Confusion of the Psychic and the Spiritual

De la confusion du psychique et du spirituel, March 1935.

We have already pointed out on many occasions the unfortunate ten-dency of some people in the West to confuse the two domains of the psychic and the spiritual; we are forced to observe so many manifesta-tions of this tendency in various forms that we must return to this subject once again, unfortunate as it is to deal with it. Indeed, we see all too often the consequences that may result: spreading this confusion is, whether we like it or not, to commit beings to be irretrievably lost in the chaos of the 'intermediary world,' and, in this way, to play the game of the 'sa-tanic' forces that govern what we have called 'counter-initiation.'

It is important here to be precise in order to avoid any misunderstand-ing: no development of the possibilities of a being, even in a lower order, can be regarded as essentially 'malefic' in itself; everything depends on the use that is made of it, and, first and foremost, it is necessary to con-sider whether this development is taken for an end in itself, or on the contrary, for a simple means to achieve a goal of a superior order. Indeed, as we have often pointed out, anything can serve as an opportunity and 'support' depending on the circumstances of each particular case for those who embark on the path that will lead them to spiritual ‘realiza-tion'; this is especially true at the beginning, because of the diversity of the individual natures whose influence is then at its peak, but it is still so in later stages, to a certain extent, as long as the limits of the individuality are not exceeded. On the other hand, anything can be as much of an ob-stacle as it can be a 'support,' if the being stops there and is allowed to be deluded and misled by certain appearances of 'realization' which does not have any value on its own and are only accidental and contingent results, even if they may be regarded as results from any point of view; this danger of illusion and aberration always exists precisely as long as we are still in the order of individual possibilities.

The most gross example, if we can say, of such a mistake is that which refers to possibilities of a purely corporeal and physiologic order, in this we refer, in particular, to the common mistake among Westerners with regard to certain preparatory processes of Yoga, where their ignorance only wishes to see a kind of method of 'physical training' or a special 'therapy.' Moreover, this error is basically the least serious and the least dangerous, because it is the one whose consequences go the least far: it runs little more risk than the obtaining of an opposite result to the that which is desired due to 'practices' being carried out inconsiderately and uncontrollably, and to ruin one's health by believing it to be improved. This does not interest us in anything except that there is a deviation in the use of these 'practices' which, in reality, are made for an entirely different use, as far as possible from the physiologic domain, and the nat- ural repercussions of which are merely an ‘accident' to which it is not appropriate to attach the slightest importance. However, it must be added that these same 'practices' may also have repercussions in the psy- chic domain, i.e., in the subtle modes of the individual, which considera- bly increases the danger: without suspecting it in the least, we can thus open the door to 'influences' of all kinds, against which we are all the less prejudiced so that sometimes we do not even suspect their existence, and even more that we are unable to discern their true nature. But at the least there is no 'spiritual' or 'initiatic' pretension, whereas it is quite different for those who seek so-called 'powers,' i.e., in sum, extraordinary 'phenomena,' or for those who try to 'center' their consciousness on lower extensions of human individuality, mistaken for higher states simply because they are outside a setting in which the activity of the ordinary man is generally closed from; we will return to the first of these two cases again, for it is on the second that we wish to insist on now.

Indeed, here again it is the attraction of the ‘phenomenon' that is most often at the root of the error: those who behave in this way wish to obtain results that are 'sensory,' and this is what they believe to be a 'realiza- tion'; however, this is to say that everything that is truly spiritual escapes them entirely. Of course, it is not a question of denying the reality of the 'phenomena' in question as such; they are all too real, we might say, and they are all the more dangerous: what we are questioning is their value and their interest, and that is what the illusion is about. If there was only a waste of time and effort again, the evil would not be very great, but, in general, the being who attaches himself to these things then becomes unable to overcome them and go beyond them; the cases of these indi- viduals is well known in Oriental traditions, those who have become mere producers of 'phenomena' that will never reach the slightest spir- ituality. But there is more: there may be a kind of ‘reverse' development, which not only does not bring any valid acquisition, but always moves away from spiritual ‘realization' until it is to be definitively lost in those inferior extensions of his individuality to which we were alluded mo- ments ago, and by which he can only come into contact with the 'infra- human.' His situation is then hopeless, or at least there is only one, which is a 'disintegration' of the conscious being. It is there, one could say in all rigor, that is a true ‘descent to Hell' without any possible ‘recovery'; as for the outcome, it corresponds to one of the most unfavorable and 'sinister' meanings of this 'second death' of which we have spoken in a previous article: it is properly the 'inverted' shadow of the 'second death' of initiation.

