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Works: form

quinta-feira 1º de fevereiro de 2024

  

Form is the manifestation of an “idea,” hence of a particular possibility or of an archetype, and in the final analysis of an aspect of the divine nature, and this to the extent that the form is positive and essential, not privative and accidental. [GTUFS: DivineHuman, Structure and Universality of the Conditions of Existence] Form is by definition the manifestation of an archetype, the intention of which excludes an indefinite gradation. In other words, form coincides with an “idea” which cannot be something other than what it is. [GTUFS: DivineHuman, The Message of the Human Body] Form reflects the first hypostatic autodetermination, the divine Logos. [GTUFS: DivineHuman, Structure and Universality of the Conditions of Existence] Every expressed truth necessarily assumes a form, that of its expression, and it is metaphysically impossible that any form should possess a unique value to the exclusion of other forms; for a form, by definition, cannot be unique and exclusive, that is to say, it cannot be the only possible expression of what it expresses. Form implies specification or distinction, and the specific is only conceivable as a modality of a “species,” that is to say, of a category that includes a combination of analogous modalities. Again, that which is limited excludes by definition whatever is not comprised within its own limits and must compensate for this exclusion by a reaffirmation or repetition of itself outside its own boundaries, which amounts to saying that the existence of other limited things is rigorously implied in the very definition of the limited. To claim that a limitation, for example, a form considered as such, is unique and incomparable of its kind, and that it excludes the existence of other analogous modalities, is to attribute to it the unicity of Existence itself; now, no one can contest the fact that a form is always a limitation or that a religion is of necessity always a form – not, that goes without saying, by virtue of its internal Truth, which is of a universal and supraformal order, but because of its mode of expression, which, as such, cannot but be formal and therefore specific and limited. It can never be said too often that a form is always a modality of a category of formal, and therefore distinctive or multiple, manifestation, and is consequently but one modality among others that are equally possible, their supraformal cause alone being unique. We will also repeat – for this is metaphysically of great importance – that a form, by the very fact that it is limited, necessarily leaves something outside itself, namely, that which its limits exclude; and this something, if it belongs to the same order, is necessarily analogous to the form under consideration, since the distinction between forms must needs be compensated by an indistinction or relative identity that prevents them from being absolutely distinct from each other, for that would entail the absurd idea of a plurality of unicities or Existences, each form representing a sort of divinity without any relationship to other forms. As we have just seen, the exoteric claim to the exclusive possession of the truth comes up against the axiomatic objection that there is no such thing in existence as a unique fact, for the simple reason that it is strictly impossible that such a fact should exist, unicity alone being unique and no fact being unicity; it is this that is ignored by the ideology of the “believers,” which is fundamentally nothing but an intentional and interested confusion between the formal and the universal. The ideas that are affirmed in one religious form (as, for example, the idea of the Word or of the Divine Unity) cannot fail to be affirmed, in one way or another, in all other religious forms; similarly the means of grace or of spiritual realization at the disposal of one priestly order cannot but possess their equivalent elsewhere; and indeed, the more important and indispensable any particular means of grace may be, the more certain is it that it will be found in all the orthodox forms in a mode appropriate to the environment in question. The foregoing can be summed up in the following formula: pure and absolute Truth can only be found beyond all its possible expressions; these expressions, as such, cannot claim the attributes of this Truth; their relative remoteness from it is expressed by their differentiation and multiplicity, by which they are strictly limited. [GTUFS: UnityReligions, The Limitations of Exoterism]
To say form is to say exclusion of possibilities, whence the necessity for those excluded to become realized in other forms, since what it “excludes” by definition, is condemned to repeat itself. [GTUFS: ChristIslam, The Idea of “The Best” in Religions]

Form / Beauty: Forms can be snares just as they can be symbols and keys; beauty can chain us to forms, just as it can also be a door opening towards the formless. [GTUFS: LightAW, In the Wake of the Fall]

Form / Essence: A form is a coagulated essence, which is to say that the relationship resembles that between ice and water; the formal world – the material and animic states – thus possesses the property of “congealing” spiritual substances, of individualizing them, and hence of separating them more or less fundamentally from each other . . . What form is with regard to essence, manifestation – whether essential or not – is with regard to the Principle. [GTUFS: FormSR, The Five Divine Presences]