Sfaturi, Despre cunoasterea metafizica Optiuni

[shapeshifter]

THE NOBLE MAN

The noble man is one who dominates himself.
The noble man is one who masters himself and loves to master himself; the base man is one who does not master himself and shrinks in horror from mastering himself.
The noble man always maintains himself at the centre; he never loses sight of the symbol, the spiritual gift of things, the sign of God, a gratitude that is both ascending and radiating.
The noble man is naturally detached from mean things, sometimes against his own interests; and he is naturally generous through greatness of soul. [Esoterism as Principle and as Way, Frithjof Schuon].


Generosity
Generosity is the opposite of egoism, avarice and meanness; nevertheless let us be clear that it is evil that is opposed to good and not inversely. Generosity is the greatness of soul which loves to give and also to forgive, because it allows man to put himself spontaneously in the place of others; which allows to one’s adversary all the chances that he humanly deserves, even though these be minimal, and without prejudicing justice or the cause of right. Nobility comprises a priori a benevolent attitude and a certain gift of self, without affectation and without failing to do justice to things as they are; the noble man tries to help, to meet one halfway, before condemning or acting severely, while being implacable and capable of speedy action when reality demands it. Goodness due to weakness or dreaming is not a virtue; generosity is beautiful to the extent that man is strong and lucid. There is always, in the noble soul, a certain instinct of the gift of self, for God Himself is the first to overflow with charity, and above all with beauty; the noble man is only happy in giving, and he gives himself above all to God, as God gave Himself to him, and desires to give Himself to him.

Piety
Transcending oneself: this is the great imperative of the human condition; and there is another that anticipates it and at the same time prolongs it: dominating oneself. The noble man is one who dominates himself; the holy man is one who transcends himself. Nobility and holiness are the imperatives of the human state.
The noble man is naturally detached from mean things, sometimes against his own interests; and he is naturally generous through greatness of soul. The pious man, for his part, holds himself detached from the things of this world — either within the framework of a legitimate equilibrium, or else by breaking this framework —because they do not lead to Heaven, or to the extent that they do not contribute to this end; and he is generous as a result of his love of God, because this love allows him to “see God everywhere”, and because “God is Love”. The fact that the two dimensions, horizontal and vertical, are linked in depth, results from the nature of things: the one conditions the other and the one proceeds from the other, and they are destined to coincide, if they do not already do so.
It is perhaps not superfluous to insist once more on the double significance of the notion of morality, that is to say on the distinction between what is good according to the law and what is good according to virtue. The two do not always coincide, for a base man can obey the law, be it only through simple constraint, while a noble man may be obliged, exceptionally, to transgress a law out of virtue, to put pity above duty, for example. [Logic and Transcendence].


Perception of the world
To have the sense of immanence — parallel to the discernment between the Real and the unreal, or between Reality that is absolute and that which is relative or contingent, or in consequence between the essential and the secondary, and so on — is to have the intuition of essences, of archetypes, or let us say: of the metaphysical transparency of phenomena; and this intuition is the basis of nobleness of soul.
The noble man respects, admires and loves in virtue of an essence that he perceives, whereas the vile man underestimates or scorns in virtue of an accident; the sense of the sacred is opposed to the instinct to belittle; the Bible speaks of "mockers." The sense of the sacred is the essence of all legitimate respect; we insist on legitimacy, for it is a question of respecting, not just anything, but what is worthy of respect; "there is no right superior to that of the truth."
It may be added that the noble man looks at what is essential in phenomena, not at what is accidental; he sees the overall worth in a creature and the intention of the Creator — not some more or less humiliating accident — and he thereby anticipates the perception of the Divine Qualities through forms. This is what is expressed by the words of the Apostle “ for the pure all things are pure”.
The noble man, and consequently the spiritual man, sees in positive phenomena the substantial greatness and not the accidental smallness, but he is indeed obliged to discern smallness when it is substantial and when, in consequence, it determines the nature of the phenomenon. The base man, on the contrary, and sometimes the simply worldly man, sees the accidental before the essential and gives himself over to the consideration of the aspects of smallness which enter into the constitution of greatness, but which cannot detract from its greatness in the least degree, except in the eyes of the man who is himself made of smallness.


