The Principle is the Absolute; that is to say that it is the absolutely Real. It is the Absolute which excludes all contingency; but it is also the Reality of all that is real. Essays NATURE AND UNITY OF THE PRINCIPLE

Perceiving the Self in intellectual discernment, we perceive objectively the Essence of our own subjectivity; and realizing it unitively in our heart, we realize subjectively the Essence of objective Reality, thus the unique and transcendent Real. Essays NATURE AND UNITY OF THE PRINCIPLE

The Six Aspects of Reality: "The Real is one." — "The Real": It is the Absolute, and It is the Infinite. Absoluity excludes all contingency; Infinitude excludes all limitation. The Absolute is discerned by our spirit as transcendent Object; the Infinite is realized in our heart as immanent Subject. Transcendence has an aspect of immanence since the Truth is inscribed in the very substance of our spirit; and immanence has an aspect of transcendence since the Self transcends the I. — "The Real is": It is purely, and It is totally. The first aspect is Vacuity, which excludes all manifestation; the second is Totality, which excludes all privation. — "The Real is one": It is unique, and It is simple. The first aspect is One-and-onliness,, which excludes all repetition; the second is Simplicity, which excludes all division. — Absoluity, Vacuity and One-and-onliness are exclusive; Infinitude, Totality and Simplicity are inclusive. — It is in virtue of Absoluity, of Vacuity and of One-and-onliness that the Real alone is; and it is in virtue of Infinitude, of Totality and of Simplicity that the world exists, and that it is not other than the Real. — Absoluity gives rise, by compensation in a certain way with regard to nothingness and thus by inversion—although in illusory mode since the Absolute is the Real—to Relativity. — Likewise: Infinitude gives rise, by compensation and inversion, to Limitation. — Likewise again: Vacuity gives rise to its contrary, Manifestation; Totality gives rise to Privation; One-and-onliness gives rise to Plurality; and Simplicity, to Diversity. Essays NATURE AND UNITY OF THE PRINCIPLE

That is to say that the Real: relativizes itself, but without nullifying Absoluity; limits itself, but without nullifying Infinitude; manifests itself, but without nullifying Vacuity; deprives or diminishes itself, but without nullifying Totality; repeats or reproduces itself, but without invalidating One-and-onliness; divides itself, but without invalidating Simplicity; and this more and more in the direction of a nothingness never attained and never capable of being so. Essays NATURE AND UNITY OF THE PRINCIPLE

The Real thus produces the world, degree by degree, beginning with the divine Degree, if one may say so; namely the creative Principle, with Its Qualities and its treasury of Archetypes. Essays NATURE AND UNITY OF THE PRINCIPLE

The point of departure of the Path is the Doctrine; the origin of which is Revelation; man accepts Revelation through intellectual intuition or by that feeling for the True — or the Real — which is called faith. There is little likelihood of a man being born with knowledge of the integral Doctrine; but it is possible — very exceptionally — that he possess from birth the certitude of the Essential. Essays Norms and Paradoxes in Spiritual Alchemy  

A fact that seems to justify the sentimental intuitionists in question — but the real bearing of which they hardly suspect — is the following, and it is incontestable: a phenomenon of beauty can be more suddenly and more profoundly convincing than a logical explanation, whence this maxim: "The Buddhas save not by their preaching alone, but also by their superhuman beauty." Also, the Platonic opinion that "Beauty is the splendor of the True" expresses without equivocation the profound, intimate, ontological relationship between the Real and the Beautiful, or between Being and Harmony; a relationship that implies — as we have just said — that Beauty is sometimes a more striking and transforming argument than a discursive proof; not logically more adequate, but humanly more miraculous. Essays Norms and Paradoxes in Spiritual Alchemy

It is from this unintelligible - and in a sense "absurd"- aspect of Maya or of Prakriti [NA: This does not mean that these two ideas are synonymous, but their juxtaposition signifies that Prakriti, the ontological "Substance", is the divine " femininity" of Maya. The masculine aspect is represented by the divine Names which, in so far as they correspond to Purusha, determine and " fertilize" Substance, in collaboration with the three fundamental tendenci es comprised in Substance (the gunas: sattwa, rajas, tamas).] that arises in the main that disturbing element which insinuates itself into our mental crystallizations as soon as they depart from their normal function, which is indicative and not exhaustive; to speak of an absolute conformity of our thought to the Real is a contradiction in terms, since our thought is not the Real and since our sense of a partial conformity to the Real implies that our thought is separated from it or different from it. sophiaperennis: Thought and mental cristallizations

