Alhassanain(p) Network for Heritage and Islamic Thought

Notes

1. The Hindu expression Sat-Chit Ananda is one of the Names of God. Sat-Chit- Ananda is usually translated as “Being-Consciousness-Bliss,” but the most “essential” translation-the one that makes most clear the metaphysical meaning of these terms-is “Object-Subject-Union.” At the highest level this ternary may also be expressed as “Known-Knower-Knowledge” or “Beloved-Lover-Love.” This ternary also has an operative or spiritual meaning related to invocatory prayer, such as the Prayer of Jesus (Christianity), japa (Hinduism), and dhikr (Islam). Here it takes the form of “Invoked-Invoker-Invocation” (in Islamic terms madhkur-dhakir-dhikr).

2. “The substance of knowledge is Knowledge of the Substance; that is, the substance of human intelligence, in its most deeply real function, is the perception of the Divine Substance.” “Atma-Maya,” Studies in Comparative Religion, Summer 1973, p. 130.

3. Gen. 2:17 and 3:24.

St. Bonaventure describes man in the state of unitive knowledge as follows, “In the initial state of creation, man was made fit for the quiet of contemplation, and therefore God placed him in a paradise of delights (Gen. 2:15). But turning from the true light to changeable good, man was bent over by his own fault, and the entire human race by original sin, which infected human nature in two ways: the mind with ignorance and the flesh with concupiscence. As a result, man, blinded and bent over, sits in darkness and does not see the light of heaven unless grace with justice come to his aid against concupiscence and unless knowledge with wisdom come to his aid against ignorance.” Bonaventure, The Soul’s Journey into God, trans. and introd. by E. Cousins, New York, 1978, p. 62.

4. The Muslim sages, when discussing metaphysical subjects, especially if they concern the nature of God, state that it was so as so and then add, often abruptly, al-an kama kan (“And it is now as it was then.”), confirming the identity of the present “now” with that “then” or moment “in the beginning” which was the origin of things in time yet stood itself outside of time.

5. “Ce qui est naturel à la conscience humaine prouve ipso facto sa vérité essentielle, la raison d’être de l’intelligence étant l’adéquation au réel.” F. Schuon, “Conséquences découlant du mystère de la subjectivité,” Sophia Perennis 4/1 (Spring 1978): 12; also in the author’s Du Divin à l’humain (in press).

6. The well-known Scholastic principle is adaequatio rei et iniellectus which St. Thomas comments upon in his saying, “knowledge comes about in so far as the object known is within the knower.”

7. Plato used theologia as the highest form of philosophy which was to know the Supreme Good through the intellect. St. Augustine adopted the term theologica naturalis in his De civitas Dei, basing himself on M. Terentius Varro’s distinction between natural theology and ideas related to myths and the state. From Augustinian teachings there issued the distinction between revealed and natural theology which Scholasticism treated as a branch of philosophy. See W. Jaeger, The Theology of the Greek Thinkers, Oxford, 1947, pp. 1-5. It is significant to note that with the radical secularization of reason and the process of knowing natural theology was discarded, to be resuscitated in the last few years along with the rise of interest in the more traditional conception of reason in its relation to both the Intellect and revelation.

8. “Les lois de la logique sont sacrées,-comme aussi celles des mathématiques,-car elles relèvent essentiellement de l’ontologie, qu’elles appliquent à un domaine particulier: la logique est l’ontologie de ce microcosme qu’est la raison humaine.” F. Schuon, “Pas de droit sacré à l’absurdité,” Études Traditionnelles 79/460 (Avril-Mai-Juin 1978): 59.

9. “Nous ajouterons-et c’est même ce qui import le plus-que les lois de la logique se trouvent enracinées dans la nature divine, c’est-à-dire qu’elles manifestent, dans l’esprit humain, des rapports ontologiques; la délimitation même de la logique est extrinsèquement chose logique, sans quoi elle est arbitraire. Que la logique soit inopérante en l’absence des données objectives indispensables et des qualifications subjectives, non moins nécessaires, c’est l’evidence même, et c’est ce qui réduit à néant les constructions lucifériennes des rationalistes, et aussi, sur un tout autre plan, certains spéculations sentimentales et expéditives des théologiens.” F. Schuon, “L’enigme de l’Epiclèse,” Études Traditionnelles 79/459 (Jan.-Feb.-Mar. 1978): 7; also in the author’s Christianisme /Islam-Visions d’oeucuménisme ésotéruque (in press).

10. Schuon, “Pas de droit sacré à l’absurdité,” p. 52.

11. See, for example,W. C. Smith, Faith and Belief, Princeton, 1979, where a sharp distinction is made between faith and belief in the modern sense of the word as it is shorn of all elements of doctrinal certitude and separated from a knowledge which is rooted in the Divine. The author quite rightly distinguishes between the meaning of belief as certain knowledge in the traditional context and its reduction to conjecture and knowledge mixed with doubt in the modern world.

12. See R. Guénon, Man and His Becoming According to the Vedanta, trans. R. C.Nicholson, London, 1945, p. 14.

13. In this study gnosis is always used in the sense of sapiential knowledge or wisdom, as the knowledge which unifies and sanctifies and not in a sectarian sense as related to gnosticism or in a narrow theological sense as employed by certain early Christian authors who contrasted it with sophia.

14. The term jnîana implies principial knowledge which leads to deliverance and is related etymologically to gnosis, the root gn or kn meaning knowledge in various Indo-European languages including English.

15. See A. K. Coomaraswamy, Hinduism and Buddhism, New York, 1943.

16. See T. R. V. Murti, The Central Philosophy of Buddhism, London, 1955; E.Conze, Buddhist Thought in India, London, 1964; F. I. Stcherbatsky, The Conception of Buddhist Nirvana,NewYork, 1973; and K. Venkata Ramanan, Nagarjuna,Siddha-Nagarjuna’s Philosophy as presented in the Maha-prajnîa paramita-sastra, Rutland, Vt., 1966.

17. “If one considers the canonical image of the Buddha, the following observation can be made:. . if he is the supreme Knowledge, the lotus will be contemplation, with all the virtues that are implied in it.” F. Schuon, In the Tracks of Buddhism, trans. M. Pallis, London, 1968, p. 157.

18. This “nature” could be interpreted in the Islamic tradition as al-fit.rah or the primordial nature which is the nature possessed by man when he lived in the proximity of the Tree of Life and ate the fruit of unitive knowledge or wisdom and which he still carries at the center of his being.

19. H. A. Giles, Chuang-Tz˘u-Taoist Philosopher and Chinese Mystic, London, 1961, p. 119.

20. Ibid., p. 127. This is the Chinese manner of stating that knowledge of principles allows man to see things in divinis and finally return to the Divine Origin of all things himself. This theme is also developed in many chapters of the Tao-Te Ching, concerning the perfect man who is characterized by knowledge of principles which is of course always combined with virtue. See C. Elorduy, Lao-Tse-La Gnosis Taoista del Tao Te Ching, Ona, Burgos, 1961, esp. “El hombre perfecto,” pp. 53-58.The apparent opposition of Lao-Tze to wisdom is to ostentatious “wisdom” and not knowledge as such as the verses of chap. 33, “He who knows men has wisdom-He who is self-knowing is enlightened,” bear out. Lao-Tze also emphasizes the “primordial nature” of man, the “uncarved block,” and the importance of “unknowing” to reach that state. For example, the verses of chap. 81 (trans. G. Feng and J. English, in Lao-Tsu: Tao Te Ching, New York, 1972), Those who know are not learned, Those who are learned do not know.Here learning means the assembling of facts and worldly knowledge to which principial knowing is contrasted. That is why (ibid., chap. 48)In the pursuit of tearning, every day something is acquired. In the pursuit of Tao, every day something is dropped.The “something dropped” refers to the process which is also called “unknowing” and which is central in reaching sacred knowledge as certain of the most important sapiential schools in theWest, to which we shall turn shortly, have emphasized.

