Indian stream·Tao Te Ching·Chapter 14 — Seeing the Invisible
Looked at, not seen — that is the formless
The Way that has no shape, no sound, no substance — yet is unbroken. To trace its origin: this is grasping the thread of the Tao.
Source context
- Theme
- the imperceptible ground of being: that which cannot be seen, heard, or grasped yet constitutes the undivided primal unity
- Soul-faculty
- Consciousness Soul
Steiner
not engaged in the GA corpus
Cross-tradition
- Vedanta — Nirguna BrahmanThe Upanishadic teaching of Nirguna Brahman — the attributeless absolute beyond sense-perception — presents a structural parallel to the Tao as that which is above brightness, below darkness, and unnameable in its continuous return to non-thing.
- Neoplatonism — Plotinus, The OnePlotinus's One, which transcends all predication including being and intelligibility, shows cross-tradition congruence with the chapter's insistence that the primal unity cannot be named, measured, or encountered through any particular faculty.
- Kabbalah — Ein SofThe Kabbalistic Ein Sof, the infinite without limitation or positive attribute, parallels the chapter's designation of the Tao as the form of the formless and the image of the imageless.
Chapter 14
We look at it, and we do not see it, and we name it 'the Equable.' We listen to it, and we do not hear it, and we name it 'the Inaudible.' We try to grasp it, and do not get hold of it, and we name it 'the Subtle.' With these three qualities, it cannot be made the subject of description; and hence we blend them together and obtain The One.
Its upper part is not bright, and its lower part is not obscure. Ceaseless in its action, it yet cannot be named, and then it again returns and becomes nothing. This is called the Form of the Formless, and the Semblance of the Invisible; this is called the Fleeting and Indeterminable.
We meet it and do not see its Front; we follow it, and do not see its Back. When we can lay hold of the Tao of old to direct the things of the present day, and are able to know it as it was of old in the beginning, this is called (unwinding) the clue of Tao.