The desire to transcend the plane of logic is combined, in a certain sectarianism hostile to discursive expression, with the desire to transcend the “scission” between the subject and the object; now this complementary opposition does not prevent the known — whatever the situation of the knower — from being of the loftiest order. The subject and the object are not adversaries; they unite in a fusion that — according to the content of the perception — can have an interiorizing and liberating virtue, of which AESTHETIC enjoyment and the union of love are the foremost examples. In Atmâ, the triad Sat, Chit, Ananda — “Being, Consciousness, Beatitude” — is not a factor of scission; similarly, on earth, the dimensions of physical space do not prevent space from being one, so that we perceive no fissure in it. Essays Norms and Paradoxes in Spiritual Alchemy
The modes are not always intelligible at first sight; for example, one might wonder what the relevance is of a discipline such as the Tea Ceremony, which combines ascesis with art, while being materially based on manipulations that seem a priori unimportant, but are ennobled by their sacralization. First of all, one must take into account the fact that in the Far Easterner, sensorial intuition is more developed than the speculative gift; also, that the practical sense and the AESTHETIC sense, as well as the taste for symbolism are at the basis of his spiritual temperament. In the Tea Ceremony, the symbolic and morally correct act — the “profound” act if one will — is supposed to bring about a sort of Platonic anamnesis or a unitive consciousness, whereas with the white man of the East and the West it is the Idea that is supposed to lead to correct and virtuous acts. The man of the yellow race goes from sensorial experience to intellection, roughly speaking, whereas with the white man, it is the converse that takes place: in starting out from concepts, or from habitual mental images, he understands and classifies phenomena, without, however, feeling the need to consciously integrate them into his spiritual life, except incidentally or when it is a question of traditionally accepted symbols. Essays Norms and Paradoxes in Spiritual Alchemy
The initiatory journey presents two moral dimensions of primary importance, one exclusive and ascetical and the other inclusive and symbolist or AESTHETIC, if one may say so. Among aspirants to Liberation, there are first of all those who, in the name of Truth, withdraw from the world, such as monks or sannyâsîs; then there are those who, in the name of the same Truth, remain in the world and seek to transmute into gold the lead the world offers a priori, such as the adepts of the knightly and craft initiations. If Shankara recommended the ascetical path, that is because it is the surest, given human weakness; but he specified in one of his writings that the “one delivered in this life,” the jivan-mukta, can harmoniously and victoriously adapt himself to any social situation conforming to universal Dharma, as is shown at the highest level by the example of Krishna. On the one hand, one must see God in Himself, beyond the world, in the Emptiness of Transcendence; on the other hand and ipso facto, one must see God everywhere: first of all in the miraculous existence of things and then in their positive and theomorphic qualities; once Transcendence is understood, Immanence reveals itself of itself. Essays Norms and Paradoxes in Spiritual Alchemy
Guénon was like a personification, not of straightforward spirituality, but of intellectual certitude in its own right; or of metaphysical self-evidence in a mathematical mode, and this explains the tenor of his teaching, which is abstract and reminiscent of mathematics, as well as explaining – indirectly and because of the lack of compensatory features – certain of his traits of character. No doubt, he had the right to be “one-sided” but this constitution went ill with the broad sweep of his mission, or with what he believed to be his mission; he was neither a psychologist nor an esthete – in the best sense of these terms – which is to say that he underestimated both AESTHETIC values and moral values, particularly in relation to their spiritual functions. He had an inborn distaste for everything that is human and “individual”, and there are certain points on which this affected his metaphysics as when, for example, he felt himself bound to deny that the “human state” has a “privileged position”, or that the “mind” – the essence of which is reason – constitutes a privilege for man; in reality, it is the presence of the faculty of reason that proves the “central” and “total” character of the human state and it would not exist without this character, which is its entire raison d’être. Essays A NOTE ON RENÉ GUÉNON
