IN studying the Perennial Philosophy we can begin
- either at the bottom, with practice and morality;
- or at the top, with a consideration of metaphysical truths;
- or, finally, in the middle, at the focal point where mind and matter, action and thought have their meeting place in human psychology.
- The lower gate is that preferred by strictly practical teachers —men who, like Gautama Buddha, have no use for speculation and whose primary concern is to put out in men's hearts the hideous fires of greed, resentment and infatuation.
- Through the upper gate go those whose vocation it is to think and specu-late—the born philosophers and theologians.
- The middle gate gives entrance to the exponents of what has been called 'spiritual religion '—
- the devout contemplatives of India,
- the Sufis of Islam,
- the Catholic mystics of the later Middle Ages, and,
- in the Protestant tradition, such men as Denk and Franck and Castellio, as Everard and John Smith and the first Quakers and William Law.
It is through this central door, and just because it is central, that we shall make our entry into the subject matter of this book.
The psychology of the Perennial Philosophy has its source in metaphysics and issues logically in a characteristic way of life and system of ethics. Starting from this mid-point of doctrine, it is easy for the mind to move in either direction.
In the present section we shall confine our attention to but a single feature of this traditional psychology—the most important, the most emphatically insisted upon by all exponents of the Perennial Philosophy and, we may add, the least psychological. For the doctrine that is to be illustrated in this section belongs to autology rather than psychology—to the science, not of the personal ego, but of that eternal Self in the depth of particular, individualized selves, and identical with, or at least akin to, the divine Ground.
In the present section we shall confine our attention to but a single feature of this traditional psychology—the most important, the most emphatically insisted upon by all exponents of the Perennial Philosophy and, we may add, the least psychological. For the doctrine that is to be illustrated in this section belongs to autology rather than psychology—to the science, not of the personal ego, but of that eternal Self in the depth of particular, individualized selves, and identical with, or at least akin to, the divine Ground.
[ autology The study of oneself. ]
7 8 THE PERENNIAL PHILOSOPHY
Based upon the direct experience of those who have fulfilled the necessary conditions of such knowledge, this teaching is expressed most succinctly in the Sanskrit formula, tat tvarn asi ('That art thou');
7 8 THE PERENNIAL PHILOSOPHY
Based upon the direct experience of those who have fulfilled the necessary conditions of such knowledge, this teaching is expressed most succinctly in the Sanskrit formula, tat tvarn asi ('That art thou');
- the Atman, or immanent eternal Self, is one with Brahman,
- the Absolute Principle of all existence;
and the last end of every human being is to discover the fact for himself, to find out Who he really is.
The more God is in all things, the more He is outside them. The more He is within, the more without.
Eckhart
Only the transcendent, the completely other, can be immanent without being modified by the becoming of that in which it dwells. The Perennial Philosophy teaches that it is desirable and indeed necessary to know the spiritual Ground of things, not only within the soul, but also outside in the world and, beyond world and soul, in its transcendent otherness—'in heaven.'
Though GOD is everywhere present, yet He is only present to thee in the deepest and most central part of thy soul. The natural senses cannot possess God or unite thee to Him; nay, thy inward faculties of understanding, will and memory can only reach after God, but cannot be the place of His habitation in thee. But there is a root or depth of thee from whence all these faculties come forth, as lines from a centre, or as branches from the body of the tree. This depth is called the centre, the fund or bottom of the soul. This depth is the unity, the eternity—I had alm'ost said the infinity—of thy soul; for it is so infinite that nothing can satisfy it or give it rest but the infinity of God.
William Law
This extract seems to contradict what was said above; but the contradiction is not a real one. God within and God without —these are two abstract notions, which can be entertained by the understanding and expressed in words. But the facts to which these notions refer cannot be realized and experienced except in 'the deepest and most central part of the soul.'
[ 9]
And this is true no less of God without than of God within. But though the two abstract notions have to be realized (to use a spatial metaphor) in the same place, the intrinsic nature of the realization of God within is qualitatively different from that of the realization of God without, and each in turn is different from that of the realization of the Ground as simultaneously within and without—as the Self of the perceiver and at the same time (in the words of the Bhagavad-Gita) as 'That by which all this world is pervaded.'
When Svetaketu was twelve years old he was sent to a teacher, with whom he studied until he was twenty-four. After learning all the Vedas, he returned home full of conceit in the belief that he was consummately well educated, and very censorious [severely critical of others.] .
The more God is in all things, the more He is outside them. The more He is within, the more without.
Eckhart
Only the transcendent, the completely other, can be immanent without being modified by the becoming of that in which it dwells. The Perennial Philosophy teaches that it is desirable and indeed necessary to know the spiritual Ground of things, not only within the soul, but also outside in the world and, beyond world and soul, in its transcendent otherness—'in heaven.'
Though GOD is everywhere present, yet He is only present to thee in the deepest and most central part of thy soul. The natural senses cannot possess God or unite thee to Him; nay, thy inward faculties of understanding, will and memory can only reach after God, but cannot be the place of His habitation in thee. But there is a root or depth of thee from whence all these faculties come forth, as lines from a centre, or as branches from the body of the tree. This depth is called the centre, the fund or bottom of the soul. This depth is the unity, the eternity—I had alm'ost said the infinity—of thy soul; for it is so infinite that nothing can satisfy it or give it rest but the infinity of God.
William Law
This extract seems to contradict what was said above; but the contradiction is not a real one. God within and God without —these are two abstract notions, which can be entertained by the understanding and expressed in words. But the facts to which these notions refer cannot be realized and experienced except in 'the deepest and most central part of the soul.'
[ 9]
And this is true no less of God without than of God within. But though the two abstract notions have to be realized (to use a spatial metaphor) in the same place, the intrinsic nature of the realization of God within is qualitatively different from that of the realization of God without, and each in turn is different from that of the realization of the Ground as simultaneously within and without—as the Self of the perceiver and at the same time (in the words of the Bhagavad-Gita) as 'That by which all this world is pervaded.'
