Categoria: Perenialistas – Temático

Existentialism has achieved the tour de force or the monstrous contortion of representing the commonest stupidity as intelligence and disguising it as philosophy, and of holding intelligence up to ridicule, that of all intelligent men of all times. Since “scandal must needs come” this manifestation of the absurd was to be expected, there was no…

The term “EXOTERISM” designates three different orders: firstly, a system of symbols and means; secondly, a way; and thirdly, a mentality. The first category embraces dogmas and rites, then legal, moral and other prescriptions, and liturgy in the widest sense; the second embraces the general religious practices, those which are incumbent upon all; and the…

Faith is nothing other than the adherence of our whole being to Truth, whether we have a direct intuition of that Truth or an indirect idea. (PrayerMan) Faith is like an ‘existential’ intuition of its ‘intellectual’ object. (GTUFS: GnosisDW, The Sense of the Absolute in Religions) Faith is to say “yes” to the truth of…

Falsification results from the sin of pride; to falsify a good is to appropriate it for oneself, to subordinate it to an end which is contrary to it, thus to vitiate it by an inferior intention. Pride, like hypocrisy which accompanies it, can produce only FALSIFICATION. (GTUFS: SurveyME, Outline of Religious Typologies)

In calling God “FATHER,” Christ attests to the “Sovereign Good”: he refers on the one hand to the essentiality of the divine Goodness, and on the other hand to the reciprocity between the Creator and the creature “made in His image”; this means that Christ grants priority, not to the divine Power and to the…

Fideistic: to believe what one considers one has to believe under the cover of dogmatic data, without asking whether this will convince or “hold water”; dialectical: to deal with a particular point by isolating it and intensifying it, without asking whether this is suitable in itself, and compatible with what one previously said, or with…

feu (de l’enfer) Fire (of hell): Many people today think in such terms as these: “either God exists, or He does not; if He exists and is what people say He is, then He will recognize that we are good and do not deserve punishment.” This means that they are prepared to believe in His…

Five Divine Presences: In Sufi terminology they are: the “human realm” (nasut), that is, the domain of the corporeal, since man is created out of “earth”; then the “realm of royalty” (malakut), so called because it immediately dominates the corporeal world; next comes the “realm of power” (jabarut), which, macrocosmically, is Heaven and, microcosmically, the…

Form is the manifestation of an “idea,” hence of a particular possibility or of an archetype, and in the final analysis of an aspect of the divine nature, and this to the extent that the FORM is positive and essential, not privative and accidental. (GTUFS: DivineHuman, Structure and Universality of the Conditions of Existence) Form…

A practice may be termed “FORMALISTIC” not because it is based upon a form – otherwise every spiritual practice would pertain to formalism – but because its immediate object belongs to the outward – hence a priori formal – order. (GTUFS: HaveCenter, “Our Father Who Art in Heaven”)

How can the sanctified man not be generous, since he trusts in the Divine Mercy, and since he does not do so blindly? For it is not enough to await from Mercy the benefits that it promises, it is necessary in addition, and even above all, to open oneself to it and to love it…

In normal conditions, that may be considered to be GOOD which, first, is in conformity with the Divine Attraction, second, is in conformity with universal Equilibrium, and third, provides a positive result in regard to the ultimate destiny of man; and that may be considered to be evil which is contrary to the Divine Attraction…

GOODNESS is in the very substance of the Universe, and for that reason it penetrates right into the matter we know, “accursed” though that matter be. The fruits of the earth and the rain from the sky, which make life possible, are nothing if not manifestations of the GOODNESS that penetrates everywhere and warms the…

Let us recall here that Meister Eckhart very rightly brought out this distinction in terming Beyond-Being die GOTTHEIT, “the Godhood,” and in reserving the word Gott, “God,” for Being, who is the Divine Self-personification. (GTUFS: ChristIslam, Dilemmas of Moslem Scholasticism)

The grateful man is one who maintains himself in holy poverty, or, in other words, in a sort of holy monotony in the midst of inevitable distractions and complex occupations; he also maintains himself in a state of holy childhood, keeping blessedly apart from every unhealthy curiosity, from every temptation that both imprisons and pursues.…

The universal “ETHER,” of which the physical element is only a distant and grosser reflection, is none other than the divine Word which is everywhere “being” and “consciousness” and everywhere creative and liberating or revealing and illuminating. (GTUFS: UIslam, The Quran)

From the spiritual point of view, which alone takes account of the true cause of our calamities, EVIL is not by definition what causes us to suffer, it is that which – even when accompanied by a maximum of comfort or of ease, or of “justice” so-called – thwarts a maximum of souls as regards…

We do not deny that EVOLUTION exists within certain limits, as is indeed evident enough, but we do deny that it is a universal principle, and hence a law which affects and determines all things, including the immutable; EVOLUTION and degeneration can moreover go hand in hand, each then occurring on a different plane. However…

Evolutionism would be justified if a tree could produce something other and better than what is contained in its seed; it would be justified if the fruits of the tree were, not the manifestation of what the seed already contains, but the result of an evolution that is unforeseeable and variable according to circumstances, or…

That the GNOSTIC – in the orthodox sense of the term – bases himself extrinsically on a given sacred Scripture or on some other GNOSTIC cannot prevent him from thinking in an intrinsically free manner by virtue of the freedom proper to the immanent Truth, or proper to the Essence which by definition escapes formal…