21. On Manichaean gnosis see N. C. Puech, Le Manichéisme: son fondateur, sa doctrine, Paris, 1949.

22. On this doctrine and Zoroastrian angelology in general see A. V. W. Jackson, Zoroastrian Studies, New York, 1928; R. C. Zaehner, Zurvan, A Zoroastrian Dilemma, Oxford, 1955; G. Widengren, The Great Vohu Manah and the Apostle of God: Studies in Iranian and Manichaean Religion, Leipzig, 1945; idem, Die Religionen Irans, Stuttgart, 1965; M. Molé, Culte, mythe et cosmologie dans l’Iran ancien; le problème zoroastrien et la tradition mazdéenne, Paris, 1963; H. S. Nyberg, Die Religionen des alten Iran, Leipzig, 1938; and many of the works of Corbin including his En Islam iranien, 4 vols., Paris, 1971-

72; and Celestial Body and Spiritual Earth, from Mazdean Iran to Shi‘ite Iran, trans. N. Pearson, Princeton, 1977.

23. “There are many kinds of masculinity and femininity. Masculinity and femininity are ever thus: innate wisdom and acquired wisdom. Acquired wisdom occupies the place of the masculine, and innate wisdom occupies the place of the feminine.. . Innate wisdom without acquired wisdom is like a female without a male, who does not conceive and does not bear fruit. A man who possesses acquired wisdom, but whose innate wisdom is not perfect, is like a female who is not receptive to a male.” Aturpat-i Emetan, The Wisdom of the Sasanian Sages (Denkard VI), trans. S. Shaked, Boulder, 1979, p. 103.

24. See G. von Rad, Wisdom in Israel, London, 1972.

25. See L. Schaya, The Universal Meaning of the Kabbalah, trans. N. Pearson, London, 1971.

26. Liqqutei Amarim [Tanya] by Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, trans. N. Mindel, Brooklyn, N.Y., 1965, pp. 26-27.

27. Ibid., p. 113.

28. Ibid., pp. 113-14.

29. Jewish esoterism also speaks in an erotic language when discussing the three Sefiroth, Chachma, Binah, Da‘ath, together abbreviated as Chabad, which are wisdom, understanding, and knowledge in both the principial, Divine Order and in the human microcosm considered in its totality. Chachma is considered as the father, Binah as the mother, and the Da‘ath as the son born of their union. (Da‘ath also means sexual union, indicating the symbolic relation between the ecstasy of sexual union and gnosis).

“Chachma is called Abba (Father), and Binah is called Imma (Mother). Metaphorically speaking, the seed of Abba is implanted in the womb of Imma, and there the rudimentary plant of the seed is developed, expanded, externalised, and informed. Da‘ath is called Ben (Son), i.e., the offspring of this union of Chachma and Binah.” Rabbi Jacob Immanuel Sebochet, Introduction to the English Translation of IGERETH HAKODESH, Brooklyn, N.Y., 1968, p. 35.

30. F. Schuon, Understanding Islam, trans. D. M. Matheson, London, 1963, chap. 1; and S. H. Nasr, Ideals and Realities in Islam, London, 1980, chap. 1. We have dealt extensively with the Islamic conception of knowledge and the central role of intelligence as the means of access to the Divinity in many of our other writings including Science and Civilization in Islam, Cambridge, Mass., 1968; and An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines, London-Boulder, 1978.

31. See F. Rosenthal, Knowledge Triumphant: The Concept of Knowledge in Medieval Islam, Leiden, 1970, where this theme is treated from a scholarly rather than a metaphysical point of view but with much worthwhile documentation. Rosenthal, looking as a historian upon the meaning of knowledge in the Islamic perspective as reflected in the sayings of the Prophet, writes, “In the Prophet’s view of the world, ‘knowledge’ which in its totality is a matter of deepest concern to him consists of two principal parts. There is human knowledge, that is, a secular knowledge of an elementary or more advanced character and a religious human knowledge; the latter constitutes the highest development of knowledge attainable to man.. . But in addition to human knowledge both secular and religious, there also exists a divine knowledge. It is basically identical with human knowledge, still, it is somehow of a higher order both quantitatively and qualitatively. The most important features of these aspects of knowledge are felt and respected by the Prophet as interlocking and interdependent.” Ibid., p. 31.

On the Islamic conception of knowledge see also ‘Abd al-H. alım Mah.mud, “Islam and Knowledge,” Al-Azhar Academy of Islamic Research: First Conference of the Academy of Islamic Research, Cairo, 1971, pp. 407-53.

32. The relation between Greek and Hindu wisdom as compared and studied by such a figure as A. K. Coomaraswamy is principial and not merely historical even if certain historical links may have existed between them as asserted by many recent authors such as J. W. Sedlar, India and the Greek World, Totowa, N.J., 1980.

33. There are exceptional studies of much value which have remained fully aware of the link between Greek philosophy and various dimensions of Greek religion. See, for example, F. Cornford, Principium sapientiae: the Origins of Greek Philosophical Thought, Cambridge, 1952; idem, From Religion to Philosophy: a Study in the Origins of Western

Speculation, New York, 1957; and idem, The Unwritten Philosophy and Other Essays, Cambridge, 1967.

34. V. 12 on from the King James Version.

35. Quoted by F. Schuon in Spiritual Perspectives and Human Facts, trans. D. M. Matheson, London, 1953, p. 153. “If the life of the spirit is the illumination of knowledge and if it is love of God which produces this illumination, then it is right to say: there is nothing higher than love of God.” St. Maximus the Confessor, Centuries of Charity, And “Holy knowledge draws the purified spirit, even as the magnet, by a natural force it possesses, draws iron.” Evagrius of Ponticum, Centuries of Charity (both cited from Schuon, Spiritual Perspectives and Human Facts, p. 153). The chap. “Love and Knowledge” in Spiritual Perspectives and Human Facts contains the essence of the meaning of the way of knowledge or the sapiential path in Christian spirituality as well as in other traditions.

36. There is no doubt that certain forms of Christology rejected byWestern Christianity during later centuries in order to combat various types of theological heresy, had a profound metaphysical significance when interpreted not only theologically and literally but metaphysically and symbolically. See F. Schuon, Logic and Transcendence, trans. P. N. Townsend, New York, 1975, esp. pp. 96ff.

37. See A. Feuillet, Le Christ sagesse de Dieu, Paris, 1966; and E. E. Ellis, Prophecy and Hermeneutic in Early Christianity, Grand Rapids, 1978, esp. pp. 45ff.

38. See, for example, J. Dupont, La Connaissance religieuse dans les Epitres de Saint Paul, Paris, 1960.

39. On Clement and his gnostic doctrines see T. Camelot, Foi et gnose. Introduction à l’étude de la connaissance mystiaue chez Clément d’Alexandrie, Paris, 1945; J. Daniélou, Histoire des doctrines chrétiennes avant Nicée.t. II: Message evangélique et culture hellénistique aux IIe et IIIe siècles, Paris, 1961; J. Munck, Untersuchungen über Klemens von Alexandria, Copenhagen/Stuttgart, 1933; E. F. Osborn, The Philosophy of Clement of Alexandria, Cambridge, 1954; andW. Völker, Der wahre Gnostiker Clemens Alexandrianus, Berlin, 1952. In this as in other similar instances in this book, the bibliographical references do not mean to be  exhaustive but are simply a guide for those who wish to pursue further study of the figure in question. Needless to say, there is a vast literature on Clement, much of which is indicated in the bibliographies contained in the scholarly works cited above.

40. Of course Intellect is used in this context and in fact throughout this work in its original sense of intellectus or nous and as distinct from reason or ratio which is its reflection.

41. “He who is already pure in heart, not because of the commandments, but for the sake of knowledge by itself,-that man is a friend of God.” Clement of Alexandria Miscellanies Book VII, introd., translation and notes by F. J. A.Hort, London, 1902, p. 31.

