Truth (FS) – SPECULUM

The Six Aspects of Reality: “The Real is one.” — “The Real”: It is the Absolute, and It is the Infinite. Absoluity excludes all contingency; Infinitude excludes all limitation. The Absolute is discerned by our spirit as transcendent Object; the Infinite is realized in our heart as immanent Subject. Transcendence has an aspect of immanence since the TRUTH is inscribed in the very substance of our spirit; and immanence has an aspect of transcendence since the Self transcends the I. — “The Real is”: It is purely, and It is totally. The first aspect is Vacuity, which excludes all manifestation; the second is Totality, which excludes all privation. — “The Real is one”: It is unique, and It is simple. The first aspect is One-and-onliness,, which excludes all repetition; the second is Simplicity, which excludes all division. — Absoluity, Vacuity and One-and-onliness are exclusive; Infinitude, Totality and Simplicity are inclusive. — It is in virtue of Absoluity, of Vacuity and of One-and-onliness that the Real alone is; and it is in virtue of Infinitude, of Totality and of Simplicity that the world exists, and that it is not other than the Real. — Absoluity gives rise, by compensation in a certain way with regard to nothingness and thus by inversion–although in illusory mode since the Absolute is the Real–to Relativity. — Likewise: Infinitude gives rise, by compensation and inversion, to Limitation. — Likewise again: Vacuity gives rise to its contrary, Manifestation; Totality gives rise to Privation; One-and-onliness gives rise to Plurality; and Simplicity, to Diversity. Essays NATURE AND UNITY OF THE PRINCIPLE

But there is yet another dimension to be considered, and it is the moral — in certain respects “aesthetic” — climate of spiritual alchemy; this climate basically constitutes what has been called the “initiatory qualification.” To the TRUTH and to the Path must be joined Virtue, namely the qualities of humility, charity, justice and dignity: rigorous knowledge of oneself, benevolent understanding of others, impartial perception of the nature of things, inward and outward participation in the “Motionless Mover” — in the immutable Archetype or the majesty of Being. There is no sâdhana without dharma; no spiritual alchemy without nobleness of character; “beauty is the splendor of the True.” Essays Norms and Paradoxes in Spiritual Alchemy

The initiatory journey presents two moral dimensions of primary importance, one exclusive and ascetical and the other inclusive and symbolist or aesthetic, if one may say so. Among aspirants to Liberation, there are first of all those who, in the name of TRUTH, withdraw from the world, such as monks or sannyâsîs; then there are those who, in the name of the same TRUTH, remain in the world and seek to transmute into gold the lead the world offers a priori, such as the adepts of the knightly and craft initiations. If Shankara recommended the ascetical path, that is because it is the surest, given human weakness; but he specified in one of his writings that the “one delivered in this life,” the jivan-mukta, can harmoniously and victoriously adapt himself to any social situation conforming to universal Dharma, as is shown at the highest level by the example of Krishna. On the one hand, one must see God in Himself, beyond the world, in the Emptiness of Transcendence; on the other hand and ipso facto, one must see God everywhere: first of all in the miraculous existence of things and then in their positive and theomorphic qualities; once Transcendence is understood, Immanence reveals itself of itself. Essays Norms and Paradoxes in Spiritual Alchemy

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

The Advaitic Doctrine comprises the crucial idea of hierarchized TRUTH: first of all there is the one and absolute TRUTH, but this latter does not exclude the diverse and relative truths; on the contrary, it supports them, since they offer to common mortals all they are able to understand and all that can save them. On the one hand, what is true saves ipso facto; on the other hand, that is true which possesses a saving power. Essays Norms and Paradoxes in Spiritual Alchemy

This is what must not be lost sight of when considering the perplexing diversity of liberating Paths — not just any sects, but the intrinsically orthodox Paths, whatever the demerits of the men who represent them. Doubtless there are demanding doctrines that cannot satisfy every need for causal explanations; but there are truths all men must acknowledge, actions all must perform, beauties all must realize; which is to say that there is a Message for the least of mortals. TRUTH, Prayer and Virtue; everything is there. Essays Norms and Paradoxes in Spiritual Alchemy

What favors confusion is the fact that in both cases the intelligence operates independently of outward prescriptions, although for diametrically opposed reasons: that the rationalist if need be draws his inspiration from a PRE-existing system does not prevent him from thinking in a way that he deems to be “free”- falsely, since true freedom coincides with truth – likewise, mutatis mutandis: that the gnostic – in the orthodox sense of the term – bases himself extrinsically on a given sacred Scripture or on some other gnostic cannot prevent him from thinking in an intrinsically free manner by virtue of the freedom proper to the immanent TRUTH, or proper to the Essence which by delinition escapes formal constraints. sophiaperennis: What is a philosopher?