One can never be too wary in this regard of any appeal to the 'sub-conscious,' to 'instinct,' to infrarational 'intuition,' or even to an ill-defined 'life force,' in a word all those vague and obscure things that lead more or less directly to a contact with the lower states. All the more, we must beware of everything that induces beings to ‘coalesce,' we might willingly say 'to dissolve,' in a kind of ‘cosmic consciousness' exclusive of all 'transcendence,' and therefore of all effective spirituality; this is the ultimate consequence of all the anti-metaphysical errors that terms such as 'pantheism,'‘immanentism,' and 'naturalism' designate, all things closely related to each other, a consequence which some would certainly retreat from if they knew what they were really talking about. In fact, it is there that spirituality is taken 'backwards,' to substitute it in place of the opposite, since this leads to its definitive loss, and this is what 'Satanism,' properly speaking, consists of; whether it is conscious or unconscious, it does not change the results, and we must not forget that the 'unconscious Satanism' of some, more numerous than ever in our age of intellectual disorder, is never anything but an instrument at the service of the 'conscious Satanism' of the representatives of ‘counter-initiation.'

We have sometimes had the opportunity to point out the initiatic symbolism of the 'journey' accomplished through the Ocean represent- ing the psychic domain, which must be crossed, avoiding all dangers, to reach the goal; but what of the one who would throw himself in the mid- dle of this Ocean and have no other inspiration than to drown in it? This is exactly what this 'fusion' with a ‘cosmic consciousness' means, which is only the confused and indistinct whole of 'psychic influences' which, although some may imagine otherwise, have certainly nothing in com- mon with the 'spiritual influences,' even if they sometimes imitate them in some of their external manifestations. Those who commit this fatal mistake simply forget or ignore the distinction between the 'Upper Wa- ters' and the 'Lower Waters'; instead of rising to the Ocean from above, they sink into the abyss of the Ocean below; instead of concentrating all their powers to direct them to the informal world, which alone can be called 'spiritual,' they disperse in the infinitely changing and fleeting di- versity of forms of the subtle manifestation, without suspecting that what they are taking for a plentitude of 'life' is actually only the kingdom of death.

De la confusion du psychique et du spirituel, March 1935.

We have already pointed out on many occasions the unfortunate tendency of some people in the West to confuse the two domains of the psychic and the spiritual; we are forced to observe so many manifestations of this tendency in various forms that we must return to this subject once again, unfortunate as it is to deal with it. Indeed, we see all too often the consequences that may result: spreading this confusion is, whether we like it or not, to commit beings to be irretrievably lost in the chaos of the 'intermediary world,' and, in this way, to play the game of the 'satanic' forces that govern what we have called 'counter-initiation.'

It is important here to be precise in order to avoid any misunderstanding: no development of the possibilities of a being, even in a lower order, can be regarded as essentially 'malefic' in itself; everything depends on the use that is made of it, and, first and foremost, it is necessary to consider whether this development is taken for an end in itself, or on the contrary, for a simple means to achieve a goal of a superior order. Indeed, as we have often pointed out, anything can serve as an opportunity and 'support' depending on the circumstances of each particular case for those who embark on the path that will lead them to spiritual 'realization'; this is especially true at the beginning, because of the diversity of the individual natures whose influence is then at its peak, but it is still so in later stages, to a certain extent, as long as the limits of the individuality are not exceeded. On the other hand, anything can be as much of an obstacle as it can be a 'support,' if the being stops there and is allowed to be deluded and misled by certain appearances of ‘realization' which does not have any value on its own and are only accidental and contingent results, even if they may be regarded as results from any point of view; this danger of illusion and aberration always exists precisely as long as we are still in the order of individual possibilities.

