phenomena (FS) – SPECULUM

Intelligence, by which we comprehend the Doctrine, is either the intellect or reason; reason is the instrument of the intellect, it is through reason that man comprehends the natural PHENOMENA around him and within himself, and it is through it that he is able to describe supernatural things — parallel to the means of expression offered by symbolism by transposing intuitive knowledge into the order of language. The function of the rational faculty can be to provoke — by means of a given concept — a spiritual intuition; reason is then the flint which makes the spark spring forth. The limit of the Inexpressible varies according to mental structures: what is beyond all expression for some, may be easily expressible for others. Essays Norms and Paradoxes in Spiritual Alchemy

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

“Know thyself” was the inscription written above the portico of the Temple of Delphi; that is, know thine immortal essence but also, by that very token, know thine archetype. This injunction no doubt applies in principle to every man, but it applies to the pneumatic in a far more direct manner, in the sense that he has, by definition, awareness of his celestial model in spite of the flaws which his earthly shell may have undergone in contact with an all too uncongenial ambience. Paradox is part of the economy of this world below, given that the limitlessness of Universal Possibility necessarily implies unexpected, if not incomprehensible, combinations of things; PHENOMENA can be what they are, but vincit omnia veritas. Essays A NOTE ON RENÉ GUÉNON

There are two points to consider in created things, namely the empirical appearance and the mechanism; now the appearance manifests the divine intention, as we have stated above; the mechanism merely operates the mode of manifestation. For example, in man’s body the divine intention is expressed by its form, its deiformity, (NA: We should specify: total or integral deiformity, for in animals too there is – or can be – a deiformity, but it is partial; similarly for plants, minerals, elements and other orders of PHENOMENA.) its symbolism and its beauty; the mechanism is its anatomy and vital functioning. The modern mentality, having always a scientific and “iconoclastic” tendency, tends to overaccentuate the mechanism to the detriment of the creative intention, and does so on all levels, psychological as well as physical; the result is a jaded and “demystified” mentality that is no longer “impressed” by anything. sophiaperennis: Sophia Perennis and the theory of evolution and progress

We do not ask physicists to be content with an anthropomorphic and naive creationism; but at least it would be logical on their part – since they aim at a total and flawless science – to try to understand the traditional ontocosmological doctrines, especially the Hindu doctrine of the “envelopes (kosha) of the Self (Atma) a doctrine that, precisely, presents the Universe as a system of circles proceeding from the Center-Principle to that extreme limit which for us is matter. For human science does not derive solely from the need to know and to register; more profoundly its origin is the thirst for the essential; now the sense of essentiality attracts us toward shores other than those of the limited plane of physical PHENOMENA alone. (Roots of the Human Condition, p. 16-20). sophiaperennis: Sophia Perennis and the theory of evolution and progress

The PHENOMENA of evolution and transmutation exist within the limits of certain contingencies, otherwise the seed would never become a tree and a plant would never modify its shape under given conditions, such as a change of soil or climate; but these two factors – evolution and transmutation – are altogether secondary in relation to the principle of qualitative anticipation of effects within their own cause. These truths assume a particular importance when it is a question of Revelations and traditions, for the slightest error on this plane can be devastating to the soul and to the intelligence. (Treasures of Buddhism, p27). sophiaperennis: Sophia Perennis and the theory of evolution and progress

At all events, no infallibility exists which a priori encompasses all possible contingent domains; omniscience is not a human possibility. No one can be infallible with regard to unknown, or insufficiently known, PHENOMENA; one may have an intuition for pure principles without having one for a given PHENOMENAl order, that is to say, without being able to apply the principles spontaneously in such and such a domain. The importance of this possible incapacity diminishes to the extent that the PHENOMENAl domain envisaged is secondary and, on the contrary, that the principles infallibly enunciated are essential. One must forgive small errors on the part of one who offers great truths – and it is the latter that determine how small or how great the errors are – whereas it would obviously be perverse to forgive great errors when they are accompanied by many small truths. (NA: There is certainly no reason to admire a science which counts insects and atoms but is ignorant of God; which makes an avowal of not knowing Him and yet claims omniscience by principle. It should be noted that the scientist, like every other rationalist, does not base himself on reason in itself; he calls ” reason” his lack of imagination and knowledge, and his ignorances are for him the ” data” of reason. 2 . Always respect ful of this form, the Holy Spirit will not teach a Moslem theologian the subtleties of trinitarian theology nor those of Vedanta; from another angle, it will not change a raci al or ethnic mentality; neither that of the Romans in view of Catholicism, nor that of the Arabs in view of Islam. Humanity must not only have its history, but also its stories.) sophiaperennis: The notion of philosophy

