BOOK III — THE ORDER OF THE WORLD
Thoth, to André
I
André: If time is the ordered procession of change, what is being translated into succession?
Thoth: Time is the translation of simultaneous Divine Knowledge into succession for manifest beings.
André: Does Divine Mind contain past, present and future at once?
Thoth: Divine Knowledge does not pass from one moment to another in order to know them. Time belongs to manifestation, not to an ignorance in Divine Mind: succession is how the manifest receives what it cannot embody all at once.
II
André: Is time therefore only a defect of finite beings?
Thoth: A mode of reception is not a defect merely because it is limited.
André: What does succession make possible?
Thoth: Beginning, development, relation between phases, and the completion of acts whose parts cannot appear together.
André: Yet one moment following another does not itself create order.
Thoth: Mere succession gives a before and an after. Time becomes intelligible when the relation between them expresses a law.
III
André: If Divine Knowledge is simultaneous, is everything that occurs already determined?
Thoth: You have confused the manner of divine knowing with the necessity of what is known.
André: Can Divine Mind know possibilities as well as events?
Thoth: If possibility were absent from Divine Knowledge, no possible thing could enter manifestation.
André: Then succession need not be the unwinding of a single fixed chain.
Thoth: It is the ordered entrance of possibility into conditions where one thing may become actual and another remain possible.
IV
André: Why does time move through cycles?
Thoth: Because a quality may remain itself while the conditions of its manifestation change.
André: What distinguishes a cycle from repetition?
Thoth: The same quality returns under altered conditions. Return makes its continuity visible; the altered conditions permit another possibility of that quality to appear.
André: Does every return produce development?
Thoth: No. Altered conditions make development possible; they do not compel a being to realise that possibility.
V
André: What place do the spheres have in this order?
Thoth: A sphere is a mode through which simultaneous Divine Knowledge becomes a sequence of influences.
André: Does each sphere contain a separate portion of that Knowledge?
Thoth: Difference of mode does not divide the source. Each sphere gives certain relations an order of entrance into manifestation.
André: Then a sphere is not merely a region through which consciousness may travel.
Thoth: Place is one way it may be encountered. Its function is disclosed by the order of influence it carries.
VI
André: What does a spherical influence do when it reaches a human life?
Thoth: It presents a divine possibility in time.
André: Does it determine what the person will do with that possibility?
Thoth: No. Influence gives the possibility a time and a pressure of manifestation. It does not supply the human response.
André: What, then, is altered by the influence?
Thoth: The relation between what is latent and what is able to become active under the present conditions.
VII
André: If an influence is strong enough, can it compel the response?
Thoth: Strength of condition is not identity with decision.
André: Yet some conditions leave almost no practical alternative.
Thoth: Then speak accurately of the narrowness of the field. Do not call a narrow possibility no possibility, nor call it freedom merely because more than one act can be imagined.
André: Spherical influence may therefore condition freedom without replacing it.
Thoth: That question belongs to the relation between fate and freedom, which you have not yet examined.
VIII
André: How may I recognise the action of a sphere without attributing every event to it?
Thoth: Follow the continuity of the quality through its changing forms, observe the rhythm of its recurrence, and test whether the events attributed to it share an intelligible relation.
André: Is a traditional correspondence sufficient?
Thoth: A correspondence may direct observation. It cannot replace it.
André: Can several spheres influence the same event?
Thoth: Distinct sequences may meet in one manifestation. Their meeting does not abolish the measure proper to each.
IX
André: If the spheres present possibilities but do not determine my response, what in my life belongs to fate?
Thoth: First distinguish the conditions given to you from the act you perform within them.
André: Is freedom whatever remains after all conditions have been counted?
Thoth: Before you can answer, you must know whether freedom stands outside cosmic order or becomes possible through knowledge of one’s place within it.