42. “It is our business then to prove that the gnostic alone is holy and pious, worshipping the true God as befits him; and the worship which befits God includes both loving God and being loved by him. To the gnostic every kind of pre-eminence seems honourable in proportion to its worth. In the world of sense rulers and parents and elders generally are to be honoured; in matters of teaching, the most ancient philosophy and the earliest prophecy; in the spiritual world, that which is elder in origin, the Son, the beginning and first-fruit of all existing things, himself timeless and without beginning; from whom the gnostic believes that he receives the knowledge of the ultimate cause, the Father of the universe, the earliest and most beneficent of all existences, no longer reported by word of mouth, but worshipped and adored, as is his due, with silent worship and holy awe; who was manifested indeed by the Lord so far as it was possible for the learners to understand, but apprehended by those whom the Lord has elected for knowledge, those, says the apostle, who have their senses exercised.” Library of Christian Classics, vol. II, Alexandrian Christianity, selected and trans. J. E. L. Oulton and H. Chadwick, London, 1954.

43. Stromateis IV. 6.

44. On Origen see W. R. Inge, Origen, London, 1946; M. Harl, Origène et la fonction révéllatrice du verbe incarné, Paris, 1958; H. de Lubac, Histoire et Esprit, l’intelligence de l’Écriture d’après Origène, Paris, 1950; R. A. Greer (ed.), Origen, New York, 1979; J.

Oulton and H. Chadwick, Alexandrian Christianity; Selected Translations of Clement and Origen, Philadelphia, 1954; H. Urs von Balthasar, Geist und Feuer. Ein Aufbau aus seinen Schriften, Salzburg, 1951; and E. R. Redepenning, Origenes. Eine Darstellung seines Lebens und seiner Lehre, 2 vols., Bonn, 1966.

45. “Thus, just as a human being is said to be made up of body, soul and spirit, so also is the Sacred Scripture, which has been granted by God’s gracious dispensation for man’s salvation.” From First Principles, book 4, cited in Greer, op. cit, p. 182.

46. “And if anyone reads the revelations made to John, how can he fail to be amazed at how great an obscurity of ineffable mysteries is present here? It CHAPTER 1. KNOWLEDGE AND ITS DESACRALIZATION 46 is evident that even those who cannot understand what lies hidden in them nevertheless understand that something lies hidden. And indeed, the letters of the apostles, which do seem to some clearer, are they not filled with profound ideas that through them, as through some small opening, the brightness of an immense light seems to be poured forth for those who can understand the meaning of divine wisdom?” Ibid., p. 181.

47. See de Lubac, op. cit. Origen devotes much of his First Principles to the question of the Logos in its relation to the attainment of knowledge by man. “. . das Christliche Leben sich für Origenes als eine fortschneitende Laüterung und darauffolgende Erkenntnis formt.” H. Koch, Pronoia und Paideusis, Berlin and Leipzig, 1932, p. 84. Koch gives an analysis of Origen’s “theory of knowledge” in pp. 49-62 of this work.

48. “Le logos est présent, en l’homme, chez qui il est l’intelligence. Parce qu’il se trouve ê la fois en Dieu et en l’homme, comme en deux extrémités, il peut les relier et il le fait, d’autant mieux qu’il est également entre les deux, comme un intermédiaire de connaissance. Il joue le rôle que joue la lumière pour la vision des objets: la lumière rend l’objet lumineux et elle permet à l’oeil de voir, elle est lumière de l’objet et lumière du sujet, intermédiaire de vision. De la même façon, le logos est à la fois intelligibilité de Dieu et l’agent d’intellection de l’homme, médiateur de connaissance.” Harl, op. cit., p. 94.

49. Origen, The Song of Songs-Commentary and Homilies, trans. and annotated by R. P. Lawson, London, 1957, p. 61.

50. “In as much as man is endowed with an intellect, he is by nature a being illumined by God.” E. Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of Saint Augustine, New York, 1960, p. 80.

51. “Thus God does not take the place of our intellect when we think the truth. His illumination is needed only to make our intellects capable of thinking the truth, and this by virtue of a natural order of things expressly established by Him.” Ibid., p. 79. This quotation also shows that already in Augustinian epistemology the sacred character of knowledge is perceived in a somewhat more indirect manner than what we find in the “gnostic” perspective of the Alexandrian fathers.

52. In describing the sapiential dimension in Christianity one could practically confine oneself to Dionysius alone, seeing how important his teachings were. But from the point of view of this cursory study it suffices to emphasize the significance of his well-known doctrines whose development can be seen in Erigena, Eckhart, Cusa, and so many other laterWestern masters of sapience. On Dionysius, so unjustly referred to as pseudo-Dionysius as if to detract from the significance of his works through such an appelation, see M. de Gandillac (ed.), Oeuvres complètes du pseudo-Denys d’Aréopagite, Paris, 1943; R. Roques, Structures thélogigues de la gnose à Richard de Saint-Victor, Paris, 1962; idem, L’Univers dionysien. Structure hiérarchique du monde selon le pseudo-Denys, Paris, 1954; W. Voelker, Kontemplation und Ekstase bei Pseudo-Dionysius Ar., Wiesbaden, 1954; and A. M. Greeley, Ecstasy: AWay of Knowing, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1974.

53. There is a great amount of literature on Erigena in various European languages. See, for example, R. Roques, Libres sentiers vers l’Erigénisme, Rome, 1975; G. Allegro, G. Scoto Eriugena-Antrolopogia, Rome, 1976, esp. “Intelletto umano et intelletto angelico,” pp. 62ff.; idem, G. Scoto Eriugena, Fede e ragione, Rome, 1974; J. J. O’Meara and L. Bieler (eds.). The Mind of Erigena, Dublin, 1973; E.Jeanneau (trans.), Jean Scot, Homelie sur le prologue de Jean, Paris, 1969, which shows the degree of devotion of Erigena to John whom he almost divinizes as being “superhuman”; G. Kaldenbach, Die Kosmologie des Johannes Scottus Erigena, Munich, 1963; G. Bonafede, Scoto Eriugena, Palermo, 1969; C. Albanese, II Pensiero di Giovanni Eriugena, Messina, 1929; H. Bert, Johannes Scotus Erigena, A Study in Medieval Philosophy, Cambridge, 1925; A. Gardner, Studies in John

The Scot, New York, 1900; M. S. Taillandier, Scot Erigène et la philosophic scholastique, Strasbourg-Paris, 1843; and T. Gregory, Giovanni Scoto Eriugena, Tre studi, Florence, 1963.

54. See, for example, W. Seul, Die Gotteserkenntnis bei Johannes Skotus Eriugena, Bonn, 1932; and A. Schneider, Die Erkenntnislehre des Johannes Erigena, Berlin and Leipzig, 1923, both of which give a rather rationalistic interpretation of Erigena reducing Erigena’s doctrines to a “harmless” Neoplatonist influence. Later studies have emphasized his Christian character somewhat more but nevertheless still fail for the most part to see in him a crystallization of something essential to the sapiential dimension of Christianity.

55. “Spesso ci si è cruduti costretti a doner scegliere una posizione di fronte alla celebre riduzione, o identificazione, che Scoto compie fra ‘vera religio’ e ‘vera philosophia’.” Allegro, G. Scoto Eriugena, Fede e ragione, p. 63.

56. “C’est la sagesse, la sapience, qui est cette vertu commune à l’homme et à l’ange; c’est elle qui donne à l’esprit la pure contemplation, et lui fait apercevoir l’Éternel, l’Immuable.” Taillandier, op. cit., p. 84.

57. “All the natural (liberal arts) concur in signifying Christ in a symbolic manner, (these arts) in whose limits is included the totality of Divine Scripture.” Expositiones super ierarchiam caelestiam sancti Dionysii, ed. H. J. Floss in Patrologia Latina 122, I, 140A. Erigena states that in the same way that nous is an image of God, artes is an image of Christ. See Roques, Libres sentiers, p. 62.