The cosmic, or more particularly the earthly function of beauty is to actualize in the intelligent creature the Platonic recollection of the archetypes, right up to the luminous Night of the Infinite. (NA: According to Pythagoras and Plato, the soul has heard the heavenly harmonies before being exiled on earth, and music awakens in the soul the remembrance of these melodies.) This leads us to the conclusion that the full understanding of beauty demands virtue and is identifiable with it: that is to say, just as it is necessary to distinguish, in objective beauty, between the outward structure and the message in depth, so there is a distinguo to make, in the sensing of the beautiful, between the AESTHETIC sensation and the corresponding beauty of soul, namely such and such a virtue. Beyond every question of “sensible consolation” the message of beauty is both intellectual and moral: intellectual because it communicates to us, in the world of accidentality, aspects of Substance, without for all that having to address itself to abstract thought; and moral, because it reminds us of what we must love, and consequently be. In conformity with the Platonic principle that like attracts like, Plotinus states that “it is always easy to attract the Universal Soul . . . by constructing an object capable of undergoing its influence and receiving its participation. The faithful representation of a thing is always capable of undergoing the influence of its model; it is like a mirror which is capable of grasping the thing’s appearance.” (NA: This principle does not prevent a heavenly influence mani festing itself incident ally or accidentally even in an image which is extremely imperfect – works of perversion and subversion being excluded – through pure mercy and by virtue of the ‘exception that proves the rule”.) This passage states the crucial principle of the almost magical relationship between the conforming recipient and the predestined content or between the adequate symbol and the sacramental presence of the prototype. The ideas of Plotinus must be understood in the light of those of the “divine Plato”: the latter approved the fixed types of the sacred sculptures of Egypt, but he rejected the works of the Greek artists who imitated nature in its outward and insignificant accidentality, while following their individual imagination. This verdict immediately excludes from sacred art the productions of an exteriorizing, accidentalizing, sentimentalist and virtuoso naturalism, which sins through abuse of intelligence as much as by neglect of the inward and the essential. sophiaperennis: Plato
ESOTERISM comprises four principal dimensions: an intellectual dimension, to which doctrine bears witness; a volitive or technical dimension, which includes the direct and indirect means of the way; a moral dimension, which concerns the intrinsic and extrinsic virtues; and an AESTHETIC dimension, to which pertain symbolism and art from both the subjective and objective point of view. sophiaperennis: FOUNDATIONS OF AN INTEGRAL AESTHETICS
Exoterically, beauty represents either an excusable or an inexcusable pleasure, or an expression of piety and thereby the expression of a theological symbolism; esoterically, it has the role of a spiritual means in connection with contemplation and interiorizing “remembrance”. By “integral AESTHETICs” we mean in fact a science that takes account not only of sensible beauty but also of the spiritual foundations of this beauty, (NA: One must not confuse AESTHETICs with AESTHETICism: the second term, used to describe a literary and artistic movement in England in the 19th century, means in general an excessive preoccupation with AESTHETIC values real or imaginary, or at any rate very relative. However, one must not too readily cast aspersions upon romantic aesthetes, who had the merit of a nostalgia that was very understandable in a world that was sinking into a hopeless mediocrity and a cold and inhuman ugliness.) these foundations explaining the frequent connection between the arts and initiatic methods. sophiaperennis: FOUNDATIONS OF AN INTEGRAL AESTHETICS
The cosmic, or more particularly the earthly function of beauty is to actualize in the intelligent creature the Platonic recollection of the archetypes, right up to the luminous Night of the Infinite. (NA: According to Pythagoras and Plato, the soul has heard the heavenly harmonies before being exiled on earth, and music awakens in the soul the remembrance of these melodies.) This leads us to the conclusion that the full understanding of beauty demands virtue and is identifiable with it: that is to say, just as it is necessary to distinguish, in objective beauty, between the outward structure and the message in depth, so there is a distinguo to make, in the sensing of the beautiful, between the AESTHETIC sensation and the corresponding beauty of soul, namely such and such a virtue. Beyond