Heaven

But here also — in the face of these two Mysteries — there are the divergent options of those who make of every complementarity an alternative: some believe that everything has to fall from Heaven; others believe that everything can and must come from our own efforts. Now human intelligence, being theomorphic, possesses in principle a supernatural power; but whatever be the prerogatives of our nature, we can do nothing without God’s help: for it is He who causes us to participate in the Knowledge He has of Himself. Essays Norms and Paradoxes in Spiritual Alchemy

In Japanese Buddhism, one distinguishes between “self-power,” jiriki, and “Other-power,” tariki; the first refers to Immanence and the second to Transcendence. The first means that everything, in the Path, depends on our own strength and initiative; the second means that everything depends on celestial Grace. In reality, even if one of the viewpoints predominates, both viewpoints have to be combined; for on the one hand, we cannot save ourselves by relying entirely on our own strength, and on the other hand, Heaven will not help us if we, who are created intelligent and free, do not collaborate in our own salvation. Essays Norms and Paradoxes in Spiritual Alchemy

In the Buddhist as well as the Hindu climate, one encounters a mystical altruism that protests against “seeking a selfish salvation”: one should not wish to save oneself, it seems, one should at the same time wish to save others, indeed everyone, at least according to one’s intention. Now a selfish salvation is a contradiction in terms; an egoist does not obtain salvation, there is no place in Heaven for the miser. Altruists do not see that in the Path, the distinction between “I” and “others” disappears: any salvatory realization is so to speak realization as such, and this being so, a realization obtained by a given person always has an invisible radiance that blesses the ambience. There is no need for a sentimentalism that intends to come to the rescue of Truth; for with Truth, Love is already given, the circle closes with a transpersonal and infinitely generous Beatitude. Love of the Creator implies Love of creatures; and true charity implies Love of God — of Divine Reality, whatever be its Name. Essays Norms and Paradoxes in Spiritual Alchemy

It is true that the word “illumination” can have a superior meaning, in which case it no longer designates a passive phenomenon; unitive and liberating illumination is beyond the distinction between passivity and activity. Or more exactly, illumination is the Divine Activity in us, but for that very reason it also possesses an aspect of supreme Passivity in the sense that it coincides with the “extinction” of the passional and dark elements separating man from his immanent Divine Essence; this extinction constitutes receptivity to the Influx of Heaven – without losing sight of the fact that the Divine Order comprises a “Passive Perfection” as well as an “Active Perfection,” and that the human spirit must in the final analysis participate in both mysteries. sophiaperennis: Gnosis

Relativism engenders the spirit of rebellion and is at the same time its fruit. The spirit of rebellion is not, like holy anger, a passing state and directed against some worldly abuse; on the contrary, it is a chronic malady directed against Heaven and against all that represents Heaven or is a reminder of it. When Lao-Tse said that “in the latter times the man of virtue appears vile,” he had in mind this spirit of rebellion that characterizes our century; yet, for psychological and existentialist relativism, which by definition is always out to justify the crude ego, such a state of mind is normal, it is its absence which is a sickness; hence the would-be abolition of the sense of sin. The sense of sin is really the consciousness of an equilibrium that surpasses our personal will and which, even while wounding us on occasion, operates in the long run for the good of our integral personality and that of the human collectivity; this sense of sin is a counterpart of the sense of the sacred, the instinct for that which surpasses us and which, for that very reason, must not be touched by ignorant and iconoclastic hands. sophiaperennis: Existentialism

Infallibility, in a sense by definition, pertains in one degree or another to the Holy Spirit, in a way that may be extraordinary or ordinary, properly supernatural or quasi-natural; now the Holy Spirit, in the religious order, adapts itself to the nature of man in the sense that it limits itself to preventing the victory of intrinsic heresies, a victory which would falsify this “divine form” that is the religion; for the upaya, the “saving mirage,” is willed by Heaven, not by men. sophiaperennis: The notion of philosophy