By “phenomenology” we simply mean the study of a category of PHENOMENA, and not a particular philosophy which claims to resolve everything by observing or exploring in its fashion the PHENOMENA that present themselves to one’s attention, without being able to account for the central and ungraspable phenomenon that is the mystery of subjectivity… sophiaperennis: Phenomenology

For Heidegger, for instance, the question of Being “proved intractable in the investigations of Plato and Aristotle” and: “what was formerly wrenched out of PHENOMENA in a supreme effort of thought, although in a fragment ary and groping (in ersten Anläufen) manner, has long since been rendered trivial” (Sein und Zeit). Now, it is a priori excluded that Plato and Aristotle should have “discovered” their ontology by dint of “thinking”; they were, at most, the first in the Greek world to consider it useful to formulate an ontology in writing. Like all modern philosophers, Heidegger is far from being aware of the quite “indicative” and “provisional” role of “thinking” in metaphysics; and it is not surprising that this writer should, as a “thinker,” misunderstand the normal function of all thought and conclude: “It is a matter of finding and following a way which allows one to arrive at the clarifi cation of the fundamental question of ontology. As for knowing whether this way is the sole way, or a good way, this can only be decided subsequently” (ibid.). It is difficult to conceive a more anti-metaphysical attitude. There is always this same prejudice of subjecting the intellect, which is qualitative in essence, to the vicissitudes of quantity, or in other words of reducing every quality from an absolute to a relative level. It is the classical contradiction of philosophers: knowledge is decreed to be relative, but in the name of what is this decree issued? sophiaperennis: Comparison between Plato and Aristotle

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

Apart from the forms of sensory knowledge, Kant admits the categories, regarded by him as innate principles of cognition; these he divides into four groups inspired by Aristotle, (NA: Quantity, quality, relation, and modality; the latter no doubt replacing the Aristotelian ” position.”) while at the same time subjectivizing the Aristotelian notion of category. He develops in his own way the peripatetic categories that he accepts while discarding others, without realizing that, regardless of Aristotelianism, the highest and most important of the categories have eluded his grasp. (NA: Such as the principial and cosmic qualities which determine and classify PHENOMENA, or the universal dimensions which join the world to the Supreme Essence and which include each in its own manner the qualities mentioned above. Aristotle for his part had the right not to speak of them in that he accepted God as being self-evident and his approach was in no way moralistic and empirical; since he accept ed God, he did not consider his categories to be exhaustive.) The categories are a priori independent of all experience since they are innate; Kant recognized this, yet he considered that they were capable of being “explored” by a process he called “transcendental investigation.” But how will one ever grasp the pure subject who explores and who investigates? sophiaperennis: Kantianism

Moreover, since philosophy by definition could never limit itself to the description of PHENOMENA available to common observation, it is forced to admit, in good logic at least, the intuitive and supralogical character of the faculty of knowledge which it claims to possess. Logic, in other words, is perfectly consistent only when exceeding itself. sophiaperennis: Kantianism

As a result, the “symbolic proof”–we term it thus because its cogency lies in the analogy between the communicating symbol and the truth to be communicated, and not in the logical combination of the two propositions–the symbolic proof, then, serves to actualize a knowledge that is not somehow added from without but virtually contained in intelligence itself. One may even go further and say that the symbolic proof is identified with that which is to be proven, in the sense that it “is” that thing at a lesser level of reality, as for example water proves universal Substance by the fact that it “is” it on the plane of bodily existence. What matters is not to confuse the “materiality” of the symbol with its ontological essence; which is why Hindu doctrine, when it extols the worship of the Deity through a sacramental image, forbids the worshiper to think of the material substance of this image; and it is for the same reason that the North American Indians–those who take the sun as a vehicle of worship–specify that it is not the sun they worship, but the “Father” or “Ancestor” who dwells there invisibly. All the PHENOMENA of nature are proofs of God, as the sacred sophiaperennis: Rationalism