The most gross example, if we can say, of such a mistake is that which refers to possibilities of a purely corporeal and physiologic order, in this we refer, in particular, to the common mistake among Westerners with regard to certain preparatory processes of Yoga, where their ignorance only wishes to see a kind of method of 'physical training' or a special 'therapy.' Moreover, this error is basically the least serious and the least dangerous, because it is the one whose consequences go the least far: it runs little more risk than the obtaining of an opposite result to the that which is desired due to 'practices' being carried out inconsiderately and uncontrollably, and to ruin one's health by believing it to be improved. This does not interest us in anything except that there is a deviation in the use of these 'practices' which, in reality, are made for an entirely different use, as far as possible from the physiologic domain, and the natural repercussions of which are merely an 'accident' to which it is not appropriate to attach the slightest importance. However, it must be added that these same 'practices' may also have repercussions in the psychic domain, i.e., in the subtle modes of the individual, which considerably increases the danger: without suspecting it in the least, we can thus open the door to 'influences' of all kinds, against which we are all the less prejudiced so that sometimes we do not even suspect their existence, and even more that we are unable to discern their true nature. But at the least there is no ‘spiritual' or 'initiatic' pretension, whereas it is quite different for those who seek so-called 'powers,' i.e., in sum, extraordinary 'phenomena,' or for those who try to 'center' their consciousness on lower extensions of human individuality, mistaken for higher states simply because they are outside a setting in which the activity of the ordinary man is generally closed from; we will return to the first of these two cases again, for it is on the second that we wish to insist on now.

Indeed, here again it is the attraction of the 'phenomenon' that is most often at the root of the error: those who behave in this way wish to obtain results that are ‘sensory,' and this is what they believe to be a 'realization'; however, this is to say that everything that is truly spiritual escapes them entirely. Of course, it is not a question of denying the reality of the 'phenomena' in question as such; they are all too real, we might say, and they are all the more dangerous: what we are questioning is their value and their interest, and that is what the illusion is about. If there was only a waste of time and effort again, the evil would not be very great, but, in general, the being who attaches himself to these things then becomes unable to overcome them and go beyond them; the cases of these individuals is well known in Oriental traditions, those who have become mere producers of 'phenomena' that will never reach the slightest spirituality. But there is more: there may be a kind of 'reverse' development, which not only does not bring any valid acquisition, but always moves away from spiritual 'realization' until it is to be definitively lost in those inferior extensions of his individuality to which we were alluded moments ago, and by which he can only come into contact with the 'infra-human.' His situation is then hopeless, or at least there is only one, which is a 'disintegration' of the conscious being. It is there, one could say in all rigor, that is a true 'descent to Hell' without any possible 'recovery'; as for the outcome, it corresponds to one of the most unfavorable and 'sinister' meanings of this 'second death' of which we have spoken in a previous article: it is properly the ‘inverted' shadow of the ‘second death' of initiation. One can never be too wary in this regard of any appeal to the 'sub-conscious,' to 'instinct,' to infrarational ‘'intuition,' or even to an ill-defined 'life force,' in a word all those vague and obscure things that lead more or less directly to a contact with the lower states. All the more, we must beware of everything that induces beings to 'coalesce,' we might willingly say 'to dissolve,' in a kind of 'cosmic consciousness' exclusive of all 'transcendence,' and therefore of all effective spirituality; this is the ultimate consequence of all the anti-metaphysical errors that terms such as 'pantheism,' 'immanentism,' and 'naturalism' designate, all things closely related to each other, a consequence which some would certainly retreat from if they knew what they were really talking about. In fact, it is there that spirituality is taken 'backwards,' to substitute it in place of the opposite, since this leads to its definitive loss, and this is what 'Satanism,' properly speaking, consists of; whether it is conscious or unconscious, it does not change the results, and we must not forget that the 'unconscious Satanism' of some, more numerous than ever in our age of intellectual disorder, is never anything but an instrument at the service of the 'conscious Satanism' of the representatives of ‘counter-initiation.' We have sometimes had the opportunity to point out the initiatic symbolism of the 'journey' accomplished through the Ocean representing the psychic domain, which must be crossed, avoiding all dangers, to reach the goal; but what of the one who would throw himself in the middle of this Ocean and have no other inspiration than to drown in it? This is exactly what this 'fusion' with a 'cosmic consciousness' means, which is only the confused and indistinct whole of 'psychic influences' which, although some may imagine otherwise, have certainly nothing in common with the 'spiritual influences,' even if they sometimes imitate them in some of their external manifestations. Those who commit this fatal mistake simply forget or ignore the distinction between the 'Upper Waters' and the 'Lower Waters'; instead of rising to the Ocean from above, they sink into the abyss of the Ocean below; instead of concentrating all their powers to direct them to the informal world, which alone can be called 'spiritual,' they disperse in the infinitely changing and fleeting diversity of forms of the subtle manifestation, without suspecting that what they are taking for a plentitude of 'life' is actually only the kingdom of death.

