All this evokes the question of the Symbol and of symbolism; what is the role of the Symbol in the economy of spiritual life? We have just shown that the object of concentration is not necessarily an Idea, but that it can also be a symbolic sign, a sound, an image or an activity: the monosyllable Om, mystical diagrams– mandalas — and images of the Divinities are in their way vehicles of consciousness of the Absolute, without the intervention of a doctrinal element; the “contemplation of the naked Lady,” in certain circles of the troubadors or the Fideli d’Amore, suggests a VISION of the Infinite and of Pure Being– not a seduction, but a catharsis. The PRE-eminence either of the Idea or of the Symbol is a question of opportuneness rather than of principle; by the nature of things, the modes of the Path are as diverse as men are, and as complex as the human soul. But whatever be our points of departure — Idea or Symbol or their combination — there is also, and essentially, concentration on the Void, concentration made of certitude and serenity; as Shankara said: “That which is the ceasing of mental agitation and the supreme Peacefulness that is the true Benares, and that is what I am.” Essays Norms and Paradoxes in Spiritual Alchemy
For a certain mysticism met with in all traditional climates, only sentiment — not intelligence — offers the solution to the main problem of our existence, namely the meaning of life; eschatology then takes on the function of metaphysics. In this promotion of feeling, the word “truth” is still used, but it means that which liberates us while granting us a happiness that we experience as being fundamental and lasting; truth is then no longer a principle comprising the most diverse contents, it is simply a given content dogmatized; it is forgotten that the true is the nature of things, and that nothing can take precedence over this in the VISION of the real. Still within this mental and moral climate, intelligence — presented as “analytical’ and “separative” — is opposed to sentiment viewed according to its synthetic and unitive aspect; and what is constructed is a deformed image of man, as if he were the victim of a deceptive intelligence, and liberated by some sentimental solution. Essays Norms and Paradoxes in Spiritual Alchemy
There is intelligence and there is intelligence; there is knowledge and there is knowledge; there is on the one hand a fallible mind that registers and elaborates, and on the other hand a heart-intellect that perceives and projects its infallible VISION onto thought. Here lies the entire difference between a logical certitude that can replace another logical certitude, and a quasi-ontological certitude that nothing can replace because it is what we are, or because we are what it is. sophiaperennis: Gnosis
From the point of view of knowledge properly so-called, reasoning is like the groping of a blind man, with the difference that – by removing obstacles – it may bring about a clearing of VISION; it is blind and groping due to its indirect and discursive nature, but not necessarily in its function, for it may be no more than the description – or verbalization – of a VISION which one possesses a priori, and in this case, it is not the mind that is groping, but the language. If we compare reasoning to a groping, it is in the sense that it is not a VISION, and not in order to deny its capacity of adequation and exploration; it is a means of knowledge, but this means is mediate and fragmentary, like the sense of touch, which enables a blind man to find his way and even to feel the heat of the sun, but not to see. (NA: It is said that angels do not possess reason since they have VISION of causes and consequences, which obviously does not signify an infirmity.) sophiaperennis: Reason
It should be noted that Meister Eckhart called Plato ” the great priest”, and that Jili had a VISION of him “filling the whole of space with light”; also, that the disciples of Rumi see in Plato (Sayyid-na Aflatun) a kind of prophet. Moslem authors in general see in him an eminent master of music, like Orpheus charming wild beasts with his lute in virgin nature whither he had withdrawn after a disagreement with Aristotle, which is full of meaning. It may be added that Plato, like Socrates and Pythagoras, was the providential spokesman of Orphism. 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
However that may be, all the speculations of Plato or Socrates converge upon a VISION which transcends the perception of appearances and which opens on to the Essence of things. This Essence is the “Idea” and it confers on things all their perfection, which coincides with beauty. 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
From the standpoint of integral rationalism, Aristotle has been reproached with stopping halfway and thus being in contradiction with his own principle of knowledge; but this accusation stems entirely from an abusive exploitation of Aristotelian logic, and is the product of a thinking that is artificial to the point of perversion. To Aristotle’s implicit axioms, which his detractors are incapable of perceiving, they oppose a logical automatism which the Stagirite would have been the first to repudiate. If Aristotle is to be blamed it is for the quite contrary reason that his formulation of metaphysics is governed by a tendency toward exteriorization, a tendency which is contrary to the very essence of all metaphysics. Aristotelianism is a science of the Inward expanding toward the outward and thereby tends to favor exteriorization, whereas traditional metaphysics is invariably formulated in view of an interiorization, and for this reason does not encourage the expansion of the natural sciences, or not to an excessive extent. It is this flaw in Aristotelianism that explains the superficiality of its method of knowledge, which was inherited by Thomism and exploited by it as a religious pretext to limit the intellective faculty, despite the latter being capable in principle both of absoluteness and hence also of reaching out to the supernatural; the same defect also explains the corresponding mediocrity of Aristotelian ethics, not to mention the scientism which proves Aristotle’s deviation from the epistemological principle. The important point to retain here is that