every question of “sensible consolation” the message of beauty is both intellectual and moral: intellectual because it communicates to us, in the world of accidentality, aspects of Substance, without for all that having to address itself to abstract thought; and moral, because it reminds us of what we must love, and consequently be. In conformity with the Platonic principle that like attracts like, Plotinus states that “it is always easy to attract the Universal Soul . . . by constructing an object capable of undergoing its influence and receiving its participation. The faithful representation of a thing is always capable of undergoing the influence of its model; it is like a mirror which is capable of grasping the thing’s appearance.” (NA: This principle does not prevent a heavenly influence mani festing itself incident ally or accidentally even in an image which is extremely imperfect – works of perversion and subversion being excluded – through pure mercy and by virtue of the ‘exception that proves the rule”.) sophiaperennis: FOUNDATIONS OF AN INTEGRAL AESTHETICS
In spite of these facts, which would seem to be quite obvious and which are corroborated by all the beauties that Heaven has bestowed on the traditional worlds, some will doubtless ask what connection there can be between the AESTHETIC value of a house, of an interior decoration, or of a tool and spiritual realization: did Shankara ever concern himself with AESTHETICs or morality? The answer to this is that the soul of a sage of this calibre is naturally beautiful and exempt from every pettiness, and that furthermore, an integrally traditional environment – especially in a milieu like that of the brahmins – largely if not absolutely excludes artistic or artisanal ugliness; so much so that Shankara had nothing to teach – nor a fortiori to learn – on the subject of AESTHETIC values, unless he had been an artist by vocation and profession, which he was not, and which his mission was far from demanding. sophiaperennis: FOUNDATIONS OF AN INTEGRAL AESTHETICS
It is necessary to dissipate here an error which would have it that everything in nature is beautiful and everything of traditional production is likewise beautiful because it belongs to tradition; according to this view, ugliness does not exist either in the animal or the vegetable kingdoms, since, it seems, every creature “is perfectly what it should be”, which has really no connection with the AESTHETIC question; likewise it is said that the most magnificent of sanctuaries possesses no more beauty than some tool or other, always because the tool “is everything that it should be”. This is tantamount to maintaining not only that an ugly animal species is AESTHETICally the equivalent of a beautiful species, but also that beauty is such merely through the absence of ugliness and not through its own content, as if the beauty of a man were the equivalent of that of a butterfly, or of a flower or a precious stone. Beauty, however, is a cosmic quality which cannot be reduced to abstractions foreign to its nature; likewise, the ugly is not only that which is not completely what it is supposed to be, nor is it only an accidental infirmity or a lack of taste; it is in everything which manifests, accidentally or substantially, artificially or naturally, a privation of ontological truth, of existential goodness, or, what amounts to the same, of reality. Ugliness is, very paradoxically, the manifestation of a relative nothingness: of a nothingness which can affirm itself only by denying or eroding an element of Being, and thus of beauty. This amounts to saying that, in a certain fashion and speaking elliptically, the ugly is less real than the beautiful, and in short that it exists only thanks to an underlying beauty which it disfigures; in a word, it is the reality of an unreality, or the possibility of an impossibility, like all privative manifestations. sophiaperennis: FOUNDATIONS OF AN INTEGRAL AESTHETICS
The argument that AESTHETIC quality is far from always coinciding with moral quality and that it is consequently superfluous – an argument that is just in its observation but false in its conclusion – overlooks an obvious fact, namely that the ontological and in principle spiritual merit of beauty remains intact on its own level; the fact that an AESTHETIC quality may not be fully exploited does not mean that it could not and should not be, and it would then prove its spiritual potentiality and so its true nature. Inversely, ugliness is a privation even when it is allied to sanctity, which cannot make it positive, but which obviously neutralizes it, just as moral badness sterilizes beauty, but without abolishing it as far as the existential, not the volitive, aspect is concerned. (NA: There is all the difference, in a face, between the features as such and the expression, or between the form of a body and its gestures, or again, between the form of an eye and its look. Nevertheless, even the look of a morally imperfect person can have beauty when it expresses spring, or youth, or simply happiness, or a good sentiment, or sadness; but all of this is a question of degree, either in respect of natural beauty or in respect of moral imperfection.) sophiaperennis: FOUNDATIONS OF AN INTEGRAL AESTHETICS
