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
A fact that seems to justify the sentimental intuitionists in question — but the real bearing of which they hardly suspect — is the following, and it is incontestable: a phenomenon of beauty can be more suddenly and more profoundly convincing than a logical explanation, whence this maxim: “The Buddhas save not by their preaching alone, but also by their superhuman beauty.” Also, the PLATONIC opinion that “Beauty is the splendor of the True” expresses without equivocation the profound, intimate, ontological relationship between the Real and the Beautiful, or between Being and Harmony; a relationship that implies — as we have just said — that Beauty is sometimes a more striking and transforming argument than a discursive proof; not logically more adequate, but humanly more miraculous. Essays Norms and Paradoxes in Spiritual Alchemy
Transformist evolutionism offers a patent example of “horizontality” in the domain of the natural sciences, owing to the fact that it puts a biological evolution of “ascending” degrees in place of a cosmogonic emanation of “descending” degrees. (NA: We understand the term “emanation” in the PLATONIC sense: the starting point remains transcendent, hence unaffected, whereas in deist or naturalist emanationism the cause pertains to the same ontological order as the effect.) Similarly, modern philosophers – mutatis mutandis – replace metaphysical causality with “physical” and empirical causalities, which no doubt demands intelligence, but one that is purely cerebral. (Roots of the Human Condition, p. 5). sophiaperennis: Sophia Perennis and the theory of evolution and progress
With a thoughtlessness that is infinitely culpable when they call themselves believers some people imagine a superman who is destined to take man’s place, and who consequently would also render Christ’s humanity contemptible (NA: For God only manifests himself directly in a support which by definition marks the presence of the Absolute in relativity and is for this reason “relatively absolute.” This “relative absoluteness” is the justification of the possibility Homo Sapiens Man might disappear, if God so wished, but he could not change into another species; the PLATONIC ideas are precise possibilities and not just misty vagueness: every possibility is what it is and what it ought to be.); and a certain “genius” imagines at the end of the evolutionist and progressivist chain something he is not ashamed to call “God” and which is no more than a pseudoabsolute decked out in a pseudotranscendence; for the Eternal will always be Alpha and has always been Omega. Creatures are crystallized in the corporeal zone emanating, in a manner at once, continuous and discontinuous, from the Center and from on high; they do not “evolve” by coming from matter and so from the periphery and from below. But at the same time, and beyond reach of our human point of view, creatures are all “contained” in God and do not really come out from Him; the whole play of relationships between God and the world is but a monologue of relativity. (Logic and Transcendence, p.68-69). sophiaperennis: Sophia Perennis and the theory of evolution and progress
The Augustinian idea that the good tends by its very nature to communicate itself, is at bottom PLATONIC: this idea is self-evident since, according to Plato, the Absolute is by definition the “Sovereign Good,” the Agathòn; and to say “Good,” is to say Radiation or Manifestation. sophiaperennis: Plato
Plato is sometimes included under the heading of rationalism, which is unjust despite the rationalistic style of his dialectic and a manner of thinking that is too geometrical; but what puts Plato in the clearest possible opposition to rationalism properly so-called is his doctrine of the eve of the soul. (NA: The opinion linking Plato not only with Pythagoreanism but also with the Egyptian tradition is perhaps not to be disregarded; in that case, the wisdom of Thoth will have survived in alchemy and partially or indirectly in Neo- Platonism as well, within Islam no less than in Christianity and Judaism.) This eye, so he teaches, lies buried in a slough from which it must extricate itself in order to mount to the vision of real things, namely the archetypes. Plato doubtless here has in mind an initiatic regeneration, for he says that the eyes of the soul in the case of the ordinary man are not strong enough to bear the vision of the Divine; moreover, this mysterial background helps to explain the somewhat playful character of the PLATONIC dialogues, since we are most probably dealing here with an intentional dialectical exoterism destined to adapt sacred teachings for a promulgation which had become desirable at that time. sophiaperennis: Plato
In Plotinus the essence of Platonism reveals itself without any reserves. Here one passes from the passion-centered body to the virtuous soul and from the soul to the cognizant Spirit, then from and through the Spirit to the suprarational and unitive vision of the ineffable One, which is the source of all that exists; in the One the thinking subject and the object of thought coincide. The One projects the Spirit as the sun projects light and heat: that is to say, the Spirit, Nous, emanates eternally from the One and contemplates It. By this contemplation the Spirit actualizes in itself the world of the archetypes or ideas – the sum of essential or fundamental possibilities – and thereafter produces the animic world; the latter in its turn engenders the material world – this dead end where the reflections of the possibilities coagulate and combine. The human soul, brought forth by the One from the world of the archetypes, recognizes these in their earthly reflections, and it tends by its own nature toward its celestial origin. With Aristotle, we are much closer to the earth, though not yet so close as to find ourselves cut off from heaven. If by rationalism is meant the reduction of the intelligence to logic alone and hence the negation of intellectual intuition (which in reality has no need of mental supports even though they may have to be used for communicating perceptions of a supramental order), then it will be seen that Aristotelianism is a rationalism in principle but not absolutely so in fact, since its theism and hylomorphism depend on Intellection and not on reasoning alone. (NA: Hylomorphism is a plausible thesis, but what is much less plausible is the philosopher’s opposition of this thesis to the PLATONIC Ideas, of which it is really only a prolongation, one that tends to exteriorize things to a dangerous degree just because of the absence of those Ideas.) And this is true of every philosophy that conveys metaphysical truths since an unmitigated rationalism is possible only where these truths or intellections are absent. (NA: Kantian theism does not benefit from this positive reservation; for Kant, God is only a “postulate of practical reason,” which takes us infinitely far away from the real and transcendent God of Aristotle.) sophiaperennis: Plato
