At-Tawhid

Et-Tawhid, July 1930.

The doctrine of Unity, that is, the affirmation the Principle of all exist- ence is essentially One, is a fundamental point common to all Orthodox traditions, and we can even say that it is on this point that their under- lying identity appears most clearly, reflected even in the very expression. Indeed, when it comes to unity, all diversity disappears, and it is only when we descend to the multiplicity that the differences of forms appear, the modes of expression then being multiple themselves, and are vary indefinitely to suite the circumstances of time and place. But 'the doc- trine of Unity is unique' (according to the Arabic formula: at-tawhid wahidun), which is to say that it is everywhere and always the same, invariable as the Principle, independent of the multiplicity and is of change only when it can affect contingent applications.

So we can say that, contrary to current opinion, there has never been anywhere really of a 'polytheistic' doctrine, which is to say admitting a plurality of absolute and irreducible principles. This 'pluralism' is only possible as a deviation resulting from the ignorance and misunderstand- ing of the masses, their tendency to focus exclusively on the multiplicity of the manifest: hence 'idolatry' in all its forms, arising from the confu- sion of the symbol in itself with what it is intended to express, and the personification of the divine attributes considered as so many independ- ent beings, which is the only possible origin of an actual 'polytheism.' This tendency, moreover, is accentuated as we advance in the develop- ment of a cycle of manifestation, because this development itself is a de- scent into multiplicity, and because of the spiritual obscurity which in- evitably accompanies this descent. That is why the most recent tradi- tional forms are those which must state in the most apparent way the affirmation of Uniqueness; and, indeed, this affirmation is expressed no- where so explicitly and so insistently as in Islam where it seems even, if one can say, to absorb in itself any other affirmation.

The sole difference between traditional doctrines in this respect is the one we have just indicated: the affirmation of Unity is everywhere, but originally it did not even need to be formulated expressly to appear as the most obvious of all truths, because men were then too close to the Principle to disregard it or lose sight of it. Now, on the contrary, it may be said that most of them, engaged entirely in the multiplicity, and hav-ing lost the intuitive knowledge of higher-order truths, have difficulty in understanding Unity; and this is why it gradually becomes necessary, during the history of earthly humanity, to formulate this affirmation of unity on many occasions and more and more clearly, we could say more and more energetically.

If we consider this present state of affairs, we see that this affirmation is somewhat more enveloped in certain traditional forms, that it some-times even constitutes it as the esoteric side, taking this word in its broadest sense, while that in others, it appears to all eyes, so that we come to see more than it, although there are certainly many other things, but which are more than secondary to this one. This last case is that of Islam, even exoterically; esoterism here only explains and develops all that is contained in this affirmation and all the consequences that derive from it, and if it does so in terms often identical to those we encounter in other traditions, such as the Vedanta and Taoism, there is no reason to be surprised, nor to see there the effect of borrowings which are histori-cally contestable; it is simply so because truth is one, and because, in this principal order, as we said at the beginning, Unity is necessarily trans-lated even into the expression itself.

However, it is to be noted, always considering things in their present state, the Western peoples, and especially the Nordic peoples, are the ones who seem to have the greatest difficult in understanding the doc-trine of unity, at the same time they are more engaged than everyone else in change and multiplicity. These two things obviously go together, and perhaps there is something at least partly related to the conditions of existence of these peoples: a question of temperament, but also of cli-mate, one being besides function of the other, at least to a certain point.

In the Northern countries, indeed, where the sunlight is weak and of-ten veiled, all things appear in view with equal value, so to speak, and in a way which asserts purely and simply their individual existence without leaving anything to be seen beyond; so, in ordinary experience itself, one really sees only the multiplicity. It is quite different in countries where the sun, by its intense radiations, absorbs, so to speak, all things within itself, making them disappear before it as multiplicity disappears before unity, not that it ceases to exist according to its own mode, but because this existence is strictly nothing with regard to the Principle. Thereby the Unity becomes somewhat sensitive: this solar flare is the image of the fulguration of the eye of Shiva, which reduces to ashes all manifestations. The sun stands out here as the symbol par excellence of the Principle One (Allahu Ahad), which is his necessary Being, the one who alone is self-sufficient in His absolute fullness (Allahu aş-Şamad), and on whom depends the entirety of existence and sustenance of all things, which outside of Him would be nothingness.

