Chapter XXI
CHAPTER XXI.
The comprehensiveness of supreme energy is its conformity to the Tao. 1
The Tao considered as an entity is impalpable, indefinite. Indefinite, impalpable, within are conceptions. Impalpable, indefinite, within are shapes. 2 Profound, obscure, within is the essence. This essence being supremely real, within is sincerity.
From the beginning until now it has not changed, 3 and thus it has watched all the essentials. How do I know it has been thus with all principles? By what has just been said.
Footnotes
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- 39:2
"The cosmos is all-formed—not having forms external to itself, but changing them itself within itself. Since, then, cosmos is made to be all-formed, what may its maker bet For that, on the one hand, He should not be void of all form; and, on the other hand, if He's all-formed, He will be like the cosmos. Whereas, again, has He a single form, He will thereby be less than cosmos. What, then, say we He is?—that we may not bring our sermon into doubt; for naught that mind conceives of God is doubtful. He, then, hath one idea, which is His own alone, which doth not fall beneath the sight, being bodiless, and (yet) by means of bodies manifesteth all (ideas). And marvel not that there's a bodiless idea." The mind to Hermes, by G. R. S. Mead, in The Theosophical Review, vol. xxxiii., p. 52.
- 39:3