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
Likewise, and for even stronger reasons: the inadequate soul, that is to say, the soul not in conformity with its primordial dignity as “image of God”, cannot attract the graces which favour or even constitute sanctity. According to Plato, the eye is “the most solar of instruments-‘, which Plotinus comments on as follows: ”The eye would never have been able to see the sun if it were not itself of solar nature, any more than the soul could see the beautiful if it were not itself beautiful.” PLATONIC Beauty is an aspect of Divinity, and this is why it is the “splendour of the True”: this amounts to saying that Infinity is in some fashion the aura of the Absolute, or that Maya is the shakti of Atma, and that consequently every hypostasis of the absolute Real – whatever be its degree – is accompanied by a radiance which we might seek to define with the help of such notions as “harmony”, “beauty”, “goodness”, “mercy” and “beatitude”. “God is beautiful and He loves beauty”, says a hadith which we have quoted more than once: Atma is not only Sat and Chit, “Being” and ”Consciousness” – or more relatively: “Power” and “Omniscience” – but also Ananda, “Beatitude”, and thus Beauty and Goodness; and what we want to know and realize, we must a priori mirror in our own being, because in the domain of positive realities we can only know perfectly what we are. sophiaperennis: Plato
PLATONIC recollection is none other than the participation of the human Intellect in the ontological insights of the Divine Intellect; this is why the Sufi is said to be ‘arif bi-‘Llah, “knower by Allah”, in keeping with the teaching of a famous hadith according to which God is the “Eye wherewith he (the Sufi) seeth”; and this explains the nature of the “Eye of Knowledge”, or of the “Eye of the Heart”. sophiaperennis: Plato
The importance of this idea of the degrees of the Real, is linked to the fact that it indicates totality of knowledge. In Hinduism, as is known, this totality is represented by Shankara, whereas for Ramanuja, as for the Semitic exoterisms, the Real does not comprise extinctive degrees; among the Greeks , we encounter the awareness of these degrees in PLATONIC idealism, but scarcely so in Aristotelian hylomorphism, which accentuates or favors the “horizontal” perspective; whence its utility for scientism on the one hand, and for a theology more cosmological than metaphysical on the other hand; science being centered upon the world, and religion upon the eschatological interests of man. sophiaperennis: Comparison between Plato and Aristotle
Thus it is illogical, to say the least, to wish to contrast the “wisdom of Christ,” whose purpose is to save and not to explain, with the “wisdom of the world” – that of Plato for example – whose purpose is to explain and not to save; besides, the fact that the PLATONIC wisdom is not dictated by an intention to save does not imply that it is of “this world” or “of the flesh,” or even that it does not contain any liberating virtue in the methodic context required by it. sophiaperennis: About Plato and/or Aristotle
When one speaks of Christian esoterism, it can only be one of three things: firstly, it can be Christly gnosis, founded on the person, the teaching and the gifts of Christ, and profiting in certain eventualities from PLATONIC concepts, a process which in metaphysics has nothing irregular about it; (NA: In a general manner, intertraditional influences are always possible under cert ain conditions, but without any syncretism. Unquestionably Buddhism and Islam had an influence on Hinduism, not of course by adding new elements to it, but by favouring or determining the blossoming of PRE-existing elements. 20. In other words, one finds elements of esoterism in orthodox gnosticism – which is prolonged in the theosophy of Boehme and his successors – then in the Dionysian mysticism of the Rhinelanders, and of course in Hesychasm; without forgetting that partial element of methodic esoterism constituted by the quietism of Molinos, traces of which can be found in St Francis of Sales.) this gnosis was manifested in particular, although in a very uneven way, in writings such as those of Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Denis the Areopagite – or the Theologian or the Mystic, if one prefers – Scotus Erigena, Meister Eckhart, Nicholas of Cusa, Jakob Boehme and Angelus Silesius. sophiaperennis: Platonism and Christianity
The Augustinian and PLATONIC doctrine of knowledge is still in perfect accord with gnosis, while Thomist and Aristotelian sensationalism, without being false on its own level and within its own limits, accords with the exigencies of the way of love, in the specifi c sense of the term bhakti. But this reservation is far from applying to the whole of Thomism, which identifies itself, in many respects, with truth unqualified – It is necessary to reject the opinion of those who believe that Thomism, or any other ancient wisdom, has an effective value only when we ‘recreate it in ourselves’ – we, ‘men of today!’ – and that if St. Thomas had read Descartes, Kant and the philosophers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, he would have expressed himsel f differently; in reality, he would then only have had to refute a thousand errors the more. If an ancient saying is right, there is nothing to do but accept it; if itis false, there is no reason to take notice of it; but to want to ‘rethink’ it through a veil of new errors or impressions quite clearly has no interest, and any such attempt merely shows the degree to which the sense of intrinsic and timeless truth has been lost. sophiaperennis: Platonism and Christianity