58. “When [our reason] possesses the presence of the Word of God, it knows the intelligible realities and God Himself, but not by its own means, rather by grace of the Divine Light that is infused in him.” Jeanneau (trans.), op. cit., p. 266.

59. See Allegro, G. Scoto Eriugena, Fede e ragione, “Il mondo come teofania,” pp. 285ff. This relation between the sapiential perspective and interest in the study of nature as the theater of divine activity is to be seen throughout the whole sapiential tradition in theWest and is one of the very few principles in which all of theWestern esoteric schools of later centuries, even those whose knowledge remains partial, are in accord.

60. “Et puisque Dieu se crée dans sa manifestation, celle-ci se crée elle-même sous la motion divine en exprimant Dieu et elle-même. Dieu passe du Rien au Tout en suscitant les causes primordiales et l’esprit. Indivisiblement, l’esprit crêe tire de cette nuit illurmnatrice le déploiement qui le fait esprit, c’est-à-dire conscience du tout et de soi-même. Il y a une noophanie ê l’interieur de la théophanie. Si bien qu’on peut dire à la fois que Dieu se pense dans les esprits qu’il illumine et que cette pensée est leur autoréalisation.” J. Trouillard, “Erigène et la théophanie créatrice,” in O’Meara and Bieler (eds.), op. cit., p. 99.

61. Following the dictum of Dionysius, Cognito earum, quae sunt, ea quae sunt, est.

62. See Bett, op. cit., p. 86.

63. See R. Roques, “Remarques sur la signification de Jean Scot Erigène,” in Miscellanea A. Combes, Rome, 1967.

64. There is no doubt that both St. Bonaventure and St. Thomas were metaphysicians, properly speaking, as well as theologians as can be seen when they are treated metaphysically and not only theologically by a figure such as A. K.Coomaraswamy. But the fact remains that their purely sapiential teachings (esp. that of St. Thomas) became more or less veiled in a theology which, although of great value, also helped create an intellectual climate in which gnosis appeared to be of less direct concern and in fact less and less accessible to the extent that during the Renaissance many figures had to search outside the prevalent Christian theological orthodoxy for the kind of wisdom or gnosis which had been more accessible within theWestern Christian tradition during earlier centuries of Christian history. It seems that for St. Thomas reason impregnated and supported by faith was of greater consequence than intelligence in its sacramental function. St. Thomas was certainly not opposed to intellection although he did not consider in a central manner the role and function of the intelligence as a sacrament because of his adoption of Aristotelianism which counters a penetrating and interiorizing intelligence with an exteriorized and exteriorizing will.

“In the case of the Stagirite, the intelligence is penetrating but the tendency of the will is exteriorizing, in conformity moreover with the cosmolatry of the majority of the Greeks; it is this that enabled Saint Thomas to support the religious thesis regarding the ‘natural’ character of the intelligence, so called because it is neither revealed nor sacramental, and

the reduction of intelligence to reason illuminated by faith, the latter alone being granted the right to be ‘supernatural’.” F. Schuon, Logic and Transcendence, pp. 174-75.

As for St. Bonaventure he remains closer to the Augustinian position emphasizing illumination and that “cotuition,” to use his own terminology, which for him is the sixth and crowning stage of the journey of the mind to God even beyond the realm of the contemplation of God as Being to the Divine Darkness. See St. Bonaventure, The Mind’s journey to God-Itinerarium Mentis in Deum, trans. L. S. Cunningham, Chicago, 1975.

In any case, any complete study of Christian sapiential teachings would have to include certainly the theology of St. Bonaventure and also those of St. Thomas, Duns Scotus, and others which this more cursory survey has to leave aside. Another reason for our passing rapidly over medieval theology is the fact that these schools are well-known in comparison with the more directly gnostic teachings.

65. On Eckhart’s doctrine of knowledge as related to the sacred see E. Heinrich, Verklärung und Erlösung im Vedânta, bei Meister Eckhart und bei Schelling, Munich, 1961, esp. “Von der Verklärung und von der Einung mit der Gottheit,” pp. 80ff.; J. Kopper, Die Metaphysik Meister Eckharts, Saarbrücken, 1955, esp. pp. 73-121; J. Hammerich, Über das Wesen der Götterung bei Meister Eckhart, Speyer, 1939; H. Schlötermann, “Logos und Ratio, Die platonische Kontinuität in der deutschen Philosophie des Meister Eckhart,” in Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 3 (1949): 219-39; O. Spann, “Meister Eckharts mystische Erkenntnislehre,” in Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 3 (1949): 339-55; G. Stephenson, Gottheit und Gott in der spekulativen Mystik Meister Eckharts, Bonn, 1954, esp. pp. 73-96; V. Lossky, Théologie négative et connaissance de Dieu chez Maître Eckhart, Paris, 1960; J. M. Clark, Meister Eckhart. An Introduction to the Study of His Works, New York, 1957; E. Soudek, Meister Eckhart, Stuttgart, 1973; C. Clark, The Great Human Mystics, Oxford, 1949; V. Brandstätter and E. Sulek, Meister Eckharts mystische Philosophie, Graz, 1974; and F. Brunner, Maître Eckhart, introduction, suivi de textes traduits pour la premier fois du latin en français, Paris, 1969, which contains an exceptional treatment of Meister Eckhart from the point of view of traditional metaphysics or the scientia sacra with which we shall deal later.

The extent of recent interest in Eckhart can be gauged from the number of current works on the master such as C. F. Kelley, Master Eckhart on Divine Knowledge, New Haven, 1977; R. Shurmann, Meister Eckhart: Mystic & Philosopher, Bloomington, Indiana, 1978; M. C.Walshe, Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, London, 1980; and many new translations or editions of older translations such as the well-known one by F. Pfeiffer as well as numerous comparative studies which involve him and different masters of Oriental wisdom. An incomparable and masterly work of this kind is A. K. Coomaraswamy, The Transformation of Nature in Art, which contains an exposition of the metaphysics of art of Meister Eckhart and the traditional doctrines issuing from Hinduism.

66. St. Thomas had used this term in Latin (scintilla animae) before Eckhart, but this concept plays a more central role in Eckhart esp. as far as epistemology is concerned.

67. See V. Lossky, op. cit., p. 180, where one can find a masterly analysis of many CHAPTER 1. KNOWLEDGE AND ITS DESACRALIZATION 50 Eckhartian theses.

68. E. Cassirer, who was one of the major influences in the revival of interest in Cusa, in fact believed that Cusa tried to create a third way or school beside the Scholastic and humanist schools which were combating each other during the Renaissance. See Cassirer, Individuum und Kosmos in der Philosophie der Renaissance, Leipzig, 1927.

69. On Cusa see, E. Van Steenberghe, he Cardinal Nicholas de Cues, Paris, 1920; H.Bett, Nicholas of Cusa, London, 1932, esp. chap. 5 where his theory of knowledge is discussed but somewhat rationalistically; P. de Gandillac, La Philosophie de Nicholas de Cues, Paris, 1941; A. Bonetti, La ricerca metafisica nel pensiero de Nicolo Cusano, Bresca, 1973; N. Herold, Menschliche Perspektive und Wahrheit, Munster, 1975; A. Bruntrup, Konnen und Sein, Munich, 1973; G. Schneider, Gott-das Nichtandere, Untersuchunger zum metaphysichen Grunde bei Nickolaus von Kues, Munster, 1970; K. Jacobi, Die Methode der Cusanischen Philosophie, Munich, 1969; N. Henke, Der Abbildbegriff in der Erkenntnislehre des Nickolaus von Kues, Munster, 1967; and A. Lubke, Nikolaus von Kues, Kirchenfurst zwinschen Mittelalter und Neuzeit, Munich, 1968.

