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  

All this evokes the question of the Symbol and of symbolism; what is the role of the Symbol in the economy of spiritual life? We have just shown that the object of concentration is not necessarily an Idea, but that it can also be a symbolic sign, a sound, an image or an activity: the monosyllable Om, mystical diagrams— mandalas — and images of the Divinities are in their way vehicles of consciousness of the Absolute, without the intervention of a doctrinal element; the "contemplation of the naked Lady," in certain circles of the troubadors or the Fideli d’Amore, suggests a vision of the Infinite and of Pure Being— not a seduction, but a catharsis. The pre-eminence either of the Idea or of the Symbol is a question of opportuneness rather than of principle; by the nature of things, the modes of the Path are as diverse as men are, and as complex as the human soul. But whatever be our points of departure — Idea or Symbol or their combination — there is also, and essentially, concentration on the Void, concentration made of certitude and serenity; as Shankara   said: "That which is the ceasing of mental agitation and the supreme Peacefulness that is the true Benares, and that is what I am." Essays Norms and Paradoxes in Spiritual Alchemy

To say Beauty is to say Love; and it is known how important this idea of Love is in all religions and all spiritual alchemies. The reason for this is that Love is the tendency towards Union: this tendency can be a movement, either towards the Immutable, the Absolute, or towards the Limitless, the Infinite; on the plane of human relations, a particular love is the support for Love as such; and the love of man for woman can be compared to the liberating tendency towards the Divine Infinitude — woman personifying All-Possibility — whereas the love of woman for man is comparable to the stabilizing tendency towards the Divine Center, which offers all certitude and all security; however, each partner participates in the other’s position, given that each is a human being and that in this respect the sexual scission is secondary. As regards sexuality in itself, the Sufi Ibn Arabi   deems sexual union to be, in the natural order, the most adequate image of Supreme Knowledge: of Extinction in Allâh of the "Knower through Allâh." Essays Norms and Paradoxes in Spiritual Alchemy

Guénon was like a personification, not of straightforward spirituality, but of intellectual certitude in its own right; or of metaphysical self-evidence in a mathematical mode, and this explains the tenor of his teaching, which is abstract and reminiscent of mathematics, as well as explaining - indirectly and because of the lack of compensatory features - certain of his traits of character. No doubt, he had the right to be "one-sided" but this constitution went ill with the broad sweep of his mission, or with what he believed to be his mission; he was neither a psychologist nor an esthete - in the best sense of these terms - which is to say that he underestimated both aesthetic values and moral values, particularly in relation to their spiritual functions. He had an inborn distaste for everything that is human and "individual", and there are certain points on which this affected his metaphysics as when, for example, he felt himself bound to deny that the "human state" has a "privileged position", or that the "mind" - the essence of which is reason - constitutes a privilege for man; in reality, it is the presence of the faculty of reason that proves the "central" and "total" character of the human state and it would not exist without this character, which is its entire raison d’être. Essays A NOTE ON RENÉ GUÉNON

There is intelligence and there is intelligence; there is knowledge and there is knowledge; there is on the one hand a fallible mind that registers and elaborates, and on the other hand a heart-intellect that perceives and projects its infallible vision onto thought. Here lies the entire difference between a logical certitude that can replace another logical certitude, and a quasi-ontological certitude that nothing can replace because it is what we are, or because we are what it is. sophiaperennis: Gnosis

This being so, it is not even difficult to be infallible when one knows one’s limits; it is enough not to speak of things of which one is ignorant, which presupposes that one knows that one is ignorant of them. This amounts to saying that infallibility is not only a matter of information and intellection, but that it also, and essentially, comprises a moral or a psychological condition, in the absence of which even men who are in principle infallible become accidentally fallible. Let us add that it is not blameworthy to offer a plausible hypothesis, on condition that is not be presented in the form of certitude ex cathedra. sophiaperennis: The notion of philosophy

Thus metaphysical certitude is absolute because of the identity between the knower and the known in the Intellect. If an example may be drawn from the sensory sphere to illustrate the difference between metaphysical and religious knowledge, it may be said that the former, which can be called ’esoteric’ when it is manifested through a religious symbolism, is conscious of the colourless essence of light and of its character of pure luminosity; a given religious belief, on the other hand, will assert that light is red and not green, whereas another belief will assert the opposite; both will be right in so far as they distinguish light from darkness but not in so far as they identify it with a particular colour. sophiaperennis: Difference between Metaphysics and Philosophy