Plato has been reproached for having had too negative an idea of matter, but this is to forget that in this connection there are in Plato’s thought (NA: By “thought” we mean here, not an artificial elaboration but the mental crystallization of real knowledge. With all due deference to anti-Platonic theologians, Platonism is not true because it is logical, it is logical because it is true; and as for the possible or apparent illogicalities of the theologies, these can be explained not by an alleged right to the mysteries of absurdity, but by the fragment ary character of particular dogmatic positions and also by the insuffi ciency of the means of thought and expression. We may recall in this connection the alternativism and the sublimism proper to the Semitic mentality, as well as the absence of the crucial notion of Maya -. at least at the ordinary theological level, meaning by this reservation that the boundaries of theology are not strictly delimited.) two movements: the first refers to fallen matter, and the second to matter in itself and as a support for the spirit. For matter, like the animic substance that precedes it, is a reflection of Maya: consequently it comprises a deiform and ascending aspect and a deifugal and descending aspect; and just as there occurred the fall of Lucifer – without which there would not have been a serpent in the Earthly Paradise – so also there occurred the fall of man. For Plato, matter – or the sensible world – is bad in so far as it is opposed to spirit, and in this respect only; and it does in fact oppose the spirit – or the world of Ideas – by its hardened and compressive nature, which is heavy as well as dividing, without forgetting its corruptibility in connection with life. But matter is good with respect to the inherence in it of the world of Ideas: the cosmos, including its material limit, is the manifestation of the Sovereign Good, and matter demonstrates this by its quality of stability, by the purity and nobility of certain of its modes, and by its symbolist plasticity, in short by its inviolable capacity to serve as a receptacle for influences from Heaven. A distant reflection of universal Maya, matter is as it were a prolongation of the Throne of God, a truth that a ”spirituality” obsessed by the cursing of the earth has too readily lost sight of, at the price of a prodigious impoverishment and a dangerous disequilibrium; and yet this same spirituality was aware of the principial and virtual sanctity of the body, which a priori is “image of God” and a posteriori an element of “glory”. But the fullest refutation of all Manicheism is provided by the body of the Avatara, which is capable in principle of ascending to Heaven – by ”transfiguration” – without having to pass through that effect of the “forbidden fruit” which is death, and which shows by its sacred character that matter is fundamentally a projection of the Spirit. (NA: The “Night Journey” (isra, mi ‘raj) of the Prophet has the same significance.) Like every contingent substance, matter is a mode of radiation of the Divine Substance; a partially corruptible mode, indeed, as regards the existential level, but inviolable in its essence. (NA: All the same, the biblical narrative regarding the creation of the material world implies symbolically the description of the whole cosmogony, and so that of all the worlds, and even that of the eternal archetypes of the cosmos; traditional exegesis, especially that of the Kabbalists bears witness to this.) sophiaperennis: Plato

A certain underlying warrior or chivalric mentality does much to explain both the theological fluctuations and their ensuing disputes (NA: Let us not lose sight of the fact that the same causes produce the same effects in all climates – albeit to very varied extents and that India is no exception; the quarrels of sectarian Vishnuism are a case in point.) – the nature of Christ and the structure of the Trinity having been, in the Christian world, among the chief points at issue – just as it explains such narrownesses as the incomprehension and the intolerance of the ancient theologians towards Hellenism, its metaphysics and its mysteries. It is moreover this same mentality which produced, in the very bosom of the Greek tradition, the divergence of Aristotle with regard to Plato, who personified in essence the brahmana spirit inherent in the Orphic and Pythagorean tradition, (NA: It goes without saying that in the classical period – with its grave intellectual and artistic deviations – and then in its re- emergence at the time of the Renaissance, we have obvious examples of luciferianism of a warrior and chivalric, and therefore, kshatriya type. But it is not deviation proper that we have in mind here, since we are speaking on the contrary of manifestations that are normal and acceptable to Heaven, otherwise there could be no question of voluntarist and emotional upayas.) whereas the Stagirite formulated a metaphysics that was in certain respects centrifugal and dangerously open to the world of phenomena, actions, experiments and adventures. (NA: But let us not make Aristotelianism responsible for the modern world, which is due to the confluence of various factors, such as the abuses – and subsequent reactions – provoked by the unrealistic idealism of Catholicism, or such as the divergent and unreconciled demands of the Latin and Germanic mentalities; all of them converging on Greek scientism and the profane mentality.) sophiaperennis: Comparison between Plato and Aristotle