Not only is scientistic philosophy ignorant of the Divine Presences, it ignores their rhythms and their "life": it ignores, not only the degrees of reality and the fact of our imprisonment in the sensory world, but also cycles, the universal solve et coagula; this means that it ignores the gushing forth of our world from an invisible and fulgurant Reality, and its reabsorption into the dark light of this same Reality. All of the Real lies in the Invisible; it is this above all that must be felt or understood before one can speak of knowledge and effectiveness. But this will not be understood, and the human world will continue inexorably on its course. sophiaperennis: Scientistic philosophy

Likewise, and for even stronger reasons: the inadequate soul, that is to say, the soul not in conformity with its primordial dignity as "image of God", cannot attract the graces which favour or even constitute sanctity. According to Plato, the eye is "the most solar of instruments-’, which Plotinus   comments on as follows: ’’The eye would never have been able to see the sun if it were not itself of solar nature, any more than the soul could see the beautiful if it were not itself beautiful." Platonic Beauty is an aspect of Divinity, and this is why it is the "splendour of the True": this amounts to saying that Infinity is in some fashion the aura of the Absolute, or that Maya is the shakti of Atma, and that consequently every hypostasis of the absolute Real - whatever be its degree - is accompanied by a radiance which we might seek to define with the help of such notions as "harmony", "beauty", "goodness", "mercy" and "beatitude". "God is beautiful and He loves beauty", says a hadith which we have quoted more than once: Atma is not only Sat and Chit, "Being" and ’’Consciousness" - or more relatively: "Power" and "Omniscience" - but also Ananda, "Beatitude", and thus Beauty and Goodness; and what we want to know and realize, we must a priori mirror in our own being, because in the domain of positive realities we can only know perfectly what we are. sophiaperennis: Plato

The importance of this idea of the degrees of the Real, is linked to the fact that it indicates totality of knowledge. In Hinduism, as is known, this totality is represented by Shankara  , whereas for Ramanuja  , as for the Semitic exoterisms, the Real does not comprise extinctive degrees; among the Greeks , we encounter the awareness of these degrees in Platonic idealism, but scarcely so in Aristotelian hylomorphism, which accentuates or favors the "horizontal" perspective; whence its utility for scientism on the one hand, and for a theology more cosmological than metaphysical on the other hand; science being centered upon the world, and religion upon the eschatological interests of man. sophiaperennis: Comparison between Plato and Aristotle  

Likewise, and for even stronger reasons: the inadequate soul, that is to say, the soul not in conformity with its primordial dignity as "image of God", cannot attract the graces which favour or even constitute sanctity. According to Plato, the eye is "the most solar of instruments-’, which Plotinus comments on as follows: ’’The eye would never have been able to see the sun if it were not itself of solar nature, any more than the soul could see the beautiful if it were not itself beautiful." Platonic Beauty is an aspect of Divinity, and this is why it is the "splendour of the True": this amounts to saying that Infinity is in some fashion the aura of the Absolute, or that Maya is the shakti of Atma, and that consequently every hypostasis of the absolute Real - whatever be its degree - is accompanied by a radiance which we might seek to define with the help of such notions as "harmony", "beauty", "goodness", "mercy" and "beatitude". sophiaperennis: FOUNDATIONS OF AN INTEGRAL AESTHETICS

What we have just said results moreover from the bodily form: first of all, the feminine body is far too perfect and spiritually too eloquent to be no more than a kind of transitory accident; and then, due to the fact that it is human, it communicates in its own way the same message as the masculine body, namely, we repeat, the absolutely Real and thereby the victory over the "round of births and deaths;" thus the possibility of leaving the world of illusion and suffering. The animal, which can manifest perfections but not the Absolute, is like a closed door, as it were enclosed in its own perfection; whereas man is like an open door allowing him to escape his limits, which are those of the world rather than his own. sophiaperennis: The Message of the Human Body

In Shri Ramana Maharshi   one meets again ancient and eternal India. The Vedantic truth - the truth of the Upanishads   - is brought back to its simplest expression but without any kind of betrayal. It is the simplicity inherent in the Real, not the denial of that complexity which it likewise contains, nor the artificial and altogether outward simplification that springs from ignorance. sophiaperennis: Ramana Maharshi