70. See E. Gilson, The Unity of Philosophical Experience, New York, 1937.

71. See, for example, H. Oberman, “The Theology of Nominalism,” Harvard Theological Review 53 (1960): 47-79.

72. J. P. Dolan (ed.), Unity and Reform-SelectedWritings of Nicholas of Cusa, Chicago, 1962, p. 105.

73. Ibid., pp. 8-9.

74. This is treated extensively by de Gandillac in his work cited in n. 69 above.

75. “Just as any knowledge of the taste of something we have never tasted is quite empty until we do taste it, so the taste of this wisdom cannot be acquired by hearsay but by one’s actually touching it with his internal sense, and then he will bear witness not of what he has heard but what he has experimentally tasted in himself.” From De sapientia, quoted in Dolan, op. cit., pp. 111-12.

76. “Wisdom is the infinite and never failing food of life upon which our spirit lives eternally since it is not able to love anything other than wisdom and truth. Every intellect seeks after being and its being is living; its living is to understand; its understanding is nurtured on wisdom and truth. Thus it is that the understanding that does not taste clear wisdom is like an eye in the darkness. It is an eye but it does not see because it is not in light. And because it lacks a delectable life which for it consists in seeing, it is in pain and torment and this is death rather than life. So too, the intellect that turns to anything other than the food of eternal wisdom will find itself outside of life, bound up in the darkness of ignorance, rather dead than alive. This is the interminable torment, to have an intellect and never to understand. For it is only the eternal wisdom in which every intellect can understand.” Dolan, op. cit., pp. 108-9.

77. See A. Conrad, “La docte ignorance cusaine,” Etudes Traditionnelles 78/458 (Oct.-Dec. 1977): 164-71.

78. See F. Schuon, “Le problème de l’evangélisme,” in his Christianisme/Islam, chap. 3.

79. It is of interest to note that this theosophy survived during the past four centuries almost exclusively in Lutheran areas or those influenced by Lutheranism. The German Lutheran mystic Tersteegen in fact distinguishes clearly between Christian mystics and theosophers, claiming all theosophers to be mystics but not all mystics to be theosophers “whose spirit has explored the depths of the Divinity under Divine guidance and whose spirit has known such marvels thanks to an infallible vision.” From his Kurzer Bericht von der Mystik quoted by Schuon (ibid.).

80. The work of J. S. Bach is a perfect example of this type of music in which the deepest yearning of the European soul for the sacred seems to have taken refuge in an age when the other art forms had become so depleted of the sense of the sacred. Even the Coffee Cantata of Bach is of a more religious character than many a modern setting of the Psalms to music. A work like the B Minor Mass has an archetectonic structure impregnated with a powerful piety and sense of the sacred which make it very akin and conformable to the sapiential perspective. On the metaphysics of musical polyphony and counterpoint in which Bach was a peerless master see M. Pallis, “Metaphysics of Musical Harmony,” in his A Buddhist Spectrum, London, 1980, pp. 121ff.

81. “Pour Böhme, la Sagesse est une Vierge éternelle, symbole de Dieu, reflet du Ternaire, image dans laquelle ou par laquelle le Seigneur s’exprime en dévoilant la richesse infinie de la virtualité. Dans le mirroir de la Sagesse la volonté divine trace le plan, la figure de son action créatrice. Elle ‘imagine’ dans ce mirroir, acte qui représente l’acte magique par excellence. Ainsi s’accomplit le mystère d’exprimer, de traduire, dans des images finies la pensée infinie de Dieu.” A.Faivre, L’Ésotérisme au XVIIIe siècle en France et en Allemagne, Paris, 1973, p.38.

On Boehme see A. Koyré, La Philosophie de Jacob Boehme, Paris, 1929; E.Benz, “Über die Leiblichkeit des Geistigen zur Theologie der Leiblichkeit bei Jacob Böhme,” in S. H. Nasr (ed.), Mélanges offerts à Henry Corbin, Paris-Tehran, 1977, pp. 451-520; Benz, Der Vollkommene Mensch nach Jacob Boehme, Stuttgart, 1937; Revue Hermès, (ed. J. Masui) 3 (1964-65), containing articles on Boehme; R. M. Jones, Spiritual Reformers in the 16th and 17th Centuries, London, 1914, chaps. 9-11; H. T. Martensen, Jacob Boehme: His Life and Teaching, trans. T. Rhys Evans, London, 1885; H. Tesch, Vom Dreifachen Leben, Bietigheim/Württ., 1971; G. Wehr, Jakob Böhme in Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten, Hamburg, 1971; V.Weiss, Die Gnosis Jakob Böhmes, Zurich, 1955; V. Hans Grunsky,

Jacob Boehme, Stuttgart, 1956; H. H. Brinton, The Mystic Will, New York, 1930; and A. J. Penny, Studies in Jacob Böhme, London, 1912.

82. Boehme deals with this theme esp. in chap. 14 of his De signatura rerum.

83. According to A. Koyré, the desire for the Eternal is “aussi le gage de la possibilité d’atteindre à une connaissance parfaite de Dieu, et de le connaitre à la fois dans la nature par laquelle il s’exprime et dans l’âme ou il habite, virtuellement au moins.” Koyré, La Philosophie de Jacob Boehme, p. 454.

84. This is the specifically Baaderian interpretation of Boehme, but certainly implicit in his writings.

85. Boehme treats this question in his Mysterium Magnum chap. XXXV, 60. The idea of a “natural language” of a sacred character can also be found in other sapiential works of the period such as Confessio Fraternitatis der Hochlöblichen Bruderschaft von Rosenkreutz. See Koyré, op. cit., p. 457, n. 4.

86. “When God recognizes and views Himself with holy delight, He apprehends not only Himself, but also all His contents-the ‘fullness’ of His universe. This fullness, which is best thought of as a universe of ideas, streaming forth in multiplicity from the Father, is gathered by the Son into intellectual unity, and is shaped by the Spirit into a world of ideas, distinct from God, and yet inseparable from Him. We have here what Boehme calls wisdom.” H. L. Martensen, Jacob Boehme, trans. T. Rhys Evans, new ed. and notes by S. Hobhouse, London, 1949, p. 106.

87. On the Cambridge Platonists see J. Tulloch, Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy in England in the Seventeenth Century, 2 vols., London and Edinburgh, 1872; E. A. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science, London, 1925; F. J. Powicke, The Cambridge Platonists, London, 1926; E. Cassirer, The Platonic Renaissance in England, trans. J. P. Pettegrove, Edinburgh, 1953; C. E. Raven, Natural Religion and Christian Theology, Cambridge, 1953; S. Hutin, Henry More, Essai sur les doctrines théosophiques chez les Platoniciens de Cambridge, Hildensheim, 1966, which treats this school more from a, properly speaking, sapiential rather than merely philosophical and rational point of view; and J. A. Passmore, Ralph Cudworth, Cambridge, 1951, where an extensive bibliography of earlier works is provided.

On the theme of Henry More’s spissitudo spiritualis in comparison with doctrines developed by his Muslim contemporary Sadr al-Dın Shırazı see H. Corbin, En Islam iranien, vol. 4, p. 158. See also the “prélude à la deuxième édition” of Corbin’s Corps Spirituel et terre céleste-de l’iran mazdéen à l’iran shî‘ite, Paris, 1979.

88. “Were I indeed to define Divinity, I should rather call it a Divine life, than a Divine science; it being something rather to be understood by a Spiritual sensation, than by any Verbal description.” John Smith, “A Praefatory Discourse concerning the TrueWay or Method of Attaining to Divine Knowledge,” in E. T. Campagnac, The Cambridge Platonists, Oxford, 1961, p. 80.