It has been said and said again that the Hellenists and the Orientals – the “Platonic” spirits in the widest sense – have become blameworthy in “arrogantly” rejecting Christ, or that they are trying to escape from their “responsibilities”- once again and always ! – as creatures towards the Creator in withdrawing into their own centre where they claim to find, in their pure being, the essence of things and the Divine Reality; they thus dilute, it seems, the quality of creature and at the same time t hat of Creator with a sort of pantheistic impersonalism, which amounts to saying that they destroy the relationship of “obligation” between the Creator and the creature. In reality “responsibilities” are relative as we ourselves are relative in our existential specification; they cannot be less relative – or “more absolute”- than the subject to which they are related. One who, by the grace of Heaven, succeeds in escaping from the tyranny of the ego is by that very circumstance discharged from the responsibilities which the ego implies. God shows himself as creative Person in so far as – or in relation to the fact that – we are “creature” and individual, but that particular reciprocal relationship is far from exhausting all our ontological and intellectual nature; that is to say, our nature cannot be exhaustively defined by notions of “duty”, of “rights”, nor by other fixations of the kind. It has been said that the “rejection” of the Christie gift on the part of the “Platonic” spirit constitutes the subtlest and most Luciferan perversity of the intelligence; this argument, born of an instinct of selfpreservation, wrong in its inspiration but comprehensible on its own plane, can easily and far more pertinently be turned against those who make use of it: for, if we are to be obliged at all costs to find some mental perversion somewhere, we shall find it with those who want to substitute for the Absolute a personal and therefore relative God, and temporal phenomena for metaphysical principles, and that not in connection with a childlike faith that asks nothing of anybody, but within the framework of the most exacting erudition and the most totalitarian intellectual pretension. If there is such a thing as abuse of the intelligence, it is to be found in the substitution of the relative for the Absolute, or the accident from the Substance, on the pretext of putting the “concrete” above the “abstract”; it is not to be found in the rejection – in the name of transcendent and immutable principles – of a relativity presented as absoluteness. The misunderstanding between Christians and Hellenists can for the greater part be condensed to a false alternative: in effect, the fact that God resides in our deepest “being”- or at the extreme transpersonal depth of our consciousness – and that we can in principle realize him with the help of the pure and theomorphic intellect, in no way excludes the equal and simultaneous affirmation of this immanent and impersonal Divinity as objective and personal, nor the fact that we can do nothing without his grace, despite the essentially “divine” character of the Intellect in which we participate naturally and supernaturally. sophiaperennis: Platonism and Christianity

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

Sacred art is vertical and ascending, whereas profane art is horizontal and equilibrating. In the beginning, nothing was profane; each tool was a symbol, and even decoration was symbolistic and sacral. With the passage of time, however, the imagination increasingly spread itself on the earthly plane, and man felt the need for an art that was for him and not for Heaven alone; the earth too, which in the beginning was experienced as a prolongation or an image of Heaven, progressively became earth pure and simple, that is to say that the human being increasingly felt himself to possess the right to be merely human. If religion tolerates this art, it is because it nevertheless has its legitimate function in the economy of spiritual means, within the horizontal or earthly dimension, and with the vertical or heavenly dimension in view. sophiaperennis: THE DEGREES OF ART

In the case of the examples just mentioned, we are obviously at the antipodes, not perhaps of certain medieval miniatures nor of the noblest and most spring-like works of the Quattrocento, but of the dramatic titanism, and the fleshly and vulgar delirium, of the megalomaniacs of the Renaissance and the 17th century, infatuated with anatomy, turmoil, marble and gigantism. Non-traditional art, about which a few words must be said here, embraces the classical art of antiquity and the Renaissance, and Continues up to the 19th century which, reacting against academicism, gives rise to impressionism and analogous styles; this reaction rapidly decomposes into all sorts of perversities, either “abstract” or “surrealistic”: in any case, it is of “subrealism” that one ought to speak here. It goes without saying that worthwhile works are to be found incidentally both in impressionism and in Classicism – in which we include romanticism, since its technical principles are the same -, for the cosmic qualities cannot but manifest themselves in this realm, and a given individual aptitude cannot but lend itself to this manifestation; but these exceptions, in which the positive elements succeed in neutralizing the erroneous or insufficient principles, are far from being able to compensate for the serious drawbacks of extratraditional art, and we would gladly do without all its productions if it were possible to disencumber the world from the heavy mortgage of Western culturism, with its vices of impiety, dispersion and poisonousness. The least that one can say is that it is not this kind of grandeur that brings us closer to Heaven. “Suffer the little children to come unto ME and forbid them not; for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.” sophiaperennis: THE DEGREES OF ART

