Great Throughts Treasury

"Knowledge only saves us on condition that it engages all that we are: only when it constitutes a way which works and transforms, and which wounds our nature as the plough wounds the soil."

"Religions are cut off from one another by barriers of mutual incomprehension... the sense of the absolute stands on a different plane in each of them."

"We live in an age of confusion and thirst in which the advantages of communication are greater than those of secrecy."

"Spiritual realization is theoretically the easiest thing and in practice the most difficult thing there is. It is the easiest because it is enough to think of God. It is the most difficult because human nature is forgetfulness of God."

"A civilization is integral and healthy to the extent [that] it is founded on the "invisible" or "underlying" religion, the religio perennis, that is, to the extent [that] its expressions or forms are transparent to the Non-Formal and tend toward the Origin, thus conveying the recollection of a lost Paradise, but also - and with all the more reason - the presentiment of a timeless Beatitude. For the Origin is at once within us and before us; time is but a spiral movement around a motionless Center."

"When people want to be rid of Heaven it is logical to start by creating an atmosphere in which spiritual things appear out of place; in order to be able to declare successfully that God is unreal they have to construct around man a false reality, a reality that is inevitably inhuman because only the inhuman can exclude God. What is involved is a falsification of the imagination and so its destruction."

"A distinction analogous to the one that we have just raised is the opposition between spirit and matter, with the difference that the latter is neutral and not malefic; nonetheless the distinction between the "spirit" and the "flesh" identifies the latter in practice with evil — for reasons of moral and mystical opportuneness — losing sight of the metaphysical transparency of phenomena in general and of sensations in particular, hence their principial ambiguity and neutrality.(1) In other words, and to be more precise: if matter as such is neutral — nothing is more pure than a crystal — there is however a disgrace in its combination with life, whence impurity, sickness and death; a relative disgrace that does not preclude interferences of the celestial into terrestrial life. Geometrically and analogically speaking, decay is possible in the concentric circles, but the rays originating from the center and traversing them remain incorruptible; this principle applies not only to the ambiguity of matter, but also to the excess of contingencies in which we are obliged to live, and which only our relationship with Heaven can manage to compensate and vanquish."

"A hadith says: "Keep yourselves from suspicion, for suspicion is the most deceitful thing which the soul can hold out as an enticement to man." Another says: "Do not make investigations and do not spy". The police mentality is in fact closely linked with a suspicion and corrosive moralism, with a certain persecution mania."

"A remark concerning the divergence between the Aryan or Greco-Hindu idea of "universal Manifestation" and the Semitic or monotheistic idea of "Creation" is called for here. The first idea refers to the world inasmuch as it results from an ontological necessity, that of radiation or of communication of the good, precisely; in other words, M?y? springs from the Infinitude of the Supreme Principle; and to say M?y? is to say sams?ra, the world of transmigration." As for the Semitic idea of Creation, it refers to the world, considered not in its totality, but reduced to a single cycle and conceived as the effect of a single "free" act of God. In reality, the creation to which we belong is but one cycle of universal manifestation, this manifestation being composed of an indefinite number of cycles that are "necessary" as regards their existence but "free" as regards their particularity. The Universe is a fabric woven of necessity and freedom, of mathematical rigor and musical play; every phenomenon participates in these two principles."

"A remark is necessary here: one might object that evil likewise, by its very nature, tends to communicate itself; that is true, but it has this tendency precisely because it is opposed to the radiation of the good and thus cannot help imitating the latter in some fashion. For evil is by definition both opposition and imitation: within the framework of opposition it is ontologically forced to imitate; "the more they curse God the more they praise Him," said Meister Eckhart."

"According to St. Augustine, 'the other vices are attached to evil, in order that it may be done; pride alone is attached to the good, in order that it may perish.'"

"A tendency to suspicion is no more a normal mode of intelligence than is guile. If suspicion is legitimate when it arises incidentally - and exceptionally - from a just impression, it is illegitimate as soon as it becomes a tendency and a kind of principle, for it then engenders a sickness of the soul that is incompatible with virtue and with spirituality."

