Initiatic Teaching
We must return once again to the characteristics proper to initiatic teaching, characteristics by which it differs profoundly from all profane teaching. What we wish to consider here can be called the exteriority of this teaching, that is, the means of expression by which it can in a certain measure and to a certain degree be transmitted as a preparation to the purely interior work by which the initiation, at first virtual, becomes more or less completely effective. Many, who do not realize what initiatic teaching really is, see in it no other feature worthy of note than the use of symbolism; moreover it is very true that symbolism does play an essential role in it, but one must still know why this is so. Now such people, seeing things only in a very superficial way and stopping short at appearances and outward forms, fail entirely to understand the purpose and even, one can say, the necessity of symbolism, which under these conditions they can only find strange and at best merely useless. Indeed, they suppose that the initiatic doctrine is in fact hardly more than a philosophy like all the others, doubtless a bit different in its method, but in any case nothing more, their mentality being so formed that they are incapable of conceiving anything else; but it. is nevertheless quite certain that for the reasons we have given above philosophy has nothing to do with symbolism and is even in a certain way opposed to it. Even those who in spite of this misapprehension manage all the same-for whatever reasons, which usually have rothing initiatic about them-to find in the teaching of such a doctrine some value from one point of view or another, never make of it anything more than a sort of extension of profane teaching, a
complement to ordinary education for the use of a relative elite. But perhaps it is better to deny its value entirely, which amounts to ignoring it purely and simply, than to belittle it thus and, all too often, to present in its name and in its place certain more or less coordinated views about all sorts of things that are really not initiatic either in themselves or in the way they are treated, this being precisely that deviation of the 'speculative' work to which we have already alluded.
There is another way of envisaging initiatic teaching that is hardly less false than the former although it may seem completely contrary to it. This consists in trying to oppose it to profane teaching as if it were in a way situated on the same level by attributing to it as object of study a certain more or less vaguely defined special science that is always in contradiction and conflict with the other sciences, although it is always declared to be superior to them by hypothesis and without any clear reason being given. This viewpoint is particularly that of the occultists and other pseudo-initiates who, in reality, scorn profane teaching far less than they would like to believe, since they go so far as to make many more or less disguised borrowings from it; and what is more, this attitude of opposition can hardly be reconciled with their constant preoccupation with finding points of comparison between traditional doctrine, or what they believe to be such, and the modern sciences; and indeed, it is certainly true that opposition and similitude both presuppose that the things in question are of the same order. Here there is a double error: on the one hand, confusion of initiatic knowledge with the study of a more or less secondary traditional science (whether magic or something else of the kind) and, on the other, ignorance of what constitutes the essential difference between the point of view of the traditional sciences and that of the profane sciences; but after all that we have already said there is no need to dwell further on this.
Now, if initiatic teaching is neither a prolongation of profane teaching, as the first would have it, nor its antithesis, as the others maintain, if it is neither a system of philosophy nor a specialized
science, this is because it is really something altogether different; but one must not seek to give it a definition in the strict sense, for this would inevitably deform it even more. The constant use of symbolism in the transmission of this teaching already suffices to hint at this once it is admitted, as is logical to do even without going to the heart of the matter, that there must be a mode of expression that is completely different from ordinary language in order to express ideas equally different from those expressed by ordinary language, ideas which cannot be completely translated into words and for which a less limited, more universal language is necessary, for the reason that they themselves are of a more universal order. It is necessary to add that if initiatic concepts are essentially different from profane concepts, this is because they proceed above all from another mentality than these [2], from which they differ less by their object than by the point of view from which they consider that object; and this is inevitably so, given that this object cannot be 'specialized', which would amount to trying to impose on initiatic knowledge a limitation incompatible with its very nature. It is therefore easy to accept on one hand that everything that can be considered from the profane point of view can also be considered, though in a completely different way and with a different understanding, from the initiatic point of view (for as we have often said, there is really no profane domain to which certain things belong by their nature, but only a profane point of view, which is finally only an illegitimate and deviated way of looking at things) [3], whereas on the other hand there are things that totally escape every profane point of view [4] and that are exclusive to the initiatic domain alone.
We have explained earlier that symbolism, which is like the sensible form of all initiatic teaching, is really a language more universal than the common languages, and this cannot be doubted for even an instant if one considers that every symbol is susceptible of multiple interpretations which, far from contradicting each other, are on the contrary complementary and equally true, although proceeding from different points of view; and if this is so, it is because the symbol is less the expression of a clearly defined and delimited idea (in the sense of the 'clear and distinct' ideas of Cartesian philosophy, which are supposed to be entirely expressible by words) than the synthetic and schematic representation of a whole ensemble of ideas and conceptions that each person can grasp according to his own intellectual aptitudes and in the measure that he is prepared to comprehend them. Whoever succeeds in penetrating to the deeper meaning of the symbol can thereby conceive incomparably more than what can be expressed directly; and thus it is the only means of transmitting, to the degree possible, all the inexpressible reality that makes up the proper domain of initiation, or rather, to speak more rigorously, of placing the seeds of conceptions of this order in the intellect of the initiate who must thereafter bring them from potency to act, and who must develop and cultivate them by his personal effort, for no one can do more than prepare him for this by tracing, with the appropriate formulas, the plan that he will afterward have to realize within himself in order to come to the effective possession of the initiation that he has received only virtually from the outside. It must not be forgotten, moreover, that if symbolic initiation, which is but the basis and support of effective initiation, is necessarily the only one that can be given from the outside, it can at least be preserved and transmitted even by those who understand neither its meaning nor its scope; it suffices that the symbols be maintained intact for them to remain able to awaken in anyone capable of it all of the conceptions of which they represent the synthesis. Let us again recall that it is here that the true initiatic secret
lies, which is inviolable by its nature and which is itself its own protection against the curiosity of the profane, and of which the relative secret of certain outward signs is but a symbolic representation. As to this secret, each person will be able to penetrate it to a greater or lesser extent according to the range of his intellectual horizon, but even if he should penetrate it completely he can never effectively communicate to another what he himself will have understood; at most he will be able to help those who are capable of it to come to this same understanding.
