Physics tore the veil of matter open: what looks solid is electrical charge and mathematical pattern. Assagioli reads this as the scientific way toward expanded consciousness, confirmed by Einstein himself.
By Roberto Assagioli
Assagioli Archives, Florence
Original titles: Piercing the Veil of Matter / La Via Scientifica
Translated and edited with notes by Jan Kuniholm
Editorial Note
The abstract and contextual subtitle in this online edition have been added by the editor, Kenneth Sørensen, to support readability, navigation, and archival consistency. The original wording has not been altered.
This page brings together two related documents from the Assagioli Archive that explore the same subject: Assagioli’s account of the Scientific Way as a path toward expanded consciousness. The first develops the argument through Ouspensky’s philosophy and the question of higher dimensions; the second builds toward the same conclusion through three passages from Einstein. Translator Jan Kuniholm has edited and annotated both.
Abstract
In this combined essay, Roberto Assagioli argues that the scientific revolution in physics has demolished the illusion of solid matter and opened a path toward spiritual consciousness. Where our senses perceive a solid and static world, physics reveals only electrical charges moving according to mathematical patterns that imply a Cosmic Mind. This is the scientific way: a route to expanded consciousness available to the scientifically inclined. The essay draws on Ouspensky’s theory of higher dimensions and the convergence of invisible worlds, and closes with three passages from Einstein on science, awe, and the liberation of consciousness from the ego.
The fundamental obstacle to the realization of spiritual states of consciousness is constituted by the unceasing succession of the sensations arriving via our senses from the material world, to which are added those arriving in our physical body. We thus live in an apparently solid and objective world, by which our consciousness is continuously monopolized one might say rather, hypnotized.
First, then, we have to free ourselves from this limitation and illusion by which the consciousness is held prisoner. We who live at this time are fortunate in having the powerful assistance of the very physical sciences that in the past foisted on man a wholly material conception of the universe. The revolutionary developments in chemistry and physics in the last few years are truly fundamental, but not all, not even among well-educated people, are aware of their tremendous implications. New conceptions arrived that by observation and precise experiment have established that the “matter” we perceive with our senses does not really exist. Matter appears solid, static and inert to us, but this is simply an illusion created by our limited sense instruments of sight, touch, etc.
On the contrary, physics has demonstrated that the so-called “Matter” is in reality composed of minute and powerful electric charges, positive, negative and neutral, concentrated in centers and points and moving rapidly in space in conformity with laws and patterns based on mathematical formulae. The latter imply of necessity an intelligent principle or being, a Cosmic Mind which has formulated them and maintains them in operation. Thus it is that scientists have arrived – perhaps almost in spite of themselves – at the same conclusions reached millennia ago by the most advanced philosophical thought: that the physical world an we perceive it is “phenomenal”, that is, apparent, and that behind and above it exits the world of reality composed of energies and intelligent powers. This is the world of causes, of which the phenomena are the effects.
To express this truth in another way, what is real is not directly perceived by our senses, but can only be inferred by our reason or realized by our intuition. Ouspensky in his book A New Model For The Universe has clearly developed this point:
“… invisible worlds, the religious, the philosophical, and the scientific, are after all, more closely related to one another than they would at first appear. And these invisible worlds of different categories possess identical properties common to all. These properties are, first: the fact that they contain the causes of the phenomena of the invisible world. This idea of cause is always associated with the invisible world. In the invisible world of the religious systems, invisible forces govern people and invisible phenomena. In the scientific invisible world the causes of visible phenomena always come from the invisible world of small quantity and ‘vibration’. In philosophical systems the phenomena are only our conception of the noumenon, that is, an illusion, the real of which remains hidden and inaccessible to us.”
“This shows that at all levels of his development, man has always understood that the causes of visible and observable phenomena lie beyond the sphere of observation. He has found that among observable phenomena certain facts could be regarded as causes of other facts, but these deductions were insufficient for the explanation of EVERYTHING that occurred in himself or around him. Therefore in order to be able to explain the causes it was necessary for him to have an invisible world consisting either of “Spirit” or “ideas” or “vibrations.” [1]
Another way of which the veil of matter can be made almost transparent to our minds is the realization that the three dimensions of space, of which we are normally aware, are not the only possible ones. Indeed, a number of mathematicians, physicists and philosophers, investigating the problem of dimensions, from different angels, have given good reasons for the existence of a fourth and other higher dimensions.