Dogmatism as such does not consist in the mere enunciation of an idea, that is to say in the fact of giving form to a spiritual intuition, but rather in an interpretation which, instead of rejoining the formless and total TRUTH after taking as its starting point one of the forms of that TRUTH, results in a sort of paralysis of this form by denying its intellectual potentialities and by attributing to it an absoluteness which only the formless and total TRUTH itself can possess. sophiaperennis: What is dogmatism?

One might illustrate this in the following manner: whoever participates in universal Knowledge will regard two apparently contradictory truths as he would two points situated on one and the same circumference which links them together by its continuity and so reduces them to unity; in the measure in which these points are distant from, and thus opposed to, one another, there will be contradiction, and this contradiction will reach its maximum when the two points are situated at the extremities of a diameter of the circle; but this extreme opposition or contradiction only appears as a result of isolating the points under consideration from the circle and ignoring the existence of the latter. One may conclude from this that a dogmatic affirmation, that is to say an affirmation which is inseparable from its form and admits no other, is comparable to a point, which by definition, as it were, contradicts all other possible points; a speculative formulation, on the other hand, is comparable to an element of a circle, the very form of which indicates its logical and ontological continuity and therefore the whole circle or, by analogical transposition, the whole TRUTH; this comparison will, perhaps, suggest in the clearest possible way the difference which separates a dogmatic affirmation from a speculative formulation. sophiaperennis: What is dogmatism?

The outward and intentional contradictoriness of speculative formulations may show itself, it goes without saying, not only in a single, logically paradoxical formula such as the Vedic Aham Brakmasmi (I am Brahma)- or the Vedantic definition of the Yogi – or the Anal-Haqq (I am the TRUTH) of El Hallaj, or Christ’s words concerning His Divinity, but also, and for even stronger reasons, as between different formulations each of which may be logically homogeneous in itself. Examples of the latter may be found in all sacred Scriptures, notably in the Koran: we need only recall the apparent contradiction between the affirmations regarding predestination and those regarding free-will, affirmations which are only contradictory in the sense that they express opposite aspects of a single reality. However, apart from these paradoxical formulations – whether they are so in themselves or in relation to one another – there also remain certain theories which, although expressing the strictest orthodoxy, are nevertheless in outward contradiction one with another, this being due to the diversity of their respective points of view, which are not chosen arbitrarily and artificially but are established spontaneously by virtue of a genuine intellectual originality. sophiaperennis: What is dogmatism?

When speaking, therefore, of the understanding of ideas, we may distinguish between a ‘dogmatic’ understanding, comparable to the view of an object from a single viewpoint, and an integral or speculative understanding, comparable to the indefinite series of possible views of the object, views which are realized through indefinitely multiple changes of point of view. Just as, when the eye changes its position, the different views of an object are connected by a perfect continuity, which represents, so to speak, the determining reality of the object, so the different aspects of a truth, however contradictory they may appear and notwithstanding their indefinite multiplicity, describe the integral TRUTH which surpasses and determines them. We would again refer here to an illustration we have already used; a dogmatic affirmation corresponds to a point which, as such, contradicts by definition every other point, whereas a speculative formulation is always conceived as an element of a circle which by its very form indicates principially its own continuity, and hence the entire circle and the TRUTH in its entirety. sophiaperennis: What is dogmatism?

There is at the same time analogy and opposition: the mind is analogous to the intellect insofar as it is a kind of intelligence, but is opposed to it by its limited, indirect and discursive character; as for the apparent limitations of the intellect, they are merely accidental and extrinsic, while the limits of the mental faculty are inherent in it. Even if the intellect cannot exteriorize the “total truth” – or rather reality – because that is in itself impossible, it can perfectly well establish points of reference which are adequate and sufficient, rather as it is possible to represent space by a circle, a cross, a square, a spiral or a point and so on. TRUTH and reality must not be confused: the latter relates to “being” and signifies the aseity of things, and the former relates to “knowing” – to the image of reality reflected in the mirror of the intellect – and signifies the adequation of “being” and “knowing”; it is true that reality is often designated by the word “truth,” but this is a dialectical synthesis which aims at defining truth in relation to its virtuality of “being,” of “reality.” sophiaperennis: What is the intellect and Intellection?