In principle, and in the absence of opposing factors capable of neutralizing this effect, the AESTHETIC phenomenon is a receptacle that attracts a spiritual presence; if this applies in the most direct way possible to sacred symbols, where this quality is superimposed on sacramental magic, it likewise holds good, though in a more diffuse manner, for all elements of harmony, that is to say truth in sensible form. sophiaperennis: THE DEGREES OF ART
But as a general rule form takes a higher place, AESTHETICally speaking, than expression – unless the latter is deliberately concerned with stressing ugliness – in the sense that its normative character and thus its regularity of substance and of proportions constitutes the prime condition of AESTHETIC value; for wherever harmony or balance are lacking in the form itself, beauty of expression no longer appears as a decisive factor in the order of sensible beauty, this order being by definition that of formal perfection or of truth in form. Beauty of soul can indeed enhance that of the body, or even assert its supremacy to the point of submerging or extinguishing the corporeal, but it cannot purely and simply replace the beauty of the body as though the body did not exist and did not itself have a right to the perfection which is its existential norm. sophiaperennis: Truths and Errors Concerning Beauty
Another very widespread error, not moralist this time but relativist and subjectivist, suggests that beauty is no more than a mere question of taste and that the canons of AESTHETIC perfection vary according to the country and the period; or to put it the other way, that the variations which in fact occur prove the arbitrary and subjective character of beauty, or of that which has come to be called beauty. In reality beauty is essentially an objective factor which we may or may not see or may or may not understand but which like all objective reality or like truth possesses its own intrinsic quality; thus it exists before man and independently of him. It is not man who creates the Platonic archetypes, it is they that determine man and his understanding; the beautiful has its ontological roots far beyond all that is within the comprehension of sciences restricted to phenomena. sophiaperennis: Truths and Errors Concerning Beauty
Although taste does not create beauty, yet it has a natural part to play by reason of the fact that it indicates an affinity, not with the beautiful as such, but with some modality of the beautiful, so that it is perfectly possible to be aware, in a particular case, that the AESTHETIC ideal is elsewhere than in the object of our personal choice, and to know that this choice is determined, not by a maximum of beauty, but by a maximum of complementary typological relationship. Affinity, which determines the choice of a complement and thus of a harmonious opposite, is explained by our factual limitation to a given type which by definition must exclude something. sophiaperennis: Truths and Errors Concerning Beauty
In an analogous order of ideas, the affirmation that “the beautiful is the useful” is doubly false. In the first place, what is it that determines in an absolute way the utility of an object or of its purpose, if it is not that spiritual hierarchy of values which the utilitarians entirely ignore? In the second place, if only the useful is beautiful, what of the decorative art which for thousands of years has everywhere been applied to tools, and what of the stylization which transfigures crude objects and which, being universal and immemorial, is natural to man? In a world that lives by the creation and maintenance of artificial needs, the notion of utility becomes singularly arbitrary; (NA: All too often things which some people call “useful” arc anything but useful in their results. “Progress” is healing a paralytic while depriving him of his sight.) those who ill treat that notion at least owe some explanation, not only of the ornamental arts already mentioned but also of the figurative arts, not forgetting music, dance, and poetry, for they too are beautiful without being useful in a crudely practical sense. The arts are in no way identifiable either with practical work or with any kind of tool, and they therefore go beyond the narrow sphere of the “useful”; even architecture and the art of clothing are almost nowhere reduced to mere utility alone. There is no question here of denying that a tool as such possesses, or can possess, a beauty arising from the intelligibility of its symbolism, nor are we maintaining that ornamentation or stylization are conditions of its AESTHETIC value; we are simply rejecting the assertion that the beautiful is the useful. What must be said is that the useful can be beautiful, and is so to the extent that the tool meets a need, whether this be simply normal and legitimate, or exalted in the hierarchy of values and functions. sophiaperennis: Truths and Errors Concerning Beauty
