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  

There is a close relationship between rationalism and modern science; the latter is at fault not in concerning itself solely with the finite, but in seeking to reduce the Infinite to the finite, and consequently in taking no account of Revelation, an attitude which is, strictly speaking, inhuman; what we reproach modern science for is that it is inhuman - or infra-human - and not that it has no knowledge of the facts which it studies, even though it deliberately ignores certain of their modalities. It believes that it is possible to approach total knowledge of the world - which after all is indefinite - by what can only be a finite series of discoveries, as if it were possible to exhaust the inexhaustible. And what is to be said of the pretentiousness which sets out to "discover" the ultimate causes of existence, or of the intellectual bankruptcy of those who seek to subject their philosophy to the results of scientific research? sophiaperennis: Modern philosophers

Strictly speaking, there is but one sole philosophy, the Sophia Perennis; it is also - envisaged in its integrality - the only religion. Sophia has two possible origins, one timeless and the other temporal: the first is "vertical" and discontinuous, and the second, "horizontal" and continuous; in other words, the first is like the rain that at any moment can descend from the sky; the second is like a stream that flows from a spring. Both modes meet and combine: metaphysical Revelation actualizes the intellective faculty, and once awakened, this gives rise to spontaneous and independent intellection. sophiaperennis: Philosophia Perennis

Profane philosophy is ignorant not only of the value of truth and universality in Revelation, but also of the transcendence of the pure Intellect; [NA: For example, the Cartesian Cogito is neither conformable to Revelation, nor the consequence of a direct intellection: it has no scriptural basis, since according to Scripture the foundation of existence is Being and not some experience or other; and it lacks inspiration, since direct intellective perception excludes a purely empirical process of reasoning. When Locke   says Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu, the statement is false in the same two respects; firstly, Scripture affirms that the intellect derives from God and not from the body - for man, "made in the image of God," is distinguished from animals by the intelligence not by the senses - and secondly, the intellect conceives of realities which it does not discern a priori in the world, though it may seek their traces a posteriori in sensory perceptions.] it entails therefore no guarantee of truth on any level, for the quite human faculty which reason is, insofar as it is cut off from the Absolute, is readily mistaken even on the level of the relative. The efficacy of reasoning is essentially conditional. sophiaperennis: Profane "thinkers"

The reduction of the notion of intellectuality to that of simple rationality often has its cause in the prejudice of a school: St. Thomas is a sensationalist - that is to say he reduces the cause of all non-theological knowledge to sensible perceptions - in order to be able to underestimate the human mind to the advantage of Scripture; in other words, because this allows him to attribute to Revelation alone the glory of "supernatural" knowledge. And Ghazali inveighs against the "philosophers" because he wishes to reserve for the Sufis the monopoly of spiritual knowledge, as if faith and piety, combined with intellectual gifts and grace - all the Arab philosophers were believers - did not provide a sufficient basis for pure intellection. sophiaperennis: Reason and Intellection

Thus it is not surprising that from the strictly theological point of view, gnosis is the "enemy number one." By its recourse to intellection it seems to make Revelation redundant and even superfluous, which in theological language is called "submitting Revelation to the judgement of reason"; this confusion - which is not disinterested - between reason and intellection is altogether typical. Plato’s anticipated retort is the following, and it is all the more justified in that religious sentimentalism has had extremely serious, if providential, consequences since "it must needs be that offenses come": "All force of reasoning must be enlisted to oppose anyone who tries to maintain an assertion and at the same time destroys knowledge, understanding and intelligence." (Sophist, 249). sophiaperennis: About Plato and/or Aristotle  

FOR exoterism, appearances have little importance, unless it be that Revelation and Tradition concern themselves with them to a certain degree; for pure esoterism, on the contrary, appearances have all the importance that results from their nature on the one hand, and from the nature of man on the other. For an absurd appearance is an error, and many errors in history would have been avoided, if one had not created a framework of appearances that favoured them, and made them appear precisely as truths or at least as very venial sins. Certainly, it is the spirit that counts, not forms, when the alternative arises; in normal conditions it arises seldom, and in any case the primacy of the spirit does not require falseness on the part of forms, to say the least. Perfect virtue includes everything that is within our reach, just as the total truth includes everything that is. sophiaperennis: THE DEGREES OF ART