It is interesting to note that despite his insistence on the primacy of Divine Knowledge, John Smith accepted Cartesian mechanism-distinguishing “science” from “wisdom”-and opposed Cudworth and More on this central issue  demonstrating not only differences of view which existed among the Cambridge Platonists but also the partial character of the traditional knowledge which this school possessed and expounded. On the differences among the Cambridge Platonists, esp. concerning Descartes who had been read by all of them, see J. E. Saveson, “Differing Reactions to Descartes Among the Cambridge Platonists,” journal of the History of Ideas 21/4 (Oct.-Dec. 1960): 560-67.

89. “Divinity indeed is a true Efflux from the Eternal light, which, like the Sunbeams, does not only enlighten, but heat and enliven; and therefore our Saviour hath in his Beatitudes connext Purity of heart with the Beatifical Vision.” Campagnac, op. cit., p. 80.

90. Campagnac, op. cit., p. 96.

91. On Angelus Silesius (Johannes Scheffler) see J. Baruzi, Création reiigieuse et pensée contemplative, 2e part.: Angelus Silesius, Paris, 1951; E. Suzini, Le Pélerin Chérubique, 2 vols., Paris, 1964; G. Ellinger, Angelus Silesius. Ein Lebensbild, Munich, 1927; H. Plard, La Mystique d’Angelus Silesius, Paris, 1943; Von Willibald Köhler, Angelus Silesius (Johannes Scheffler), Munich, 1929; J. Trautmann, Von wesentlichem Leben: Eine Auswahl aus dem CherubinischenWandersmann des Angelus Silesius,

Hamburg, 1946; J. L. Sammons, Angelus Silesius, New York, 1967; and G. Rossmann, Das königliche Leben: Besinnung auf Angelus Silesius, Zurich, 1956.

92. “Il s’agit, dans son livre, d’un retour à Dieu, et d’abord par la connaissance. C’est le sens du titre, devenu le sien à partir de la seconde édition (1675); Der Cherubische Wandermann, où sont réunies l’idée d’une marche vers Dieu, et la connaissance, ou plus exactement, la sagesse comme principe de cette marche.” H. Plard, La Mystique d’Angelus Silesius, Paris’, 1943.

93. How remarkably close is the verse of Silesius,

Stirb, ehe du noch stirbst, damit du mchte darfst sterben

Wenn du nun sterben sollst; sonst möchtest du verderben.

Die now before thou diest; that thou mayst not die

When thou shalt die, else shalt thou die eternally.

to the verses of Jalal al-Dın Rumı

 

O man go die before thou diest

So that thou shalt not have to suffer death when thou shalt die.

Such a death that thou wilst enter unto light

Not a death through which thou wilst enter unto the grave.

These and other amazingly similar utterances of Silesius and Sufi poets point not to historical borrowings but common archetypes. They indicate similar types of spirituality within the members of the Abrahamic family of religions.

94. J. Bilger, Alexandrines, Translated from the Cherubischer Wandermann of Angelus Silesius 1657, North Montpelier, N.Y., 1944, p. 33.

95. Angelus Silesius, The Cherubic Wanderer, selections trans. W. Trask, New York, 1953, p. 27.

96. Angelus Silesius, A Selection from the Rhymes of a German Mystic, trans. P. Carus, Chicago, 1909, p. 163.

97. Silesius, The Cherubic Wanderer, p. 60.

98. Silesius, A Selection, p. 152. This rather jarring anthropomorphic imagery must of course be understood in its esoteric and symbolic sense, signifying both union and ecstasy which characterize the state of the intellect when it attains knowledge of the sacred at its highest level.

99. It is certainly paradoxical that the eighteenth century which, along with the period that was to follow, must be characterized as the age of darkness from the sapiential point of view should be identified with “light,” this age being known as the Enlightenment, l’âge des lumières, illuminismo, or Aufklärung in various European languages. If in a hypothetical situation an Oriental sage such as ´Sankara or Ibn ‘Arabı were to review the later history of Western thought, perhaps few facts would amaze him more than seeing men like Diderot and Condorcet called “enlightened.” He would also be surprised that some (but of course not all) of those figures who were called les frères illuminés and who belonged to various “esoteric” and “occultist” groups were opposed to theism not from the point of view of the Advaita or the “transcendent unity of being” (wah. dat al-wujud), which “comprehends” the theistic position, but from the perspective of a deism which was practically agnostic if not outright atheistic. See E. Zolla, “Che Cosa Potrebbe Essere un Nuova Illuminismo” in his Che Cos’è la Tradizione, Milan, 1971.

It is, however, important to note also that careful studies carried out only recently have shown that there were a large number of figures in the eighteenth century who, although belonging to this period in time, stood opposed to the rationalism of the age. This group embraced many figures ranging all the way from real gnostics and theosophers who possessed authentic esoteric knowledge to different kinds of occultists who were to be the forerunners of the better known occultist groups of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. No one in recent years has done as much as A. Faivre to make better known the teachings of these marginal but important figures of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. See his L’Esotérisme au XVIIIe stiècle en France et en Allemagne, Paris, 1973; Kirchberger et l’illuminisme du XVIIIe siècle, The Hague, 1966; Epochen der Naturmystik:

Hermetische Tradition im wissenschaftlichen Forschritt, Berlin, 1977; and “De Saint-Martin à Baader, le ‘Magikon’ de Kleuker,” in Revue d’Etudes Germaniques, April-June 1968, pp. 161-90. See also R. Le Forestier, La Franc-Maçonnerie occultiste au XVIIIe siècle et l’Ordre des Elus-Coens, Paris, 1928; idem, La Franc-Maçonnerie occultiste et templière aux XVIIIe et XIXe siècles, Paris, 1970; E. Benz, Adam, der Mythus von Urmenschen, Munich, 1955; “L’illuminisme au XVIIIe siècle,” ed. R. Amadou, in Les Cahiers de la Tour Saint-Jacques, Paris, 1960; and H. Schneider, Quest for Mysteries, Ithaca, N.Y., 1947.

100. SeeA. Faivre, Eckartshausen et la théosophie chrétienne, Paris, 1969. Eckartshausen was not only influential in Russia but even left his effect upon such more recent occultists as Eliphas Lévi and Papus.

101. There is a vast literature on Swedenborg. See, for example, E. Benz, Swedenborg, Naturforscher und Seher, Munich, 1948; and H. Corbin, “Herméneutique spirituelle comparée (I. Swedenborg-II.) Gnose ismaëlienne,” in Eranos- Jahrbuch 33 (1964): 71-176, where an interesting morphological study is made of Swedenborg’s hermeneutics and that of certain Isma’ılı exegetes who sought to reveal the inner significance of the Quran.

102. On Newton and alchemy see B. Dobbs, The Foundations of Newton’s Alchemy; or, “The Hunting of the Greene Lyon,” Cambridge, 1976. Although the interest of the author is more scholarly and historical than philosophical and metaphysical, she has provided in this study much material on Newton’s alchemy not available before including a list of Newton’s considerable alchemical writings in Appendix A, pp. 235-48. On Newton’s alchemy see also P. M. Rattansi, “Newton’s Alchemical Studies,” in A. Debus (ed.), Science, Medicine and Society in the Renaissance. Essays to Honor Walter Pagel, 2 vols., New York, 1972, II, pp. 167-82.

103. Concerning Newton’s profound interest in Boehme see S. Hutin, Les Disciples anglais de Jacob Böhme, Paris, 1960; also K. R. Popp, Jakob Böhme und Isaac Newton, Leipzig, 1935. The thesis that Boehme has influenced Newton has been refuted by H. McLachlan, Sir Isaac Newton: Theological Manuscripts, Liverpool, 1950, pp. 20-21, on the basis of lack of any substantial extracts from Boehme’s writings in Newton’s theological works. His view has also been espoused by Dobbs in op. cit., pp. 9-10. On the general philosophical level of the meaning of alchemy, however, one can see a relation between them and the thesis of S. Hutin and others who claim a link between Boehme and Newton cannot be totally refuted through the lack of either citations of names or quotations of texts or even the fact that Newton had another side very different from Boehme.