It has been said that beauty and goodness are the two faces of one and the same reality, the one outward and the other inward; thus goodness is internal beauty, and beauty is external goodness. Within beauty it is necessary to distinguish between appearance and essence. A love of beauty, from the point of view adopted here, does not signify attachment to appearances, but an understanding of appearances with reference to their essence and consequently a communication with their quality of truth and love. Fully to understand beauty, and it is to this that beauty invites us, is to pass beyond the appearance and to follow the internal vibration back to its roots; the AESTHETIC experience, when it is directed aright, has its source in symbolism and not in idolatry. This experience must contribute to union and not to dispersion, it must bring about a contemplative dilatation and not a passional compression; it must appease and relieve, not excite and burden. (NA: Everything that Saint Paul says in his magnificent passage on love (1 Corinthians 13) is equally applicable to beauty, in a transposed sense.) sophiaperennis: Truths and Errors Concerning Beauty
Under normal conditions spiritual life is plunged in beauty for the simple reason that the environment is unbrokenly traditional; in such a framework, harmony of forms is omnipresent like air and light. In worlds like those of the Middle Ages and the Orient man cannot escape from beauty, (NA: Nor from ugliness, in so far as it is a part of life and of truth; but then it is a natural ugliness carrying no suggestion of a diabolical confes sion of faith. One might say that natural ugliness is framed in beauty.) and the material forms themselves of every traditional civilization – buildings, clothes, tools, sacred art – prove that beauty is wholly unsought, that is to say that in such a civilization the question of seeking it does not arise; an analogous observation could be made concerning virgin nature, direct work of the Creator. The AESTHETIC environment of traditional man plays an indirectly didactic part. It “thinks” on his behalf and furnishes him with criteria of truth, if he is capable of understanding them, for “beauty is the splendor of the true.” In a word, for traditional man a certain beauty that can be thought of as a mean is part of his existence, it is a natural aspect of truth and of the good. sophiaperennis: Truths and Errors Concerning Beauty
Ignorant and profane AESTHETICism, at least in practice, puts the beautiful – or what its sentimental idealism takes to be the beautiful – above the true, and in so doing exposes itself to errors on its own level. But if AESTHETICism is the unintelligent cult of the beautiful, or more precisely of AESTHETIC feeling, this in no way implies that a sense of beauty is mere AESTHETICism. This is not to say that man is limited to a choice between AESTHETICism and AESTHETICs, or, in other words, between idolizing of the beautiful and the science of beauty. Love of beauty is a quality which exists apart from its sentimental deviations and its intellectual foundations. Beauty is a reflection of Divine bliss, and since God is Truth, the reflection of His bliss will be that mixture of happiness and truth which is to be found in all beauty. sophiaperennis: AESTHETICS AND SYMBOLISM IN ART AND NATURE
There is something in our intelligence which wants to live in repose, something in which the conscious and the unconscious meet in a kind of passive activity, and it is to this element that the lofty and easy language of art addresses itself. The language is lofty because of the spiritual symbolism of its forms and the nobility of its style; it is easy because of the AESTHETIC mode of assimilation. When this function of our spirit, this intuition which stands between the natural and the supernatural and produces incalculable vibrations, is systematically violated and led into error, the consequences will be extremely serious, if not for the individual, at all events for the civilization concerned. sophiaperennis: AESTHETICS AND SYMBOLISM IN ART AND NATURE
