“Simplicity” meaning the unification of all the being’s powers, is a feature of the return to the “primordial state”; and here is seen the whole difference that separates the transcendent knowledge of the sage from ordinary and “profane” knowledge. This “simplicity” is also what is called elsewhere the state of “CHILDHOOD” (in Sanskrit baalya), to be understood of course in the spiritual sense, and this “CHILDHOOD” is considered in the Hindu doctrine as an indispensable condition for attaining to true knowledge. Studies in Comparative Religion Winter Issue (1973) AL-FAQR (‘SPIRITUAL POVERTY’)
“Poverty”, “simplicity” and “CHILDHOOD”, are no more than one same thing, and the process of being stripped which all these words express (footnote: It is the “being stripped of metals” in the Masonic symbolism.) culminates in an extinction” which is, in reality , the fullness of the being, just as “inaction” (wu-wei) is the fullness of activity , because it is from it that all the particular activities are derived; “The Principle is always inactive, and yet everything is done by it”(Tao-Te-Ching). Studies in Comparative Religion Winter Issue (1973) AL-FAQR (‘SPIRITUAL POVERTY’)