'Monotheism,' if we can use this word to translate At-Tawhid, although it somewhat restricts its meaning by making one think almost inevitably of an exclusively religious point of view, ‘monotheism,' we say, therefore has a character that is essentially ‘solar.' It is nowhere more 'responsive' than in the desert where the diversity of things is reduced to a minimum, and where, at the same time, the mirages reveal all that is illusory of the manifested world. There, solar radiation produces things and destroys them in turn; or rather, because it is incorrect to say that he destroys them, he transforms them and reabsorbs them after having manifested them. One could never find a truer image of Unity unfolding externally in multiplicity without ceasing to be itself and without being affected by it, and then bringing back to it, always according to appearances, this multiplicity which, in reality, has never come out of it, for there can be nothing outside the Principle, to which nothing can be added and from which nothing can be subtracted, because it is the indivisible totality of the unique Existence. In the intense light of the countries of the East, it is enough to see to understand these things, to seize immediately the deep truth; and above all it seems impossible not to understand them thus in the desert, where the sun traces the divine names in letters of fire in the sky.

Al-Faqr El-Faqru, October 1930.

The contingent being can be defined as one who does not have within himself sufficient reason; such a being, therefore, is nothing by himself and nothing of his own belongs to him. Such is the case of the human being, as an individual, as well as of all manifested beings, in whatever state, for whatever the difference between the degrees of Universal Ex- istence, it is always null in respect to the Principle. These beings, human or otherwise, are, in all that they are, in a complete dependence on the Principle, “out of which there is nothing, absolutely nothing that ex- ists;"^[129] this is the consciousness of this dependence that properly con- sists of what many traditions refer to as 'spiritual poverty.' At the same time, for the being who has attained this consciousness, this has the im- mediate consequence of detachment from all manifested things, for he knows then that these things too are nothing, that their importance is strictly zero in relation to Absolute Reality. This detachment, in the case of the human being, implies essentially, and above all, the indifference towards the fruits of action, as taught in particular by the Bhagavad-Gita, indifference by which the being escapes the indefinite sequence of the consequences of this action: it is ‘action without desire' (nishkama Karma), while 'action with desire' (sakama Karma) is the action accom- plished in view of its fruits. By this, the being thus departs from multiplicity; it escapes, according to the expressions used by the Taoist doctrine, the vicissitudes of the 'streams of form,' the alternation of states of 'life' and 'death,' 'conden- sation' and 'dissipation,'^[130] from the circumference of the 'cosmic wheel' to its center, which is itself designated as “the emptiness (the unmanifest) that unites the rays and makes them a wheel."^[131] "The one who has reached the maximum amount of emptiness,” Lao-tzu also states, “will be firmly fixed in the rest... To return to its root (that is to say the Prin- ciple which is both the first origin and the last end of all beings) is to enter the state of rest.”^[132] “Peace in the void,” the Lieh-tzu states, “is an definable state; it is neither taken nor give; we are only able to settle there.^[133] This 'peace in the void' is the 'great peace' (Ash-Shakinah) of Muslim esoterism,^[134] which is at the same time the 'divine presence' at the center of being, implied by the union with the Principle, which can only really occur in this very center. “To him who abodes in the unman- ifest, all beings who are manifested themselves are united unto the Prin- ciple, he is in harmony with all beings. United with the Principle, he knows everything by superior general reasons, and no longer uses, his various senses to know. The true reason of things is invisible, elusive, indefinable, indeterminable. Only the mind restored to the state of per- fect simplicity can reach it in deep contemplation."^[135] 'Simplicity,' the expression of the unification of all the powers of be- ing, characterizes the return to the 'primordial state;' and here we see the difference that separates transcendent knowledge from the wise, from ordinary and 'profane' knowledge. This 'simplicity' is also what is re- ferred to elsewhere as the state of 'childhood' (in Sanskrit, balya), under- stood naturally in the spiritual sense, and which, in the Hindu doctrine, is considered a precondition for the acquisition of knowledge par excel- lence. This is reminiscent of the similar words found in the Gospel: "Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein.” “You have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to the simple and the small."^[136] 'Simplicity' and 'smallness' are basically the equivalents of 'poverty,' which is so often discussed in the Gospel, and is generally understood very poorly: "Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."^[137] This 'poverty' (in Arabic al-faqr) leads, according to Muslim esoterism, to al-fanā', which is to say to the 'extinction' of the 'me;'^[138] and by this 'extinction' we reach the 'divine place' (al-maqām al-ilāhī), which is the central point where all the distinctions inherent in external points of view are passed, where all the oppositions have disappeared and are resolved in a perfect equilibrium. “In the primordial state, these oppositions do not exist. All are derived from the diversification of being (inherent in the manifestation and contingencies of it), and from their contacts caused by the universal gyration (that is, by the rotation of the 'cosmic wheel' around its axis). They immediately cease to affect the be-ing who has reduced his distinct self and his particular movement to al-most nothing."^[139] This reduction of the 'distinct self,' which finally disappears in one single point, is the same as al-fanā', and also as the 'emptiness' men-tioned above; it is also evident from the symbolism of the wheel that the 'movement' of a being is all the more reduced as this being moves closers to the center. “This being no longer comes into conflict with any being, because he is established in the infinite, erased in the indefinite.^[140] He has arrived and stands at the starting point of transformation, the neutral point where there is no conflict. By concentrating his nature, by feeding his vital spirit, by gathering all his power, he is united with the principle of all genesis. His nature being whole (totalized synthetically in the prin-cipal unity), his vital spirit being intact, no being can crush it.”^[141] The 'simplicity' referred to above corresponds to the 'dimensionless' unity of the primordial point, which is the result of the movement back to the origin. "The simply absolute man bends all beings by his simplic-ity... so that nothing is opposed to him in the six regions of space, that nothing is hostile towards him, that fire and water do not harm him."^[142] Indeed, he stands in the center, whose six directions are radiated, and where they converge, in the returning moment, neutralize each other in pairs in this single point, their triple opposition ceases entirely, and that nothing which results from it or is localized to it cannot reach the being who remains in immutable unity. The latter does not oppose anything, nothing can be opposed to him, because opposition is necessarily a re-ciprocal relation, which requires two terms in the presence, and which, consequently, is incompatibly with a principled unity; and hostility, which is only a continuation or an outward manifestation of opposition, cannot exist with respect to a being who is outside and beyond any op-position. Fire and water, which are the two types of opposites in the 'el-ementary world,' cannot harm him, for, to tell the truth, they do not exist contrary to him, having been absorbed, balancing and neutralizing each other by the union of their apparently opposite, but really complemen-tary, qualities in the undifferentiation of the primordial ether. This central point, by which communication with the higher or 'ce-lestial' states is established for the human being, is also the 'narrow door' of evangelical symbolism, and we can therefore understand who the 'rich' who cannot enter: they are the beings attached to multiplicity, and who, consequently, are incapable of rising from distinctive knowledge to unified knowledge. This attachment, in fact, is directly contrary to the detachment mentioned above, as wealth is contrary to poverty, and it connects beings to the indefinite series of cycles of manifestation.^[143] The attachment to multiplicity is also, in a certain sense, the Biblical 'temp-tation' which, by making taste be the fruit of the ‘Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil,' which is of the dual and distinctive knowledge of con-tingent things, removes it from the original central unit and prevents it from attaining the fruit of the 'Tree of Life;' and it is indeed by this fact that the being is subject to the alternation of cyclical mutations, that is, at birth and at death. The indefinite course of multiplicity is precisely represented by the serpent's spirals wrapping around the tree that sym-bolizes the 'Axis Mundi:' it is the path of the 'misguided' (ad-dāllīn), of those who are in ‘error,' in the etymological sense of the word, as op-posed to the 'right path' (aş-Şirāt al-mustaqim), in vertical ascension along the same axis of which is spoken in the first surah of the Qur'an.^[144] 'Poverty,' 'simplicity,' 'childhood,' these are all one and the same thing, and the bareness that all these words express^[145] leads to an 'ex-tinction' which is, in reality, the fullness of being, just as 'non-action' (wui-wei) is the fullness of the activity, since it is from there that are de-rived all particular activities: “The Principle is always non-acting, and yet everything is done by him."^[146] The being who has thus arrived at the central point has thereby achieved the totality of the human state: it is the 'true man' (chen-jen) of Taoism, and when, from this point ascends towards higher states, he has achieved the perfect totalization of his pos-sibilities, he will have become the 'divine man' (cheun-jen), who is the 'Universal Man' (al-Insān al-Kāmil) of Muslim esoterism. Thus, it can be said that it is the ‘rich' from the point of view of manifestation who are in reality the 'poor' in regards to the Principle, and conversely so; this is what the words of the Gospel still very clearly express: “So the last shall be the first, and the first last;”^[147] and we must note in this regard, once more, the perfect agreement of all the traditional doctrines, which are only the various expressions of the one Truth.