This does not in any way prevent the sensible forms used for the transmission of the outward and symbolic initiation from having their own value as means of instruction, even apart from their essential role as support and vehicle of the spiritual influence. In this connection we may note (and this brings us back to the intimate connection between symbol and rite) that they render the fundamental symbols in gestures, taking this word in its widest sense as we have already done earlier, and that in this way they make the teaching presented to the initiate 'living' so to speak [5], which is the most adequate and most generally applicable way to present it for his assimilation, for in the present conditions of existence all manifestations of the human individuality necessarily translate into diverse modalities of vital activity. But for all that, vitality must not be made into a sort of absolute principle, as many moderns wish to do; the expression of an idea in vital mode is, after all, only a symbol like the others, as also, for example, is its translation into spatial mode, which would constitute a geometric symbol or ideogram; but it is, one could say, a symbol that by its special character is capable of penetrating more immediately than any other into the very interior of the human individuality. In the final analysis, if every method of initiation in its different phases presents a correspondence, whether with the individual human life or even with the entirety of terrestrial life, it is because the development of vital manifestation itself, particular or general, 'microcosmic' or 'macrocosmic', is effected according to a plan analogous to that which the
initiate must inwardly accomplish in order to realize in himself the complete development of all the potentialities of his being. Such plans correspond always and everywhere to one and the same synthetic conception, so that they are principially identical and, although different and indefinitely varied in their realization, all proceed from a single 'archetype', a universal plan laid out by the supreme Will designated symbolically as the 'Great Architect of the Universe' [6].
Thus each being tends, consciously or not, to realize in itself by the means appropriate to its particular nature what the Western initiatic forms, basing themselves on 'structural' symbolism, call the plan of the Great Architect of the Universe', and thereby contributes, according to the function belonging to it in the cosmic totality, to the integral realization of this same plan, which is finally nothing other than a universalizing of its own personal realization. It is at the exact point in its development when a being really becomes conscious of this finality that effective initiation begins for it, which must lead it by degrees and in accordance with its personal path to this integral realization, a realization not achieved by the isolated development of certain special faculties but by the complete, harmonious, and hierarchic development of all the possibilities implied in the essence of that being. Moreover, since the end is necessarily the same for everything that shares the same principle, it is only the means employed to attain this end that are proper to each individual, considered within the limits of the special function determined for it by its individual nature, and which, whatever it may be, must be considered a necessary element of the total and universal order; and by the very nature of things this diversity of particular paths subsists so long as the domain of individual possibilities has not been effectively surpassed.
Initiatic instruction envisaged in its universality must therefore comprise, as so many indefinitely varied applications of one same
transcendent principle, all the paths of realization that are proper, not only to each category of beings but also to each individual being considered separately; and thus including them all in itself, it sums up and synthesizes them in the absolute unity of the universal Way [7]. If, therefore, the principles of initiation are immutable, its modalities nonetheless can and must vary so as to adapt to the multiple and relative conditions of manifested existence, conditions of which the diversity requires mathematically as it were that there cannot be two identical things in the entire universe, as we have already explained on other occasions [8]. One can then say that it is impossible that, for two different individuals, there should be two initiations exactly alike, even from the outward and ritual point of view, and all the more so from the point of view of the inner work of the initiate. The unity and immutability of the principle in no way require a uniformity and immobility that in any case are unrealizable in fact and which, in reality, only represent an 'inverted' reflection of the former at the lowest degree of manifestation; and the truth is that the initiatic teaching, implying an adaptation to the indefinite diversity of individual natures, is thereby opposed to the uniformity that profane teaching on the contrary regards as its 'ideal'. The modifications in question are, of course, limited to the outward expression of initiatic knowledge and to its assimilation by this or that individuality, for in the measure that such an expression is possible it must perforce take relativities and contingencies into account, whereas what it expresses is independent of this in the universality of its principial essence, which includes all possibilities in the simultancity of a unique synthesis.
Initiatic teaching, outward and transmissible by forms, in reality is and can only be-we have said this before and stress it again-a preparation of the individual for acquiring true initiatic knowledge by personal cffort. Thus the way to be followed and the plan to be realized can be pointed out to him, and he can be encouraged to cultivate the mental and intellectual attitude necessary to acquire an
effective and not merely theoretical comprehension; he can also be helped and guided by a constant monitoring of his effort; but this is all, for no one else, were he even a 'Master' in the most complete meaning of the word [9], can do the work for him. What the initiate must necessarily acquire for himself, because no one and nothing outside himself can communicate it to him, is effective possession of the initiatic secret properly speaking; to realize this possession in all its extent and with all that it implies requires that the teaching that serves in a way as foundation and support of his personal work be constituted in such a way that it open him to truly unlimited possibilities, and thus enable him to expand his conceptions indefinitely, both in breadth and depth, instead of enclosing them, as does every profane point of view, in the more or less narrow limits of some sort of systematic theory or verbal formula.