When Svetaketu was twelve years old he was sent to a teacher, with whom he studied until he was twenty-four. After learning all the Vedas, he returned home full of conceit in the belief that he was consummately well educated, and very censorious [severely critical of others.] .
His father said to him, 'Svetaketu, my child, you who are so full of your learning and so censorious, have you asked for that knowledge by which we hear the unhearable, by which we perceive what cannot be perceived and know what cannot be known?'
'What is that knowledge, sir?' asked Svetaketu.
His father replied, 'As by knowing one lump of clay all that is made of clay is known, the difference being only in name, but the truth being that all is clay—so, my child, is that knowledge, knowing which we know all.'
'But surely these venerable teachers of mine are ignorant of this knowledge; for if they possessed it they would have imparted it to me. Do you, sir, therefore give me that knowledge.'
'So be it,' said the father.... And he said, 'Bring m&a fruit of the nyagrodha tree.'
'Here is one, sir.'
'Break it.'
'It is broken, sir.'
'What do you see there?'
'Some seeds, sir, exceedingly small.'
'Break one of these.'
'It is broken, sir.'
'What do you see there?'
'Nothing at all.'
The father said, 'My son, that subtle essence which you do not
perceive there—in that very essence stands the being of the huge
nyagrodha tree. In that which is the subtle essence all that exists
has its self. That is the True, that is the Self, and thou, Svetaketu,
art That.'
'Pray, sir,' said the son, 'tell me more.'
'Be it so, my child,' the father replied; and he said, 'Place
this salt in water, and come to me tomorrow morning.'
The son did as he was told.
Next morning the father said, 'Bring me the salt which you put
in the water.'
The son looked for it, but could not find it; for the salt, of
course, had dissolved.
The father said, 'Taste some of the water from the surface of
the vessel. How is it?'
'Salty.'
'Taste some from the middle. How is it?'
'Salty.'
'Taste some from the bottom. How is it?'
'Salty.'
The father said, 'Throw the water away and then come back
to me again.'
The son did so; but the salt was not lost, for salt exists for
ever.
Then the father said, 'Here likewise in this body of yours,
my son, you do not perceive the True; but there in fact it is.
In that which is the subtle essence, all that exists has its self. That
is the True, that is the Self, and thou, Svetaketu, art That.'
The man who wishes to know the 'That' which is 'thou' may set to work in any one of three ways.
'What is that knowledge, sir?' asked Svetaketu.
His father replied, 'As by knowing one lump of clay all that is made of clay is known, the difference being only in name, but the truth being that all is clay—so, my child, is that knowledge, knowing which we know all.'
'But surely these venerable teachers of mine are ignorant of this knowledge; for if they possessed it they would have imparted it to me. Do you, sir, therefore give me that knowledge.'
'So be it,' said the father.... And he said, 'Bring m&a fruit of the nyagrodha tree.'
'Here is one, sir.'
'Break it.'
'It is broken, sir.'
'What do you see there?'
'Some seeds, sir, exceedingly small.'
'Break one of these.'
'It is broken, sir.'
'What do you see there?'
'Nothing at all.'
The father said, 'My son, that subtle essence which you do not
perceive there—in that very essence stands the being of the huge
nyagrodha tree. In that which is the subtle essence all that exists
has its self. That is the True, that is the Self, and thou, Svetaketu,
art That.'
'Pray, sir,' said the son, 'tell me more.'
'Be it so, my child,' the father replied; and he said, 'Place
this salt in water, and come to me tomorrow morning.'
The son did as he was told.
Next morning the father said, 'Bring me the salt which you put
in the water.'
The son looked for it, but could not find it; for the salt, of
course, had dissolved.
The father said, 'Taste some of the water from the surface of
the vessel. How is it?'
'Salty.'
'Taste some from the middle. How is it?'
'Salty.'
'Taste some from the bottom. How is it?'
'Salty.'
The father said, 'Throw the water away and then come back
to me again.'
The son did so; but the salt was not lost, for salt exists for
ever.
Then the father said, 'Here likewise in this body of yours,
my son, you do not perceive the True; but there in fact it is.
In that which is the subtle essence, all that exists has its self. That
is the True, that is the Self, and thou, Svetaketu, art That.'
From the Cliandogya Upanishad
The man who wishes to know the 'That' which is 'thou' may set to work in any one of three ways.
- He may begin by looking inwards into his own particular thou and, by a process of 'dying to self'—self in reasoning, self in willing, self in feel-ing—come at last to a knowledge of the Self, the Kingdom of God that is within.
- Or else he may begin with the thous existing outside himself, and may try to realize their essential unity with God and, through God, with one another and with his own being.
- Or, finally (and this is doubtless the best way), he may seek to approach the ultimate That both from within and from without, so that he comes to realize God experimentally as at once the principle of his own thou and of all other thous, animate and inanimate.
[11]
The completely illuminated human being knows, with Law, that God 'is present in the deepest and most central part of his own soul';
but he is also and at the same time one of those who, in the words of Plotinus,
see all things, not in process of becoming, but in Being,
and see themselves in the other.
Each being contains in itself the whole intelligible world.
Therefore All is everywhere.
Each is there All, and All is each.
Man as he now is has ceased to be the All.
But when he ceases to be an individual,
he raises himself again and penetrates the whole world.
[Plotinus was a major Hellenistic Greek philosopher born and raised in Roman Egypt, regarded by modern scholarship as the founder of Neoplatonism.]
It is from the more or less obscure intuition of the oneness that is the ground and principle of all multiplicity that philosophy takes its source. And not alone philosophy, but natural science as well. All science, in Meyerson's phrase, is the reduction of multiplicities to identities. Divining the One within and beyond the many, we find an intrinsic plausibility in any explanation of the diverse in terms of a single principle.