The Limits of the Mind Les limites du Mental, November 1930.

Following a series of questions from a few of our readers, we believe it necessary to return to a point which we have often dealt with in our works: the deficiency of the mind in regard to all knowledge of a properly metaphysical or initiatic order. We are obliged to use the term 'mind,' over any other, as an equivalent to the Sanskrit manas, because it is con- nected to it via roots; by this we mean the set of faculties of knowledge which are specifically characteristic of the human individual (also desig- nated in various languages by having words of the same root), and of which the principal is reason. We shall not return here to the distinction between reason and pure, supra-individual, intellect, a distinction which has been recognized, at least theoretically, by certain ancient Western philosophers such as Ar- istotle and the Scholastics, although they do not seem to have drawn all the consequences that this implies. We will say only that metaphysical knowledge, in the true sense of the word, being of a universal order would be impossible if there was in the being a faculty of the same order, thus transcendent knowledge with respect to the individual is intellec- tual intuition. Indeed, all knowledge being essentially a realization, it is obvious that the individual, as such, cannot reach knowledge that is be- yond the individual domain, which would be contradictory; this knowledge is possibly only because the being who is a human individual in a certain contingent state of manifestation is also something else, at the same time. ^[148] It would be absurd to say that man, as a man and by his human means, can surpass himself; but the being who appears in this world as a man is, in reality, quite another thing by the permanent and immutable principle which constitutes its deep essence. All knowledge that can truly be called 'initiatic' results from a communication con- sciously established with the higher states; and it is to such a communi- cation that words, such as those of 'inspiration' and 'revelation' are al-luded to, if they are understood in their true meaning and without taking into account the abuse that is sometimes made of them.^[149]