If the importance of forms is to be understood, it is necessary to appreciate the fact that it is the sensible form which, symbolically, corresponds most directly to the Intellect, by reason of the inverse analogy connecting the principial and manifested orders. [NA: ’Art’, said St. Thomas Aquinas  , ’is associated with knowledge.’ As for the metaphysical theory of inverse analogy, we would refer the reader to the doctrinal works of René Guénon, especially to ’L’homme et son devenir selon le Vêdânta’ (Man and his Becoming according to the Vedanta, Luzac, 1946).] In consequence of this analogy the highest realities are most clearly manifested in their remotest reflections, namely, in the sensible or ’material’ order, and herein lies the deepest meaning of the proverb ’extremes meet’; to which one might add that it is for this same reason that Revelation descended not only into the souls of the Prophets, but also into their bodies, which presupposed their physical perfection. [NA: René Guénon (Les deux nuits -The Two Nights, in Etudes Traditionnelles, Paris, Chacornac, April and May, 1939) in speaking of the laylat el-qadr, night of the ’descent’ (tanzil) of the Koran  , points out that ’this night, according to Mohyiddin ibn Arabi  ’s commentary, is identified with the actual body of the Prophet. What is particularly important to note is the fact that the " revelation" is received, not in the mind, but in the body of the being who is commissioned to express the Principle: "And the Word was made flesh" says the Gospel   (" flesh" and not "mind") and this is but another way of expressing, under the form proper to the Christian Tradition, the reality which is represented by the laylat el-qadr in the Islamic Tradition.’ This truth is closely bound up with the relationship mentioned as existing between forms and intellections.] sophiaperennis: CONCERNING FORMS IN ART

...let us return for a moment to the modern scientific outlook, since it plays so decisive a part in the modern mentality. There seems to be absolutely no reason for going into raptures about space-flights; the saints in their ecstasies climb infinitely higher, and these words are used in no allegorical sense, but in a perfectly concrete sense that could be called "scientific" or "exact". In vain does modern science explore the infinitely distant and the infinitely small; it can reach in its own way the world of galaxies and that of molecules, but it is unaware — since it believes neither in Revelation nor in pure intellection — of all the immaterial and supra-sensorial worlds that as it were envelop our sensorial dimensions, and in relation to which these dimensions are no more than a sort of fragile coagulation, destined to disappear when its time comes before the blinding power of the Divine Reality. To postulate a science without metaphysic is a flagrant contradiction, for without metaphysic there can be no standards and no criteria, no intelligence able to penetrate, contemplate and coordinate. Both a relativistic psychologism which ignores the absolute, and also evolutionism which is absurd because contradictory (since the greater cannot come from the less) can be explained only by this exclusion of what is essential and total in intelligence. [Light on the Ancient Worlds, p. 130]. sophiaperennis: Modern science, and the infinitely distant and the infinitely small

There is close relationship between rationalism and modern science; the latter is at fault not in concerning itself solely with the finite, but in seeking to reduce the Infinite to the finite, and consequently in taking no account of Revelation, an attitude which is, strictly speaking, inhuman; our quarrel with modern science is that it is inhuman, or infra-human, and not that it is ignorant of the facts which it studies, even though through prejudice it ignores certain of their modalities... [Stations of Wisdom, p. 37]. sophiaperennis: Science and intelligence

There are truths which intuitive intellection alone allows one to attain, but it is not a fact that such intellection lies within the capacity of every man of ordinarily sound mind. Moreover the Intellect, for its part, requires Revelation, both as its occasional cause and as vehicle of the ’Perennial Philosophy,’ if it is to actualize its own light in more than a fragmentary manner. sophiaperennis: Science and mythologies

There is a close relationship between rationalism and modern science; the latter is at fault not in concerning itself solely with the finite, but in seeking to reduce the Infinite to the finite, and consequently in taking no account of Revelation, an attitude which is, strictly speaking, inhuman; what we reproach modern science for is that it is inhuman - or infra-human - and not that it has no knowledge of the facts which it studies, even though it deliberately ignores certain of their modalities. It believes that it is possible to approach total knowledge of the world - which after all is indefinite - by what can only be a finite series of discoveries, as if it were possible to exhaust the inexhaustible. sophiaperennis: Science and rationalism

In other words, the foundations of modem science are false because, from the "subject" point of view, it replaces Intellect and Revelation by reason and experiment, as if it were not contradictory to lay claim to totality on an empirical basis; and its foundations are false too because, from the "object" point of view, it replaces the universal Substance by matter alone, either denying the universal Principle or reducing it to matter or to some kind of pseudo-absolute from which all transcendence has been eliminated. sophiaperennis: Science and Revelations

In all epochs and in all countries there have been revelations, religions, wisdoms; tradition is a part of mankind, just as man is a part of tradition. Revelation is in one sense the infallible intellection of the total collectivity, in so far as this collectivity has providentially become the receptacle of a manifestation of the universal Intellect. The source of this intellection is not of course the collectivity as such, but the universal or divine Intellect in so far as it adapts itself to the conditions prevailing in a particular intellectual or moral collectivity, whether it be a case of an ethnic group or of one determined by more or less distinctive mental conditions. sophiaperennis: Science and Revelations

To say that Revelation is "supernatural" does not mean that it is contrary to nature in so far as nature can be taken to represent, by extension, all that is possible on any given level of reality, it means that Revelation does not originate at the level to which, rightly or wrongly, the epithet "natural" is normally applied. This "natural" level is precisely that of physical causes, and hence of sensory and psychic phenomena considered in relation to those causes. sophiaperennis: Science and Revelations

