THE REIGN OF RELATIVITY
CATEGORY 19, VOLUME 13 – PART I
April, 2026
The word “relative” assumes polarization, two apparently distinct perspectives. As human beings we know or experience objects, or even ourselves, against a background of difference and in the context of continuous change, even though we believe these objects – our world and ourselves – to be permanent in some way. Paul Brunton helps us explore this contradiction in Category 19.
There is no thing, be it as vast as a sun or as small as a cell, which is not subject to the law of opposite polarities and which therefore does not manifest itself in two entirely contrary ways. Yet human beings, because their senses are so limited, see it in only a single way. It is this incompleteness which creates their illusion that the thing really exists in time, is measured in space, and is shaped in form. [19:1.24]
The world-illusion not only obscures the Reality behind it but deceives us into thinking of the Many as being Real, instead of being One. [19:1.38]
The status of the world is contradictory. It is a thing because it exists but a no-thing because it is only an appearance. It is like the hazy twilight, which is neither day nor night, yet in one sense day but in another night. It is like a dream, which is real enough while we are within it but unreal when we are not. [19:1.62]
Although we live in a world that is basically unreal–if we define reality as that which never changes, which ever was, is, and will be–we have to live in this world as if it were real, substantially real. We are compelled to do so, because we find ourselves here and we have to be active here. What it amounts to is that the maya of the Indians has to be treated as if it were Brahman, but we can only do so safely if we know the Truth. [19:1.58]
What are the elements which contribute to or determine the form of our experience of the world and ourselves?
The three thought-forms of space, time, and cause necessarily dominate the universal experience of humankind. They are the relations wherein we experience that aggregate of objects which makes the world of Nature. They are not open to choice or rejection by anyone but are forced on all alike and felt by fool and philosopher. [19:4.1]
The time-space-causality reference is an essential part of human nature, a governing law of human thinking. These three hold good solely within such thinking and can have no possible or proper application outside it. Human beings do not consciously or arbitrarily impose them upon their thought; it is beyond their individual power to reject them. [19:4.2]
Everything that is manifested must be manifested in some space-time world–that is, it must have a shape and it must be subject to “Before” and “After.” [19:4.12]
How are we to understand the sense of permanence we experience? Why do we believe in our constancy even though we experience ourselves as ever changing? Is there a higher purpose to this seeming paradox?
Our thinking process is bound by time and space relations, but there is something in us which is not. Ordinarily, we have no awareness of it, although it never leaves us. [19.4.7]
Living in time and space as we do, we perforce live always in the fragmentary and imperfect, never in the whole, the perfect. Only if, at rare moments, we are granted a mystical experience and transcend the time-space world, do we know the beauty and sublimity of being liberated from a mere segment of experience into the wholeness of Life itself. [19:4.3]
We are given forms embodied in space and minds working in time whereby we may come to decipher meanings in life and the world, develop awareness of the Infinite Being that is behind both, and know our true self. [19:4.13]
What is the best attitude for the spiritual seeker to adopt in their understanding and experience of this paradoxical nature of themselves and the world?
All experience may be regarded from either the practical or the philosophical standpoint, but best of all from the double standpoint.[19:2.1]
Unless one looks at life from this double point of view, one can get only an inadequate unbalanced and incomplete perspective. It is needful for the everyday practical routine of living to regard it only at the point of personal contact. Here one sees its momentary, transitory, and finite form. But it is also needful for the satisfaction of the higher interests of mind and heart to regard the living universe as a whole. Here one sees an eternal and infinite movement, cored and surrounded by mystery. [19:2.14]
One has to practise living on two different planes of being at once, the immediate and ultimate, the short-range and long-range, the relative and the Absolute, not as if they were in eternal contradiction but as if they were one and indivisible. [19:2.38]
Does this double standpoint mean that there is a constant oscillation between the two aspects, a mind which flutters from one to the other over and over again? Of course not! Just as the small circle can be contained within a larger circle, so the mind can be at once in the practical and the metaphysical yet able to concentrate on the one needed at any moment. [19:2.47]
To live in the ego is to live in time, to live in the Overself is to live in timelessness. But because human beings must live in both to live on earth at all, let them learn the art of resting in the eternal Now, the continuing moment which opens on to eternity. [19:2.64]
Compiled by Judy S.