Categoria: Perenialistas – Temático

Manifestation is not the Principle, yet it is the Principle by participation, in virtue of its “non-inexistence”; and Manifestation – the word indicates this – is the Principle manifested, but without being able to be the Principle in itself. (GTUFS: SufismVQ, The Quintessential Esoterism of Islam)

In connection with the mystery of inwardness . . . we should perhaps mention here the power of the MANTRA, of the word in its “uncreated” essence – thus a priori inward or cardiac – and interiorizing from the standpoint of the outward ego. The MANTRA is a revealed substitute of the primordial sound; purifying…

In ordinary language, the word “MASK” is synonymous with “false appearance,” hence with insincerity; this is plausible from the standpoint of ordinary psychology, but it is to lose sight of the fact that there are sacred MASKs and priestly vestments which express either what transcends the wearer, or on the contrary express his transcendent substance…

Nothing is more contradictory than to deny the spirit, or even simply the psychic element, in favor of matter alone, for it is the spirit that denies, whereas matter remains inert and unconscious. The fact that matter can be thought about proves precisely that MATERIALISM contradicts itself at its starting point, rather as with Pyrrhonism,…

Matter is the sensible manifestation of existence itself . . . Matter extends – starting from its base, ether – from extreme subtlety to extreme solidity; one could say: from substantiality to accidentality. (GTUFS: DivineHuman, Structure and Universality of the Conditions of Existence) Matter, in fact, refers in the final analysis to the divine Substance.…

The contact between man and God here becomes contact between the intelligence and Truth, or relative truths contemplated in view of the Absolute . . . Meditation acts on the one hand upon the intelligence, in which it awakens certain consubstantial “memories,” and on the other hand upon the subconscious imagination which ends by incorporating…

Metaphysic: The science of the Absolute and of the true nature of things. (GTUFS: LogicT, Rationalism, Real and Apparent) Metaphysic / Philosophy: In reality, the transcendent character of METAPHYSIC makes it independent of any purely human mode of thought. In order to define clearly the difference between the two modes in question, it may be…

Metaphysical / Mystical: “Metaphysical”: concerning universal realities considered objectively. “Mystical”: concerning the same realities considered subjectively, that is, in relation to the contemplative soul, insofar as they enter operatively into contact with it. (GTUFS: LogicT, Understanding and Believing) . . . the two wisdoms, the one METAPHYSICAL and the other mystical; it would be entirely…

A priori, METAPHYSICS is abstract; but it would not be what it is if it did not give rise a posteriori to concrete prolongations on the plane of our human and earthly existence. The Real encompasses all that is; the consciousness of the Real implies all that we are. (GTUFS: PlayMasks, Being Conscious of the…

Potency comes from the Latin posse “to be able,” from which, precisely, comes possibilis: to be potent is to be greatly “able,” and thus to be rich in “possibilities.” Potentiality is of the same order. (GTUFS: DivineHuman, The Problem of Possibility)

The all-embracing virtue of “POVERTY” (faqr) is conformity to the demands of the Divine Nature: namely effacement, patience, gratitude, generosity; and also, and even above all, resignation to the Will of God and trust in His Mercy. (GTUFS: RootsHC, Outline of the Islamic Message) Poverty / Generosity / Veracity: The epithets applied to the Prophet…

The remembrance of God is at the same time a forgetting of oneself; conversely, the ego is a kind of crystallization of forgetfulness of God. The brain is, as it were, the organ of this forgetfulness; it is like a sponge filled with images of this world of dispersion and of heaviness, filled too with…

Pride limits intelligence, which amounts to saying that in the last analysis it slays it: it destroys its essential functions, while allowing the surface mechanism to remain incidentally, as if in mockery. (GTUFS: HaveCenter, To Have a Center) A symbolic notion which includes everything that imprisons the soul in outwardness and keeps it away from…

PRIMORDIALITY is the fitrah of the Sufis: it is essential and normative human nature, created in the image of the Creator; and for that very reason it is intelligence as such, projection of the Divine Consciousness. For “I was a hidden treasure and wished to be known, hence I created the world”; and with it…

Profound / Inferior Person: A noble and PROFOUND person tends to see the Substance in the accidents, whereas an inferior person tends to reduce the substantial manifestations to a trivializing accidentality. The sense of the sacred and of the celestial is the measure of human worth.* (* Which cuts short the hasty and barbarous distinction…

All too often things which some people call “useful” are anything but useful in their results. “Progress” is healing a paralytic while depriving him of his sight. (GTUFS: LogicT, Truths and Errors Concerning Beauty) “Progress” is most often but a transference, the exchange of one evil for another, otherwise our age would be perfect and…

Rational (extra-): Existence is a reality in some respects comparable to a living organism; it cannot with impunity be reduced, in man’s consciousness and in his modes of action, to proportions that do violence to its nature; pulsations of the “extra-RATIONAL”* pass through it from every quarter. Now religion and all forms of supra-RATIONAL wisdom…

Cartesianism – perhaps the most intelligent way of being unintelligent – is the classic example of a faith which has become the dupe of the gropings of reasoning; this is a “wisdom from below” and history shows it to be deadly. The whole of modern philosophy, including science, starts from a false conception of intelligence;…

A RATIONALIST is a person who upholds the primacy, or rather the exclusive worth, of reason as compared with Intellection on the one hand and Revelation on the other, both of which he accuses of being “irrational.” He will claim, for example, that a miracle is irrational because it is contrary to reason, which is…

To quote an expression of Pascal’s we favor – Reality is “an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and its circumference nowhere”. (GTUFS: TreasuresB, Message and Messenger)