the Monotheists, whether Semite or Semitized, could not have incorporated Aristotle in their teachings if he had been exclusively a rationalist; but in incorporating him they nonetheless became poisoned, and the partial or virtual rationalism – or rationalism in principle – which resulted has finally given rise to totalitarian rationalism, systematic and self-satisfied, and consequently shut off from every element that is subjectively or objectively suprarational. (NA: It might seem surprising that Scholasticism chose Aristotle and not Plato or Plotinus, hut the reason for this is plain, since from the viewpoint of objective faith there is everything to be gained by promoting a wisdom that offers no competition, and which makes it possible, on the one hand, to neutralize that interloper Intellection, and, on the other, to give carte blanche to any theological contradictions that may occur by describing them as “mysteries.”) The Aristotelian Pandora’s box is scientism coupled with sensationalism; it is through these concepts that Aristotle deviates from Plato by replacing the interiorizing tendency with its inverse. People say that the Church has kept science in chains; what is certain is that the modern world has unchained it with the result that it has escaped from all control, and, in the process of destroying nature, is headed toward the destruction of mankind. For genuine Christianity, as for every other traditional perspective, the world is what it appears to be to our empirical VISION and there is no good reason for it to be anything else; herein lies the real significance, on the one hand, of the naïveté of the Scriptures, and, on the other, of the trial of Galileo. To try and pierce the wall of collective, normal, millenary experience is to eat of the forbidden fruit, leading fatally to the loss of essential knowledge and earthly equilibrium through the euphoria engendered by a completely unrealistic autodivinization of man. sophiaperennis: Aristotle
Aristotle, in erecting his table of categories – substance, quantity, quality, relation, activity, passivity, place, moment, position, condition – seems to have been more concerned about the rational classification of things than about their concrete nature. (NA: The Greek word kategoria, “argument,” means in the last analysis: an ultimate form of thought, that is to say a key-notion capable of classifying other notions, or even all the notions having a bearing on existence.) Our own standpoint* being closer to cosmology than to Peripatetic logic – although the boundaries fluctuate – we give preference to the following enumeration: object and subject, space and time, which are container-categories; matter and energy, form and number, which are content-categories; quality and quantity, simplicity and complexity, which are attribute categories; the first term of each couple being static, and the second, dynamic, approximately and symbolically speaking. This being granted, we cannot exclude other possible angles of VISION, whether they be more analytic, or on the contrary more synthetic; and always prefigured by some symbolism of nature. (NA: Let us mention this fundamental enumeration: space, time, form, number, matter – fundamental because of its relation to the symbolism of the pentagram, the human body, the hand, the five elements. There are some who put “life” in place of matter, thinking no doubt of energy, which penetrates everything.) sophiaperennis: About Plato and/or Aristotle
The first reproach is based on the totally false hypothesis that a metaphysical doctrine is a logical attempt at an explanation; the second reproach, which stems from Kant, amounts to flagrant nonsense, for if there is nothing to prove our intelligence is capable of adequation – in that case, what is intelligence?- there is likewise nothing to prove that the intelligence expressing this doubt is competent to doubt, and so forth. If the optic nerve has to be examined in order to be sure that VISION is real, it will likewise be necessary to examine that which examines the optic nerve, an absurdity which proves in its own indirect way that knowledge of suprasensible things is intuitive and cannot be other than intuitive. sophiaperennis: Kantianism
What good, for example, is Schelling’s correct view of intellectual contemplation and of the transcending of the subject-object relationship in the Absolute, since it is accompanied by the promise of a flat philosophical pseudo-religion mingled with a classical or academic aestheticism of the most banal style? The replacing of the Cartesian Cogito ergo sum by the formula of Maine de Biran: “I act, I will, I exist,” or the Sum cogitans of Heidegger, and so on, is strictly a matter of taste, or of mental illusion; the starting point in all cases of this kind is at bottom merely an ignorance ignorant of itsel f. It may well be asked why thought or action are any better proof of our existence than some sensation or other; it is precisely the intelligence which shows us that many things exist without thinking, acting or willing, for once we see that stones exist, we have no need to invoke thought or action as proofs of our own existence, provided, of course, we admit that we are certain of the objective value of our VISION. Now we are certain of it by virtue of the infallibility of the Intellect, and that is a subject which admits of no discussion, any more than does the question of knowing whether we are sane or mad. Philosophers readily found their systems on the absence of this certitude, which is however the conditio sine qua non of all knowledge, and even of all thought and all action. sophiaperennis: Descartes and the Cogito
The current use of the term “abstractions” to designate principial realities is quite characteristic of this mentality: far from revealing a “concrete” VISION of things, this term too often constitutes but one criterion among others of the incapacity to think posing as arbitrator of every possible thought. sophiaperennis: Rationalism
In proportion to the loftiness of its aspects, Truth wishes to be “seen” and not simply “thought”; when it is a question of transcendent truths, the mental operation can have only two functions, which are rather the positive and negative modes of one function: to contribute to the individual’s assimilation of the intellectual VISION, and to eliminate the mental obstacles that interfere with this VISION, or in other words, that veil “the Eye of the Heart.” sophiaperennis: Rationalism