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

Art has a function that is both magical and spiritual: magical, it renders present principles, powers and also things that it attracts by virtue of a “sympathetic magic”; spiritual, it exteriorizes truths and beauties in view of our interiorization, of our return to the “kingdom of God that is within you.” The Principle becomes manifestation so that manifestation might rebecome the Principle, (NA: Saint Irenaeus: “God became man that man might become God.”) or so that the “I” might return to the Self; or simply, so that the human soul might, through given PHENOMENA, make contact with the heavenly archetypes, and thereby with its own archetype. sophiaperennis: ART, ITS DUTIES AND ITS RIGHTS

It is necessary to distinguish between an idolatry that is objective and another that is subjective: in the first case, it is the image itself that is erroneous, because it is supposed to be a god; in the second case, the image may pertain to sacred art and it is the lack of contemplativity that constitutes idolatry; it is because man no longer knows how to perceive the metaphysical transparency of PHENOMENA, images and symbols that he is idolatrous. sophiaperennis: ART, ITS DUTIES AND ITS RIGHTS

The analogy between artistic naturalism and modern science permits us at this point to make a digression. We do not reproach modern science for being a fragmentary, analytical science, lacking in speculative, metaphysical and cosmological elements or for arising from the residues or debris of ancient sciences; we reproach it for being subjectively and objectively a transgression and for leading subjectively and objectively to disequilibrium and so to disaster. Inversely, we do not have for the traditional sciences an unmixed admiration; the ancients also had their scientific curiosity, they too operated by means of conjectures and, whatever their sense of metaphysical or mystical symbolism may have been, they were sometimes – indeed often – mistaken in fields in which they wished to acquire a knowledge, not of transcendent principles, but of physical facts. It is impossible to deny that on the level of PHENOMENA, which nevertheless is an integral part of the natural sciences, to say the least, the ancients – or the Orientals – have had certain inadequate conceptions, or that their conclusions were often most naïve; we certainly do not reproach them for having believed that the earth is flat and that the sun and the firmament revolve around it, since this appearance is natural and providential for man; but one can reproach them for certain false conclusions drawn from certain appearances, in the illusory belief that they were practising, not symbolism and spiritual speculation, but PHENOMENAl or indeed exact science. One cannot, when all is said and done, deny that the purpose of medicine is to cure, not to speculate, and that the ancients were ignorant of many things in this field in spite of their great knowledge in certain others; in saying this, we are far from contesting that traditional medicine had, and has, the immense advantage of a perspective which includes the whole man; that it was, and is, effective in cases in which modern medicine is impotent; that modern medicine contributes to the degeneration of the human species and to over-population; and that an absolute medicine is neither possible nor desirable, and this for obvious reasons. But let no one say that traditional medicine is superior purely on account of its cosmological speculations and in the absence of particular effective remedies, and that modern medicine, which has these remedies, is merely a pitiful residue because it is ignorant of these speculations; or that the doctors of the Renaissance, such as Paracelsus, were wrong to discover the anatomical and other errors of Greco-Arab medicine; or, in an entirely general way, that traditional sciences arc marvellous in all respects and that modern sciences, chemistry for example, are no more than fragments and residues. sophiaperennis: THE DEGREES OF ART