The philosophy of the Upanishads reappears, developed and enriched, in the Bhagavad-Gita and was finally systematized, in the ninth century of our era, by Shankara. Shankara's teaching (simultaneously theoretical and practical, as is that of all true exponents of the Perennial Philosophy) is summarized in his versified treatise, Viveka-Chudamani ('The Crest-Jewel of Wisdom'). All the following passages are taken from this conveniently brief and untechnical work.
The Atman is that by which the universe is pervaded, but which nothing pervades; which causes all things to shine, but which all things cannot make to shine.
The nature of the one Reality must be known by one's own clear spiritual perception; it cannot be known through a pandit (learned man). Similarly the form of the moon can only be known through one's own eyes. How can it be known through others?
Who but the Atman is capable of removing the bonds of ignorance, passion and self-interested action?
Liberation cannot be achieved except by the perception of the identity of the individual spirit with the universal Spirit.
It is from the more or less obscure intuition of the oneness that is the ground and principle of all multiplicity that philosophy takes its source. And not alone philosophy, but natural science as well. All science, in Meyerson's phrase, is the reduction of multiplicities to identities. Divining the One within and beyond the many, we find an intrinsic plausibility in any explanation of the diverse in terms of a single principle.
The philosophy of the Upanishads reappears, developed and enriched, in the Bhagavad-Gita and was finally systematized, in the ninth century of our era, by Shankara. Shankara's teaching (simultaneously theoretical and practical, as is that of all true exponents of the Perennial Philosophy) is summarized in his versified treatise, Viveka-Chudamani ('The Crest-Jewel of Wisdom'). All the following passages are taken from this conveniently brief and untechnical work.
The Atman is that by which the universe is pervaded, but which nothing pervades; which causes all things to shine, but which all things cannot make to shine.
The nature of the one Reality must be known by one's own clear spiritual perception; it cannot be known through a pandit (learned man). Similarly the form of the moon can only be known through one's own eyes. How can it be known through others?
Who but the Atman is capable of removing the bonds of ignorance, passion and self-interested action?
Liberation cannot be achieved except by the perception of the identity of the individual spirit with the universal Spirit.
It can be achieved neither by Yoga (physical training), nor by Sankhya (speculative philosophy), nor by the practice of religious ceremonies, nor by mere learning.
Disease is not cured by pronouncing the name of medicine, but by taking medicine. Deliverance is not achieved by repeating the word 'Brahman,' but by directly experiencing Brahman.
The Atman is the Witness of the individual mind and its operations. It is absolute knowledge..
The wise man is one who understands that the essence of Brahman and of Atman is Pure Consciousness, and who realizes their absolute identity. The identity of Brahman and Atman is affirmed in hundreds of sacred texts....
Caste, creed, family and lineage do not exist in Brahman. Brahman has neither name nor form, transcends merit and demerit, is beyond time, space and the objects of sense-experience. Such is Brahman, and 'thou art That.' Meditate upon this truth within your consciousness.
Supreme, beyond the power of speech to express, Brahman may yet be apprehended by the eye of pure illumination. Pure, absolute and eternal Reality—such is Brahman, and 'thou art That.' Meditate upon this truth within your consciousness....
Though One, Brahman is the cause of the many. There is no other cause. And yet Brahman is independent of the law of causation. Such is Brahman, and 'thou art That.' Meditate upon this truth within your consciousness.
The truth of Brahman may be understood intellectually. But (even in those who so understand)
Disease is not cured by pronouncing the name of medicine, but by taking medicine. Deliverance is not achieved by repeating the word 'Brahman,' but by directly experiencing Brahman.
The Atman is the Witness of the individual mind and its operations. It is absolute knowledge..
The wise man is one who understands that the essence of Brahman and of Atman is Pure Consciousness, and who realizes their absolute identity. The identity of Brahman and Atman is affirmed in hundreds of sacred texts....
Caste, creed, family and lineage do not exist in Brahman. Brahman has neither name nor form, transcends merit and demerit, is beyond time, space and the objects of sense-experience. Such is Brahman, and 'thou art That.' Meditate upon this truth within your consciousness.
Brahman is (in Hinduism) the ultimate reality underlying all phenomena.
Brahman is formless but is the birthplace of all forms in visible reality
Supreme, beyond the power of speech to express, Brahman may yet be apprehended by the eye of pure illumination. Pure, absolute and eternal Reality—such is Brahman, and 'thou art That.' Meditate upon this truth within your consciousness....
Though One, Brahman is the cause of the many. There is no other cause. And yet Brahman is independent of the law of causation. Such is Brahman, and 'thou art That.' Meditate upon this truth within your consciousness.
The truth of Brahman may be understood intellectually. But (even in those who so understand)
the desire for personal separateness is deep-rooted and powerful, for it exists from beginning-less time.
It creates the notion, 'I am the actor, I am he who experiences.'
This notion is the cause of bondage to conditional existence, birth and death.
It can be removed only by the earnest effort to live constantly in union with Brahman.
By the sages, the eradication of this notion and the craving for personal separateness is called Liberation.
It is ignorance that causes us to identify ourselves with the body, the ego, the senses, or anything that is not the Atman.
It is ignorance that causes us to identify ourselves with the body, the ego, the senses, or anything that is not the Atman.
He is a wise man who overcomes this ignorance by devotion to the Atman.
When a man follows the way of the world, or the way of the flesh, or the way of tradition (i.e. when he believes in religious rites and the letter of the scriptures, as though they were intrinsically sacred), knowledge of Reality cannot arise in him.
The wise say that this threefold way is like an iron chain, binding the feet of him who aspires to escape from the prison-house of this world. He who frees himself from the chain achieves Deliverance.
Shankara [ Adi Shankara, 8th century Hindu philosopher ]
deliverance
- the state of being saved from a painful or bad experience:
We pray for deliverance from our sins.