The Sophists inaugurate the era of individualistic rationalism and of unlimited pretensions; thus they open the door to all arbitrary totalitarianisms. It is true that profane philosophy also begins with Aristotle  , but in a rather different sense, since the rationality of the Stagyrite tends upwards and not downwards as does that of Protagoras and his like; in other words, if a dissolving individualism originates with the Sophists - not forgetting allied spirits such as Democritus   and Epicurus   - Aristotle on the other hand opens the era of a rationalism still anchored in metaphysical certitude, but none the less fragile and ambiguous in its very principle, as there has more than once been occasion to point out. sophiaperennis: Modern philosophers

It should be possible to restore to the word "philosophy" its original meaning: philosophy - the "love of wisdom" - is the science of all the fundamental principles; this science operates with intuition, which "perceives," and not with reason alone, which "concludes." Subjectively speaking, the essence of philosophy is certitude; for the moderns, on the contrary, the essence of philosophy is doubt: philosophy is supposed to reason without any premise (voraussetzungsloses Denken), as if this condition were not itself a preconceived idea; this is the classical contradiction of all relativism. Everything is doubted except for doubt. [NA: For Kant  , intellectual intuition - of which he does not understand the first word - is a fraudulent manipulation (Erschleichung), which throws a moral discredit onto all authentic intellectuality.] sophiaperennis: Original meaning of the word Philosophy

The solution to the problem of knowledge - if there is a problem - could not possibly be this intellectual suicide that is the promotion of doubt; on the contrary, it lies in having recourse to a source of certitude that transcends the mental mechanism, and this source - the only one there is - is the pure Intellect, or Intelligence as such. The so-called century of "enlightenment" did not suspect its existence; for the Encyclopedists, all that the Intellect had offered - from Pythagoras   to the Scholastics - was merely naive dogmatism, even "obscurantism." Quite paradoxically, the cult of reason ended in the sub-rationalism - or "esoterism of stupidity" - that is existentialism in all its forms; it is to illusorily replace intelligence with "existence." sophiaperennis: Original meaning of the word Philosophy

The Sophists inaugurate the era of individualistic rationalism and of unlimited pretensions; thus they open the door to all arbitrary totalitarianisms. It is true that profane philosophy also begins with Aristotle, but in a rather different sense, since the rationality of the Stagyrite tends upwards and not downwards as does that of Protagoras and his like; in other words, if a dissolving individualism originates with the Sophists - not forgetting allied spirits such as Democritus and Epicurus - Aristotle on the other hand opens the era of a rationalism still anchored in metaphysical certitude, but none the less fragile and ambiguous in its very principle, as there has more than once been occasion to point out. sophiaperennis: Protagoras

In theology as in philosophy, and to varying degrees, one encounters a deliberate way of reasoning in a given manner and in a given direction in order to support a certain axiom, and to exclude from the intelligence all possibilities which do not serve this end. The subjectivists will say that the same holds true for all demonstrations, but this is not so, since in the case of a certitude independent of all sentimental postulates, the arguments result objectively from the certitude to be demonstrated, and not subjectively from our desire to prove it. sophiaperennis: About the rational mode of knowledge

The moderns have reproached the pre-Socratic philosophers - and all the sages of the East as well - with trying to construct a picture of the universe without asking themselves whether our faculties of knowledge are at the height of such an enterprise; the reproach is perfectly vain, for the very fact that we can put such a question proves that our intelligence is in principle adequate to the needs of the case. It is not the dogmatists who are ingenuous, but the sceptics, who have not the smallest idea in the world of what is implicit in the "dogmatism" they oppose. In our days some people go so far as to make out that the goal of philosophy can only be the search for a "type of rationality" adapted to the comprehension of "human realism"; the error is the same, but it is also coarser and meaner, and more insolent as well. How is it that they cannot see that the very idea of inventing an intelligence capable of resolving such problems proves, in the first place, that this intelligence exists already - for it alone could conceive of any such idea - and shows in the second place that the goal aimed at is of an unfathomable absurdity? But the present purpose is not to prolong this subject; it is simply to call attention to the parallelism between the pre-Socratic - or more precisely the Ionian - wisdom and oriental doctrines such as the Vaisheshika and the Sankhya, and to underline, on the one hand, that in all these ancient visions of the Universe the implicit postulate is the innateness of the nature of things in the intellect [NA: In the terminology of the ancient cosmologists one must allow for its symbolism: when Thales saw in "water" the origin of all things, it is as certain as can be that Universal Substance - the Prakriti of the Hindus - is in question and not the sensible element. It is the same with the " air" of Anaximenes of Miletus, or with the " fire" of Heraclitus  .] and not a supposition or other logical operation, and on the other hand, that this notion of innateness furnishes the very definition of that which the sceptics and empiricists think they must disdainfully characterize as "dogmatism"; in this way they demonstrate that they are ignorant, not only of the nature of intellection, but also of the nature of dogmas in the proper sense of the word. The admirable thing about the Platonists is not, to be sure, their "thought", it is the content of their thought, whether it be called "dogmatic" or otherwise. The Sophists inaugurate the era of individualistic rationalism and of unlimited pretensions; thus they open the door to all arbitrary totalitarianisms. It is true that profane philosophy also begins with Aristotle, but in a rather different sense, since the rationality of the Stagyrite tends upwards and not downwards as does that of Protagoras and his like; in other words, if a dissolving individualism originates with the Sophists - not forgetting allied spirits such as Democritus and Epicurus - Aristotle on the other hand opens the era of a rationalism still anchored in metaphysical certitude, but none the less fragile and ambiguous in its very principle, as there has more than once been occasion to point out. sophiaperennis: About Plato and/or Aristotle

