The Sophia Perennis is to know the total Truth and, consequently, to will the Good and love Beauty; and this in conformity to this Truth, hence with full awareness of the reasons for doing so. The doctrinal Sophia treats of the Divine Principle on the one hand and of its universal Manifestation on the other: hence of God, the world and the soul, while distinguishing within Manifestation between the macrocosm and the microcosm; this implies that God comprises in Himself – extrinsically at least – degrees and modes, that is to say that He tends to limit Himself in view of His Manifestation. Therein lies all the mystery of the Divine Maya. To know the Truth, to will the Good, to love Beauty. We have just characterized the element Truth; as for the Good, it is a priori the supreme Principle as quintessence and cause of every possible good; and it is a posteriori on the one hand that which in the Universe manifests the Principle, and on the other hand that which leads back to the Principle; in a word, the Good is first of all God Himself, then the “projection” of God into existence, and finally the “reintegration” of the existentiated into God. Let us specify that for man, the three highest goods are: firstly religion, secondly piety, and thirdly salvation, taking these terms in an almost absolute sense and outside any restrictive specification. As for the goods that do not enter into these three categories, they participate in them either in a direct or in an indirect manner, for every good has the value of a symbol, hence of a key. As for Beauty, it stems from Infinitude, which coincides with the divine Bliss; seen in this connection, God is Beauty, Love, Goodness and Peace, and He penetrates the whole Universe with these qualities. Beauty, in the Universe, is that which reveals the divine Infinitude: every created beauty communicates to us something infinite, beatific, liberating. Love, which responds to Beauty, is the desire for union, or it is union itself; according to Ibn ‘Arabi, the way towards God is Love because God is Beauty. Goodness, for its part, is the generous radiation of Beauty: it is to Beauty what heat is to light. Being Beauty, God is thereby Goodness or Mercy: we could also say that in Beauty, God lends us something of Paradise; the beautiful is the messenger, not only of Infinitude and Harmony, but also, like the rainbow, of reconciliation and pardon. From an altogether different standpoint, Goodness and Beauty are the respectively “inward” and “outward” aspects of Beatitude, whereas from the standpoint of our preceding distinction, Beauty is intrinsic inasmuch as it pertains to the Essence, whereas Goodness is extrinsic inasmuch as it is exercised in relation to accidents, namely towards creatures. In this dimension, Rigor, which stems from the Absolute, could not be absent: intrinsically, it is the adamantine purity of the divine and of the sacred; extrinsically, it is the limitation of pardon, owing to the lack of receptivity of given creatures. The world is woven of two major dimensions, mathematical rigor and musical gentleness; both are united in a superior homogeneity that pertains to the very fathomlessness of the Divinity. In such truths or mysteries, the exoteric and esoteric perspectives – religions and wisdoms – participate in accordance with their capabilities and their vocations: esoterism in considering strictly the nature of things, and exoterism in filtering and adapting it to human opportunities, while conveying behind this veil the treasures of the one and unanimous Sophia. In the very depths of certain men there always resides, intact, man as such; and consequently also the plenary knowledge of God. What defines man is that of which he alone is capable: namely total intelligence – endowed with objectivity and transcendence – free will, and generous character; or quite simply objectivity, hence adequation of the will and of sentiment as well as of intelligence. The Sophia Perennis is, basically, objectivity freed from all shackles: it is the capacity to “perceive” that which is, to the point of being able to “be” that which is; it is the capacity to conform to necessary – not only possible – Being. The animal cannot leave his state, whereas man can; strictly speaking, only he who is fully man can leave the closed system of the individuality, through participation in the one and universal Selfhood. There lies the mystery of the human vocation: what man “can,” he “must”; on this plane, to be able to is to have to, given that the capacity pertains to a positive substance. Or again, which fundamentally amounts to the same thing: to know is to be; to know That which is, and That which alone is. (GTUFS: RootsHC, Pillars of Wisdom)
Strictly speaking, there is but one sole philosophy, the Sophia Perennis; it is also – envisaged in its integrality – the only religion. Sophia has two possible origins, one timeless and the other temporal: the first is “vertical” and discontinuous, and the second, “horizontal” and continuous; in other words, the first is like the rain that at any moment can descend from the sky; the second is like a stream that flows from a spring. Both modes meet and combine: metaphysical Revelation actualizes the intellective faculty, and once awakened, this gives rise to spontaneous and independent intellection. (GTUFS: TransfMan, Thought: Light and Perversion)
Sophia Perennis / Exoterism: All things considered, only the SOPHIA perennis can be considered a total good without reservations; exoterism, with its evident limitations always comprises an aspect of “lesser evil” owing to its inevitable concessions to collective human nature, hence to the intellectual, moral and spiritual possibilities of an average that by definition is “fallen”; “God alone is good,” Christ said. From the operative even more than from the speculative point of view, exoterism places pure intelligence between brackets, as it were: it replaces it with belief and reasonings linked to belief, which means that it puts the accent on will and sentiment. It must do so, given its mission and its reason for being; but this limitation is nonetheless a double-edged sword whose consequences are not as purely positive as religious prejudice would have it. It is true that the ambiguity of exoterism is not unrelated to the designs of Providence. (GTUFS: HaveCenter, Intelligence and Character)
Sophia Perennis / Humanism: The question may be asked whether the SOPHIA perennis is a “humanism”; the answer would in principle be “yes,” but in fact it must be “no” since humanism in the conventional sense of the term de facto exalts fallen man and not man as such. The humanism of the moderns is practically a utilitarianism aimed at fragmentary man; it is the will to make oneself as useful as possible to a humanity as useless as possible. (GTUFS: HaveCenter, Foreword)