This very rudimentary example is designed to show that the religious point of view, because it is based in the minds of believers on a revelation and not on a knowledge that is accessible to each one of them (an unrealizable condition for a large human collectivity), will of necessity confuse the symbol or form with the naked and supraformal TRUTH, while metaphysic, which can only be assimilated to a particular ‘point of view’ in a purely provisional sense, will be able to make use of the same symbol or form as a means of expression, while being aware of its relativity. sophiaperennis: Difference between Metaphysics and Philosophy

Now, though dogma is not accessible to all men in its intrinsic truth, which can only be directly attained by the Intellect, it is none the less accessible through faith, which is, for most people, the only possible mode of participation in the divine truths. As for intellectual knowledge, which, as we have seen, proceeds neither from belief nor from a process of reasoning, it goes beyond dogma in the sense that, without ever contradicting the latter, it penetrates its ‘internal dimension’, that is, the infinite TRUTH which dominates all forms. sophiaperennis: Difference between Metaphysics and Philosophy

In the opinion of all profane thinkers, philosophy means to think “freely,” as far as possible without presuppositions, which precisely is impossible; on the other hand, gnosis, or philosophy in the proper and primitive sense of the word, is to think in accordance with the immanent Intellect and not by means of reason alone. What favors confusion is the fact that in both cases the intelligence operates independently of outward prescriptions, although for diametrically opposed reasons: that the rationalist if need be draws his inspiration from a PRE-existing system does not prevent him from thinking in a way that he deems to be “free”- falsely, since true freedom coincides with truth – likewise, mutatis mutandis: that the gnostic – in the orthodox sense of the term – bases himself extrinsically on a given sacred Scripture or on some other gnostic cannot prevent him from thinking in an intrinsically free manner by virtue of the freedom proper to the immanent TRUTH, or proper to the Essence which by delinition escapes formal constraints. Or again: whether the gnostic “thinks” what he has “seen” with the “eye of the heart,” or whether on the contrary he obtains his “vision” thanks to the intervention – preliminary and provisional and in no wise efficient – of a thought which then takes on the role of occasional cause , is a matter of indifference with regard to the truth, or with regard to its almost supernatural springing forth in the spirit. sophiaperennis: Profane “thinkers”

As for true ideas, those, that is to say, which more or less implicitly suggest aspects of the total TRUTH, and hence this TRUTH itself, they become by that very fact intellectual ‘keys’ and indeed have no other function; this is something that metaphysical thought alone is capable of grasping. So far as philosophical or ordinary theological thought is concerned, there is on the contrary an ignorance affecting not only the nature of the ideas which are believed to be completely understood, but also and above all the scope of theory as such; theoretical understanding is in fact transitory and limited by definition, though its limits can only be more or less approximately defined. sophiaperennis: What is the understanding of an idea?

We would again refer here to an illustration we have already used; a dogmatic affirmation corresponds to a point which, as such, contradicts by definition every other point, whereas a speculative formulation is always conceived as an element of a circle which by its very form indicates principially its own continuity, and hence the entire circle and the TRUTH in its entirety. sophiaperennis: What is the understanding of an idea?

For Socrates, in Plato’s dialogues, the “true philosopher” is one who consecrates himself to “studying the separation of soul from body, or the liberation of the soul,” and “who is always occupied in the practice of dying”; it is one who withdraws from the bodily – and therefore from all that, in the ego, is the shadow or echo of the surrounding world – in order to be nothing other than absolutely pure Soul, immortal Soul, Self: “The Soul-in-itself must contemplate Things-in-themselves” (Phaedo). Thus the criterion of truth – and the basis of conviction, this reverberation of Light in the “outer man” – is TRUTH in itself, the prephenomenal Intelligence by which “all things were made” and without which “nothing was made that was made.” sophiaperennis: Plato

For Plato’s Socrates, the ‘true philosopher’ is he who consecrates himself to ‘studying the separation of soul from body, or the liberation of the soul’, and ‘who is always occupied in the practice of dying’; it is he who withdraws from the bodily – and therefore from all which, in the ego, is the shadow or echo of the surrounding world – in order to be no more than absolutely pure soul, immortal Soul, Self: ‘The Soul-in-itself must contemplate Things-in-themselves’ (Phaedo). Thus the criterion of truth – and the basis of conviction, this reverberation of Light in the ‘outer man – is TRUTH in itself, the PRE-phenomenal Intelligence by which ‘all things were made’ and without which ‘was not anything made that was made’. sophiaperennis: Plato

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

For procuring a pleasurable sensation of important accomplishment there is nothing like the conviction of having invented gunpowder or of having stood Christopher Columbus’ egg on its point. This philosophy derives all it has in the way of originality from what, in effect, is nothing but a hatred of God; but since it is impossible to abuse directly a God in whom one does not believe, one abuses Him indirectly through the laws of nature, and one goes so far as to disparage the very form of man and his intelligence, the very intelligence one thinks with and abuses with. There is however no escape from the immanent TRUTH: “The more he blasphemes”, says Meister Eckhart, “the more he praises God”. sophiaperennis: Philosophy and modern times