There is not only the beauty of the adult, there is also that of the child as our mention of the Child Jesus suggests. First of all, it must be said that the child, being human, participates in the same symbolism and in the same AESTHETIC expressivity as do his parents – we are speaking always of man as such and not of particular individuals – and then, that childhood is nevertheless a provisional state and does not in general have the definitive and representative value of maturity. (NA: But it can when the individual value of the child visibly over rides his state of immaturity; notwithstanding the fact that childhood is in itself an incomplete state which points towards its own completion.) In metaphysical symbolism, this provisional character expresses relativity: the child is what “comes after” his parents, he is the reflection of Atmâ in Mâyâ, to some degree and according to the ontological or cosmological level in view; or it is even Mâyâ itself if the adult is Atmâ. (NA: Polarized into “Necessary Being” and “All-Possibility.”) But from an altogether different point of view, and according to inverse analogy, the key to which is given by the seal of Solomon, (NA: When a tree is mirrored in a lake, its top is at the bottom, but the image is always that of a tree; the analogy is inverse in the first relationship and parallel in the second. Analogies between the divine order and the cosmic order always comprise one or the other of these relationships.) the child represents on the contrary what “was before,” namely what is simple, pure, innocent, primordial and close to the Essence, and this is what its beauty expresses; (NA: We do not say that every human individual is beautiful when he is a child, but we start from the idea that man, child or not, is beautiful to the extent that he is physically what he ought to be.) this beauty has all the charm of promise, of hope and of blossoming, at the same time as that of a Paradise not yet lost; it combines the proximity of the Origin with the tension towards the Goal. And it is for that reason that childhood constitutes a necessary aspect of the integral man, therefore in conformity with the divine Intention: the man who is fully mature always keeps, in equilibrium with wisdom, the qualities of simplicity and freshness, of gratitude and trust, that he possessed in the springtime of his life. (NA: “Verily I say unto you, except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.” (Matthew 18:3)) Since we have just mentioned the principle of inverse analogy, we may here connect it with its application to femininity: even though a priori femininity is subordinate to virility, it also comprises an aspect which makes it superior to a given aspect of the masculine pole; for the divine Principle has an aspect of unlimitedness, virginal mystery and maternal mercy which takes precedence over a certain more relative aspect of determination, logical precision and implacable justice. (NA: According to Tacitus, the Germans discerned something sacred and visionary in women. The fact that in German the sun (die Sonne) is feminine whereas the moon (der Mond) is masculine, bears witness to the same perspective.) Seen thus, feminine beauty appears as an initiatic wine in the face of the rationality represented in certain respects by the masculine body. (NA: Mahâyanic art represents Prajnâpâramitâ, the “Perfection of Gnosis,” in feminine form; likewise, Prajnâ, liberating Knowledge, appears as a woman in the face of Upâya, the doctrinal system or the art of convincing, which is represented as masculine. The Buddhists readily point out that the Bodhisattvas, in themselves asexual, have the power to take a feminine form as they do any other form; now one would like to know for what reason they do so, for if the feminine form can produce such a great good, it is because it is intrinsically good; otherwise there would be no reason for a Bodhisattva to assume it.) sophiaperennis: The Message of the Human Body
The morality and mysticism of the West see carnal sin exclusively in concupiscence, which is one-sided and insufficient; in reality, sin here lies just as much in the profanation of a theophanic mystery; it is in the fact of pulling downwards, towards the frivolous and the trivial, that which by its nature points upwards and towards the sacred; but sin or deviation is also, at a level which in this case is not deprived of nobility, in the purely AESTHETIC and individualistic cult of bodies , as was the case in classical Greece, where the sense of clarity, of measure, of finite perfection, completely obliterated the sense of the transcendent, of mystery and of the infinite. Sensible beauty became an end in itself; it was no longer man who resembled God, it was God who resembled man; whereas in Egyptian and Hindu art, which express the substantial and not the accidental, one feels that the human form is nothing without a mystery which on the one hand fashions it and on the other hand transcends it, and which calls both to Love and to Deliverance. sophiaperennis: The Message of the Human Body