For a Global and Operative Anthropology by Yves Albert Dauge

For a Global and Operative Anthropology by Yves Albert Dauge

Sourced & Translated From : https://www.revue3emillenaire.com/blog/pour-une-anthropologie-globale-et-operative-par-yves-albert-dauge/

Etymologically, the term esotericism corresponds to the interiorization of the gaze, or, more exactly, to the rigorous, deep, total approach, of one who wants to penetrate into the heart of himself, of beings and things, of creative energies, of the Divine. By the same token, esotericism excludes any superficiality, any partiality, any closure, any limitation; it tends towards the unity of vision, towards a clear dialectic between transcendence and immanence; it is none other than living Knowledge which endlessly increases of itself; and it demands high qualities: purity of intention, discernment, courage, perseverance. Understood in this way, we prefer this term to occultism, which drags behind it troubled consonances,

(Revue Epignôsis. No I, 1 st section . June 1983)

 

Plan of the article

 

– Prolegomena.

Need for a renewal of anthropology

“Epignôsis”, the true and operative knowledge

What is creation anthropology?

 

– Three essential characteristics of our research.

 

I. Maximalism .

 

Man is fundamentally connected to the Divine

Anthropology, correctly understood, leads to a theogenesis

The universal ideal of the Perfect Man

The key theme of the “iconic man”

The metaphysics of being in the imperative

The exemplary anthropology of Pic de la Mirandole

The Man of Glory, or the “accomplished Anthropocosm”

 

II. Globalism .

 

Gnosis is one and indivisible

Against all reductionism

The essential conversion of the gaze

Transparency of forms and unity of vision

The inexhaustible dynamic of Gnosis

Coherent and free opening onto the totality of reality

 

III. Creationism .

 

No true I without creative power

The builder and a carpenter.

To actualize in us the divine germ-principle which constitutes us.

Transmute the world.

 

Summary and research directions .

 

Neo-anthropology and the imperatives of “epignôsis”

Discovering the “Theta Faculty”

Study Program: The Lightning Way of Transfiguration

 

– Some modalities of this anthropology .

 

For a precise definition of esotericism

Articulation dune triple Science:

Energy Science: universal dynamic

the “Science of Libra”: universal metamorphosis

the Science of Symbols: universal hermeneutics.

 

– Elements for a work discipline .

 

Rigor: from logic to metalogic

The wonder: the constant renewal of the gaze

Integration: the indefinite pursuit of synthesis

 

– Conclusion: the dynamics specific to our time

Note on the meanings of the Tetramorph of Vatopédi

 

A hundred years ago, Nietzsche launched this pathetic appeal (Aurore. Fragments posthumous [1879-1881]): “An age of barbarism begins, the sciences will be put at its service!” – Let us advise on the means of preserving however our supreme values, the quintessence of our current knowledge: thanks to a community of free individuals… To subsist in spite of everything within barbarism, this community will have to be rough and intrepid – ascetic preparation ”. Have times changed? Today, curiously, an esoteric Parisian review, entitled Aurores, disseminates a quality teaching which, to be realistic, is no less optimistic, while Jacques Breyer, the Alchimist, gives as a subtitle to his work fundamental Earth-Omega: “Initiatory keys to survive the Apocalypse”, and dedicates it to “free beings” …

 

Remarkable witnesses of the present entanglement of currents, ideas, perspectives. Twilight is both evening and morning; barbarism, of course, is accentuated, but the Spirit increases; the sciences destroy, but also enlighten; Tradition reveals itself and flourishes, but can also be diluted or petrified; the “values” oscillate between the Absolute and the relative. Now endowed with instruments as numerous as they are precise to know and accomplish themselves, man is, however, more and more anxious, in search of “masters” whom he can trust, of a “pole” to which to attach himself. . The meaning of the story is terribly ambiguous; mutations are looming, with a whole procession of seemingly inevitable catastrophes.

 

Thus, more than ever, do we need “a community of free individuals”, that is to say capable of thinking simultaneously through and beyond all the “forms” of this world, capable of verifying , to bring together, to pacify the various elements of knowledge, to understand the “natural” being while defining the “normal” being, capable of converting chaos into coherent energy, and of promoting the birth of this new man who is germinating in our universe. And for that, an “ascetic” discipline: discernment, rigor, openness, creativity, sense of unity, power of gaze and mastery of key ideas. We come to the need for a new anthropology, giving an account of the totality of the human being, and giving him all the means to realize himself.