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

Some people doubtless think that beauty, whatever merits it may possibly possess, is not necessary to knowledge. To this it may be answered first that strictly speaking there is no contingency that is in principle indispensable to knowledge as such, but neither is there any contingency totally separated from it; second that we live among contingencies, forms, and appearances, and consequently cannot escape them, not least because we ourselves belong to the very same order as they; third that in principle pure knowledge surpasses all else, but that in fact beauty, or the comprehension of its metaphysical cause, can reveal many a truth, so that it can be a factor in knowledge for one who possesses the necessary gifts; fourth that we live in a world wherein almost all forms are saturated with errors, so that it would be a great mistake to deprive ourselves of a “discernment of spirits” on this plane. There can be no question of introducing inferior elements into pure intellectuality; on the contrary, it is a case of introducing intelligence into the appreciation of forms, among which we live and of which we are, and which determine us more than we know. The relationship between beauty and virtue is very revealing in this connection: virtue is the beauty of the soul as beauty is the virtue of forms; and the Angels or the Devas are not only states of knowledge but also states of beauty comparable to the PHENOMENA we admire in nature or in art. sophiaperennis: Truths and Errors Concerning Beauty

We have alluded above to the evolutionist error which was inevitable in connection with our considerations on the deiformity of man, and which permits us here to insert a parenthesis. The animal, vegetable and mineral species not only manifest qualities or combinations of qualities, they also manifest defects or combinations of defects; this is required by All-Possibility, which on pain of being limited – of not being what it is – must also express “possible impossibilities,” or let us say negative and paradoxical possibilities; it implies in consequence excess as well as privation, thereby emphasizing norms by means of contrasts. In this respect, the ape, for example, is there to show what man is and what he is not, and certainly not to show what he has been; far from being able to be a virtual form of man, the ape incarnates an animal desire to be human, hence a desire of imitation and usurpation; but he finds itself as if before a closed door and falls back all the more heavily into its animality, the perfect innocence of which, it can no longer recapture, if one may make use of such a metaphor; it is as if the animal, prior to the creation of man and to protest against it, had wished to anticipate it, which evokes the refusal of Lucifer to prostrate before Adam. (NA: According to the Talmud and the Koran.) This does not prevent the ape from being sacred in India, perhaps on account of its anthropomorphism, or more likely in virtue of associations of ideas due to an extrinsic symbolism; (NA: As was the case for the boar, which represents sacerdotal authority for the Nordics; or as the rhinoceros symbolizes the sannyâsi.) this also would explain in part the role played by the apes in the Ramayana, unless in this case it is a question of subtle creatures – the jinn of Islam – of whom the ape is only a likeness. (NA: The story recounted in the Râmayana is situated at the end of the ” silver age” (Treta- Yuga) and consequently in a climate of possibilities quite different from that of the ” iron age” (Kali- Yuga); the partition between the material and animic states was not yet ” hardened” or ” congealed” as is above all the case in our epoch.) One may wonder whether the intrinsically noble animals, hence those directly allowing of a positive symbolism, are not themselves also theophanies; they are so necessarily, and the same holds true for given plants, minerals, cosmic or terrestrial PHENOMENA, but in these cases the theomorphism is partial and not integral as in man. The splendor of the stag excludes that of the lion, the eagle cannot be the swan, nor the water lily the rose, nor the emerald the sapphire; from a somewhat different point of view , we would say that the sun doubtless manifests in a direct and simple manner the divine Majesty, but that it has neither life nor spirit; (NA: It can nevertheless have a sacrament al function with regard to men who are sensitive to cosmic barakah.) only man is the image-synthesis of the Creator, (NA: And this in spite of the loss of the earthly paradise. One of the effects of what monotheist symbolism calls the ” fall of Adam,” was the separation between the soul and the body, conjointly with the separation between heaven and earth and between the spirit and the soul. The ” resurrection of the flesh” is none other than the restoration of the primordial situation; as the body is an immanent virtuality of the soul, it can be remanifested as soon as the separative ” curse” has drawn to its close, which coincides with the end of a great cycle of humanity.) owing to the fact that he possesses the intellect – hence also reason and language – and that he manifests it by his very form. sophiaperennis: The Message of the Human Body