This subject is too technical to be dealt with here and it is not within the direct scope of this paper. Those who want to study it, can find it discussed in several books. A suggestive, non-technical and humorous presentation is contained in ” Flatlands, Romance of many Dimensions ” by Dr. Abbott Evelyn Abbott. (London – Seely & co. 1884), and in Claude Bragdon’s “ Four Dimensional Vistas. ” In the two books by Ouspensky “ Tertium Organum ” and the other just quoted, the subject is discussed at length.
The two chief conceptions of the fourth dimension are, that there is another dimension of space itself; the other, that time can be considered the fourth dimension. As there can be more than four dimensions, the two conceptions are not mutually exclusive nor do they bare the possibilities of other and different conceptions. One such is that one can conceive a direction of dimension going from “matter”, as we know it, through other and more refined states of “substance” and energy to the realms of Vitality (Prana), of Feeling, of Mind; concrete and abstract; and on up to the sphere of pure spirit.
The Cognitive Way (continued): The Dimensional Path
By Roberto Assagioli, undated, from the Assagioli Archive in Florence. Italian original: “La Via Conoscitiva,” Part II. From this point the document shifts from polished prose into outline form, indicating that this section consisted of working notes Assagioli would have expanded orally in a lecture setting.
Another scientific path leading to the spirit is that of multidimensionality.
The fourth dimension — further dimensions — various conceptions:
Time as the fourth dimension. Non-Euclidean geometries.
The dimension and direction from the dense to the subtle, from matter to spirit, along various levels:
- etheric
- emotional
- mental (lower and higher)
- intuitive
- and so on
“Matter is spirit at its highest degree of density, and spirit is matter at its highest state of subtlety; and both constitute a unity pervaded by Life.”
— H.P.B.[¹]
[¹] H.P.B. = Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891), founder of the Theosophical Society and author of The Secret Doctrine and Isis Unveiled. Assagioli uses the initials alone, in keeping with the convention of Theosophical and esoteric literature, indicating that the formulation would have been familiar to his audience. The exact source of this specific wording in Blavatsky’s writings has not been located by the translator; the substance — spirit and matter as a continuum of differentiated densities unified by Life — is a core Theosophical doctrine consistently expressed across her work. — Tr.
[1] Ouspensky, A New Model of the Universe, p. 69
THE SCIENTIFIC WAY
(Archivio Assagioli — Florence)
(Editor’s note: This article is translated from an Italian document in the Archivio Assagioli titled La Via Scientifica*. A separate English article on the Scientific Way, titled “The Scientific Way” and subtitled “Piercing the Veil of Matter,” is also published in this library; it is translated from a different Italian source (provisionally identified as* Squarciare il velo della materia or a closely related document) and develops the same Way along different lines, drawing on Ouspensky and the question of higher dimensions rather than on Einstein. The two articles share an opening framing about the materialist conception of science and the revolutionary developments in physics, but diverge in their substantive development. Readers interested in Assagioli’s treatment of the Scientific Way may wish to consult both.)
At first sight it may seem surprising that the expansion of consciousness in an upward direction could be produced or favored by science — since, until fairly recently, and for many still today, science was considered the study of matter, of the objective world, without reference to consciousness, and therefore led to a materialistic conception of reality.
But for some decades now, especially in the field of physics, what may be called a true revolution has taken place.
The new discoveries of physics have in fact demonstrated that “matter,” as we perceive it with our senses, simply does not exist. Matter appears to us solid, static, and inert; but this is only an illusion produced by our limited sense-instruments, such as sight and touch. Physicists have shown that the so-called material atoms are themselves formed of minute and powerful electric charges — positive, negative, or neutral — concentrated in various centers or points, and moving in space according to laws and patterns based on mathematical formulae. And this implies, of necessity, the existence of an intelligent Principle or Being — a Cosmic Mind which has formulated them and causes them to operate.
This conception has been expressed clearly and forcefully by Albert Einstein:
“…the scientist is permeated by the sense of causality [that is, of the law of cause and effect] in all that happens… His religiosity consists in the ecstatic admiration of the laws of nature; there is revealed to him a Mind so superior that the whole intelligence of men… is, in the face of it, no more than an utterly insignificant reflection.” (The World as I See It, p. 39)
And further on:
“The individual recognizes the sublime imprint and the marvelous order that manifest themselves both in nature and in the world of thought. Individual existence gives him the impression of a prison, and he wants to live in the full knowledge of all that is — in its universal unity and in its deepest meaning.” (p. 43)
And finally:
“The true value of a man is determined by examining to what extent and in what sense he has come to liberate himself from the ego.” (p. 47)
One could not express more decisively and concisely the requirement of the expansion of consciousness — the transcendence of the limits of the personal ego.
