense of direction steady; and perhaps to carefully study a map he

has been given for the journey. Singleness of purpose and an essential

ineradicable self-dedication and undeviating will are needed. Yet, at this

time of human history, also required is the ability to _understand_ the

character of the way and the nature of the goal to which it is to lead. A

new light of understanding should now be shed on this occult path to

knowledge and, above all on the _one source_ of that knowledge. It is an

integrated and indeed organic kind of knowledge, and all that can be called

organic had its origin in one germinating wholeness of being. Failing to

understand this fact is to court eventual disaster as one proceeds on the

transphysical as well as transpersonal way.

Knowledge is of the mind. Occult knowledge belongs to an archetypal

realm where ideas are like cells of a vast organism of mind. Whoever enters

that realm can directly contact, experience or "see" ideas as functional

parts of an integrated whole. There, the knower is the seer, and the light

with which he sees is the basically one, yet functionally multicolored,

radiance of a primordial revelation. It is a re-velation inasmuch as it

covers and differentiates the spiritual unity of the original divine

Impulse, the Creative Word, by means of multicolored veils that are as many

''principles of formation.''

These principles can be known, but such a knowledge is inevitably

dangerous in that it deals with the early manifestation of the one central

Power from which a multitude of structured currents of energies have flown,

passing through ever more differentiated forms, each representing a

specific mode of release of power. Each of these modes has its functional

place and purpose within the whole, somewhat as every life-form in the

Earth's biosphere has its _temporary_ function in the cyclically

transformed ecology of the whole as representative of a particular type of

vegetable, animal, human, and superhuman or extrahuman mode of activity and

consciousness.

It is because man's mind has the latent possibility to _reflect and

respond to_ all these modes of activity and consciousness, at least within

the total organism of one planet, Earth, that it is dangerous for him to

ascend _consciously_ to a realm that is close to the one source of all

powers released in all the Earth's spheres (lithosphere, biosphere,

noosphere, pneumosphere). If he could operate wilfully in that realm he

would be able to act upon currents of energy which would affect an immense

variety of lower and far more differentiated modes of power release.

Whoever pollutes the source of a river can destroy all lives that, in the

plains, drink of its water. To put it differently: because cosmic processes

are hierarchical, the closer to the summit of the pyramidal structure of

"idea-forces" that control these processes, the greater the possibility,

either constantly to adjust and readjust the dynamic manifestations of

essential cosmic Harmony and Equilibrium, or to introduce discord and

conflict. This means the possibility of being godlike, or a devil.

We should nevertheless understand that the introduction of widely

destructive possibilities in any field of planetary or cosmic activity

implies that the time is soon coming when the cyclic pattern according to

which such a field operates has become saturated with waste products and

its original and functional puryose on this Earth is no longer able to

vitalize and inspire the new generations. Whatever it was possible to

accomplish in this particular type of field has become by then

self-defeating even if it can be considered a great intellectual and social

achievement. Too many opportunities have been missed, too many wrong turns

taken because of pride, greed, or insecurity. And this is where mankind in

general, and especially our Western society, stands today. Our civilization

seems to be fast reaching a point of no-return. Darkness has fallen and it

is no longer possible to retrace our collective steps, because in the dark

we could not find the old way and we would die of exhaustion and spiritual

cold.

As we follow the first above-mentioned alternative - as science

extends further its field of investigation until it bursts out of its

limitations - the new discoveries _unavoidably_ are being used by

power-greedy men in control of the basic mechanisms of our society in such

a way that the process of destruction of that society is accelerated.

Should we deplore such an acceleration? Let us rather realize that this

accelerated process also unavoidably polarizes a new Avataric descent. This

realization may be the only thing that can save the sensitive and

perceptive individual from a sense of futility if not despair.

The great problem nevertheless is: what will mankind do with what

this new Avataric focusing of power - this new revelation - will bring?

What any individual or group of individuals will do with it largely

depends on _how they understand its character and its source_. The quality

of this understanding will condition mankind's over-all responses to what

is being revealed and thus, spectacularly or not, brought out into the

collective field of human consciousness.

The quality of our understanding: this is the decisive, indeed the

crucial, factor in the impending world-situation. Transformative forces are

at work. Cathartic events have come; more intense ones may be ahead. But

the essential issue is, and during this last quarter of the century will

remain, the quality of our mental understanding and our emotional response

to them. Love and Knowledge: how we relate to other beings, and on what

basis or knowledge our understanding of what changing, freer, more open

modes of relating and cooperating in a vital awareness of the meaning of

togetherness _mean_ and are meant to accomplish.

Everything depends on meaning and understanding. Tomorrow we may meet a

divine personage and never realize it or, if we dimly sense his power, fall

worshipful at his feet. The meaning of such a meeting would be that we,

individually or collective!y, have reached the threshold of a new world of

reality, and that the opportunity finally has come for us to walk, erect

and strong, through that threshold as a link between what was - our past

and mankind's past in us - and what must and will be. Always, everywhere

and at any level, the one essential question is: How much of the new

potentiality whose time for manifestation has come, can we actualize, and

what will be the quality and scope of our actualization?

The basic character of the occult way and of truly transpersonal living

is that it brings us in contact at an accelerated pace with the

potentiality of periodically renewing our consciousness, our feeling

responses, and our capacity for action by resonating to new potentialities

latent in the planetary (and eventually galactic) archetype, Man. It is

indeed a question of "resonance" and the future science will come to learn

that power can and should be released by resonating to various modalities

of cosmic power, rather than by destroying matter. Destruction inevitably

leaves toxic waste products, but he whose whole being has become attuned,

and therefore can resonate, to the great rhythms of universal Motion (only

an aspect of which we know as life) he alone can act as a focusing agent

for the Creative word. At whatever level he operates, he is an Avataric

being; and it is the togetherness of all such seed men that factually _is_

the living Presence of the Avatar.

This Presence is active, here and now, in this era of transition toward

a New Age. It is around us, above us, deep within us if we let it operate.

We need not prostrate outselves to worship it; it needs no worshippers. It

needs only powerful, clear, understanding minds, feelings free from self

and possessiveness, and the capacity to stand, erect and tall. Then its

power _radiating from behind us_ will be able to _pass through_ our being,

and move our hands, our tongue, the whole of us, in blessings to emergent

tomorrows.

 

 

References and Notes

1. This type of thinking in terms of principles of harmony and form is

often found expressed in many articles in the excellent and highly

respected magazine _Main Currents in Modern Thought_ founded by F.

L. Kunz and now directed by Dr. Henry Margenau, a prominent

physicist and "philosopher of science" who taught at Yale University.

 

2. Cf. Lancelot L. Whyte's book _Accent on Form_, p. 28 (Harper: N. Y.

1954). "The normal states of physical systems display definite spatial

patterns, such as the linear arrays of atoms and molecules in a

crystal,

the chain of atoms in fibers and the still obscure but highly

significant

arrangements in genes, viruses and all working parts of organisms. Here

it is the pattern or arrangement which counts for most purposes. The

individual particles are indistinguishable and may come and go at

random. Indeed apparently the only function of the particles is to

build

up the patterns, for it is the latter which we actually observe ...

_The

"form", in the new sense of underlying structural pattern, is more

important than its material components, which lack individuality."_

Also

"structure is a name for the effective pattern of relationship in any

situation . . . . This idea, structure . . . is _the_ creation of

this century as

far as human understanding is concerned."