Modern science, which is rationalist as to its subject and materialist as to its object, can describe our situation physically and approximately, but it can tell us nothing about our extra-spatial situation in the total and real Universe. Astronomers know more or less where we are in space, in what relative “place”, in which of the peripheral arms of the Milky Way, and they may perhaps know where the Milky Way is situated among the other assemblages of stardust; but they do not know where we are in existential “space”, namely, in a state of hardness and at the center or summit thereof, and that we are simultaneously on the edge of an immense “rotation”, which is not other than the current of forms, the “samsaric” flow of PHENOMENA, the panta rhei of Heraclitus. Profane science, in seeking to pierce to its depth the mystery of the things that contain — space, time, matter, energy — forget the mystery of the things that are contained: it tries to explain the quintessential properties of our bodies and the intimate functioning of our souls, but it does not know what intelligence and existence are; consequently, seeing what its “principles” are, it cannot be otherwise than ignorant of what man is. (Light on the Ancient Worlds, p. 111). sophiaperennis: Does modern science know what man is

It will doubtless be objected that modern psychology, for its part, is not a science riveted to matter, but this plea fails to take note of the merely empirical character of that science: it is a system of observations and hypotheses, compromised in advance by the fact that those who practice it are ignorant of the profound nature of the PHENOMENA they set out to study. sophiaperennis: Limits of modern science

A science, to truly deserve that name, owes us an explanation of a certain order of PHENOMENA; now modern science, which claims to be all-embracing by the very fact that it recognizes nothing outside itself as valid, is unable to explain to us, for instance, what a sacred book is, or a saint or a miracle; it knows nothing of God, of the hereafter or the Intellect and it cannot even tell us anything about PHENOMENA such as premonition or telepathy; it does not know in virtue of what principle or possibility shamanistic procedures may cure illnesses or attract rain. (NA: There is a singular irony in the indignation of those who consider that belief in sorcerers and ghosts is incompatible with the science of the “atomic age”, whereas this age is precisely – and utterly — ignorant of what said “beliefs” mean. Only what can be verified “with laboratory clarity” is held to be true, as if it were logical and objective to demand, in the name of truth, conditions which may be contrary to the nature of things, and as if it were a proof of imagination to deny the very possibility of such incompatibilities.) (Treasures of Buddhism, p. 43). sophiaperennis: Limits of modern science

Even if the “scientists” could observe the non-contradiction of all possible objective PHENOMENA, there still would remain the contradictory enigma of the scission between the objective universe and the observing subject, not to mention the “scientifically” insoluble problem of that flagrant contradiction which is the empirical uniqueness of a particular subject, to which problem we have just alluded; and even if we limit ourselves to the objective world, of which the limitlessness precisely constitutes a contradiction since it is inconceivable according to empirical logic, how can we believe for an instant that the day will finally come when we can put it into a homogeneous and exhaustive system? sophiaperennis: Science and logic

If life is but a faint glow between two nights or two naughts and if we are only biological accidents devoid of interest in an absurd universe, what then is the use of all these efforts and, more especially, what is the use of this scientistic faith even more absurd than the senseless universe that men explore without ever a hope of coming out of it? And of what profit to us are accurate observations if in fact – for in principle they are innocent (NA: This point must be stressed. No science is evil on account of its contents; but a demonstration of anatomy, possibly very useful to an adult, might ruin a child’s soul.) – they deprive us of all that is essential, namely the knowledge of that whereof natural PHENOMENA are but fragile exteriorizations? (Treasures of Buddhism, p. 44-45). sophiaperennis: Science and technique, industry, machines

To treat man as absolutely free – man who plainly is not absolute – is to set free all manner of evils in him, without there remaining any principle whereby their propagation might be kept within bounds. All this goes to show that basically it is a kind of abuse of language to give the bare name of’ ‘science’ to a knowledge that only leads to practical results while revealing nothing concerning the profound nature of PHENOMENA; a science which by its own showing eschews transcendent principles can offer no sort of guarantee as to the ultimate results of its own investigations. sophiaperennis: Science and mythologies

But what we would chiefly emphasize here is the error of believing that by the mere fact of its objective content ‘science’ possesses the power and the right to destroy myths and religions and that it is some kind of higher experience, which kills gods and beliefs; in reality it is human incapacity to understand unexpected PHENOMENA or to resolve certain seeming antinomies which is smothering truth and dehumanizing the world. (Understanding Islam, p. 114-115). sophiaperennis: Science and Revelations

