Referring to the original “yoga,” and while declaring that it has always meant essentially the same thing, one must not forget to put a question of which we have as yet made no mention. What is the origin of these traditional metaphysical doctrines from which we have borrowed all our fundamental ideas? The answer is very simple, although it risks raising objections from those who would look at everything from a historical viewpoint: It is that there is no origin, by which we mean no human origin subjected to determination in time. In other words, the origin of tradition, if indeed the word “origin” has any applicability in such a case, is “NONHUMAN,” as is metaphysics itself. Doctrines of this order have not appeared at any particular moment in the history of humanity; the allusion we have made to the “primordial state,” and also what we have said of the nontemporal nature of all that is metaphysical, enables one to grasp this point without too much difficulty, on condition that it be admitted, contrary to certain prejudices, that there are some things to which the historical point of view is not applicable. Metaphysical truth is eternal; even so, there have always existed beings who could truly and completely know. All that changes is only exterior forms and contingent means; and the change has nothing to do with what people today call evolution. It is only a simple adaptation of such and such particular circumstances to special conditions of some given race or epoch. From this results the multiplicity of forms; but the basis of the doctrine is no more modified and affected than the essential unity and identity of the being is altered by the multiplicity of its states of manifestation. Essays: Oriental Metaphysics
To comprehend universal principles directly, the transcendent intellect must itself be of the universal order; it is no longer an individual faculty, and to consider it as such would be contradictory, as it is not within the power of the individual to go beyond his own limits and leave the conditions that limit him qua individual. Reason is a specifically human faculty, but that which lies beyond reason is truly “NONHUMAN”; it is this that makes metaphysical knowledge possible, and that knowledge, one must again emphasize, is not a human knowledge. In other words, it is not as man that man can attain it, but because this being that is human in one of its aspects is at the same time something other and more than a human being. It is the attainment of effective consciousness of supraindividual states that is the real object of metaphysics, or better still, of metaphysical knowledge itself. We come here to one of the most vital points, and it is necessary to repeat that if the individual were a complete being, if he made up a closed system like the monad of Leibnitz, metaphysics would not be possible; irremediably confined in himself, this being would have no means of knowing anything outside his own mode of existence. But such is not the case; in reality the individuality represents nothing more than a transitory and contingent manifestation of the real being. It is only one particular state among an indefinite multitude of other states of the same being; and this being is, in itself, absolutely independent of all its manifestations, just as, to use an illustration that occurs frequently in Hindu texts, the sun is absolutely independent of the manifold images in which it is reflected. Such is the fundamental distinction between “self” and “I,” the personality and the individuality; as the images are connected by the luminous rays with their solar source, without which they would have neither existence nor reality, so the individuality, either of the human individual or of any other similar state of manifestation, is bound by the personality to the principial center of being by this transcendent intellect of which we are speaking. It is impossible, within the limits of this exposition, to develop these lines of thought more completely or to give a more exact idea of the theory of multiple states of being, but I think I have said enough to show the extreme importance of all truly metaphysical doctrine. Essays: Oriental Metaphysics
ALLTHE constituent elements of a rite have necessarily a symbolic sense, while on the other hand a symbol itself in its commonest acceptation, as a support for meditation, is destined essentially to give results that are exactly comparable to the results of rites. Let us add that when it is a matter of truly traditional rites and symbols (and ones that are not so do not deserve the name at all, but are really only counterfeits or even parodies), their origins in either case are equally “NONHUMAN”; thus the general impossibility of assigning them any definite author or inventor is not due to ignorance as profane historians may suppose, (NA: If for want of a better solution they are not driven to look on them as the product of a sort of “collective consciousness,” which if it even existed would in any case be quite incapable of producing things of a transcendent order such as these.) but it is a natural consequence of these origins, which can be questioned only by people who are wholly unaware of the true nature of tradition and of everything that is integrally bound up with it, as both rites and symbols clearly are. Essays: Rites and Symbols