 

So, as Jean Biès has clearly shown in his Passports for New Times (Dervy-Livres, 1982), such an anthropology must be both true knowledge and operative-transmuting science. Two fundamental and inseparable aspects of research impose themselves on us: the global path of the elucidation of being, and the dazzling path of personal transfiguration. On the one hand, understanding the ontological structures and modalities of universal dynamism; on the other hand, the implementation of the keys of metamorphosis – of transmutation or deification. To sum it all up in one word, we chose Epignôsis.

 

This term, which means first of all “action of recognizing as just”, in the New Testament took on its full and luminous value of “true and operative knowledge”. Many passages (Philipp. 1,9; Coloss. 1,10; I Tim. 2,4; II Tim. 3,7; Hebr. 10:26; II Peter 1,2, etc.) use it to designate the authentic, deep, total science of being; it is in relation with the “eye of the Heart”, with the Intellect-Love which gives access to the secrets of God and to those of our deification (cf. Ephes. l, 17-18; Coloss. 2, 2); it intervenes wherever the emphasis must be placed on the truth, the unity, the creative force of Gnosis (cf. Rom. 1:28; 10, 2; Ephes. 4,13, etc.).

 

But if we have retained this word, it is above all because of a splendid text from the Epistle to the Colossians (3, 9-11) which corresponds exactly to our conception of anthropology. Here it is: “9. You have stripped yourselves of the old man (ton palaion anthrôpon) with his actions, 10. and you have put on the new one (your neon), the one who is moving towards true knowledge (eis epignôsin) in himself. renewing in the image of its Creator (kat’eikona tou ktisantos auton) ”. And the author adds: “11. There, there is no longer any question of Greek or Jew, circumcision or uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, slave, free man; there is only Christ, who is all and in all ”. Christian language, of course; but ideological archetype of general scope: these lines can easily be transposed or interpreted in a universal perspective.

 

Knowledge of the “old man” – or of the “natural” being – with his psycho-material behavior, his conditioned state, his ethnic and social ties, his political or religious environment, in short, his limits, is necessary. awareness of its true end and a conversion of its energy: passage from a paleo- to a neo-anthropology. Necessary, the knowledge of evolved man – or of the “normal” being -, awakened to the true science of metamorphosis, of transmutation, allied with the superior or divine forces to travel tirelessly “the heroic and Gnostic way towards the Self ” [1]: establishment of a theo-anthropology. Thus, in the broad sense, this New Testament text, while giving epignôsis a clear definition, allows us to consider how to stimulate and renew anthropological research: by the clarity and elevation of its objective, by the emphasis placed on the mutable nature of man and on his deep vocation, which is to make himself like God – or to discover the Self in oneself.

 

Three traits, therefore, will characterize our company, mark its spirit: maximalism, globalism, and creationism. Not very elegant vocabulary, yes; but relatively explicit and striking. Maximalism! the most complete, the highest, the most demanding conception of the human being. Globalism: orderly convergence of all fields of knowledge, unifying dialectic. Creationism (not to be confused with “creationist” opinions): desire to transmute man by himself. As it is obvious, these traits are closely complementary and open to research an infinite field, but where each element must find its right place, each particle of knowledge and energy its right role. However, the last aspect representing the decisive orientation of the whole, we will call this anthropology,

 

Neo-anthropology which will strive to penetrate to the heart of being and of evolutionary dynamism, to reach, beyond dissimilarities and limits, the essential and sovereign reality of our theandric vocation (cf. the philosophy of Vladimir Soloviev ). Moreover, as stated in shorthand typing Father Henri de Lubac (Catholicism, Edict Cerf, 5. E ed, 1952 p.303.) “The New Man, who is the universal man [concept also Sufi], is at the same time the interior man ”, – which at the same time founds the nature and the necessity of esotericism.

 

Let us now take a closer look at these characteristic features of epignosis, so as to bring out the breadth of its field and the strength of its spirit, after which we will complete this presentation with some methodological considerations on the proper use of esotericism, on the triple Science of Energies, “Balance” and Symbols, as well as on the discipline of work which is essential.