We have already remarked that there is a relative but not irremediable incompatibility – an incompatibility of fact and not of principle – between the spiritual content or the radiance of a work of art and an implacable and virtuosic naturalism: it is as if the science of the mechanism of things killed their spirit, or at least ran the grave risk of killing it. On the one hand we have a treatment that is naive, but charged with graces and diffusing an atmosphere of security, happiness and holy childhood; while on the other hand – in classical antiquity and from the Cinquecento onwards – we have on the contrary a treatment that is scientifically executed but the content is human and not heavenly – or rather it is “humanistic” – and the work suggests, not a childhood still close to Heaven, but an adulthood fallen into disgrace and expelled from Paradise. sophiaperennis: THE DEGREES OF ART

The multiform beauty of a sanctuary is like the crystallization of a spiritual flux or of a stream of blessings. It is as though invisible and celestial power had fallen into matter – which hardens, divides and scatters – and had transformed it into a shower of precious forms, into a sort of planetary system of symbols, surrounding us and penetrating us from every side. The impact, if one may so call it, is analogous to that of the benediction itself; it is direct and existential; it goes beyond thought and seizes our being in its very substance. There are blessings which are like snow; and others which are like wine; all can be crystallized in sacred art. What is exteriorized in such art is both doctrine and blessing, geometry and the music of Heaven. 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

There is nothing surprising in the fact that the workers’ world, with its mechanico-scientific and materialistic psychology, is particularly impermeable to spiritual realities, for it presupposes a surrounding reality which is quite artificial: it requires machinery and therefore metal, din, hidden and treacherous forces, a nightmare environment, incomprehensible comings and goings – in a word an insect-like existence carried on in the midst of ugliness and triviality. In such a world, or rather in such a stage-set, spiritual reality comes to be regarded as an all too obvious illusion or a luxury to be despised. In no matter what traditional environment, on the contrary, it is the problem of the workers, and so also of mechanization, which is devoid of persuasive force: in order to make it convincing a stage world corresponding to it had first to be created, in which the very forms suggested the absence of God; Heaven had to be made to seem improbable and any talk of God to sound false. (NA: The great mistake of those who in Europe seek to lead the industrial masses back to the fold of the Church is that they confirm the worker in his dehumanization by accepting the world of machines as a real and legitimate world and even believing themselves obliged to ‘love that world for its own sake’. To translate the Gospels into slang or to travesty the Holy Family in the guise of proletarians is to make a mock not only of religion but of the workers themselves; it is in any case base demagogy or, let us say, weakmindedness, for all these attempts betray the inferiority complex of intellectuals when they meet the sort of brutal realism characteristic of the industrial worker.) When the industrial worker says he has no time to pray he is not far wrong. sophiaperennis: Science and mythologies

A symbol (NA: The word “symbol” implies “participation” or “aspect”, whatever the difference of level may be involved.) is intrinsically so concrete and so efficacious that celestial manifestations, when they occur in our sensory world, “descend” to earth and “reascend” to Heaven; a symbolism accessible to the senses takes on the function of the supra-sensible reality which its reflects. Light-years and the relativity of the space-time relationship have absolutely nothing to do with the perfectly “exact” and “positive” symbolism of appearances and its connection at once analogical and ontological with the celestial or angelic orders… sophiaperennis: Science and Revelations

A symbol is intrinsically so concrete and so efficacious that celestial manifestations, when they occur in our sensory world, “descend” to earth and “reascend” to Heaven; a symbolism accessible to the senses takes on the function of the supra-sensible reality which its reflects. Light-years and the relativity of the space-time relationship have absolutely nothing to do with the perfectly “exact” and “positive” symbolism of appearances and its connection at once analogical and ontological with the celestial or angelic orders, The fact that the symbol itself may be no more than an optical illusion in no way impairs its precision or its efficacy, for all appearances, including those of space and of the galaxies, are strictly speaking only illusions created by relativity. (Light on the Ancient Worlds, 36-37). sophiaperennis: Science and negation of Transcendence