104. It is remarkable how little of the writings of this important figure is available in the English language. On von Baader see H. Fischer-Barnicol (ed.), Franz von Baader vom Sinn der Gesellschaft, Köln, 1966; M. Pulver, Schriften Franz von Baaders, Leipzig, 1921; E. Susini, Franz von Baader et le romantisme mystique, 3 vols., Paris, 1942; J. Glaassen, Franz von Baaders Leben und theosophische Ideen, 2 vols., Stuttgart, 1886.

105. See E. Klamroth, DieWeltanschauung Franz von Baaders in ihrem Gegensatz zu Kant, Berlin, 1965. To Descartes’s cogito ergo sum, von Baader was to answer cogitor, ergo cogito et sum (“I am thought [by God], therefore I think and I am”), placing God’s knowledge of man as the source of both his being and intelligence. See F. Schuon, Logic and Transcendence, p. 44. For von Baader knowledge does not begin with cogito but with God’s knowledge of us.

106. This doctrine is found especially in his two major works Fermenta cognitionis and Spekulative Dogmatik.

Von Baader also considered religion as a sacred science and sacred science as religion. For him religion should be based on knowledge of a sacred character and not only sentiments. Likewise, science should be ultimately rooted in the Divine Intellect which would make of it religion in the vastest sense of this term. “Baader affirme que la religion doit devenir une science, et la science une religion; qu’il faut savoir pour croire, croire pour savoir.” A. Faivre, L’Esotérisme au XVIIIe siècle, p. 113.

107. See Susini, op. cit, esp. vols. 2-3, pp. 225ff.

108. The influence of Rossmini was to continue in Italy until recent times among such Catholic thinkers as F. Sciacca, but he is hardly known in the Englishspeaking world and remains like von Baader and similar philosophers a peripheral figure in a world where philosophy became reduced to rationalism and finally irrationalism.

109. The root of knowledge is of course the same as the Sanskrit jnîana as well as the Greek gnosis which mean both knowledge and sapiential wisdom. The distinction made in later Greek thought and also by the church fathers between gnosis and episteme already marks the separation of knowledge from its sacred source. Otherwise knowledge in English or Erkenntnis in German containing the root kn should also reflect the meaning of gnosis as jnîana does in Sanskrit, a root which implies at once knowledge and coming into being as the word genesis implies.

110. “Le ‘miracle grec’, c’est en fait la substitution de la raison a l’Intellect, du fait au Principe, du phénoméne à l’Idée, de l’accident à la Substance, de la forme à l’Essence, de l’homme à Dieu, et cela dans l’art aussi bien que dans la pensée.” F. Schuon, Le Soufisme voile et quintessence, Paris, 1980, p. 106.

111. “Le véritable miracle grec, si miracle il y a,-et dans ce cas il serait apparenté au ‘miracle hindou’,-c’est la métaphysique doctrinale et la logique méthodique, providentiellement utilisées par les Sémites monothéistes.” Ibid., p. 106.

112. See S. H. Nasr, Three Muslim Sages, Albany, N.Y., 1975, chaps. 1 and 2.

113. On the issues involved in this “dialogue” see F. Schuon, “Dialogue between Hellenists and Christians,” in Light on the Ancient Worlds, trans. Lord Northbourne, London, 1965, pp. 58-71.

114. Of course Hellenism triumphed in another dimension by surviving as a doctrinal language and way of thinking and looking upon the world at the heart of Christianity itself.

“Like most inter-traditional polemics, the dialogue in which Hellenism and Christianity were in opposition was to a great extent unreal. The fact that each was right on a certain plane-or in a particular ‘spiritual dimension’-resulted in each emerging as victor in its own way: Christianity by imposing itself on the whole Western world, and Hellenism by surviving in the heart of Christianity and conferring on Christian intellectuality an indelible imprint.” Ibid., p. 58.

It would be worthwhile to note that, while Western Christianity opposed so strongly what it considered as Greek “paganism,” in Western Asia in certain Christian circles during early centuries of Christian history such figures as Socrates were considered as pre-Christian saints.

115. We owe this termto Th. Roszak. See his Where theWasteland Ends,New York, 1972.

116. See J. Robinson (ed.), The Nag Hammadi Library,New York, 1977, “Acts of Peter and the Twelve Apostles,” pp. 265ff.; also H. Corbin, “L’Orient des pélerins abrahamiques,” in Les Pelerins de l’orient et les vagabonds de l’occident, Cahiers de l’Université Saint-Jean de Jérusalem, no. 4, Paris, 1978, p. 76; and Corbin, “La necessité de l’angélologie,” in Cahiers de l’hermétisme, Paris, 1978, chap. 4, II.

117. For his views on this crucial question see E. Gilson, Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages, New York, 1938.

118. S. H. Nasr, An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines, pp. 185ff. It is interesting that neo-Thomist European scholars of Islamic thought such as L. Gardet have posed the question as to whether Ibn Sına’s thought is Islamic philosophy or just Greek philosophy in an Islamic dress, while a scholar such as Corbin, who was so devoted to the sapiential school of the West including the Renaissance Protestant mystics, insists upon not only the importance of Ibn Sına as an Islamic philosopher for Islamic thought itself but the sapiential and gnostic teachings of Suhrawardı and Mulla S. adra. Despite our deep respect for such scholars as Gardet, who precisely because of their Thomism are able to understand many important aspects of Islam which simply secularist or agnostic scholars have neglected and ignored, on this particular issue we agree totally with the views of Corbin. Anyone who, in fact, knows later Islamic thought well and who also comprehends the purely metaphysical perspective cannot but be led to a similar if not identical conclusion as we see in the writings of T.Izutsu who has also made many important studies of later Islamic philosophy and gnosis. See Corbin in collaboration with S. H.Nasr and O. Yahya, Histoire de la philosophic islamique, vol. 1, Paris, 1964; the prologomena of Corbin to S.adr al-D ın Shırazı, Le Livre des pénétrations métaphysiques, Paris-Tehran, 1964;and T. Izutsu, The Concept and Reality of Existence, Tokyo, 1971.

119. See H. Corbin, Avicenna and the Visionary Recital, trans. W. Trask, Dallas,1980.

120. On Latin Avicennism and Latin Averroism see R. de Vaux, “La première entrée d’Averroës chez les Latins,” Revue des Sciences Philosophiaues et Théologiques 22 (1933): 193-245; de Vaux, Notes et textes sur l’Avicennisme latin aux confins des XIIe -XIIIe siècles, Paris, 1934; M. T. d’Alverny, Avicenna nella storia della cultura medioevale, Rome, 1957; d’Alverny, “Les traductions latines d’Ibn Sına et leur diffusion au Moyen Âge,” Millénaire d’Avicenne. Congrès de Bagdad, Baghdad, 1952, pp. 59-79; d’Alverny, “Avicenna Latinus,” Archives d’Histoire, Doctrinale du Moyen-Age 28 (1961): 281-316; 29 (1962): 271-33; 30 (1963): 221-72, 31 (1964): 271-86; 32 (1965): 257-302; M. Bouyges, “Attention à Averroista’,” Revue du Moyen Âge Latin 4 (1948): 173-76; E. Gilson, History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages, New York, 1935; and F. Van Steenberghen, Siger de Brabant d’aprè’s ses oeuvres inédites, 2 vols., Louvain, 1931-42.

121. See Nasr, Three Muslim Sages.

122. This process has been admirably treated by E. Gilson in his Unity of Philosophical Experience, although Gilson in conformity with his Thomistic perspective does not point to the significance of the loss of the sapiential or gnostic dimension in the destruction of Thomism itself. For in the absence of the availability of that type of knowledge which is immediate and sanctifying, even the imposing edifice of Thomism, which leads to the courtyard of the Divine Presence but not the beatific union itself, was finally criticized and rejected. Also had the intellectual intuition of men not become dimmed, the realist-nominalist debate would not have even taken place and a situation would perhaps have developed not dissimilar to what is found in India and also the Islamic world where positions similar to nominalism have existed but only at the margin of the traditional spectrum whose center has always been occupied by doctrines of a jnîani or ‘irfanı nature.