The families hoped for the safe deliverance of their husbands, fathers, and brothers.
----
More examples
People in the country gained a complete deliverance from the power of an aristocracy which had always before oppressed them.
Her deliverance came after a three-year legal battle by her parents to allow her to die with dignity.
Penelope was promised deliverance from her suffering.
----
In the Taoist formulations of the Perennial Philosophy there is an insistence, no less forcible than in the Upanishads, the Gita and the writings of Shankara, upon the universal immanence of the transcendent spiritual Ground of all existence.
'What follows is an extract from one of the great classics of Taoist literature, the Book of Chuang Tzu, most of which seems to have [14] been written around the turn of the fourth and third centuries B.C.
Immanence, in philosophy and theology, a term applied, in contradistinction to “transcendence,” to the fact or condition of being entirely within something (from Latin immanere, “to dwell in, remain”).
Immanence, in philosophy and theology, a term applied, in contradistinction to “transcendence,” to the fact or condition of being entirely within something (from Latin immanere, “to dwell in, remain”).
- Do not ask whether the Principle is in this or in that; it is in all beings.
- It is on this account that we apply to it the epithets of supreme, universal, total.
- It has ordained that all things should be limited, but is Itself unlimited, infinite.
- As to what pertains to manifestation, the Principle causes the succession of its phases, but is not this succession.
- It is the author of causes and effects, but is not the causes and effects.
- It is the author of condensations and dissipations (birth and death, changes of state), but is not itself condensations and dissipations.
- All proceeds from It and is under its influence.
- It is in all things, but is not identical with beings, for it is neither differentiated nor limited.
Chuang Tu
From Taoism we pass to that Mahayana Buddhism which, in the Far East, came to be so closely associated with Taoism, borrowing and bestowing until the two came at last to be fused in what is known as Zen. The Lankavatara Sutra, from which the following extract is taken, was the scripture which the founder of Zen Buddhism expressly recommended to his first disciples.
Those who vainly reason without understanding the truth are lost in the jungle of the Vijnanas (the various forms of relative knowledge), running about here and there and trying to justify their view of ego-substance.
The self realized in your inmost consciousness appears in its purity; this is the Tathagata-garbha (literally, Buddha-womb), which is not the realm of those given over to mere reasoning.
Pure in its own nature and free from the category of finite and infinite, Universal Mind is the undefiled Buddha-womb, which is wrongly apprehended by sentient beings.
Lankavatara Sutra
The Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra (Sanskrit: लंकावतारसूत्र, Standard Tibetan: ལང་ཀར་བཤེགས་པའི་མདོ་) is a prominent Mahayana Buddhist sūtra. This sūtra recounts a teaching primarily between Gautama Buddha and a bodhisattva named Mahāmati, "Great Wisdom". The sūtra is set in Laṅkā, the island fortress capital of Rāvaṇa, the king of the rākṣasa demons. The title of this text roughly translates as "Scripture of the Descent into Laṅkā".
The Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra figured prominently in the development of Chinese, Tibetan and Japanese Buddhism. It is notably an important sūtra in Chan Buddhism and Japanese Zen.
능가경 위키백과
- 《능가경(楞伽經)》(산스크리트어: लंकावतारसूत्र 랑카바타라 수트라)은 후기 대승불교의 경전이다.
One Nature, perfect and pervading, circulates in all natures,
One Reality, all-comprehensive, contains within itself all realities.
The one Moon reflects itself wherever there is a sheet of water,
And all the moons in the waters are embraced within the one Moon.
The Dharma-body '(the Absolute) of all the Buddhas enters into
my own being.
And my own being is found in union with theirs.
The Inner Light is beyond praise and blame;
Like space it knows no boundaries,
Yet it is even here, within us, ever retaining its serenity and
fullness.
It is only when you hunt for it that you lose it;
You cannot take hold of it, but equally you cannot get rid of it,
And while you can do neither, it goes on its own way.
You remain silent and it speaks; you speak, and it is dumb;
The great gate of charity is wide open, with no obstacles before it.
The Dharma-body '(the Absolute) of all the Buddhas enters into
my own being.
And my own being is found in union with theirs.
The Inner Light is beyond praise and blame;
Like space it knows no boundaries,
Yet it is even here, within us, ever retaining its serenity and
fullness.
It is only when you hunt for it that you lose it;
You cannot take hold of it, but equally you cannot get rid of it,
And while you can do neither, it goes on its own way.
You remain silent and it speaks; you speak, and it is dumb;
The great gate of charity is wide open, with no obstacles before it.
Yung-chia Ta-shii현각 (당나라) 위키백과현각(玄覺: 665~713) 또는 영가현각(永嘉玄覺)은 중국 선종의 승려이다
I am not competent, nor is this the place to discuss the doctrinal differences between Buddhism and Hinduism. Let it suffice to point out that, when he insisted that human beings are by nature 'non-Atman,' the Buddha was evidently speaking about the personal self and not the universal Self. The Brahman controversialists, who appear in certain of the Pali scriptures, never so much as mention the Vedanta doctrine of the identity of Atman and Godhead and the non-identity of ego and Atman.
What they maintain and Gautama denies is the substantial nature and eternal persistence of the individual psyche. 'As an unintelligent man seeks for the abode of music in the body of the lute, so does he look for a soul within the skandhas (the material and psychic aggregates, of which the individual mind-body is composed).'
About the existence of the Atman that is Brahman, as about most other metaphysical matters,
the Buddha declines to speak, on the ground that such discussions do not tend to edification or spiritual progress among the members of a monastic order, such as he had founded. 16
But though it has its dangers, though it may become the most absorbing, because the most serious and noblest, of distractions, metaphysical thinking is unavoidable and finally necessary. Even the Hinayanists found this, and the later Mahayanists were to develop, in connection with the practice of their religion, a splendid and imposing system of cosmological, ethical and psychological thought.