From a certain point of view, the Christian argument is the historicity of the Christ-Saviour, whereas the PLATONIC or “Aryan” argument is the nature of things or the Immutable. If, to speak symbolically, all men are in danger of drowning as a consequence of the fall of Adam, the Christian saves him-sell by grasping the pole held out to him by Christ, whereas the Platonist saves himself by swimming; but neither course weakens or neutralizes the effectiveness of the other. On the one hand there are certainly men who do not know how to swim or who are prevented from doing so, but on the other hand swimming is undeniably among the possibilities open to man; the whole thing is to know what counts most in any situation whether individual or collective.6 We have seen that Hellenism, like all directly or indirectly sapiential doctrines, is founded on the axiom man – intelligence rather than man – will, and that is one of the reasons why it had to appear as inoperative in the eyes of a majority of Christians; but only of a majority because the Christian gnostics could not apply such a reproach to the Pythagoreans and Platonists; the gnostics could not do otherwise than admit the primacy of the intellect, and for that reason the idea of divine redemption meant to them something very different from and more far-reaching than a mysticism derived from history and a sacramental dogmatism. It is necessary to repeat once more – as others have said before and better – that sacred facts are true because they retrace on their own plane the nature of things, and not the other way round: the nature of things is not real or normative because it evokes certain sacred facts. The principles, essentially accessible to pure intelligence – if they were not so man would not be man, and it is almost blasphemy to deny that human intelligence considered in relation to animal intelligence has a supernatural side – the universal principles confirm the sacred facts, which in their turn reflect those principles and derive their efficacy from them; it is not history, whatever it may contain, that confirms the principles. This relationship is expressed by the Buddhists when they say that spiritual truth is situated beyond the distinction between objectivity and subjectivity, and that it derives its evidence from the depths of Being itself, or from the innateness of Truth in all that is. In the sapiential perspective the divine redemption is always present; it PRE-exists all terrestrial alchemy and is its celestial model, so that it is always thanks to this eternal redemption – whatever may be its vehicle on earth – that man is freed from the weight of his vagaries and even, Deo volente, from that of his separative existence; if “my Words shall not pass away” it is because they have always been. The Christ of the gnostics is he who is “before Abraham was” and from whom arise all the ancient wisdoms; a consciousness of this, far from diminishing a participation in the treasures of the historical Redemption, confers on them a compass that touches the very roots of Existence. sophiaperennis: Platonism and Christianity
Rationalism, taken in its broadest sense, is the very negation of PLATONIC anamnesis; it consists in seeking the elements of certitude in phenomena rather than in our very being. The Greeks, aside from the Sophists, were not rationalists properly speaking; it is true that Socrates rationalized the intellect by insisting on dialectic and thus on logic, but it could also be said that he intellectualized reason; there lies the ambiguity of Greek philosophy, the first aspect being represented by Aristotle, and the second by Plato, approximatively speaking. To intellectualize reason: this is an inevitable and altogether spontaneous procedure once there is the intention to express intellections that reason alone cannot attain; the difference between the Greeks and the Hindus is here a matter of degree, in the sense that Hindu thought is more “concrete” and more symbolistic than Greek thought. The truth is that it is not always possible to distinguish immediately a reasoner who accidentally has intuitions from an intuitive who in order to express himself must reason, but in practice this poses no problem, provided that the truth be saved. Rationalism is the thought of the Cartesian “therefore,” which signals a proof; this has nothing to do with the “therefore” that language demands when we intend to express a logico-ontological relationship. Instead of cogito ergo sum, one ought to say: sum quia est esse, “I am because Being is”; “because” and not “therefore.” The certitude that we exist would be impossible without absolute, hence necessary, Being, which inspires both our existence and our certitude; Being and Consciousness: these are the two roots of our reality. Vedanta adds Beatitude, which is the ultimate content of both Consciousness and Being. sophiaperennis: Rationalism
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
Likewise, and for even stronger reasons: the inadequate soul, that is to say, the soul not in conformity with its primordial dignity as “image of God”, cannot attract the graces which favour or even constitute sanctity. According to Plato, the eye is “the most solar of instruments-‘, which Plotinus comments on as follows: ”The eye would never have been able to see the sun if it were not itself of solar nature, any more than the soul could see the beautiful if it were not itself beautiful.” PLATONIC Beauty is an aspect of Divinity, and this is why it is the “splendour of the True”: this amounts to saying that Infinity is in some fashion the aura of the Absolute, or that Maya is the shakti of Atma, and that consequently every hypostasis of the absolute Real – whatever be its degree – is accompanied by a radiance which we might seek to define with the help of such notions as “harmony”, “beauty”, “goodness”, “mercy” and “beatitude”. sophiaperennis: FOUNDATIONS OF AN INTEGRAL AESTHETICS
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