123. See D. P.Walker, The Ancient Theology, Studies in Christian Platonism from the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century, London, 1972.

124. On the integration of various figures of Greek wisdom such as Apollo and Orpheus which marks the integration of ancient wisdom into the Christian tradition and its literature see E. R. Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. W. R. Trask, New York, 1953. Perhaps the last European literary figure for whom the Orpheus-Christ figure was still a reality was the seventeenth-century Spanish playwright Calderón, the author of El Divino Orfeo, for whom “Christ is the divine Orpheus. His lyre is the wood of the Cross.” Curtius, op. cit., p. 244. Calderön viewed Greek wisdom as a second Old Testament and wrote in his Autos sacramentales:

125. As Suhrawardı, Qut.bal-Dın Shırazı, and later MullaS.adra were to do for Peripatetic philosophy in Islam.

126. The celebrated Sufi of the fourth/eleventh century who was put to death in Baghdad for uttering esoteric sayings (theophonic utterances called snath.in Arabic) and who is considered as one of the great masters of Islamic gnosis. His life and teachings have been treated amply by L. Massignon in his classical work, La Passion d’al-Hallaj, 2nd ed., 4 vols., Paris, 1975; this work has been translated in its entirety into English by H. Mason and is to appear shortly.

127. “Metaphysics prescinds from the animistic proposition of Descartes, Cogito ergo sum, to say, Cogito ergo Est; and to the question, Quid est? answers that this is an improper question, because its subject is not a what amongst others but the whatness of them all and of all that they are not.” A. K. Coomaraswamy, The Bugbear of Literacy, London, 1947, p. 124; enlarged edition, London, 1980.

128. Certain forms of analytical philosophy have rendered, relatively speaking, a positive service in clarifying the language of philosophical discourse which had in fact become ambiguous in modern times but not in traditional schools where philosophical language, let us say in Arabic, Hebrew, or Latin, is as precise as that of modern science and not like modern philosophy. But this clarification of language is not the only task achieved by analytical philosophy and positivism in general whose much more devastating effect has been the trivialization of philosophy and its goals, causing many an intelligent seeker after philo-sophy to search for it in disciplines which do not bear such a name in contemporary academic circles.

129. “Academic philosophy as such, including Anglo-Saxon philosophy, is today almost entirely anti-philosophy.” F.A. Schaeffer, The God Who is There, Downers Grove, III., 1977, p. 28.

130. See F. Yates, The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age, London and Boston, 1979.

131. We have dealt extensively with this issue in our Man and Nature, London, 1976; see also Roszak, Where the Wasteland Ends and his Unfinished Animal, New York, 1975.

132. Referring to critics of modern science E. J. Dijkterhuis, who has done extensive research and provides a detailed account of how the process of mechanization of the world took place, writes, “They are inclined to look upon the domination of the mind by the mechanistic conception as one of the main causes of the spiritual chaos into which the twentieth-century world has, in spite of all its technological progress, fallen.” Dijkterhuis, The Mechanization of theWorld, trans. C. Dikshoorn, Oxford, 1961, pp. 1-2. This process has also been dealt with by many historians of science of the Renaissance and seventeenth century such as A. Koyré, G. Di Santillana, and I. B. Cohen.

133. For an example of reactions against the new astronomy which served as a basis for the mechanistic world view among such figures as Oetinger and Swedenborg see E. Benz, “Der kopernikanische Schock und seine theologische Auswirkung,” in Eranos Jahrbuch 44 (1975): 15-60; also Cahiers de l’Université de St. Jean de Jérusalem, vol. 5, Paris, 1979.

134. Goethe and Herder who championed the cause of both integral knowledge and Naturphilosophie were among those who opposed the mechanized conception of the world and who reasserted the idea of the interrelatedness of the parts of nature into a living whole which accords with traditional teachings. Goethe writes, “Die Natur, so mannigfaltig sie erscheint, ist doch immer ein Eins, eine Einheit, und so muss, wenn sie teilweise manifestiert, alles übrige Grundlage dienen, dieses in dem übrigen Zusammenhang haben.” Quoted in R. D. Gray, Goethe, The Alchemist, Cambridge, 1952, p. 6. See also H. B. Nisbet, Goethe and the Scientific Tradition, London, 1972, p. 20.

135. The popular work of K. Popper, The Poverty of Historicism, Boston, 1957, is one of the best known of these criticisms by a famous contemporary philosopher of science. Modern phenomenology has also reacted against historicism and produced alternative ways and methods of studying religion, philosophy, art, etc., and has produced notable results when wed to the traditional perspective. Otherwise, it has led to a kind of sterile study of structures divorced from both the sense of the sacred and the history of various traditions as sacred history. Nevertheless, there lies at the heart of the intuition which led to phenomenology an awareness of the “poverty of historicism” and the recollection of the richness of the permanent structures and modes which one observes even in the phenomenal world and which reflect aspects of the permanent as such.

136. He refers to the idea of nature as a great book at the beginning of his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems-Ptolemaic and Copernican.

137. “Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed. It is written in the language of mathematics and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it.” From the Assayer in Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, trans. Stillman Drake, New York, 1957, pp. 237-38. Quoted in M. De Grazia, “Secularization of Language in the 17th century,” Journal of the History of Ideas 41/2 (April-June 1980).

There is little evidence of Galileo showing direct interest in Pythagoreanism although his father was keenly interested in Pythagorean teachings.

138. Kepler develops this idea in several of his works including the Mysterium Cosmographicum.

139. De Grazia, op. cit., p. 326.

140. “In the seventeenth century, the traditional connection between human and divine language broke down. God’s language was no longer considered primarily verbal; human words ceased to be related both in kind and quality to the divine Word.” Ibid., p. 319. This process was without doubt facilitated in the West because Christianity, in contrast to Judaism and Islam, did not possess a sacred language, Latin being, properly speaking, a liturgical language and not sacred as are Arabic and Hebrew for Islam and Judaism.

141. The same process has had to take place in the revival of traditional doctrines today to which we shall refer in the following chapters.

The whole question of the relationship between the process of the desacralization of knowledge and language in the modern world deserves a separate, detailed study to which we can allude here only in passing. The process of the desacralization of the traditional languages of the Orient in the face of the secularization of thought in the East today affords a living example of what occurred in theWest over a period of some five centuries.

142. One might of course say that this radical departure from the realm of reason and taking refuge in faith alone are because “modern rationalism does its work against faith with silent violence, like an odorless gas.” K. Stern, The Flight from Woman, New York, 1965, p. 300. But the question is why should a Christian theologian accept the limitation of reason imposed by rationalism if not because of the loss of the sapiential perspective which has always seen in reason not the poison gas to kill religion but a complement to faith since both are related to the Divine Intellect. The fact that such types of theology appear indicates that the depleting of the faculty of knowing of the sacred by modern Western philosophy and science has been finally accepted by the theologians themselves, some of whom then carry it out to a much more radical stage than do many contemporary scientists in quest of the rediscovery of the sacred.

143. Speaking of Barth, Schaeffer writes, “He has been followed by many more, men like Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, Bishop John Robinson, Alan Richardson, and all the new theologians. They may differ in details, but their struggle is the same-it is the struggle of modern man who has given up a unified field of knowledge. As far as the theologians are concerned, they have separated religious truth from contact with science on the one hand and history on the other. Their new system is not open to verification, it must simply be believed.” Schaeffer, op. cit., p. 54.

The case of Teilhard de Chardin presents, from the traditional point of view, a new dimension of theological subversion with which we shall deal later.