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 Real)
Metaphysics (aim): Without a doubt, METAPHYSICS aims in the first place at the comprehension of the whole Universe, which extends from the Divine Order to the terrestrial contingencies – this is the reciprocity between Atma and Maya – yet it offers in addition intellectually less demanding but humanly crucial openings; which is all the more important in that we live in a world wherein the abuse of intelligence replaces wisdom. (GTUFS: PlayMasks, Foreword)
Metaphysics (two dimensions): Metaphysics has it were two great dimensions, the one “ascending” and dealing with universal principles and the distinction between the Real and the illusory, and the other “descending” and dealing on the contrary with the divine life in creaturely situations, and thus with the fundamental and secret “divinity” of beings and of things, for “all is Atma.” The first dimension can be called “static” and is related to the first Shahadah and to “extinction” (fana), or “annihilation” (istihlak), whereas the second appears as “dynamic,” and is related to the second Shahadah and to “permanence” (baqa). By comparison with the first dimension, the second is mysterious and paradoxical, seeming at certain points to contradict the first, or again, it is like a wine with which the Universe becomes intoxicated. But it must never be lost sight of that this second dimension is already implicitly contained within the first – even as the second Shahadah is derived from the first, namely from the “point of intersection” illa – so that static, elementary or separative METAPHYSICS is sufficient unto itself and does not deserve any reproach from those who savor the intoxicating paradoxes of the unitive experience. That which, in the first Shahadah, is the word illa will be, in the first METAPHYSICS, the concept of universal causality: we start out from the idea that the world is false since the Principle alone is real, but since we are in the world we add the reservation that the world reflects God; and it is from this reservation that springs forth the second METAPHYSICS, from whose point of view the first is like an insufficient dogmatism. Here we see in a sense the confrontation between the perfections of incorruptibility and of life: the one cannot be had without the other, and it would be a pernicious optical error to despise doctrine in the name of realization, or to deny the latter in the name of the former. However, since the first error is more dangerous than the second – the second moreover hardly arises in pure METAPHYSICS and, if it does, consists in overestimating the letter of the doctrine in its formal particularism – we would recall for the glory of the doctrine this saying of Christ: “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” The Hindu, or Hindu-Buddhist, theory of the upayas perfectly takes account of these dimensions of the spiritual realm: concepts are true according to the levels to which they relate; it is possible to transcend them, but they never cease to be true at their own level, and that level is an aspect of Absolute Reality. In the sight of the Absolute, envisaged as pure Self and unthinkable Aseity, metaphysical doctrine is assuredly tinged with relativity, but it nonetheless offers absolutely sure reference points and “adequate approximations” such as the human spirit could not do without; and this is what the simplifiers in pursuit of the “concrete” are incapable of understanding. Doctrine is to the Truth what the circle or the spiral is to the center. (GTUFS: UIslam, The Path)