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GNOSIS
by Frithjof Schuon
(In To Have a Center, 1990, p.
67)
It is a fact that too many authors — we would
almost say: general opinion — attribute to gnosis what is proper to Gnosticism
and to other counterfeits of the sophia perennis, and moreover make no
distinction between the latter and the most freakish movements, such as
spiritualism, theosophism and the pseudo-esoterisms that saw the light of day
in the twentieth century. It is particularly regrettable that these confusions
are taken seriously by most theologians, who obviously have an interest in
entertaining the worst opinion possible concerning gnosis; now the fact that
an imposture necessarily imitates a good, since otherwise it could not even
exist, does not authorize charging this good with all the sins of the
imitation.
In reality, gnosis is essentially the path of
the intellect and hence of intellection; the driving force of this path is
above all intelligence, and not will and sentiment as is the case in the
Semitic monotheistic mysticisms, including average Sufism. Gnosis is
characterized by its recourse to pure metaphysics: the distinction between
Atma and Maya and the consciousness of the potential identity
between the human subject, jivatma, and the Divine Subject,
Paramatma. The path comprises on the one hand "comprehension," and on the
other "concentration"; hence doctrine and method. The modalities of the latter
are quite diverse: in particular, there is on the one hand the mantra,
the evocative and transforming formula, and on the other hand, the yantra,
the visual symbol. The path is the passage from potentiality to virtuality,
and from virtuality to actuality, its summit being the state of the one
"delivered in this life," the jivan-mukta.
As for Gnosticism, whether it arises in a
Christian, Moslem or other climate, it is a fabric of more or less disordered
speculations, often of Manichean origin; and it is a mythomania characterizd
by a dangerous mixture of exoteric and esoteric concepts. Doubtless it
contains symbolisms that are not without interest — the contrary would be
astonishing — but it is said that "the road to hell is paved with good
intentions"; it could just as well be said that it is paved with symbolisms.
It may be remarked, perhaps, that in gnosis
as well as in Gnosticism, "illumination" plays a preponderant role; but this
is to confuse "illumination" with intellection, or
the latter with the former; whereas in reality intellection is active, and
illumination, passive, whatever the level of experiences involved. This is not
to say that the phenomenon of illumination does not arise in the climate of
gnosis; it does so necessarily, but not by way of method or as a point of
reference. An analogous remark could be made regarding hermeneutics, that is,
the interpretation of sacred scriptures; no doubt commentary on the scriptures
is practiced in the climate of gnosis — for example, it goes without saying
that the Upanishads have been explicated — but this is quite different from
the far-removed and unverifiable interpretation of scriptural formulas whose
literal meanings do not at all indicate what the mystical exegetes try to draw
from them — with the aid of "illumination," precisely.(1)
It is true that the word "illumination" can
have a superior meaning, in which case it no longer designates a passive
phenomenon; unitive and liberating illumination is beyond the distinction
between passivity and activity. Or more exactly, illumination is the Divine
Activity in us, but for that very reason it also possesses an aspect of
supreme Passivity in the sense that it coincides with the "extinction" of the
passional and dark elements separating man from his immanent Divine Essence;
this extinction constitutes receptivity to the Influx of Heaven — without
losing sight of the fact that the Divine Order comprises a "Passive
Perfection" as well as an "Active Perfection," and that the human spirit must
in the final analysis participate in both mysteries.
In gnosis, there is first of all the
intellective knowledge of the Absolute — not merely of the "personal God" —
and then self-knowledge; for one cannot know the Divine Order without knowing
oneself. "Know thyself," says the inscription over the portal of the
initiatory temple at Delphi; and "the Kingdom of God is within you."
Just as the ether is present in each of the
sensible elements, such as fire and water, and just as intelligence is present
in each of the mental faculties, such as imagination and memory, so gnosis is
necessarily present in each of the great religions, whether we grasp its
traces or not.
We have said that the driving force of the
path of gnosis is intelligence; now it is far from being the case that this
principle is applicable in a spiritual society — unless it is not very
numerous — for in general, intelligence is largely inoperative once it is
called upon to hold a collectivity in balance; in all justice, one cannot deny
in sentimental and humilitarian moralism a certain realism and hence a
corresponding efficacy. It follows from all this, not that gnosis has to
repudiate socially its principle of the primacy of intelligence, but that it
must put each thing in its place and take men as they are; that is precisely
why the perspective of gnosis will be the first to insist, not upon a
simplifying moralism, but upon intrinsic virtue, which — like beauty — is "the
splendor of the true." Intelligence must be not only objective and conceptual,
but also subjective and existential; the unicity of the object demands the
totality of the subject.
*
* *
When one has experienced the usual pious
sophistries of voluntaristic and moralistic doctrines, it becomes quite clear
that gnosis is not a luxury, and that it alone can extricate us from the
impasses of the alternativism that is part and parcel of the confessional
spirit. There is, for instance, the stupefying thesis of the Asharites,
according to which there are no natural causes: fire burns, not because it is
in its nature to burn, but because, each time something burns, it is God who
intervenes directly and who "creates" the burning.(2) Ibn Rushd pertinently
objects — against Ghazali, who made this holy absurdity his own — that "if
something did not have its specific nature, it would have no name proper to it
. . . Intelligence is nothing else than the perception of causes . . . and
whoever denies causes must also deny the intellect."
What the Asharites have not understood — and
this is characteristic of the alternativism of exoteric thought — is that
natural causes, such as the function of fire to burn, in no way exclude
immanent supernatural causality,(3) any more than the limited subjectivity of
the creature excludes the immanence of the absolute Subject. Immanent divine
causality is "vertical" and supernatural, whereas cosmic causality is
"horizontal" and natural, or in other words: the first is comparable to
centrifugal radii, and the second to concentric circles. It is this
combination of two relationships or of two perspectives that characterizes
integrally metaphysical thought, hence gnosis.(4)
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.
1. We do not contest that a word or an image in
a sacred text may have a meaning that cannot be divined at a first reading;
but in such cases this meaning cannot be contrary to the literal meaning nor
incompatible with the context.
2. Equally anti-metaphysical is the Christian
opinion that the hypostases are neither substances nor modes, that they are
merely "relations" and yet that they are persons. It is appropriate to
distinguish between the Trinity and Trinitarian theology, and no less so
between Unity and unitarian theology.
3. According to the Koran, God ordered the fire
that was to burn Abraham: "Be coolness ..!" which would be meaningless if the
nature of fire were not to burn, and which therefore refutes a priori and
divinely the Asharite opinion.
4. Let it be noted that, just as there is a
"relatively absolute" — the logical absurdity of this formulation does not
preclude its ontologically plausible meaning — so too is there a "naturally
supernatural," and this is precisely the permanent divine intervention, in
virtue of immanence, in cosmic causality.
Reproduced
gratefully from an excellent resource site:
http://www.geocities.com/integral_tradition/texts.html
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