O Tertium organum de Ouspensky: uma consideração das experiências místicas à luz de uma epistemologia baseada na quarta dimensão

Abstract

The central target of this work is to analyze the epistemological value of mystical experiences through the main work of the Russian philosopher Ouspensky, the Tertium Organum published in 1920, through the interpretation of these experiences as the knowledge of a possible higher dimensional domain, i.e., beyond the third dimension. In considering this possibility, it is also our role to ponder its relevance or validity as an epistemology that considers more than just the three known dimensions, and only a closer analysis of Ouspensky's philosophy could tell us its relevance. For those overly influenced by a non-mystical interpretation, to worry about the hypothetical and perhaps even miraculous possibility of demonstrating the existence of other dimensions is an infertile proposition. However, our effort in this work is precisely to give attention to this practically forgotten possibility. For this, our analysis is divided into three parts: 1) an analysis of the entire historical context that surrounds the outsider philosopher, the artistic, philosophical, scientific and mystical movements of Russia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as of how Ouspensky was being led by his own experiences to the construction of a multidimensional epistemology; 2) a reconstruction of the Tertium Organum based on its main propositions in the formation of an epistemology based on the fourth dimension, as well as the formation of what he calls "higher logic" referring to the logic of dimensions higher than ours; 3) our considerations about Ouspensky's analysis and his relation to Kant's philosophy, which the philosopher himself and his commentators point to as a continuation. This work may be useful to those who, though incapable of ignoring the possibility of the existence of mystical experience, are equally incapable of fully understanding in what sense such an experience can validly affirm some epistemological value or a knowledge of a reality beyond common experience - these will find in Ouspensky's doctrine a hypothesis by which this statement can be defended.