"According to Boethius, 'all the other vices flee from God; pride alone rises up against Him.'"

"And conversely, a phenomenon is bad —in some capacity or other—inasmuch as it manifests the separation of the accidental from the Substance, which amounts to saying that it tends to manifest the absence of the Substance, but without succeeding wholly in doing so, for existence testifies to the Substance. God and the world: the Substance and the accidents; or the Essence and the forms. The accident, or the form, manifests the Substance, or the Essence, and proclaims Its glory; evil is the ransom of accidentality inasmuch as the latter is separative and privative, not inasmuch as it is participatory and communicative. Knowledge of the immanent Substance is the victory over the accidents of the soul—hence over privative accidentality as such since there is an analogy between the microcosm and the macrocosm—and is thus the best of theodicies."

"Assuredly, theologies have the right to use simplifying and moralizing stratagems demanded by their sphere of action, but human intelligence — to the extent that it is capable of rejoining its own substance — has nonetheless the right to know, beyond moral and other interests, the simple nature of things, even within the Divine Order. The theological point of view cannot refrain, in practice, from attributing to the personal God — Who is within the domain of M?y? — the features of the impersonal Divinity, which alone is beyond M?y? or Relativity; but the pure Intellect — hence in principle, man — can go beyond M?y? since it is essentially capable of conceiving the pure Absolute, which is beyond M?y?, Relativity, Being. Therefore, man is not absolutely subject to God the Person, or to God- M?y?; he is subject insofar as he is an individual, but not in every other respect, and that is why the pneumatikos is "a Law unto himself," which evokes the whole question of the principial immanence of the Truth and the ay; we say "principial," thereby insisting strongly upon this reservation, for not every man is a j?van-mukta."

"As for slander, and above all calumny, it implies the following faults: firstly, saying too much, hence exaggerating and falsifying things; secondly, telling only half the story--which again amounts to falsifying what one intends to relate--or telling things outside their context; thirdly, projecting false intentions onto others; fourthly, arbitrarily generalizing particular facts; fifthly, quite simply inventing non-existent things, which constitutes calumny properly so called."

"As for calumny, it consists in spreading around inaccurate and unfavorable facts and in interpreting unfavorably things that are susceptible of a favorable meaning, making no distinction between what is certain, probable, possible, doubtful, improbable and impossible. Calumny is not a matter of accidental mistakes, but of systematic passion.""

"Absolute Reality — Beyond Being, Param?tm? — has no opposite; but Being, the personal God, comprises an opposite because Being is comprised in universal Relativity, M?y?, of which it is the summit. This opposite, Satan, could not, however, be situated on the same level as God, so that God too can be said to "have no opposite," at least in a certain — but essential — respect; thus God is "in Heaven" (en tois ouranois), whereas the devil, and with him hell, pertains to the subcelestial world. Be that as it may, the satanic possibility is given, ontologically speaking, by relativity itself, which requires not only gradations but also oppositions; relativity is basically the movement towards nothingness, which possesses a shadow of reality only because of this movement; all this, we repeat, in virtue of the infinitude of Being."

"All our preceding considerations evoke the question of the "why" of universal Manifestation and, secondarily, as a result of this question, the problem of evil. To answer the question of why there is a relativity, hence a M?y?, and consequently a Manifestation, we may refer in the first place to an idea of Saint Augustine which we have mentioned more than once, namely that it is in the nature of the Good to want to communicate itself: to say Good is to say radiation, projection, unfolding, gift of self. But at the same time, to say radiation is to say distance, hence alienation or impoverishment; the solar rays dim and become lost in the night of space. From this arises, at the end of the trajectory, the paradoxical phenomenon of evil, which nonetheless has the positive function of highlighting the good a contrario, and of contributing in its fashion to equilibrium in the phenomenal order."