Sacrificial instinct
The sacrificial instinct, which on the whole coincides with the sense of measure, enters into the very definition of nobleness: the noble man is one who controls himself and who loves to control himself; the sense not only of reality, but also of beauty demands that discipline which is self-mastery. Moreover, the impious man can never be altogether noble, whereas piety necessarily gives rise to nobility, no matter what the social milieu; the pious man is noble because truth is noble.
Especially beauty perceived by a noble man, that is: whose soul is beautiful, precisely. As Socrates said: "If there be something other than absolute Beauty, then that something can be beautiful to the extent that it partakes of absolute Beauty" (Plato: Phaedo).


Noble and Vile Man
"... man must see things according to the spirit of the Creator, not with the superficial, profane and desacralizing view of the vulgar soul. The noble man feels the need to admire, to venerate, to worship; the vile man on the contrary tends to belittle, even to mock, which is the way the devil sees things; but it is also diabolical to admire what is evil, whereas it is normal and praiseworthy to despise evil as such, for the truth has precedence over everything.
The primacy of the true also clearly implies that essential truths have precedence over secondary truths, as the absolute has precedence over the relative. The definition of man according to immortality has precedence over the definition of man according to earthly life.
The noble man respects, admires and loves in virtue of an essence that he perceives, whereas the vile man underestimates or scorns in virtue of an accident; the sense of the sacred is opposed to the instinct to belittle; the Bible speaks of "mockers." The sense of the sacred is the essence of all legitimate respect; we insist on legitimacy, for it is a question of respecting, not just anything, but what is worthy of respect; "there is no right superior to that of the truth."

Acest topic a fost editat de andra_v: 16 Apr 2009, 04:00 PM

[shapeshifter]

Some examples of Gnostic
From another point of view, Maya is relativity or illusion, and is not "on the left" but "below." As the universal archetype of femininity, Maya is both Eve and Mary: "psychic" and seductive woman, and "pneumatic" and liberating woman; descendent or ascendant, alienating or reintegrating genius. Maya projects souls in order to be able to free them, and projects evil in order to be able to overcome it; or again: on the one hand, She projects her veil in order to be able to manifest the potentialities of the Supreme Good; and, on the other, She veils good in order to be able to unveil it, and thus to manifest a further good: that of the prodigal son's return, or of Deliverance.
The emperor Augustus, who was divinized while still living, is supposed to have said before dying: "Applaud, for have I not played well the comedy of life?" This indicates in its way the distance of the "pneumatic" in relation to the "psychic" and the "hylic".
A companion of the young St Thomas Aquinas told him, in the presence of other young monks, to look out of the window to see a flying ox; this the saint did, without of course seeing anything. Everyone began to laugh, but St Thomas, imperturbable, made this remark: “A flying ox is less astonishing that a lying monk”. There is no occasion to reproach pure souls for having a certain credulity which, in fact, is to their credit, in that their humility inclines them to overestimate others, provided that evidence to the contrary is not immediately present.
In the language of gnosis, he [pope Celestine V] was what is called a “pneumatic” namely a being who is attracted by Heaven in a “supernaturally natural” manner; the name of Coelestinus, chosen by the new pope and given to the monastic order which he founded, is also an indication of this.
The “pneumatic” lives on the memory of a lost paradise: he seeks only one thing, a return to his origin, and having himself a quasi-angelic nature, he is to a large extent unaware of the average nature of men. Incapable of knowing in advance that the general run of men are wild beasts, Celestine V, with a holy naivety, believed them to be similar to — or even better than —himself; he was unaware to what extent passions, ambitions and other illusions dominate intelligences and wills, and to what extent men are capable of pretence — which incidentally proves their culpability. He had to become pope to find this out.