The Arts and Their Traditional Conception Les arts et leur conception traditionnelle, April 1935.

We have often insisted that the profane sciences are only the product of a relatively recent degeneration, due to the incomprehension of the old traditional sciences, or rather only a few of the sciences, the others hav- ing fallen entirely into oblivion. What is true in this regard for sciences is equally true for the arts, and, moreover, the distinction between the arts was much less marked in the past than it is today; the Latin word artes was sometimes also applied to the sciences, and in the Middle Ages the enumeration of the 'liberal arts' brought together things that the modern ones would make into both categories. This remark alone would suffice to show that art was then something other than what is now con- ceived under the name, that it implied a real body of knowledge; this knowledge could obviously only be of the order of the traditional sci- ences.

Only in this way can it be understood that in certain initiatic organi- zations of the Middle Ages, such as the 'Fedeli d'Amore,' the seven 'lib- eral arts' were put in correspondence with the 'heavens,' i.e. states that identified themselves with the different degrees of initiation.^[418] This re- quired that the arts, as well as the sciences, be capable of a transposition giving them a real esoteric value; what makes such a transposition pos- sible is the very nature of traditional knowledge, which, of whatever or- der they may be, are always essentially attached to the transcendent principles. This knowledge thus receives a meaning that can be said to be symbolic, since it is based on the correspondence that exists between the various orders of reality; what we must insist on is that this is not something that would be accidentally added to them, but, on the con- trary, what constitutes the most profound essence of all normal and le- gitimate knowledge, and which, as such, is inherent in the sciences and arts from their very origin and remains so long as they have not under- gone any deviation.