Among real or apparent graces there are also “powers” such as those of healing, prevision, suggestion, telepathy, divination and the performance of minor miracles. These powers may indeed be direct gifts from Heaven, but in this case they are related to some degree of sanctity; otherwise they are only natural, however rare and out of the ordinary. Now in the opinion of the most diverse spiritual authorities one should treat them with great caution, paying no attention to them, particularly because the devil may be involved in this and has an interest in so involving himself. Gratuitous powers may, a priori, indicate election on the part of Heaven, but they can also cause the downfall of those who become attached to them to the detriment of the purgative asceticism which all spirituality demands. Many heretics and false spiritual masters have started by becoming the dupes of some power with which nature had endowed them. sophiaperennis: The Sophia Perennis and Neo-spiritualism

The question of knowing which detail it is that impugns the authenticity of a celestial apparition depends either on the nature of things or else on a particular religious perspective. That is to say there are elements which in themselves, and from every religious or spiritual point of view, are incompatible with celestial apparitions … (To speak of these) discordant elements which are intrinsically incompatible with a celestial manifestation, there are first of all — and quite obviously — elements of ugliness or grotesque features, not only in the actual form of the apparition but also in its movements or even simply in the surroundings of the vision; then there is the question of speech, both from the point of view of content and of style, for Heaven neither lies nor gossips. (NA: Which puts paid to a whole series of apparitions or “messages” of which one hears talk in the second half of the 20th century.) “God is beautiful and He loves beauty”, the Prophet said. Loving beauty, He also loves dignity, He who combines beauty (jamal) with majesty (jalal). “God is love”, and love, if it does not exclude holy wrath, assuredly excludes ugliness and pettiness. sophiaperennis: The Sophia Perennis and Neo-spiritualism

A decisive criterion of authenticity, on the basis of necessary extrinsic criteria, is the spiritual or miraculous efficacy of the apparition. If nothing that is spiritually positive results from the vision, it is of doubtful validity in proportion to the imperfection of the visionary, without necessarily being false even in such a case as this, for the motives of Heaven may escape men; if, on the contrary, the visionary draws a permanent grace from the vision so that he becomes a better man, (NA: Which either modifies his habitual behavior or leads to a change in his character, the former being an extrinsic result, the latter an intrinsic one; in any case the one is not entirely independent of the other.) or if the vision is the source of miracles without being accompanied by any discordant elements, there can be no doubt that this is a case of a true celestial apparition. A fructibus eorum cognoscetis eos. (Esoterism as Principle and as Way, pages 211-218) sophiaperennis: The Sophia Perennis and Neo-spiritualism

The human being is compounded of geometry and music, of spirit and soul, of virility and femininity: by geometry, he brings the chaos of existence back to order, that is, he brings blind substance back to its ontological meaning and thus constitutes a reference point between Earth and Heaven, a “sign-post” pointing towards God; by music he brings the segmentation of form back to unitive life, reducing form, which is death, to Essence — at least symbolically and virtually — so that it vibrates with a joy which is at the same time a nostalgia for the Infinite. As symbols, the masculine body indicates a victory of the Spirit over chaos, and the feminine body, a deliverance of form by Essence; the first is like a magic sign which would subjugate the blind forces of the Universe, and the second like celestial music which would give back to fallen matter its paradisiac transparency, or which, to use the language of Taoism, would make trees flower beneath the snow. (Stations of Wisdom, p. 80). sophiaperennis: Femininity

A few words should be said here about the ancient American religion, or more precisely that of the Plains and Woodland Indians. The most eminent manifestations of the “Great Spirit” are the Cardinal Points together with zenith and nadir, or with Heaven and Earth, and next in order are such as the Sun and the Morning Star. Although the Great Spirit is one, He comprises in Himself all those qualities the traces of which we see and the effects of which we experience in the world of appearances. The East is Light and Knowledge and also Peace; the South is Warmth and Life, therefore also Growth and Happiness; the West is fertilizing Water and also Revelation speaking in lightning and thunder, the North in Cold and Purity, or Strength. Thus it is that the Universe, at whatever level it may be considered, whether or Earth, Man or Heaven, is dependent on the four primordial determinations: Light, Heat, Water, Cold. sophiaperennis: His Holiness and the Red Indian