tertium
This is P.D. Ouspensky's Tertium Organum, which he believed was the third major philosophical synthesis, the previous being those of Aristotle and Bacon. Originally issued in Russian in 1912, this is the second, revised edition. It was translated into English and published in 1922. This is the only major work by Ouspensky which is in the public domain in the US by current copyright laws.

Ouspensky (1878-1947) was a mystic who traveled widely in Europe and the East looking for esoteric knowledge. He later studied with G.I. Gurdjieff. In this book, he uses the concept of the fourth dimension as an extended metaphor for the esoteric nature of reality. Einstein and other physicists had at that time validated the study of higher dimensions, and Ouspensky was fixated on this idea. One can only wonder at what he would think of string theory, parallel universes, and the holographic universe hypothesis (the latter of which he prefigures in this book).

This is one of those great Books that has suffered because of a lack of readership capable of comprehending it. If one has the left brain traits necessary to grasp the transfinite logic and mathematics, then the mystical implications are ungraspable. And if you have the right brain intuition to understand the mystical implications, then you often struggle with the logic and mathematics. This book requires a reader with not only a first rate mind, but also a balanced one.

To briefly abstract the primary thesis: time is really motion in extra dimensional space. This is profound, for Ouspensky was the first to actually point towards where an actual, physical fourth dimension can be found. Our brains confuse this dimension with time. It can be split off from time with an adjustment, or evolution, of consciousness. You see, this represents the next huge leap in understanding the nature of the universe and reality. Just as Newton's undefined quantity of "gravity" was shown to actually be curved space, so does Ouspensky show Einstein's undefined quantity of "time" to be motion through higher physical dimensions.

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