If there are no grounds for finding fault with modem science in so far as it studies a realm within the limits of its competence - the precision and effectiveness of its results leave no room for doubt on this point - one must add this important reservation, namely, that the principle, the range and the development of a science or an art is never independent of Revelation nor of the demands of spiritual life, not forgetting those of social equilibrium; it is absurd to claim unlimited rights for something in itself contingent, such as science or art. By refusing to admit any possibility of serious knowledge outside its own domain, modem science, as has already been said, claims exclusive and total knowledge, while making itself out to be empirical and non-dogmatic, and this, it must be insisted, involves a flagrant contradiction; a rejection of all "dogmatism" and of everything that must be accepted a priori or not at all is simply a failure to make use of the whole of one’s intelligence. sophiaperennis: Science and Revelations

It is not surprising that a science arising out of the fall — or one of the falls— and out of an illusory rediscovery of the sensory world should also be a science of nothing but the sensory [NA: This distinction is necessary to meet the objection that science operates with elements inaccessible to our senses.], or what is virtually sensory, and that it should deny everything which surpasses that domain, thereby denying God, the next world and the soul [NA: Not all scientists deny these realities, but science denies them, and that is quite a different thing.], and this presupposes a denial of the pure Intellect, which alone is capable of knowing everything that modern science rejects. For the same reasons it also denies Revelation, which alone rebuilds the bridge broken by the fall. sophiaperennis: Science and Revelations

In other words, the foundations of modem science are false because, from the "subject" point of view, it replaces Intellect and Revelation by reason and experiment, as if it were not contradictory to lay claim to totality on an empirical basis; and its foundations are false too because, from the "object" point of view, it replaces the universal Substance by matter alone, either denying the universal Principle or reducing it to matter or to some kind of pseudo-absolute from which all transcendence has been eliminated. sophiaperennis: Science and Tradition

In all epochs and in all countries there have been revelations, religions, wisdoms; tradition is a part of mankind, just as man is a part of tradition. Revelation is in one sense the infallible intellection of the total collectivity, in so far as this collectivity has providentially become the receptacle of a manifestation of the universal Intellect. The source of this intellection is not of course the collectivity as such, but the universal or divine Intellect in so far as it adapts itself to the conditions prevailing in a particular intellectual or moral collectivity, whether it be a case of an ethnic group or of one determined by more or less distinctive mental conditions. sophiaperennis: Science and Tradition

To say that Revelation is "supernatural" does not mean that it is contrary to nature in so far as nature can be taken to represent, by extension, all that is possible on any given level of reality, it means that Revelation does not originate at the level to which, rightly or wrongly, the epithet "natural" is normally applied. This "natural" level is precisely that of physical causes, and hence of sensory and psychic phenomena considered in relation to those causes. [Light on the Ancient Worlds, 34-38]. sophiaperennis: Science and Tradition

For the same reasons it also denies Revelation, which alone rebuilds the bridge broken by the fall. According to the observations of experimental science, the blue sky which stretches above us is not a world of bliss, but an optical illusion due to the refraction of light by the atmosphere, and from this point of view, it is obviously right to maintain that the home of the blessed does not lie up there. Nevertheless it would be a great mistake to assert that the association of ideas between the visible heaven and celestial Paradise does not arise from the nature of things, but rather from ignorance and ingenuousness, mixed with imagination and sentimentality; for the blue sky is a direct and therefore adequate symbol of the higher and supra-sensory degrees of Existence; it is indeed a distant reverberation of those degrees, and it is necessarily so since it is truly a symbol, consecrated by the sacred Scriptures and by the unanimous intuition of peoples. [NA: The word "symbol" implies "participation" or "aspect", whatever the difference of level may be involved.] sophiaperennis: Science and negation of Transcendence

For too many people the gnostic is someone who, feeling illumined from within rather than by Revelation, takes himself to be superhuman and believes that for him everything is permissible; one will accuse of gnosis any political monster who is superstitious or who has vague interests in the occult while believing himself to be invested with a mission in the name of some aberrant philosophy. In a word, in common opinion gnosis equals "intellectual pride", as if this were not a contradiction in terms, pure intelligence coinciding precisely with objectivity, which by definition excludes all subjectivism, hence especially pride which is its least intelligent and coarsest form. sophiaperennis: The Sophia Perennis and Neo-spiritualism

A few words should be said here about the ancient American religion, or more precisely that of the Plains and Woodland Indians. The most eminent manifestations of the "Great Spirit" are the Cardinal Points together with zenith and nadir, or with Heaven and Earth, and next in order are such as the Sun and the Morning Star. Although the Great Spirit is one, He comprises in Himself all those qualities the traces of which we see and the effects of which we experience in the world of appearances. The East is Light and Knowledge and also Peace; the South is Warmth and Life, therefore also Growth and Happiness; the West is fertilizing Water and also Revelation speaking in lightning and thunder, the North in Cold and Purity, or Strength. Thus it is that the Universe, at whatever level it may be considered, whether or Earth, Man or Heaven, is dependent on the four primordial determinations: Light, Heat, Water, Cold. sophiaperennis: His Holiness and the Red Indian