Gnostic and the World
There has been much speculation on the question of knowing how the sage—the “gnostic” or the jnani “see” the world of phenomena, and occultists of all sorts have not refrained from putting forward the most fantastic theories on “clairvoyance” and the “third eye”; but in reality the difference between ordinary vision and that enjoyed by the sage or the gnostic is quite clearly not of the sensorial order.
The sage sees things in their total context, therefore in their relativity and at the same time in their metaphysical transparency; he does not see them as if they were physically diaphanous or endowed with a mystical sonority or a visible aura, even though his vision may sometimes be described by means of such images.
If we see before us a landscape and we know it to be a mirage—even if the eye alone cannot discern its true nature—we look at it otherwise than we should if it were a real landscape; a star makes a different impression on us from a firefly, even when the optical circumstances are such that the ocular sensations are the same; the sun would fill us with tenor if it ceased to set. In the same sort of way a spiritual vision of things is distinguished by a concrete perception of universal relationships and not by some special sensorial characteristic. The “third eye” is the faculty of seeing phenomena sub specie aeternitatis and therefore in a sort of simultaneity; to it are often added, in the nature of things, intuitions concerning modalities that are in the ordinary way imperceptible.
The sage sees causes in effects, and effects in causes; he sees God in all things, and all things in God. A science that penetrates the depths of the “infinitely great” and of the “infinitely small” on the physical plane, but denies other planes although it is they that reveal the sufficient reason of the nature we perceive and provide the key to it, such a science is a greater evil than ignorance pure and simple; it is in fact a “counter-science”, and its ultimate effects cannot but be deadly.
In other words, modern science is a totalitarian rationalism that eliminates both Revelation and Intellect, and at the same time a totalitarian materialism t hat ignores the metaphysical relativity—and therewith also the impermanence—of matter and of the world. It does not know that the supra-sensible, situated as it is beyond space and time, is the concrete principle of the world, and that it is consequently also at the origin of that contingent and changeable coagulation we call “matter”. A science that is called “exact” is in fact an “intelligence without wisdom”, just as postscholastic philosophy is inversely a wisdom without intelligence.


Gnostic and Virtues
An objection might here be raised that charity requires to be transcended in gnosis and that it is illogical to concern oneself with it since Knowledge, being beyond oppositions, contains the undifferentiated quintessence of every virtue; to this the reply must be made that positive charity is necessary in so far as the individual has not understood the meaning of negative virtue; the jnani asks, not: ‘Am I charitable?’ but: ‘Is this being free of egoism?’, indicating that his virtue is as negative as his theosophy is apophatic. Intrinsic virtue lies beyond all moral specification; it is our fundamental being, so that to be virtuous means to abstain from the vices of fallen nature.
This by no means prevents abstention from being able to assume, according to circumstances, an aspect of volitive affirmation, hence of exteriorisation and activity. On the other hand the strictly moral perspective, which the jnâni or the ‘gnostic’ has to leave behind, implies adding works and virtues to our being and thereby tends towards individualism; in practice it runs the risk of putting works and virtues in the place of God, while the manic perspective, which confines itself to maintaining the soul in the virginity of our fundamental being, is impersonal from the fact that it sees virtue, not in human initiatives, but in an existential quality, namely the primordial and innocent nature of creation; but this fundamental being, or this theomorphic nature, represents an ontological layer deeper than the level of the fall. Virtue then is not dissociated from contemplation, it rests, so to speak, in God; it is less a will to do than a consciousness of being, and that is why it withdraws from the plane of moral oppositions instead of entering actively into their play.
But the transcending of the virtues could not in any case be equivalent to an absence of virtues; on the contrary, it means freedom from the individual limitations which the divine Qualities assume in the human ego; what counts most, for God, is the quality of our contemplation, for to be contemplated is for God a manner of ‘being’, if one may so express it, in the sense that the fact of human contemplation is a consequence of divine ‘being’.