Direct knowledge of the transcendent order, with the absolute cer-tainty which it implies, is evidently, within itself, incommunicable and inexpressible; every expression, being necessarily distinct and thereby individual, is therefore inadequate and can only give it a reflection in the human order of things. This reflection may help certain beings to attain this same knowledge, by awakening in them higher faculties, but it can-not dispense them from doing personally what no one can do for them; it is only a 'support' for their inner work. Such is the role of symbols, which are the mode of expression best suited to initiatic teaching; such can be also that of ordinary language, which, when applied to the truths of this order, also take on a truly symbolic value. Now, since human lan-guage is closely related, in respect to its very constitution, to the exercise of the rational faculty, it follows that all that is expressed or translated by means of language necessarily takes on a form of 'reasoning;' but it must be understood that there can be only a purely apparent and external similarity, a similarity of form and not of substance, between ordinary reasoning, which concerns the things of the individual domain, and that which is intended to reflect something of the supra-individual truths. It must also be understood that he who, by the study of any dialectical ex-position, has arrived at a theoretical knowledge of certain truths of this order, yet has in no way a real (or 'realized') knowledge of it, in view of this, theoretical knowledge cannot constitute anything more than a sim-ple preparation.

This theoretical preparation, so apparently indispensable in fact (apart perhaps from certain exceptional cases), has only a value of con-tingent and accidental means; as long as we stick to it, we cannot speak of 'initiation,' even to the lowest degree. If there was nothing more and nothing else, there would only be the analog, in a higher order of what philosophy is in any other similar speculation, for such knowledge that is merely theoretical is only of the mind, while actual knowledge is by the 'spirit' and the 'soul' (rūh wa an-nafs). This is why even the simple-minded 'mystics,' in the sense that this word is taken most commonly in the Western world, without exceeding the limits of the individual do- main, are nevertheless incomparably superior to philosophers, even the-ologians, because the smallest piece of actual knowledge is immensely worth more than all the reasonings which proceed only from the mind. ^[150] As long as knowledge is only of the mind, it remains only a mere 'reflection' of knowledge, such as the shadows seen by the prisoners of Plato's cave, hence an indirect, exterior knowledge. To transition from shadow to reality, seized directly within itself, is to pass from the 'exte- rior' (az-zāhir) to the 'interior' (al-batin); this passage implies the renun- ciation of the mind, which is to say, of any 'discursive' faculty, which has now become powerless, since it cannot cross the limits imposed on it by its very nature; intellectual intuition alone is beyond these limits because it does not belong to the order of individual faculties. Using the symbol- ism based on organic correspondences, one can say that the center of consciousness must be transferred from the 'brain' to the 'heart;' for this transfer, all speculation and dialectics can obviously no longer be of any use; and it is from there only that it is possible to truly speak of 'initia- tion' (at-Tasawwuf). The point at which this begins is therefore well be- yond all that is relatively valid in the philosopher's theories ends; be- tween the one and the other, there is a true abyss, that the renunciation of the mind, as we have just said, allows one to cross. He who attaches himself to reasoning remains a prisoner of form, which is the limitation by which the individual state is defined; he will never go beyond it, and he will never go further than the 'exterior,' that is, he will remain abound to the indefinite cycle of manifestation. The passage from the 'exterior' to the 'interior' is also the passage from multiplicity to unity, from the circumference to the center, to the unique point from which it is possible for the human being, restored in the prerogatives of the 'primordial state,' to rise to the higher states and, by the total realization of its true 'essence' (ad-dat), to finally be effectively what it is from virtually all eternity. He who knows himself in the 'truth' (al-haqiqah) of the eternal and infinite 'Essence,' he knows and possesses all things in himself and by himself, because he has managed to reach the unconditioned state which leaves no possibility out of itself, and this state, in relation to all the others, however high they may be, are only preliminary stages in-comparable to it, that state which is the ultimate goal of all initiation is properly what is meant by ‘Supreme Identity.'