"But not only is there the grip of matter on the spirit, of outwardness on inwardness, of dispersion on concentration, there is also the predominance of psychism over the intelligence, and this flaw — which could never be corrected by a superficial rationality — even succeeds in compromising victories over matter; although Heaven may also use this infirmity for its ends and in such cases remove the moral harmfulness of it; one of the generosities of Mercy is to take men as they are, to the extent possible."

"Evil participates in the good in various ways; first by its existence inasmuch as this existence manifests Being, hence the Sovereign Good; second, and on the contrary, by its disappearance, for victory over evil is a good and is not possible without the presence of an evil; third, evil can participate in the good as an instrument, for it can happen that an evil collaborates in the production of a good; fourth, this participation may consist in the accentuation of a good by the contrast between it and its opposite. Finally, negative or privative phenomena manifest God's "capability" to contradict Himself as it were, and this possibility is required by the very perfection of Being; but, as Meister Eckhardt said, "the more he blasphemes the more he praises God." Moreover, it can happen that good and evil are mingled, whence the possibility of a "lesser evil"; this coincides with the very notion of relativity. As for the question of knowing why a possibility is possible, that is either unanswerable, or else it is resolved in advance by the axiom of All Possibility immanent in Being, and which by definition is without limits; quite paradoxically, it can be said that All-Possibility would not be what it is if it did not realize impossibility in a certain fashion."

"Everybody agrees that man is distinguished from animals by free will; but also, no one can deny that compared to a bird in a cage, a bird who escapes is free; the relative character of this freedom takes nothing away from the reality it represents and possesses. Therefore, freedom unquestionably exists, even in the case of an animal, but it goes without saying that the existence of a thing does not mean that it is absolute; and to deny absoluteness does not amount to denying existence, as is only too obvious. In addressing Himself to the individual and to the collectivity — which by definition is made up of individuals — the personal God makes Himself an individual: that is to say, He creates a religion which is necessarily particular and formalistic and which for that reason could not be universal as regards its form, any more than an individual as such can represent or realize universality. By contrast, the impersonal Divinity does not create religions: the Divine Self confers universal truth and the corresponding sanctity from within, by illuminating the Intellect and by penetrating into the Heart; this presupposes that the Heart be without blemish, without passions and errors, and thus that it have reintegrated primordial purity. But God is one, and there is no question of acceding to immanence while going counter to transcendence, or of approaching the impersonal Divinity against the will or requirements of the personal God; particularly outside a religious framework."

"Evil, insofar as it exists, participates in the good represented by existence. Good and evil are not, strictly speaking, existential categories as are the object, the subject, space and time; because the good is the very being of things — manifested by the categories precisely — such that they, the things, are all "modes of the good"; whereas evil indicates paradoxically the absence of this being, while annexing certain things or certain characteristics at the level at which they are accessible and by virtue of predispositions allowing it. But despite this reservation, one may consider good and evil as existential categories for the following reasons. The good includes on the one hand all that manifests the qualities of the Divine Principle, and on the other hand all things inasmuch as they manifest this same Principle by their existence, and also inasmuch as they fulfill a necessary ontological function. Evil for its part includes all that manifests a privation from the standpoint of the qualities or from that of Being"

"From the standpoint of a piety nourished by anthropomorphism, the question of predestination and the question of evil are the two great problems. But from the standpoint of metaphysical knowledge, the only problem is that of expression through language; the difficulty therefore lies in the fact that the heaviness of language requires almost endless prolixities. Be that as it may: on the principial plane, there are no unsolvable questions, for all that "is" can in principle be known, the human spirit being total — not partial as is animal intelligence. The real and the knowable coincide, not for the rational faculty to be sure, but for the Intellect, whose presence — actual or purely potential — constitutes the reason for being of the human condition."

"Hypocrisy: consists in practicing all the vices while practicing spiritual exercises, which in this context become sacrileges."