Like every other kind of beauty artistic beauty is objective, and therefore discernible by intelligence, not by ‘taste’. Taste is indeed legitimate, but only to the same extent as individual peculiarities are legitimate, that is, in so far as these peculiarities translate positive aspects of some human norm. Different tastes should be derived from pure aesthetics and should be of equal validity, just as are the different ways in which the eye sees things. Myopia and blindness are certainly not different ways of looking – they are merely defects of VISION. sophiaperennis: AESTHETICS AND SYMBOLISM IN ART AND NATURE
A science of the finite has need of a wisdom which goes beyond it and controls it, just as the body needs a soul to animate it, and the reason an intellect to illumine it. The “Greek miracle” with its so-called “liberation of the human spirit” is in reality nothing but the beginning of a purely external knowledge, cut off from genuine Sophia. (NA: It is said that Einstein, for example, revolutionized the VISION of the world as Galileo or Newton had done before him, and that the usual conceptions which he overturned – those of space, time, light and matter – are “as naive as those of the Middle Ages”; but then there is nothing to guarantee that his theory of relativity will not bejudged naive in its turn, so that, in profane science, it is never possible to escape the vicious circle of “naivety.” — Moreover, what could be more naive than to seek to enclose the Universe in a few mathematical formulae, and then to be surprised to find that there always remains an elusive and apparently “irrational” element which evades all attempts to “bring it to heel”? — We shall no doubt be told that not all scientists are atheists, but this is not the question, since atheism is inherent in science itself, in its postulates and its methods. The Einsteinian theories on mass, space and time are of a nature to demonstrate the fissures in the physical universe, but only a metaphysician can profit from them; science unconsciously provides keys, but is incapable of making use of them, because intellectuality cannot be replaced by something outside itself. The theory of relativity illustrates of necessity certain aspects of metaphysics, but does not of itself open up any higher perspective; the way in which Euclidean geometry is improperly relativized goes to prove this. On the one hand the philosophical point of view trespasses on science, and on the other the scientific point of view trespasses on metaphysics. — As for the Einsteinian postulate of a transmathematical absolute, this absolute is not supra-conscious: it is not therefore more than ourselves and could not be the Cause of our intelligence; Einstein’s “God” remains blind just as his relativized universe remains physical: one might as well say that it is nothing. Modern science has nothing it can tell us – and this not by accident but by principle – about the miracle of consciousness and all that is connected with it, from the most minute particles of consciousness to be found in creation up to the pure and trans-personal Intellect.) (Stations of Wisdom, p. 26-27). sophiaperennis: Science and rationalism
What most men do not know – and if they could know it, why should they be called on to believe it? – is that this blue sky, though illusory as an optical error and belied by the VISION of interplanetary space, is none the less an adequate reflection of the heaven of the angels and of the blessed and that therefore despite everything it is this blue mirage, flecked with silver clouds, which was right and will have the final say; to be astonished at this amounts to admitting that it is by chance that we are here on earth and see the sky as we do. Of course the black abyss of the galaxies also reflects something, but the symbolism is then shifted and it is no longer a question of the heaven of angels. sophiaperennis: Science and Revelations
It is said that Einstein, for example, revolutionized the VISION of the world as Galileo or Newton had done before him, and that the usual conceptions which he overturned — those of space, time, light and matter — are as “naive as those of the Middle Ages”; but then there is nothing to guarantee that his theory of relativity will not be judged naive in its turn, so that, in profane science, it is never possible to escape the vicious circle of “naivety”. sophiaperennis: Einstein
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
There has been much speculation on the question of knowing how the sage — the “gnostic” (NA: This word, here and elsewhere, is used in its etymological sense, and has nothing to do with anything that may historically be called “Gnosticism”. It is gnosis itself that is in question and not its pseudoreligious deviations.) or the “jnani” — “sees” the world of phenomenon, and occultists of all sorts have not refrained from putting forward the most fantastic theories on “clairvoyance” and the “third eye”; but in reality the difference between ordinary VISION and that enjoyed by the sage or the Gnostic is quite clearly not of the sensorial order. The sage see things in their total context, therefore in their relativity and at the same time in their metaphysical transparency; he does not see them as if they were physically diaphanous or endowed with a mystical sonority or a visible aura, even though his VISION may sometimes be described by means of such images…. The “third eye” is the faculty of seeing phenomena sub specie aeternitatis and therefore in a sort of simultaneity; to it are often added, in the nature of things, intuitions concerning modalities that are in the ordinary way imperceptible. sophiaperennis: The Sophia Perennis and Neo-spiritualism
…”woman” is Beauty, or the attractive and liberating VISION of God in forms that manifest Him or that manifest His radiant Goodness; the “eternal feminine” also represents this Goodness in itself, inasmuch as it forgives, welcomes and unifies, by freeing us from formal and other hardenings… (Esoterism as Principle and as Way , p. 43, note 33). sophiaperennis: Femininity