2. Kant calls "transcendent al subreption" (Erschleichung) the trans formation" of the purely " regulative" idea of God into an objective reality; which once more proves that he is unable to conceive certitude outside a reasoning founded on sense experience and operating beneath the reality which he pretends to judge and deny. In short, Kantian " criticism’ consists in calling liar" whoever does not bend to its discipline; agnostics do practically the same, by decreeing that no one can know anything, since they themselves know nothing, or desire to know nothing. sophiaperennis: Kantianism

For an intellectual limit is a wall of which one has no awareness. One cannot therefore have it both ways: either the intelligence by definition comprises a principle of illimitability or liberty, whatever be the degree of its actualization, in which case there is no call to attribute limits to it with an arbitrariness that is all the more inexcusable in that the power of a particular individual intelligence (or mode of intelligence) is not necessarily a criterion for the appraisal of intelligence as such; or else, on the contrary, the intelligence comprises, likewise by definition, a principle of limitation or constraint, in which case it no longer admits of any certitude and cannot function any differently from the intelligence of animals, with the result that all pretension to a "critical philosophy" is vain. sophiaperennis: Kantianism

Rationalism is the thought of the Cartesian "therefore," which signals a proof; this has nothing to do with the "therefore" that language demands when we intend to express a logico-ontological relationship. Instead of cogito ergo sum, one ought to say: sum quia est esse, "I am because Being is"; "because" and not "therefore." The certitude that we exist would be impossible without absolute, hence necessary, Being, which inspires both our existence and our certitude; Being and Consciousness: these are the two roots of our reality. Vedanta adds Beatitude, which is the ultimate content of both Consciousness and Being. sophiaperennis: Descartes   and the Cogito

What good, for example, is Schelling  ’s correct view of intellectual contemplation and of the transcending of the subject-object relationship in the Absolute, since it is accompanied by the promise of a flat philosophical pseudo-religion mingled with a classical or academic aestheticism of the most banal style? The replacing of the Cartesian Cogito ergo sum by the formula of Maine de Biran  : "I act, I will, I exist," or the Sum cogitans of Heidegger  , and so on, is strictly a matter of taste, or of mental illusion; the starting point in all cases of this kind is at bottom merely an ignorance ignorant of itsel f. It may well be asked why thought or action are any better proof of our existence than some sensation or other; it is precisely the intelligence which shows us that many things exist without thinking, acting or willing, for once we see that stones exist, we have no need to invoke thought or action as proofs of our own existence, provided, of course, we admit that we are certain of the objective value of our vision. Now we are certain of it by virtue of the infallibility of the Intellect, and that is a subject which admits of no discussion, any more than does the question of knowing whether we are sane or mad. Philosophers readily found their systems on the absence of this certitude, which is however the conditio sine qua non of all knowledge, and even of all thought and all action. sophiaperennis: Descartes and the Cogito

A word concerning metaphysical certitude, or the infallibility of pure intellection, is perhaps called for here. "I think, therefore I am," said Descartes; aside from the fact that our existence is not proven by thought alone, he should have added: "I am, therefore Being is"; or he could have said in the first place: "I think because I am." In any event, the foundation of metaphysical certitude is the coincidence between truth and our being; a coincidence that no ratiocination could invalidate. Contingent things are proven by factors situated within their order of contingency, whereas things deriving from the Absolute become clear by their participation in the Absolute, hence by a "superabundance of light" - according to Saint Thomas - which amounts to saying that they are proven by themselves. In other words, universal truths draw their evidence not from our contingent thought, but from our transpersonal being, which constitutes the substance of our spirit and guarantees the adequacy of intellection. sophiaperennis: Descartes and the Cogito