Gnostic and Bhaktas
In doctrinal formulations those of an affective temperament (the bhaktas) tend to adopt individual and rational modes of thought, and, being more or less aware of the limitations which this implies, they attribute them to man as such.
For Shankara theory is an objectivation of Reality, which is the Self. For Ramanuja theory is a dialectic — even an apologetic —destined to prepare the ground for the way of love.
For the affective man knowledge flows from love as a gift. For the intellective man, the gnostic (the jnani), love flows from knowledge as a necessity.
Man's deiformity implies moral beauty, if only — de facto — as a potentiality. The pneumatic is a man who identifies a priori with his spiritual substance and thus always remains faithful to himself; he is not a mask unaware of his scope, as is the man enclosed in accidentality.
The question: ‘What is God?’ or: ‘What am I?’ outweighs, in the soul of the gnostic, the question: ‘What does God want of me?’ or: ‘What must I do?’ although these questions are far from being irrelevant, since man is always man. The gnostic, who sees God ‘everywhere and nowhere’, does not first of all base himself on alternatives outside himself, although he cannot escape them; what matters to him above all is that the world is everywhere woven of the same existential qualities and poses in all circumstances the same problems of remoteness and proximity.
This last specification provides the key to the enigma: voluntaristic mysticism readily resorts to biases, to catapulting arguments or surgical acts of violence, for the simple reason that at that level the truth pure and simple appears as an inoperative abstraction. For the "gnostic" or the "pneumatic," the inverse takes place; while being insensitive to exaggerations and other means of pressure he is immediately receptive to the truth as such, because it is the truth and because the truth is what convinces and attracts him.
... for the voluntaristic and moralistic theologian, that is true which will yield a good result; for the born metaphysician, on the contrary, that is efficacious which is true; "there is no right superior to that of the Truth." But not everyone is a "pneumatic," and it is necessary to give societies an equilibrium and to save souls as one can.


Knowledge and Deliverance
“There is no other means of obtaining complete and final Deliverance than by Knowledge, this alone removes the bonds of the passions ... Action (karma), not being opposed to ignorance (avidya,), cannot remove it; but Knowledge dissipates ignorance, just as light dissipates darkness.”—Such remarks concern only “ pneumatics”; now the fact that the majority of pneumatics practiced certain actions—ritual, moral or other—does not mean that they were ignorant of the rel ative character of action, nor still more so that they attained Knowledge by means of action; and if a given hadith appears to make mystical Union dependent on supererogatory acts, this is solely because it takes as its starting-point the tendencies of exteriorized man, not to mention the fact that certain rites can be supports for cognitive actualization. Action collaborates with intellection and contemplation, but does not replace them, nor is it a conditio sine qua non.


Gnostic and the Sacred
As regards lower moral disciplines presented as stages towards higher intellectual and spiritual results, the great question that arises is knowing whether or not metaphysical ideas act on the will of such and such a man, or whether on the contrary they remain inoperative abstractions; that is to say whether or not they unleash interiorizing and ascending acts of the will and affective dispositions of the same order. If this is the case, there is no need to seek to create a distaste in the person in question for a world which already hardly attracts him, or for an ego which already has no more illusions or ambitions, at least not at the level that would justify crude disciplines; it is pointless to impose on the “pneumatic” attitudes which for him are meaningless and which, instead of humbling him in salutary fashion, can only bore and distract him.
To think otherwise — but there are here many degrees to consider —is to place oneself outside esoterism and sapience, whatever be the theories to which one thinks one can or must refer; it is to forget in particular that the “pneumatic” is the man in whom the sense of the sacred takes precedence over other tendencies, whereas in the case of the “psychic” it is the attraction of the world and the accentuation of the ego that take priority, without mentioning the “hylic” or “somatic” who sees in sensory pleasures an end in itself. It is not a particularly high degree of intelligence that constitutes initiatic qualification, it is the sense of the sacred — or the degree of this sense — with all the moral and intellectual consequences that it implies. The sense of the sacred separates from the world and at the same time transfigures it.