"He who has the intuition of the Absolute—which does not solve the problem of evil dialectically but places it within parentheses by removing all of its poison—possesses ipso facto the sense of the relationship between the Substance and accidents, so that he is unable to see the accidents outside of the Substance. An accident, that is a phenomenon or a being, whatever it may be, is good insofar as it manifests the Substance, or what amounts to the same: insofar as it manifests the resorption of the accidental within the Substance."

"First of all there is pride: it is to overestimate oneself while underestimating others; it is the refusal to accept humiliation when the nature of things requires it; and it is ipso facto to take for a humiliation every attitude that simply reveals our limits."

"If the questions of evil and predestination appear as unsolvable problems to the average believer, it is because theology, owing to its anthropomorphism, halts midway; it improperly personalizes the supreme Principle, and this shows that it has an insufficient idea of what we term the "Divine Order." Doubtless there is no impenetrable partition between reason and intelligence, but the latter cannot enter fully and decisively into a thinking that identifies with dogmatic crystallizations and their corresponding sentimentalities."

"If 'Beauty is the splendor of the true', then it can be said that moralism consists in cutting beauty off from truth. Without truth beauty cannot subsist and this explains the ugliness associated with moralism. It replaces knowledge of the true by idolatry of a 'good' that is often arbitrary and restricted."

"In one sense, the Absolute is beyond good and evil, but in another sense It is the very essence of goodness, which is to say that It is the Good as such. It is neither good nor evil insofar as It conditions, by the radiation of Its Infinitude, the genesis of what we term evil, but It is good in the sense that every conceivable good testifies to Its essential nature; evil as such could not have its root in the pure Absolute, nor in that "lesser Absolute" that is Being, the personal God. Moreover, evil ceases to be evil when it is seen as a metaphysical necessity contributing to that "greater good" which is, on the one hand, the contrastive manifestation of the good, and on the other the reabsorption that transforms every evil into the Good which is both origin and end; ad majorem Dei gloriam. As regards the root of the problem, we could also express ourselves as follows: the absolute Good has no opposite; a good that has an opposite is not the absolute good; "God alone is good." If one were to say that supra-ontological Infinitude, or ontological Possibility which projects It, is "good" in the contrastive sense normally meant by this word, then the objection that evil does exist could be raised; but precisely, in relation to this indirect causation of evil — whether of privation or excess — one has to say that Possibility is beyond that opposition; it is "amoral," so to speak. In another respect however, as regards the intrinsic and positive nature of the supreme Principle, it has to be recognized that efficient Possibility or the personal God, as well as a fortiori the Infinitude of the impersonal or suprapersonal Divinity, must be defined as the "Sovereign Good.""

"In order to resolve the thorny problem of evil, some have claimed that nothing is evil because everything that happens is "willed by God," or that evil exists only from the "standpoint of the Law." This is unacceptable, firstly because it is God who lays down the Law, and secondly because the Law exists on account of evil and not vice versa. What should be said is that evil is integrated within the universal Good, not as evil but as an ontological necessity; this necessity underlies evil, it is metaphysically inherent in it, yet without thereby transforming it into a good."

"In short, metaphysical explanations have two functions, one de jure and the other de facto: to furnish information — and thereby keys — to those who are qualified to receive it, and to free from errors those who have contracted them through contact with false ideologies; in the latter case, the function of wisdom will be a priori to allow those who have lost their faith to recover the capacity to believe in God, and all the graces that result from it."

"Let us add that sacred nudity, in Hinduism, is not unrelated to the purifying quality of the air which, being an element is simple, and hence incorruptible, a fact that Jains express in prescribing the "wearing of the air as a garment"."

"itself; it is harmful in various ways, even though this harmfulness be neutralized and compensated, in given cases, by positive factors. That is to say that there are things which are bad or harmful in principle but not in fact, just as there are others which are good and benefic in the same way; all of which contributes to the unfolding of the cosmic play with its innumerable combinations."

"In the very nature of things moralism is ignorant both of truth and of beauty: it cannot avoid being hypocritical in relation to the former and caricatural in relation to the latter."