This system was based upon the postulates of a strict idealism and professed to dispense with the idea of God. But moral and spiritual experience was too strong for philosophical theory, and under the inspiration of direct experience, the writers of the Mahayana sutras found themselves using all their ingenuity to explain why the Tathagata and the Bodhisattvas display an infinite charity towards beings that do not really exist.
At the same time they stretched the framework of subjective idealism so as to make room for Universal Mind;
qualified the idea of soullessness with the doctrine that,
if purified, the individual mind can identify itself with the Universal Mind or Buddha-womb; and,
while maintaining godlessness, asserted that this realizable Universal Mind is the inner consciousness of the eternal Buddha and that the Buddha-mind is associated with 'a great compassionate heart' which desires the liberation of every sentient being and bestows divine grace on all who make a serious effort to achieve man's final end.
In a word, despite their inauspicious vocabulary, the best of the Mahayana sutras contain an authentic formulation of the Perennial Philosophy—a formulation which in some respects (as we shall see when we come to the section, 'God in the World') is more complete than any other.
In India, as in Persia, Mohammedan thought came to be enriched by the doctrine that God is immanent as well as transcendent, while to Mohammedan practice were added the moral disciplines and 'spiritual exercises,' by means of which the soul is prepared for contemplation or the unitive knowledge of the Godhead.
In India, as in Persia, Mohammedan thought came to be enriched by the doctrine that God is immanent as well as transcendent, while to Mohammedan practice were added the moral disciplines and 'spiritual exercises,' by means of which the soul is prepared for contemplation or the unitive knowledge of the Godhead.
It is a significant historical fact that the poet-saint Kabir is claimed as a co-religionist both by Moslems and Hindus. The politics of those whose goal is beyond time are always pacific; it is the idolaters of past and future, of reactionary memory and Utopian dream, who do the persecuting and make the wars. [ 17]
Behold but One in all things; it is the second that leads you astray.
Kabir
----
Behold but One in all things; it is the second that leads you astray.
Kabir
----
That this insight into the nature of things and the origin of good and evil is not confined exclusively to the saint, but is recognized obscurely by every human being, is proved by the very structure of our language.
For language, as Richard Trench pointed out long ago, is often 'wiser, not merely than the vulgar, but even than the wisest of those who speak it.
Sometimes it locks up truths which were once well known, but have been forgotten.
In other cases it holds the germs of truths which, though they were never plainly discerned, the genius of its framers caught a glimpse of in a happy moment of divination.'
For example, how significant it is that in the Indo-European languages, as Darmsteter has pointed out, the root meaning 'two' should connote badness.
The Greek prefix dys-(as in dyspepsia) and the Latin dis- (as in dishonourable) are both derived from 'duo.'
The cognate bis- gives a pejorative sense to such modern French words as bévue ('blunder,' literally 'two-sight').
Traces of that 'second which leads you astray' can be found in 'dubious,' 'doubt' and Zwefl—for to doubt is to be double-minded.
Bunyan has his Mr. Facing-both-ways, and modern American slang its 'two-timers.'
Obscurely and unconsciously wise, our language confirms the findings of the mystics and proclaims the essential badness of division—a word, incidentally, in which our old enemy 'two' makes another decisive appearance.
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Here it may be remarked that the cult of unity on the political level is only an idolatrous ersat for the genuine religion of unity on the personal and spiritual levels. Totalitarian regimes justify their existence by means of a philosophy of political monism, according to which the state is God on earth, unification under the heel of the divine state is salvation, and all means to such unification, however intrinsically wicked, are right and may be used without scruple.
This political monism leads in practice to excessive privilege and power for the few
[18] and oppression for the many, to discontent at home and war abroad.
[18] and oppression for the many, to discontent at home and war abroad.
But excessive privilege and power are standing temptations to pride, greed, vanity and cruelty; oppression results in fear and envy; war breeds hatred, misery and despair. All such negative emotions are fatal to the spiritual life.
Only the pure in heart and poor in spirit can come to the unitive knowledge of God. Hence, the attempt to impose more unity upon societies than their individual members are ready for makes it psychologically almost impossible for those individuals to realize their unity with the divine Ground and with one another.
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Among the Christians and the Sufis, to whose writings we now return, the concern is primarily with the human mind and its divine essence.
My Me is God,
nor do I recognize any other Me except my God Himself.
In those respects in which the soul is unlike God,
St. Catherine of Genoa
In those respects in which the soul is unlike God,
it is also unlike itself.
I went from God to God,
St. Bernard
I went from God to God,
until they cried from me in me, 'O thou I!'
Two of the recorded anecdotes about this Sufi saint deserve to be quoted here.
Bayaid of Bistun
Two of the recorded anecdotes about this Sufi saint deserve to be quoted here.
'When Bayazid was asked how old he was, he replied, "Four years."
They said, "How can that be?"
He answered, "I have been veiled from God by the world for seventy years,
but I have seen Him during the last four years.
The period during which one is veiled does not belong to one's life."
On another occasion someone knocked at the saint's door and cried,
Is Bayazid here?'
Bayazid answered, 'is anybody here except God?'
[ 19]
To gauge the soul we must gauge it with God,
[ 19]
To gauge the soul we must gauge it with God,
for the Ground of God and the Ground of the Soul are one and the same.
The spirit possesses God essentially in naked nature, and God the spirit.
For though she sink all sinking in the oneness of divinity,
Eckhart
The spirit possesses God essentially in naked nature, and God the spirit.
Ruysbroeck
For though she sink all sinking in the oneness of divinity,
she never touches bottom.
For it is of the very essence of the soul that she is powerless to plumb the depths of her creator.
And here one cannot speak of the soul any more,
for she has lost her nature yonder in the oneness of divine essence.
There she is no more called soul, but is called immeasurable being.
The knower and the known are one.
Eckhart
The knower and the known are one.