 

I. Maximalism.

 

Of course, the study of everyday life is very worthy of attention; but how much more the opening on the higher planes of being! The ordinary man is certainly interesting; but how much more interesting the one who tends to go beyond the ordinary human condition! There should also be no separation: the everyday and the exceptional are appreciated in relation to each other. Only the maximalist perspective makes it possible to include everything, to “understand” everything, and to relativize everything correctly, thus highlighting the fundamental concepts of imperative, ontological pole, distance, upward movement. His thesis is this: to be mutable, man is in fact a “god in power” who is called to realize himself by making himself “like God”. Epignosis,

 

The testimonies abound of this need to connect us to the Infinite, to the Divine. “The only decisive criterion of human value is man’s attitude towards the Absolute”, proclaims Frithjof Schuon ( Spiritual Perspectives and Human Facts , Paris, 1953, p.27), a thinker who s’ is always striving to bring to light our essential nature, not “psychological”, but transcendent. Asked about religion and esotericism, Robert Amadou is led to declare: “Man does not distinguish himself, only defines himself as a being capable of God”. Didn’t Dante say, speaking of our mutation, of our deification: “transhumaner (trasumanar) will never be able to express himself in words” (Parad. 1, 70-71)? What Ananda K. Coomaraswamy fully subscribes to in his study onHinduism and Buddhism (Gallimard, 1949, chap. “Theology and Autology”, p.49). “Man is the best proof of the existence of God”, writes Seyyed Hossein Nasr for his part, “because he confirms his Creator by his theomorphic nature, and in particular by his Intelligence, which is proof of the Absolute, its real object ”( Essays on Sufism , tr.fr., Albin Michel, 1980, p.209).

 

Shri Aurobindo, meanwhile, has never ceased to insist on the true dimension of man: “We are not only what we know of ourselves, but infinitely more, that we do not know [yet] ; our momentary personality is only a bubble on the ocean of our existence ”( Divine Life, p.827). Or more precisely: “If man’s mind is able to open itself to that which transcends it, then there is no reason for man not to reach the Supreme and the superhuman himself.” , or at least so that he does not lend his mentality, life, and body to an evolution of that greater order of the Spirit which would manifest in Nature ”(ibid., p.1267). Rendue famous by incantations – fort ambiguës – du Zarathoustra nietzschéen, cette idée que l’être humain latest information n’est pas un, une étape mais qu’il faut dépasser avait été très correctement exprimée by Angelus Silesius dans son Pèlerin chérubinique (V , 219): «Homme, ne reste donc pas homme: il faut monter le plus haut qu’on le peut. In God, there will be only the gods of receipts, ”as well as by Novalis (Fragments , Gallimard, 1975, p.70): “Children of God, we are divine seeds. One day we will be what our Father is ”.

 

Anthropology, rightly understood, therefore leads to theogenesis. As Louis Cattiaux remarks ( Le Message rediscovered , Brussels, 1978, VIII, 23): “All the mysteries are reduced to a terrifying and admirable reality:” God in us, us in God “; and the entity that speaks in the Dialogues with the Angel affirms (p.75; Aubier-Montaigne, 1976): “There is not yet true knowledge of man, because MAN is not yet . THE MAN is so big that I can’t see him yet ”. How, then, can we not approve of this masterly formula of Julius Evola, who finds, in connection with Buddhism, the authentic inspiration of Epictetus: “Man is a god who does not know that he is such – and so on. ‘it is only this non-knowing that makes him a man ”(The doctrine of awakening , Adyar, 1956, p.117)?

 

Thus, a spiritual current as wide as it is constant has everywhere and always sought to bring to light the theandric character of the human person and the true meaning of his vocation. The same inexhaustible ideal makes pass before our eyes these innumerable figures of perfection proposed by the various religions and philosophies as their own end. The Truthful Sage of Stoicism or Vedanta, the Integral Yogi according to the Bhagavad-Gîta, the divine Man (theios anèr) of the Hellenistic and Roman times, the Anthropos teleios of Gnostic speculations (which is also: celestial, living, unshakeable, saint, etc.), the Fire Man of the Cabala (Isch), the “spiritual” Man of Paulineism, the “Conqueror” according to Revelation, the Verus Adam of Christian esotericism, the true Arya or the Brahmin in itself according to Buddhism (Dhammapada),[2]

 

This divine Man, one thus meets him in all the traditions and spiritualities like a fundamental topic, because he is really, according to the expressions of Rûmi – one of the best experts in the matter -, “the goal of the universe”, “The heart of the world”. Let us not forget, however, that each of us carries within him the germ of his divinity; and that, according to the beautiful sentence of Joseph Campbell ( The hero with a thousand and one faces , tr.fr., Robert Laffont, 1978, p.315), to become human, one must learn to recognize the face of God in all wonderful variations of the man’s face ”…

 