"Life in human society favors the appearance of social vices, but this is not a reason for not resisting them, quite to the contrary. Victory over the vices is owed to the men around us as well as to God who observes us and who will judge us."

"Next there is egoism it is to think only of one's own interest and thus to forget that of others. It is in this sector that egocentrism and narcissism are situated, without forgetting touchiness."

"Now, as regards the ‘problem’ of the existence of ‘evil’ itself, the religious point of view only gives an indirect and somewhat evasive answer, declaring that the Divine Will is unfathomable, and that out of all evil good will ultimately come. This second proposition does not, however, explain evil, and as for the first, to say that God is unfathomable means that there is some appearance of contradiction in his ‘ways’ which we are unable to resolve. From an esoteric point of view the ‘problem of evil’ resolves itself into two questions: firstly, why do things created necessarily imply imperfection? and secondly, why do they exist? To the first of these questions the answer is that if there were no imperfection in Creation nothing would distinguish it from the Creator, or in other words, it would not be effect or manifestation, hut Cause or Principle; the answer to the second question is that Creation (or Manifestation) is necessarily implied in the infinity of the Principle, in the sense that it is so to speak an aspect or consequence of this infinity."

"Man is free and he has the capacity to overcome all vice. He can conquer the vices through effort, through intelligence and through prayer; also through the sense of beauty. "Heaven helps those who help themselves.""

"Manifestation implies imperfection by definition, as the Infinite implies manifestation by definition. This triad ‘Infinite, manifestation, imperfection’ provides the formula which explains everything that the human mind may find ‘problematical’ in the vicissitudes of existence; those who with the eye of the Intellect are capable of viewing the metaphysical causes of all appearances will never find themselves brought to a standstill by insoluble contradictions, as necessarily happens to those limited to an exoteric perspective, which, by reason of its anthropomorphism, can never hope to grasp all the aspects of universal Reality."

"One of the most salient criteria of moralism is calumny of the object as a function of the corruptibility of the subject."

"Plainly, we are here at the limits of the expressible, where there is only one choice: either to take upon oneself the task of furnishing points of reference that cannot avoid paradox, complication, ellipsis and other drawbacks of thought or language, or else abstain from satisfying certain imperious needs for causal explanations, and confine oneself to asserting that "God does what He wills," and that the "potter" need not render account to the "pots" he has fashioned in accordance with his good pleasure. However, by refusing to take into account the needs for causal explanations to which man has a right in principle — since these needs stem from the total intelligence which characterizes the human species — one opens the door to Luciferian usurpations and thereby to the most pernicious errors and denials — those which affect all that constitutes man's reason for being. Therefore, man essentially has the right to ask certain questions: "in principle," as we have said, for in fact there is the original fall, which obliges religions — and thus theologies — to treat man like a child or like an invalid; yet fallen man is not all of man, and as a result there are problems — or rights and duties — against which it would be vain to legislate according to the "letter" of the Law."

"Pure and absolute truth can only be found beyond all its possible expressions; these expressions, as such, cannot claim the attributes of this truth, their relative remoteness from it is expressed by their differentiation and multiplicity, by which they are strictly limited."

"Pride consists in taking ourselves for what we are not and disparaging others. Self-respect is knowing what one is and not allowing oneself to be humbled. Self-respect does not prevent a man from humbling himself before what surpasses him; it is far from being the opposite of true humility, whatever the more superficial moralists may say."

"Parallel to the problem of evil — which calls into question both the Omnipotence and the Goodness of God, and which exists only in virtue of the anthropomorphist confusion between the impersonal Divinity and the personal God — there is the problem of predestination, which calls into question, on the one hand man's freedom and therefore his responsibility, and on the other hand both the Goodness and Justice of God. Here too, the solution of the difficulty lies in the distinction between Being and Beyond-Being, or between the "lesser Absolute" and the "pure Absolute": predestination could not stem from a "will" — which in that case would necessarily be arbitrary — of the personal God; it stems from pure Possibility, whose source, as we have said, lies in the Infinitude of the Absolute. From this standpoint we would say that a creature is a possibility, and a possibility is what it is; therefore, in a sense it is what it "wants to be"; destiny is one of its aspects among others. The individual "wants" to be what he "is," and it could even be said, more profoundly, that he "is" what he "wants": what his possibility, the very one he manifests, wants — or wanted initially."