Simple people imagine that they should see God,
as if He stood there and they here.
This is not so.
God and I, we are one in knowledge.
'I live, yet not I, but Christ in me.'
Eckhart
'I live, yet not I, but Christ in me.'
Or perhaps it might be more accurate to use the verb transitively and say,
'I live, yet not I; for it is the Logos who lives me'
—lives me as an actor lives his part.
In such a case, of course, the actor is always infinitely superior to the role.
Where real life is concerned, there are no Shakespearean characters,,
there are only Addi-sonian Catos or, more often, grotesque Monsieur Perrichons and Chancy's Aunts
mistaking themselves for Julius Caesar or the Prince of Denmark.
But by a merciful dispensation it is always in the power of every dramatis persona to get his low,
stupid lines pronounced and supernaturally transfigured by the divine equivalent of a Garrick.
O my God, how does it happen in this poor old world that
O my God, how does it happen in this poor old world that
Thou art so great and yet nobody finds Thee, that
Thou callest so loudly and nobody hears Thee, that
hou art so near and nobody [30] feels Thee, that
Thou givest Thyself to everybody and nobody knows Thy name?
Men flee from Thee and say they cannot find Thee;
they turn their backs and say they cannot see Thee;
they stop their ears and say they cannot hear Thee.
----
Hans Denk
----
Between the Catholic mystics of the fourteenth and fifteenth. centuries and the Quakers of the seventeenth
there yawns a wide gap of time made hideous, so far as religion is concerned, with interdenominational wars and persecutions.
But the gulf was bridged by a succession of men, whom Rufus Jones, in the only accessible English work devoted to their lives and teachings, has called the 'Spiritual Reformers.'
Denk, Franck, Castellio, Weigel, Everard, the Cambridge Platonists—in spite of the murdering and the madness, the apostolic succession remains unbroken. The truths that had been spoken in the Theologia Germanica—that book which Luther professed to love so much and from which, if we may judge from his career, he learned so singularly little—were being uttered once again by Englishmen during the Civil War and under the Cromwellian dictatorship. The mystical tradition, perpetuated by the Protestant Spiritual Reformers, had become diffused, as it were, in the religious atmosphere of the time when George Fox had his first great 'opening' and knew by direct experience:
that Every Man was enlightened by the Divine Light of Christ, and I saw it shine through all; And that they that believed in it came out of Condemnation and came to the Light of Life, and became the Children of it; And that they that hated it and did not believe in it, were condemned by it, though they made a profession of Christ. This I saw in the pure Openings of Light, without the help of any Man, neither did I then know where to find it in the Scriptures, though afterwards, searching the Scriptures, I found it.
[ 21]
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that Every Man was enlightened by the Divine Light of Christ, and I saw it shine through all; And that they that believed in it came out of Condemnation and came to the Light of Life, and became the Children of it; And that they that hated it and did not believe in it, were condemned by it, though they made a profession of Christ. This I saw in the pure Openings of Light, without the help of any Man, neither did I then know where to find it in the Scriptures, though afterwards, searching the Scriptures, I found it.
From Fox's Journal
[ 21]
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The doctrine of the Inner Light achieved a clearer formulation in the writings of the second generation of Quakers.
'There is wrote William Penn, 'something nearer to us than Scriptures, to wit,
the Word in the heart from which all Scriptures come.'
And a little later Robert Barclay sought to explain the direct experience of tat tvam asi in terms of an Augustinian theology that had, of course, to be considerably stretched and trimmed before it could fit the facts.
Man, he declared in his famous theses, is a fallen being, incapable of good, unless united to the Divine Light.
This Divine Light is Christ within the human soul, and is as universal as the seed of sin.
All men, heathen as well as Christian, are endowed with the Inward Light,
even though they may know nothing of the outward history of Christ's life. Justification is for those who do not resist the Inner Light and so permit of a new birth of holiness within them.
Goodness needeth not to enter into the soul, for it is there already,
Goodness needeth not to enter into the soul, for it is there already,
only it is unperceived.
When the Ten Thousand things are viewed in their oneness, we return to the Origin and remain where we have always been.
It is because we don't know Who we are,
Theologia Germanica
When the Ten Thousand things are viewed in their oneness, we return to the Origin and remain where we have always been.
Sen T'sen
It is because we don't know Who we are,
because we are unaware that the Kingdom of Heaven is within us,
that we behave in the generally silly, the often insane, the sometimes criminal ways that are so characteristically human.
We are saved, we are liberated and enlightened, by perceiving the hitherto unperceived good that is already within us,
by returning to our eternal Ground and remaining where, without knowing it, we have always been.
Plato speaks in the same sense when he says, in the Republic, that
'the virtue of wisdom more than anything else contains a divine element which always remains.'
And in the Theaetetus he makes the point,
so frequently insisted upon by those who have practised spiritual religion, that
it is only by becoming Godlike that we can know God—and
to become Godlike is to identify ourselves with the divine element which in fact constitutes our essential nature,
but of which, in our mainly voluntary ignorance, we choose to remain unaware.[22]
우리가 하나님을 알 수 있는 것은 오직 하나님을 닮음으로써만 가능하며, 하나님과 같이 된다는 것은 사실상 우리의 본질적인 본성을 구성하지만 주로 자발적인 무지에서 우리가 알지 못하기로 선택하는 신성한 요소와 우리 자신을 동일시하는 것입니다.
They are on the way to truth
who apprehend God by means of the divine, Light by the light.
Philo was the exponent of the Hellenistic Mystery Religion which grew up, as Professor Goodenough has shown, among the Jews of the Dispersion, between about 200 BC and 100 A.D.
Philo
Philo was the exponent of the Hellenistic Mystery Religion which grew up, as Professor Goodenough has shown, among the Jews of the Dispersion, between about 200 BC and 100 A.D.