From the perspective that is ours, we intend to concern ourselves primarily with the “iconic man”, who discovers and fulfills himself as “image” (eikôn, icon) of God: the one who “moves towards the true knowledge by being renewed in the image of its Creator ”(Coloss. 3,10). On this iconic man – or theandric person -, Marie-Madeleine Davy wrote very good pages in her Nicolas Berdiaev, the Man of the eighth day(85 f .; Flammarion, 1964), because the concept of “theo-humanity” developed by the great Russian philosopher found deep echoes in her. As in ourselves, it goes without saying. This is a theme that Christianity, mainly Eastern, has generously treated, and to which we must give all the attention it deserves, because it is in short the key to our being and our future. This maximum conception of an “iconic” anthropology, Paul Evdokimov expressed it in a remarkable – and convincing – manner in his large work on L’Orthodoxie (Neuchâtel, Delachaux & Niestlé, 1965, pp. 45 to 119), and we We can see that the texts are not lacking to support such an interpretation of the man-image of God, and to found the imperative of deification which results from it.

 

There is first the famous verse 26 of the first chapter of Genesis: “Elohim said: Let us make man in our image, in our likeness! “, Which would be better translated:” And said Elohim: We will realize Man (Adam) in the reflection of our irradiation and the conformity of our power “; this being will therefore be similar to the divine Pluri-Unity (Elohim), both in the register of “emanation” and in that of “action”: true icon, sacred twinness [3] . Then there is the formula of Psalm 82 (v. 6): “You are gods (‘elîm), and you are all sons of the Most High”, a formula taken up and amplified by Jesus during a decisive discussion with the Jews (Jn. 10,34). There is that of the II eEpistle of Saint Peter (1,4), which declares us “participants of the divine nature”; that of Saint Gregory of Nyssa: “Man is related to God”; that of Saint Basil, well known: “Man is a creature who has reread the order to become God”; that of Saint Symeon: “God unites only with gods”, and so on.

 

Thus this theme of the image – an idea-force to be elucidated and elaborated – can only develop into an “anthropology of deification” (cf. P. Evdokimov, op.cit., P.93), the only to be correctly oriented and to know how to use the totality of human potentialities. What then is epignosis? The Gospel according to Thomas answers: “When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will know that you are the sons of the living Father. But if you don’t know yourself, then you are in poverty, and you are poverty ”. Here is defined the true end of anthropology. The same Gospel adds: “Know the One who is in front of your face, and what is hidden from you will be revealed to you …”, which Father Humbert Biondi interprets with finesse: “Discover the One who hides your face! When this secret is revealed to you, no other secret will be impenetrable to you ”. It is indeed a question here of the key knowledge, that of the essential I, which is in fact dual (it is the Father-Son of the Tetragrammaton).

 

Our whole problem is excellently summed up by Nicolas Berdiaev in Le Sens de la Création (1916; Paris, 1955, p.406): “The ultimate secret lies in this, that the divine mystery and the human mystery are only one. and the same mystery, that in God the mystique of man be kept, and in man the secret of God. God is born in man, and man is born in God. To discover man to the end means to discover God ”.

 

What does Islamic esotericism bring us? With its conception of Creation as a multiple set of mirrors, of reflections of the Majesty and the Beauty of God, Sufism has quite naturally been led to give a great impact to the theme of the man-image. This one, in fact, a privileged icon of the Divine, has as an imperative (Amr) to become the purest, the most faithful of His mirrors, until the intimate union with the Light: absolute condition to see, and to be seen . What is more, when it is a question of the initiate, God himself makes himself like a mirror which reflects back to him his own transfigured image in an unlimited deepening of clarity. So Ibn ‘Arabi can say, in The gems of wisdom: “God is therefore the mirror in which you see yourself, – as you are the mirror in which He contemplates His Names. Now, these are nothing other than Himself ”. Vertiginous mystery of the double mirror, of the Eternal Couple, which Rûmi (Rubâ’îyât) also evoked: “When I look in Him, I see my image, / When I look in myself, I see His image”.

 

This total, maximum understanding of man is the basis of what Henry Corbin calls a “metaphysics of being in the imperative” ( In Iranian Islam, I, Gallimard, 1971, pp. 179 & 192), effectively symbolized by the two consonants of the imperative of the verb to be in Arabic: KN (= Esto!). Order is thus given to man, indefinitely, to approach as closely as possible to the One of whom he is the icon. “It is this divine imperative which, by its perpetual recurrence, perpetually tears the constituted being, the < being> and its act of being, in the weight of nothingness, because the whole universe of being is only being which is not sufficient in itself, does not have itself of what to be. And this is true of the material universes and the spiritual universes. All are traversed by the immense upward movement of a creative imperative which removes them from the heaviness of their negativity.

