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ONE CONCLUSION that emerges clearly from the concordant testimonies of all traditions is that there is a 'Holy Land' par excellence, that it is the prototype for all other 'Holy Lands', and that it is the spiritual center to which all others are subordinate. The 'Holy Land' is also the 'Land of the Saints', the 'Land of the Blessed', the 'Land of the Living', and the 'Land of Immortality'; all these expressions are equivalent, and we should add to their number the 'Pure Land',^[1] which Plato applies precisely to the 'Abode of the Blessed'.^[2] This abode is usually said to be situated in an 'invisible world', but this can only be understood if we do not forget that the same applies to the 'spiritual hierarchies' of which all traditions speak and which in fact represent degrees of initiation.^[3] In the present period of our terrestrial cycle, that is, during the Kali-Yuga, this 'Holy Land', defended by guardians who keep it hidden from profane view while nevertheless assuring certain exterior relations, is in fact invisible and inaccessible, though only to those who do not possess the necessary qualifications to enter it. Should its location in a definite place then be taken literally, or only symbolically, or as both at the same time? To this we will answer only that, for us, geographical facts as well as historical facts possess, as do all facts, a symbolic import, which obviously takes nothing away from the reality proper to them as such, but rather confers upon them a higher significance in addition to this immediate reality.^[4] We do not claim that we have said all there is to say on the present subject, far from it in fact, for the relationships we have established could assuredly suggest many others; but in spite of everything this study has certainly gone further than any preceding it, and some will perhaps be tempted to reproach us for that. However, we do not believe that too much has been said, and are even persuaded that there is nothing that should not be said, although we are doubtless less disposed than anyone to dispute the fact that there is reason to consider opportuneness when it is a question of making public certain matters of a somewhat unusual character. On the question of opportuneness, only this brief observation need be made: under the circumstances in which we presently live, events unfold with such rapidity that many things, the reasons for which are not immediately obvious, could well find rather unforeseen applications, if not altogether unforeseeable ones, and this sooner than we may wish to believe. We wish to refrain from anything that may in any way resemble 'prophesying', but will nevertheless cite here by way of a fitting conclusion the following words of Joseph de Maistre,^[5] which are even truer today than they were a century ago: 'We must be ready for an immense event in the divine order, which we are traveling toward with an accelerated speed that must astound all those who watch. Redoubtable oracles have already announced that the time has arrived.'

Footnotes

[1]Among the Buddhist schools that exist in Japan there is one, the Jōdo, whose name translates as ‘Pure Land', recalling the Islamic appellation of the ‘Brothers of Purity' (Ikhwān al-Şafā'), not to mention the Cathars of the Western Middle Ages, whose name signifies 'pure'. It is probable moreover that the word Sufi, designating Muslim initiates (or, more precisely, those who have reached the final goal of initiation, like the Yogis in the Hindu tradition), has exactly the same meaning; in fact, popular etymology, which has it derive from suf, ‘wool' (of which the clothing worn by the Sufis was supposed to be made), is much less satisfactory, and the derivation from the Greek sophos, ‘sage', while seemingly more acceptable, has the drawback of appealing to a term foreign to the Arabic tongue, so that it seems preferable to accept the interpretation that derives Sufi from șafā, 'purity'.

[2]A symbolic description of this 'Pure Land' can be found toward the end of Plato's Phaedo; it has already been pointed out that a kind of parallel can be drawn between this description and the one Dante makes of the Terrestrial Paradise (see John Alexander Stewart, The Myths of Plato [London: New York: Macmillan, 1905]).

[3]Besides, the various worlds are properly states, and not places, although they can be described symbolically as such; the Sanskrit word loka, which serves to designate these worlds, and which is identical with the Latin locus, contains within itself the indication of this spatial symbolism. There is also a temporal symbolism, according to which these same states are described under the form of successive cycles, although time, just as much as space, is in reality only a condition proper to one of them, so that the succession is here but an image of a causal chain.

[4]This can be compared with the plurality of meanings according to which the sacred texts are interpreted, and which, far from contradicting or destroying, on the contrary complement and harmonize each other, in integral synthetic knowledge. From the point of view indicated here, historical facts correspond to a temporal symbolism, and geographical facts to a spatial symbolism; there is moreover a link or a necessary correlation between them, as there is between time and space themselves, and that is why the location of the spiritual center may be different according to the periods considered.

[5]Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg, eleventh conversation. To avoid any apparent contradiction with the cessation of oracles alluded to earlier on, and which Plutarch had already observed, we need hardly point out that this word 'oracles' is used by Joseph de Maistre in the very broad sense often given it in ordinary language, and not the proper and precise sense it had in antiquity.

SOME CONCLUSIONS

Footnotes