InNATE WISDOM & AcQUIRED WISDOM
Confucius taught that there are two kinds of sage, those who are so by birth and others, among whom he counted himself, who become so only through their own efforts; and it should be remembered that, as he understood it, the 'sage' (cheng), who represents the highest degree of the Confucian hierarchy, also constitutes the first level of the Taoist hierarchy, thus occupying the limit as it were where the exoteric and esoteric domains meet, as we have already explained elsewhere.[1] Given these conditions it can be asked if, when he speaks of the sage by birth, Confucius only meant to designate the man who by nature possesses all the qualifications required to attain the initiatic hierarchy effectively and without further preparation, and who consequently has no need at the start to endeavor to climb little by little, by more or less long and arduous studies, the grades of the exterior hierarchy. This interpretation is indeed very possible-even the most likely-and is all the more legitimate in that at the very least it implies the recognition that there are beings destined so to speak by their own possibilities to pass immediately beyond the exoteric domain where Confucius himself always meant to remain. On the other hand, however, it can also be asked if, by passing beyond the limitations inherent in the strictly Confucian point of view, innate wisdom is not susceptible of a wider and deeper meaning, of which the other we have just noted could be considered a particular case.
It is easy to understand how such a question should arise, for as we have often had occasion to say, all effective knowledge constitutes a permanent acquisition that a being obtains once and for all and that nothing can ever take away. Consequently, if a being that has reached a certain degree of realization in one state of existence should pass on to another state, it would necessarily take along what it had acquired, which would thus appear as 'innate' in its new state; and besides, this could only be the case with a realization that has remained incomplete, for otherwise the passage to another state would have no conceivable meaning; and when a being passes on to the human state-the case that particularly interests us hererealization cannot have reached the point of liberation from the conditions of individual existence, but it can extend from the most elementary stages to the point nearest that which, in the human state, corresponds to the perfection of this state.[2] It could even be pointed out that in the primordial state all beings born as men must have been in this latter situation, since they possessed this perfection of their individuality in a natural and spontaneous way, without having to make any effort to attain it, and this implies that they were at the point of attaining it before being born into the human state. They were thus truly sages by birth, and this not only in the restricted sense inherent in the Confucian point of view, but in all the fullness of meaning that can be given to this expression.
Before going further it would be well to call attention to the fact that here we are speaking of something acquired in states of existence other than the human, something which therefore has and can have nothing in common with any 'reincarnationist' concept whatsoever; moreover, besides all the reasons of a metaphysical order that absolutely prevent this in any case, such a conception would be even more manifestly absurd in the case of the first men, which makes it useless to dwell further on the matter. What is perhaps more important to stress here, since it is more easily misunderstood, is that when we speak of the human state, this anteriority must not
be conceived literally as a succession more or less assimilable to temporal succession such as it exists within the human state itself, but only as expressing the causal sequence of the different states; these latter can in truth only be described as successive in a purely symbolic way, but it goes without saying that, without recourse to a symbolism conforming to the conditions of our world, it would be altogether impossible in any case to express things intelligibly in human language. With this reservation, one can speak of a being as having attained a certain degree of realization before its birth into the human state; it suffices to know in what sense this is to be understood in order that this way of speaking, inadequate as it may be in itself, present no real inconvenience; and it is thus that such a being will possess from birth the degree corresponding to this realization in the human world, a degree that can extend from that of cheng or Confucian sage, up to that of chen jen or 'true man'.
It must not be believed however that in the present conditions of the terrestrial world this innate wisdom can manifest itself in a wholly spontaneous way, as was the case in the primordial age, for it is obviously necessary to take into account the obstacles posed by the environment. Such a being must therefore have recourse to the means that in fact exist for surmounting these obstacles, which amounts to saying that it is in no way exempt, as one might be tempted to incorrectly suppose, from affiliation with an initiatic 'chain', failing which, so long as it is in the human state, it will remain what it was upon entering therein, and as if plunged into a sort of spiritual 'sleep' that does not permit it to go further on its path of realization. It is even conceivable that, if need be, it should outwardly manifest the state of cheng jen without having to develop it gradually, because this latter is still only at the upper limit of the exoteric domain; but for everything that is beyond this, initiation properly speaking always constitutes an indispensable condition at present, and is moreover sufficient in such a case.[3] This being may then appear to pass through the same stages as the initiate who has
merely started from the state of the ordinary man, but the reality will be quite different. Indeed, not only will the initiation be immediately effective for it, instead of initially being virtual as is usually the case, but the being will still 'recognize' these stages, if one may so express it, as already existing within it, in a way that can be compared to Platonic 'reminiscence', which in fact is doubtless one of the meanings of this latter. This case is also comparable, in the order of theoretical knowledge, to that of someone who already possesses the consciousness of certain doctrinal truths inwardly, but who is incapable of expressing them because he does not have the appropriate terms at his disposal, and who, once he hears these terms uttered, immediately recognizes them and wholly penetrates their meaning without needing any effort to assimilate them. It can even happen that upon finding himself in the presence of initiatic rites and symbols, these latter should appear to him as if he had always known them in an as it were 'intemporal' way, because he effectively has within himself everything that, beyond and independent of particular forms, constitutes their very essence; and in fact this 'knowledge' has no temporal beginning since it results from an acquisition realized outside the course of the human state, which alone is truly conditioned by time.
Another consequence of what we have just said is that in order to traverse the initiatic path a man such as this has no need of an outer and human guru, since in reality the true inner guru acts in him from the beginning, obviously making the intervention of any provisional 'substitute' superfluous, for the role of the outer guru is after all nothing other than this; and this is the exceptional case to which we have already alluded.[4] What must be clearly understood however is precisely that this case can only be altogether exceptional, and is all the more exceptional to the degree that humanity moves further along the descending path of its cycle; indeed, it can be viewed as something of a last vestige of the primordial state and of those who followed it prior to the Kali-Yuga, a vestige moreover
that is bound to be hidden, since the man who possesses 'by right' and from his birth the quality of 'true man', or what corresponds to a lesser degree of realization, can in fact no longer develop in a wholly spontaneous way, independent of any contingent circumstances. Of course, for him the role of contingencies is still reduced to the minimum, since it is purely and simply a question of initiatic affiliation, which it is obviously always possible for him to obtain, all the more in that he will be as if invincibly drawn to it by the 'affinities' that are an effect of his very nature. But what must be avoided above all, for it is always a danger to be feared when considering exceptions like these, is that some people will too easily imagine that such is their own case, either because they feel themselves naturally inclined to seek initiation-which usually only indicates that they are ready to enter this path, and not that they have already partially traversed it in another state-or because, before any initiation, that they had a few more or less vague 'glimmers', probably of an order more psychic than spiritual, which, after all, are no more extraordinary and prove nothing more than do the commonplace 'premonitions' that anyone whose faculties are a bit less narrowly limited than are commonly those of present-day humanity might occasionally have, and which are therefore less exclusively enclosed in the corporeal mode of his individuality; this moreover, generally speaking, does not even necessarily imply that the individual in question is really qualified for initiation. All of these assuredly represent reasons are altogether insufficient for claiming to be able to dispense with a spiritual master and arrive nonetheless surely at effective initiation, any more than for dispensing with all personal effort in view of this result. The truth obliges us to say that this is a possibility that exists, but also that it can belong only to a tiny minority, so much so that in practical terms there is finally no need to take it into account. Those who really possess this possibility will always become conscious of it at the desired moment in a certain and indubitable way, and ultimately this is the only thing that matters; as for the others, if they let themselves be drawn in, put their faith in vain fantasies, and act accordingly, this can only lead to the most unfortunate deceptions.