It is not surprising that the arts can be considered from this point of view if we observe that the crafts themselves, in their traditional concep- tion, serve as a basis for initiation, as we have shown on another occa- sion.^[419] Moreover, we must recall in this connection what we said then, that the distinction between arts and crafts appears to be specifically modern and exists only due to the consequence of the same degeneration which gave rise to the profane point of view, the latter expressing noth- ing but the very negation of the traditional spirit. At heart, whether it was art or a craft, there was always the application and the implementa- tion of some knowledge of a superior order to one degree or another that was closely related to initiatic knowledge itself; moreover, the direct im- plementation of initiatic knowledge also received the name art, as we clearly see by expressions such as those of the 'sacerdotal art' and the 'royal art,' which respectively relate to applications of the 'greater mys- teries' and the ‘lesser mysteries.' If we now consider the arts by giving this word a more restricted and, at the same time, a more usual meaning, i.e. what is more precisely called the 'fine arts,' we can say, according to the preceding, that each must constitute a symbolic language adapted to the expression of certain truths by means of forms which are, for some, of a visual order, and for others, of the auditory or acoustic order, hence their current division into two groups, the 'plastic arts' and the 'phonetic arts.' We have explained in previous studies that that distinction, as well as that of two kinds of corresponding rites based on these same categories of symbolic forms, relate in their origin to the difference that exists between the traditions of sedentary peoples and those of nomadic peoples.^[420] Whether it is arts of one or the other kind, it is easy to see in a very general way that they have the character that is all the more symbolic since the civilization it- self is more strictly traditional, for what makes their true value then is less what they are in themselves than the possibilities of expression they provide beyond what ordinary language is limited to. In short, their pro- ductions are primarily intended to serve as 'supports' for meditations, as 'points of support' for an understanding as profound and extensive as possible, which is the very raison d'être for all symbolism;^[421] everything, down to the most minute detail, must be determined by this considera- tion and subordination to that purpose, without any unnecessary addi-tion, without meaning or intended to play a merely 'decorative' or 'or-namental' role. ^[422] We see that such a conception is as far removed as possible from all modern and profane theories, whether it be that of 'art for the purpose of art' for example, which basically amounts to saying that art is what it must be when it means nothing, or that of 'moralizing' art, which is ob- viously not worth any more in terms of knowledge. Traditional art is certainly not a 'game,' as the term is dear to some psychologists, or a way to simply provide the man with a kind of special pleasure that is qualified as being 'superior' without any understanding as to why, because, since it is only a question of pleasure, everything is reduced to pure individual preferences between which no hierarchy can logically be established; nor is it a vain sentimental declaration, for which ordinary language is assur- edly more than sufficient, without any need for recourse to forms which are more or less mysterious or enigmatic, and which is much more com- plicated than what they would have to express in any case. This is an occasion for us to recall the perfect nullity of the 'moral' interpretations that some claim to attribute to all symbolism, for these are things that cannot be overemphasized, including initiatic symbolism properly speak- ing: if it were only similar trivialities, we do not see why or how we would have ever thought of 'veiling' them in any way, which they do very well when they are stated by profane philosophy, and better than simply saying that there is in fact no symbolism and initiation. That being said, one may wonder which among the various tradi- tional sciences are those whose arts are most directly dependent, which, naturally, does not exclude that they also have more or less constant re- lations with others, for everything here is necessarily connected and bound in the fundamental doctrine of unity in which the multiplicity of its application can in no way destroy or even affect; the conception of sciences that are narrowly 'specialized' and completely separated from each other is clearly anti-traditional, inasmuch as it manifests a defect of principle, and is characteristic of the 'analytic' mind which inspires and governs the profane sciences, while any traditional point of view can only be essentially ‘synthetic.' Subject to this reservation, it can be said that what constitutes the very basis of all the arts is principally an appli- cation of the science of rhythm in its different forms, a science which itself is immediately connected with that of numbers; of course, when we speak of the science of numbers, it is not a question of profane arithmetic as is understood by the modern ones, but of that which is best known in the examples of the Kabbalah and Pythagorism, and the equivalents which exist also under various expressions and with more or less development in all the traditional doctrine. What we have just said may seem obvious especially for the phonetic arts, whose productions are all constituted by ensembles of rhythms unfolding over time; poetry owes to its rhythmic character to have primitively been the mode of ritual expression of the 'language of the Gods' or the 'sacred language' par excellence, ^[423] a function of which is even kept until a time relatively recent to us, when ‘literature' had not yet been invented. ^[424] As for music, it would certainly be pointless to insist upon it, and its digital base is still recognized by the modern ones themselves, though distorted by the loss of traditional data; formerly, as is particularly clear in the Far-East, changes could only be made in music in accordance with certain changes occurring in the state of the world according to the cyclic periods, because the musical rhythms were intimately bound up with both the human and social order, and the cosmic order, and even expressed the relations existing between them in a certain way; the Pythagorean conception of the 'harmony of the spheres' is related precisely to the same order of considerations. For the plastic arts, whose productions develop in extension in space, the same thing may not appear so immediately, and yet it is none the less rigorously true; only, the rhythm is then fixed in simultaneity, so to speak, instead of taking place in succession as in the previous case. We can especially understand this by noting that in this second group the typical and fundamental art is architecture, the others, such as sculpting and painting, are in fact mere dependencies in their original purpose; however, in architecture the rhythm is expressed directly by the proportions existing between the various parts of the ensemble, and also by geometric forms, which are ultimately, from the point of view that we envisage, only the translation into space of numbers and their relationships. ^[425] Here again, geometry must obviously be considered in a very