Reinterpreting the Pentateuch in terms of a metaphysical system derived from Platonism, Neo-Pythagoreanism and Stoicism,
Philo transformed the wholly transcendental and almost anthropomorphically personal God of the Old Testament
into the immanent-transcendent Absolute Mind of the Perennial Philosophy.
But even from the orthodox scribes and Pharisees of that momentous century which witnessed, along with the dissemination of Philo's doctrines,
the first beginnings of Christianity and the destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem, even from the guardians of the Law we hear significantly mystical utterances. Hillel, the great rabbi whose teachings on humility and the love of God and man read like an earlier, cruder version of some of the Gospel sermons, is reported to have spoken these words to an assemblage in the courts of the Temple.
'If I am here' (it is Jehovah who is speaking through the mouth of his prophet). 'everyone is here. If I am not here, no one is here.'
The Beloved is all in all; the lover merely veils Him; The Beloved is all that lives, the lover a dead thing.
There is a spirit in the soul, untouched by time and flesh, flowing from the Spirit, remaining in the Spirit, itself wholly spiritual. [ 23]
The Beloved is all in all; the lover merely veils Him; The Beloved is all that lives, the lover a dead thing.
Jalal-uddin Rumi.
There is a spirit in the soul, untouched by time and flesh, flowing from the Spirit, remaining in the Spirit, itself wholly spiritual. [ 23]
In this principle is God, ever verdant, ever flowering in all the joy and glory of His actual Self. Sometimes I have called this principle the Tabernacle of the soul, sometimes a spiritual Light, anon I say it is a Spark. But now I say that it is more exalted over this and that than the heavens are exalted above the earth. So now I name it in a nobler fashion.... It is free of all names and void of all forms. It is one and simple, as God is one and simple, and no man can in any wise behold it.
Eckhart
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Crude formulations of some of the doctrines of the Perennial Philosophy are to be found in the thought-systems of the uncivilized and so-called primitive peoples of the world.
Among the Maoris, for example, every human being is regarded as a compound of four elements—a divine eternal principle, known as the toiora; an ego, which disappears at death; a ghost-shadow, or psyche, which survives death; and finally a body.
Among the Oglala Indians the divine element is called the sican, and this is regarded as identical with the ton, or divine essence of the world. Other elements of the self are the nagi, or personality, and nya, or vital soul.
After death the sican is reunited with the divine Ground of all things, the nagi survives in the ghost world of psychic phenomena and the niya disappears into the material universe.
In regard to no twentieth-century 'primitive' society can we rule out the possibility of influence by, or borrowing from, some higher culture.
In regard to no twentieth-century 'primitive' society can we rule out the possibility of influence by, or borrowing from, some higher culture.
Consequently, we have no right to argue from the present to the past. Because many contemporary savages have an esoteric philosophy that is monotheistic with a monotheism that is sometimes of the 'That art thou' variety, we are not entitled to infer offhand that neolithic or palaeolithic men held similar views.
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More legitimate and more intrinsically plausible are the inferences that may be drawn from what we know about our own physiology and psychology.
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More legitimate and more intrinsically plausible are the inferences that may be drawn from what we know about our own physiology and psychology.
We know that human minds have proved themselves capable of everything from imbecility to Quantum Theory, from Mein Kampf and sadism to the sanctity of Philip Neri, from metaphysics to crossword puzzles, power politics and the Missa Solemnis. [24] We also know that human minds are in some way associated with human brains, and we have fairly good reasons for supposing that there have been no considerable changes in the size and conforthation of human brains for a good many thousands of years. Consequently it seems justifiable to infer that human minds in the remote past were capable of as many and as various kinds and degrees of activity as are minds at the present time.
It is, however, certain that many activities undertaken by some minds at the present time were not, in the remote past, undertaken by any minds at all. For this there are several obvious reasons. Certain thoughts are practically unthinkable except in terms of an appropriate language and within the framework of an appropriate system of classification.
Where these necessary instruments do not exist, the thoughts in question are not expressed and not even conceived. Nor is this all: the incentive to develop the instruments of certain kinds of thinking is not always present. For long periods of history and prehistory it would seem that men and women, though perfectly capable of doing so, did not wish to pay attention to problems which their descendants found absorbingly interesting.
For example, there is no reason to suppose that, between the thirteenth century and the twentieth, the human mind underwent any kind of evolutionary change, comparable to the change, let us say, in the physical structure of the horse's foot during an incomparably longer span of geological time.
What happened was that men turned their attention from certain aspects of reality to certain other aspects. The result, among other things, was the development of the natural sciences.
Our perceptions and our understanding are directed, in large measure, by our will. We are aware of, and we think about, the things which, for one reason or another, we want to see and understand. Where there's a will there is always an intellectual way.
The capacities of the human mind are almost indefinitely great. Whatever we will to do, whether it be to come to the unitive knowledge of the Godhead, or to manufacture self-propelled flame-throwers—that we are able to do, provided always that the willing be sufficiently intense and sustained.[ 25]
It is clear that many of the things to which modern men have chosen to pay attention were ignored by their predecessors. Consequently the very means for thinking clearly and fruitfully about those things remained uninvented, not merely during prehistoric times, but even to the opening of the modern era.
The lack of a suitable vocabulary and an adequate frame of reference, and the absence of any strong and sustained desire to invent these necessary instruments of thought—here are two sufficient reasons why so many of the almost endless potentialities of the human mind remained for so long unactualized.
The lack of a suitable vocabulary and an adequate frame of reference, and the absence of any strong and sustained desire to invent these necessary instruments of thought—here are two sufficient reasons why so many of the almost endless potentialities of the human mind remained for so long unactualized.
Another and, on its own level, equally cogent reason is this: much of the world's most original and fruitful thinking is done by people of poor physique and of a thoroughly unpractical turn of mind. Because this is so, and because the value of pure thought, whether analytical or integral, has everywhere been more or less clearly recognized, provision was and still is made by every civilized society for giving thinkers a measure of protection from the ordinary strains and stresses of social life.