"Scandalmongering is an evil because one who is absent cannot defend himself and because the divulging of an unfavorable fact may injure him, and also because by his nature man tends to overestimate his own power of judgment. From the point of view of simple logic it is normal that a man should report facts that surprise him or make him suffer, since in principle he always has the right to ask for advice and to assure himself of the correctness of his own feeling; but this is conditional upon the accuracy of the facts and the impartiality of the witness and also the moral dignity of the interlocutor, quite apart from the safeguarding of those who are absent. Now in practice there is no means of guaranteeing that these conditions are always completely filled, and indeed in nine cases out of ten it will not be the case. Consequently the moral law, in so far as it concerns the collectivity, is obliged to sacrifice the exception to the rule and the particular truth to the general expediency."

"Since the function of evil is the contrasting manifestation of good and also the latter's final victory, we may say that evil by its very nature is condemned to its own negation; representing either the "spatial" or "temporal" absence of good, evil thus returns to this absence, which is privation of being and hence nothingness. If one were to object that good is likewise perishable, we would answer that it returns to its celestial or divine prototype in which alone it is wholly "itself"; what is perishable in the good is not the good in itself, it is this or that envelope limiting it. As we have said more than once — and this brings us back to the root of the question — evil is a necessary consequence of remoteness from the Divine Sun, the "overflowing" source of the cosmogonic trajectory; the mystery of mysteries being All-Possibility as such."

"Stupidity: is the lack of discernment between the essential and the secondary and, as a result, that moral ugliness which is pettiness; it is also the lack of sense of proportions, hence of priorities."

"Suspicion does not only feed on subjective illusions: it also lives on objective appearances, which are just as illusory but none the less rooted in facts. Indeed suspicion, which essentially ignores the laws of coincidence and paradox, often finds itself corroborated by appearances which the environment seems to create quite wantonly - and this is not one of the least of the aspects of the cosmic illusion; these possibilities - accumulations of coincidences, of appearances contrary to a reality which they hide - are necessary applications of the principle of contradiction which is included in universal Possibility. Sometimes the paradox is intentional on man's part, as is shown by the classic example of Omar Khayyam, whose wisdom clothed in frivolity is opposed to phariseeism clothed in piety; if religious hypocrisy is possible, the contrary paradox must equally be so.""

"The Absolute by definition includes the Infinite — their common content being Perfection or the Good — and the Infinite in its turn gives rise, at the degree of that "lesser Absolute" that is Being, to ontological All-Possibility. Being cannot not include efficient Possibility, because it cannot prevent the Absolute from including the Infinite. Possibility has so to speak two dimensions, one "horizontal" and one "descending," or one "qualitative" and one "quantitative," analogically or metaphorically speaking. The first contains the indefinitely diverse qualities and archetypes, whereas the second projects them in the direction of "nothingness" or impossibility. In drawing away from its source — namely pure Being — the second dimension on the one hand coagulates the qualities and archetypes, and on the other manifests their contraries; whence ultimately the phenomenon of contrastive manifestation, and consequently of evil. Being, which coincides with the personal God, cannot prevent evil because, as we have said, It cannot abolish, and could not wish to abolish, the Infinitude of the pure Absolute. And this resolves the following difficulty: if God is both good and omnipotent, why does He not abolish evil? Does He not wish to, or can He not do so? For the reasons we have just indicated, He cannot abolish evil as such — and He does not wish to abolish it because He knows its metaphysical necessity — but He is able and wishes to abolish particular evils, and in fact, all particular evils are transient;(2) the cosmogonic unfolding itself is transient since universal Manifestation is subject to phases and becomes reabsorbed "periodically" into the Apocatastasis or the "Night of Brahman.""