To say that Revelation is “supernatural” does not mean that it is contrary to nature in so far as nature can be taken to represent, by extension, all that is possible on any given level of reality, it means that Revelation does not originate at the level to which, rightly or wrongly, the epithet “natural” is normally applied. This “natural” level is precisely that of physical causes, and hence of sensory and psychic PHENOMENA considered in relation to those causes. sophiaperennis: Science and Revelations

A rationality that claims self-sufficiency cannot fail to provoke such interferences, at any rate at its vulnerable points such as psychology or the psychological-or “psychologizing” interpretation of PHENOMENA which are by definition beyond its reach. sophiaperennis: Science and Revelations

Modem science represents itself in the world as the principal, or as the only purveyor of truth; according to this style of certainty to know Charlemagne is to know his brain-weight and how tall he was. From the point of view of total truth let it be said once more – it is a thousand times better to believe that God created this world in six days and that the world beyond lies beneath the flat surface of the earth or in the spinning heavens, than it is to know the distance from one nebula to another without knowing that PHENOMENA merely serve to manifest a transcendent Reality which determines us in every respect and gives to our human condition its whole meaning and its whole content. sophiaperennis: Science and Revelations

Nevertheless, the very precision of modern science, or of certain of its branches, has become seriously threatened, and from a wholly unforeseen direction, by the intrusion of psychoanalysis, not to mention that of “surrealism” and other systematizations of the irrational; or again by the intrusion of existentialism, which indeed belongs strictly speaking not so much to the domain of the irrational as to that of the unintelligent. A rationality that claims self-sufficiency cannot fail to provoke such interferences, at any rate at its vulnerable points such as psychology or the psychological — or “psychologizing” — interpretation of PHENOMENA which are by definition beyond its reach. (Light on the Ancient Worlds, p. 36) sophiaperennis: Sciences and precision

It happens frequently that anglicized Hindus, as also other Asiatics, mention in the same breath names like Jesus and Gandhi, Shankara and Kierkegaard, Buddha and Goethe, the Holy Virgin and Mrs. X, or affirm that such and such a German musician was a yogi or that the French Revolution was a mystical movement, etc. This fact reveals a total ignorance of certain differences of category which are none the less of capital importance — we would readily say differences of ‘reality’ — as well as a strange lack of sensibility; it also shows a tendency to simplification, due doubtless to the more or less unconscious idea that only ‘realization’ counts and not ‘theory’, whence a completely misplaced and profitless contempt for the objective discerning of PHENOMENA… A typical example of neo-Hindu deviation is the Swami Yogananda, founder in the United States of a “Self-Realisation Fellowship'(SRF!), the president (!) of which is — or was — an American woman. On the other hand we find the ‘discerning of spirits’ present to an eminent degree in a man like (Ananda) Coomaraswamy, and we are not alone in hoping that his influence will grow in his own country. (Gnosis Divine Wisdom, p. 57-58, note 1). sophiaperennis: The Sophia Perennis and Neo-spiritualism

As for the first of these notions (occultism), it may be pointed out that the word “occult” has its origin in the vires occultae, the unseen forces of nature, and in the occulta, the secrets relating to the ancient mysteries; in fact, however, modern occultism is by and large more than the study of extrasensory PHENOMENA, one of the most hazardous of pursuits by reason of its wholly empirical character and its lack of any doctrinal basis. Occultism ranges from pure and simple experiment to pseudoreligious speculations and practices; it is only one step further to describe all authentically esoteric doctrines and methods as “occultism”, and this step has been taken either through ignorance, indifference, or carelessness, and without shame or scruple, by those who have an interest to serve by this kind of depreciation. It is as though one were to describe genuine mystics as occultists on the grounds that they too were concern with the unseen. (Logic and Transcendence, p.1). 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

Empiricism operating blindly and endowed with a false doctrine, which does not prevent the PHENOMENA to be real. (Images of the Spirit, p. 145, note 42 in the French version). sophiaperennis: The Sophia Perennis and Neo-spiritualism