The hermitage, the monastery, the college, the academy and the research laboratory; the begging bowl, the endowment, patronage and the grant of taxpayers' money—such are the principal devices that have been used by actives to conserve that rare bird, the religious, philosophical, artistic or scientific contemplative.
In many primitive Societies conditions are hard and there is no surplus wealth. The born contemplative has to face the struggle for existence and social predominance without protection. The result, in most cases, is that he either dies young or is too desperately busy merely keeping alive to be able to devote his attention to anything else. When this happens the prevailing philosophy will be that of the hardy, extraverted man of action.
All this sheds some light—dim, it is true, and merely inferential—on the problem of the perennialness of the Perennial Philosophy.
All this sheds some light—dim, it is true, and merely inferential—on the problem of the perennialness of the Perennial Philosophy.
In India the scriptures were regarded, not as revelations made at some given moment of history, but as eternal gospels, existent from everlasting to everlasting, inasmuch as coeval with man, or for that matter with any other kind of corporeal or incorporeal being possessed of reason. [26]
A similar point of view is expressed by Aristotle, who regards the fundamental truths of religion as everlasting and indestructible. There have been ascents and falls, periods (literally 'roads around' or cycles) of progress and regress; but the great fact of God as the First Mover of a universe which partakes of his divinity has always been recognized.
In the light of what we know about prehistoric man (and what we know amounts to nothing more than a few chipped stones, some paintings, drawings and sculptures) and of what we may legitimately infer from other, better documented fields of knowledge, what are we to think of these traditional doctrines?
My own view is that they may be true. We know that born contemplatives in the realm both of analytic and of integral thought have turned up in fair numbers and at frequent intervals during recorded history.
There is therefore every reason to suppose that they turned up before history was recorded. That many of these people died young or were unable to exercise their talents is certain. But a few of them must have survived. In this context it is highly significant that, among many contemporary primitives, two thought-patterns are found—
- an exoteric pattern for the unphilosophic many and
- an esoteric pattern (often monotheistic, with a belief in a God not merely of power, but of goodness and wisdom) for the initiated few.
- intended for or likely to be understood by the general public.
- intended for or likely to be understood by only a small number of people with a specialized knowledge or interest.
There is no reason to suppose that circumstances were any harder for prehistoric men than they are for many contemporary savages. But if an esoteric monotheism of the kind that seems to come natural to the born thinker is possible in modern savage societies, the majority of whose members accept the sort of polytheistic philosophy that seems to come natural to men of action, a similar esoteric doctrine might have been current in prehistoric societies.
True, the modern esoteric doctrines may have been derived from higher cultures. But the significant fact remains that, if so derived, they yet had a meaning for certain members of the primitive society and were considered valuable enough to be carefully preserved. 27
We have seen that many thoughts are unthinkable apart from an appropriate vocabulary and frame of reference. But the fundamental ideas of the Perennial Philosophy can be formulated in a very simple vocabulary, and the experiences to which the ideas refer can and indeed must be had immediately and apart from any vocabulary whatsoever.
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Strange openings and theophanies are granted to quite small children, who are often profoundly and permanently affected by these experiences.
We have no reason to suppose that what happens now to persons with small vocabularies did not happen in remote antiquity.
In the modern world (as Vaughan and Traherne and Wordsworth, among others, have told us) the child tends to grow out of his direct awareness of the one Ground of things;
for the habit of analytical thought is fatal to the intuitions of integral thinking, whether on the 'psychic' or the spiritual level.
Psychic preoccupations may be and often are a major obstacle in the way of genuine spirituality. [?]
In primitive societies now (and, presumably, in the remote past) there is much preoccupation with, and a widespread talent for, psychic thinking.
But a few people may have worked their way through psychic into genuinely spiritual experience
—just as, even in modern industrialized societies, a few people work their way out of the prevailing preoccupation with matter and through the prevailing habits of analytical thought into the direct experience of the spiritual Ground of things.
Such, then, very briefly are the reasons for supposing that the historical traditions of oriental and our own classical antiquity may be true.
Such, then, very briefly are the reasons for supposing that the historical traditions of oriental and our own classical antiquity may be true.
It is interesting to find that at least one distinguished contemporary ethnologist is in agreement with Aristotle and the Vedantists.
'Orthodox ethnology,' writes Dr. Paul Radin in his Primitive Man as Philosopher, 'has been nothing but an enthusiastic and quite uncritical attempt to apply the Darwinian theory of evolution to the facts of social experience.' And he adds that 'no progress in ethnology will be achieved until scholars rid themselves once and for all of the curious notion that everything possesses a history;
until they realize that certain ideas and certain concepts are as ultimate for man, as a social being, as specific physiological reactions are ultimate for him, as a biological being.' 28
Among these ultimate concepts, in Dr. Radin's view, is that of monotheism. Such monotheism is often no more than the recognition of a single dark and numinous Power ruling the world. But it may sometimes be genuinely ethical and spiritual.
The nineteenth century's mania for history and prophetic Utopianism tended to blind the eyes of even its acutest thinkers to the timeless facts of eternity. Thus we find T. H. Green writing of mystical union as though it were an evolutionary process and not, as all the evidence seems to show, a state which man, as man, has always had it in his power to realize.
'An animal organism, which had its history in time, gradually becomes the vehicle of an eternally complete consciousness, which in itself can have no history, but a history of the process by which the animal organism becomes its vehicle.'
But in actual fact it is only in regard to peripheral knowledge that there has been a genuine historical development. Without much lapse of time and much accumulation of skills and information, there can be but an imperfect knowledge of the material world. But direct awareness of the 'eternally complete consciousness,' which is the ground of the material world, is a possibility occasionally actualized by some human beings at almost any stage of their own personal development, from childhood to old age, and at any period of the race's history.