The error of rationalism is not to prove that which reason can perfectly well grasp, namely the facts or laws of nature, but to wish to prove that of which reason by its own means can gain no certitude; everything that can be said about rationalism applies a fortiori to the more or less recent systems such as "intuitionism," the "philosophy of values" and "existentialism" which, far from going beyond the plane of reason, represent, and cannot do other than represent, merely the decomposition of rationalism at the end of its resources. Thus the only thing we shall retain in this order of ideas is that the prejudice of enclosing intelligence within reason leads practically to the denial of reason itself. It goes without saying that the so-called "realism" which results from this—and which is merely nihilist "mysticism  " assuming by preference a psycho-logistical style—can only envisage the "real" from a properly infra-human perspective. sophiaperennis: Rationalism

Rationalism, taken in its broadest sense, is the very negation of Platonic anamnesis; it consists in seeking the elements of certitude in phenomena rather than in our very being. The Greeks, aside from the Sophists, were not rationalists properly speaking; it is true that Socrates   rationalized the intellect by insisting on dialectic and thus on logic, but it could also be said that he intellectualized reason; there lies the ambiguity of Greek philosophy, the first aspect being represented by Aristotle, and the second by Plato, approximatively speaking. To intellectualize reason: this is an inevitable and altogether spontaneous procedure once there is the intention to express intellections that reason alone cannot attain; the difference between the Greeks and the Hindus is here a matter of degree, in the sense that Hindu thought is more "concrete" and more symbolistic than Greek thought. The truth is that it is not always possible to distinguish immediately a reasoner who accidentally has intuitions from an intuitive who in order to express himself must reason, but in practice this poses no problem, provided that the truth be saved. Rationalism is the thought of the Cartesian "therefore," which signals a proof; this has nothing to do with the "therefore" that language demands when we intend to express a logico-ontological relationship. Instead of cogito ergo sum, one ought to say: sum quia est esse, "I am because Being is"; "because" and not "therefore." The certitude that we exist would be impossible without absolute, hence necessary, Being, which inspires both our existence and our certitude; Being and Consciousness: these are the two roots of our reality. Vedanta adds Beatitude, which is the ultimate content of both Consciousness and Being. sophiaperennis: Rationalism

The human body comprises three fundamental regions: the body properly so-called, the head, the sexual parts; these are almost three different subjectivities. The head represents both intellectual and individual subjectivity; the body, collective and archetypal subjectivity, that of masculinity or femininity or that of race or caste; finally, the sexual parts manifest, quite paradoxically, a dynamic subjectivity at once animal and divine, if one may express it thus. In other words, the face expresses a thought, a becoming aware of something, a truth; the body, for its part, expresses a being, an existential synthesis; and the sexual parts, a love both creative and liberat ing: mystery of the generous substance that unfolds in the accidents, and of the blessed accidents that flow back towards the substance; glory of self-giving and glory of delivering. The human body in its integrality is intelligence, existence, love; certitude, serenity and faith. sophiaperennis: The Message of the Human Body

...faith and intelligence can each be conceived at two different levels: faith as a quasi-ontological and premental certitude ranks higher than the discerning and speculative aspects of intelligence, [NA: This higher faith is something altogether different from the irresponsible and arrogant taking of liberties so characteristic of the profane improvisers of Zen or of Jn  âna, who seek to "take a short cut" by stripping themselves of the essential human context of all realization, whereas in the East, and in the normal conditions of ethical and liturgical ambiance, this context is largely supplied in advance. One does not enter the presence of a king by the back door. (Logic and Transcendence, p. 206).] but intelligence as pure Intellection ranks higher that faith which is no more than an adherence of the sentiments; it is this ambivalence which is the source of numerous misunderstandings, but which makes possible at the same time an exo-esoteric language that is both simple and complex... sophiaperennis: The Sophia Perennis and Neo-spiritualism

Beauty has something pacifying and dilating in it, something consoling and liberating, because it communicates a substance of truth, of evidence and of certitude, and it does so in a concrete and existential mode; thus it is like a mirror of our transpersonal and eternally blissful essence. [The Play of Masks, p. 46] sophiaperennis: Femininity