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

Philosophers with justice define beauty as the harmony of diversity, and they properly distinguish beauty of form from beauty of expression, as well as the beauty of art from the beauty of nature; similarly, it has been very justly said that the beautiful is distinguished from the useful by the fact that it has no objective outside itself or outside the contemplation of which it is the object, and also that the beautiful is distinguished from the agreeable by the fact that its effect surpasses mere pleasure; and finally that it is distinguished from truth by the fact that it is grasped by immediate contemplation and not by discursive thought. (NA: TRUTH in the current sense of the word, that of a concordance between a state of fact and our consciousness, is indeed situated on the plane of thought, or at least it applies a priori to that plane. As for pure Intellection, its object is ” reality” of which ” truth” is the conceptual clothing. But in practice the terms ” reality” and “truth” usually merge into one another.) sophiaperennis: TRUTHs and Errors Concerning Beauty

Ignorant and profane aestheticism, at least in practice, puts the beautiful – or what its sentimental idealism takes to be the beautiful – above the true, and in so doing exposes itself to errors on its own level. But if aestheticism is the unintelligent cult of the beautiful, or more precisely of aesthetic feeling, this in no way implies that a sense of beauty is mere aestheticism. This is not to say that man is limited to a choice between aestheticism and aesthetics, or, in other words, between idolizing of the beautiful and the science of beauty. Love of beauty is a quality which exists apart from its sentimental deviations and its intellectual foundations. Beauty is a reflection of Divine bliss, and since God is TRUTH, the reflection of His bliss will be that mixture of happiness and truth which is to be found in all beauty. sophiaperennis: AESTHETICS AND SYMBOLISM IN ART AND NATURE

From an ascetico-mystical or penitential point of view beauty may appear as something worldly, because such a point of view tends to look at everything with the eye of the will; beauty is then confounded with desire. But from the intellective point of view – which is that of the nature of things and not that of expediency – beauty is spiritual, since in its own way it externalizes TRUTH and Bliss. That is why the born contemplative cannot see or hear beauty without perceiving in it something of God; and this Divine content allows him the more easily to detach himself from appearances. As for passional man, he sees in beauty the world, seduction, the ego; it distances him from the ‘one thing needful’, at least in the case of natural beauty, though not in the case of the beauty of sacred art, for then the ‘one thing needful’ harnesses the need for beauty in the cause of piety, of fervour and of heaven. sophiaperennis: AESTHETICS AND SYMBOLISM IN ART AND NATURE

The great question “Who am I?” appears, with him, as a concrete expression of a reality that is lived, if one may so put it, and this authenticity gives to each word of the sage a flavor of inimitable freshness – the flavor of TRUTH when it is embodied in the most immediate way. sophiaperennis: Ramana Maharshi

Here it is once again appropriate … to define the difference between a heresy which is extrinsic, hence relative to a given orthodoxy, and another which is intrinsic, hence false in itself as also with respect to all orthodoxy or to TRUTH as such. To simplify the matter, we may limit ourself to noting that the first type of heresy manifests a spiritual archetype — in a limited manner, no doubt, but nonetheless efficacious — whereas the second is merely human work and in consequence based solely on its own productions;(1) and this decides the entire question. To claim that a “pious” spiritist is assured of salvation is meaningless, for in total heresies there is no element that can guarantee posthumous beatitude, even though — apart from all question of belief — a man can always be saved for reasons which escape us; but he is certainly not saved by his heresy. (Christianity/Islam, Essays on Esoteric Ecumenicism, p. 16-17). sophiaperennis: The Sophia Perennis and Neo-spiritualism

The intellectual poverty of the neo-yogist movement provides an incontestable proof that there is no spirituality without orthodoxy. It is assuredly not by chance that all these movements are as if in league against the intelligence; intelligence is replaced by a thinking that is feeble and vague instead of being logical, and ‘dynamic’ instead of being contemplative. All these movements are characterized by an affectation of detachment in regard to pure doctrine. They hate its corruptibility, for in their eyes this purity is ‘dogmatism’; they fail to understand that TRUTH does not deny forms from the outside, but transcends them from within. Orthodoxy includes and guarantees incalculable values which man could not possibly draw out of himself. (Spiritual Perspectives and Human facts, p. 117-118). sophiaperennis: The Sophia Perennis and Neo-spiritualism

Indian holly man manifests his love for a Hindu holy man; secondly, this apparently small incident reminds us of the unity of the primordial Sanatana Dharma, which is more or less hidden beneath the many forms of intrinsically orthodox tradition; and this unity is especially represented by the very function of the Jagadguru, who incarnates the Universal TRUTH. Thirdly, this little incident making a symbolical encounter between a Red Indian priest and a Hindu priest was in fact an act of prayer; and it show us that in prayer all earthly differences such as space and time are transcended, and that in prayer we are all united in one state of purity in one perfume of Deliverance. sophiaperennis: His Holiness and the Red Indian