118 Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path
interrupted at a different place, and its reunion would ac-
cordingly have to take a form specific to those beings. The
question of limits to cognition exists only for naive and
metaphysical realism, both of which see in the soul’s con-
tent only a conceptual representation of the world. For
them, what exists outside the subject is something abso-
lute, something self-existent, and the content of the sub-
ject is a picture of this absolute, standing completely apart
from it. The completeness of the cognition depends on the
degree of similarity between the picture and the absolute
object. A being with fewer senses than human beings have
will perceive less of the world; one with more senses will
perceive more. The former will therefore have less com-
plete knowledge than the latter.
For monism, things are otherwise. The organization of
the perceiving being determines where the connectedness
of the world will seem torn apart into subject and object.
The object is not absolute, merely relative to the particu-
lar subject. By the same token, the opposition can be
bridged only in the specific way appropriate to human
subjects. As soon as the I, which is separated from the
world in perceiving, reintegrates itself into the connected-
ness of the world through its thinking contemplation, then
all further questioning ceases—since it was only a result
of the separation.
A differently constituted being would have a different-
ly constituted cognition. Our own cognition is sufficient
to answer the questions posed by our own nature.
Metaphysical realism must ask: How is what is given to
us as perception given? How is the subject affected?
[30]
[31]
[32]