 

This divine command supports, animates, advances our being, constituting its “dynamic essence” as its “end” (telos). We must answer him here and now, at every moment, under penalty of infidelity to our real vocation. Because we fundamentally belong to the “world of the Imperative”, ‘alam al-Amr. First enclosed in his tunic of skin, or of flesh (body and psyche), man must become aware of the energies that run through him, of the calls that press him, and become the Man of Light that he is (Heart – Soul – Spirit) through an alchemical process of liberation and transfiguration. “Truly we belong to God, and to Him we return”, declares the Qurân in a famous verse called “the quest for the return” (II, 156).

 

Moreover, it was perhaps Pic de la Mirandole, the founder of comparative esotericism in the West, who most strikingly exposed man’s capacity for evolution towards the Divine, in an anthropology of a consistency, rigor, exemplary power. The doctrine which was at the center of his reflection is presented in De hominis dignitate (or Oratio) and in Heptaplus . But it is through the Oratio that we know her in her luminous beauty, expressed in terms which strangely recall the Sufi theme of the Perfect Man, in particular the ideas of Rûmî (“The goal of the universe, c ‘ is man ”) or Ibn ‘Arabi. Here is the gist of it – of great importance for our purposes.

 

In the work of creation, man belongs, by divine decision, to a separate order, capable of recapitulating, exceeding and enriching all the others. It was therefore formed under the double sign of freedom and metamorphosis. God, according to Pic, said to Adam: “For others (creatures) their definite nature is governed by laws which we have prescribed; you, you are not limited by any barrier, it is of your own will, in the power of which I placed you, that you will determine your nature … We have made you neither celestial nor terrestrial, neither mortal nor immortal, so that, master of yourself and having, so to speak, the honor and the responsibility of shaping and shaping your being, you compose the destiny you have preferred ”(Or., édit. Cordier, Paris, 1957 , p.125). The aim of such freedom is to arouse in man his own creative will, which will lead him to where he has decided to go. “We are born capable of becoming what we want”: possumus si volumus (Or., Pp. 128-9) (cf. the divine Name revealed in the Burning Bush: “I Am Who I Am”, or “I Will Be Who I Want To Be ”),

 

This theme of Homo secundus Deus (see below the study by Vinzenz Rüfner on this subject) is frequent in Antiquity (Plato, Virgil, Seneca, Corpus Hermeticum, Plotinus), then in esoteric Christianity (Greek Fathers, John Scot Érigène, Maitre Eckhart, Nicolas de Cuse). But it was Pic who gave it its most remarkable and stimulating form.

 

Thus, participating in all levels of being, having within him the seeds of all possibilities, man can evolve in the direction he wishes, identify with such and such an order, or overcome them all: theme of metamorphosis, transformation. It is both imago mundi (ancient notion of the microcosm, correspondence systematized by the Cabala between human beings and the Universe: cf. Heptaplus), and imago Dei in mundo. It can be plant, animal, reasonable soul, angel, and more: the human envelope contains natures of an extreme dissimilarity, a multidimensional dynamism (cf. Rûmi). God to Adam: “You will be able to degenerate into lower forms which are animal; you will be able, by decision of your spirit, to be regenerated into higher forms which are divine ”(Or., p.125).

 

Now, the true vocation of man is precisely his maximum assimilation to God, that is to say, deification. “If he is not satisfied by any kind of creature, and if he collects himself in the center of his unity, become one spirit with God, in the solitary darkness of the Father, who is placed above all beings, he will stand himself above all ”(Or., p.127). This affirmation corresponds, in Pic’s thought, to absolute certainty. Our destiny is clearly indicated in this formula of Psalm 82 (v.6) which we quoted above, and which the Oratio presents as decisive: “You are gods, and you are all children of the Most High”. Note however that the 7 thA verse from the same Psalm announces the downfall of those who abandon the spirit for the “flesh”: the human adventure is a perilous journey. An example of successful transmutation, retained by our author, is that of the Patriarch Enoch, who became the Angel of the Presence (Malakh ha-Schekhinah), or Metatron, the universal Man-God (Or., P.127, and R Ambelain, La notion gnostique du Démiurge, Paris, 1959, pp. 41-42).

 

The situation of man, in relation to the whole of Creation, is therefore analogous to that of God. In any case, it cannot be reduced to the system of values ​​represented by the world. Like God himself, he can be both within and above all, and he can act through all. Neither his place nor his role are limited: he is able to receive and transmit divine Energies, to contemplate one and multiple Beauty, to endlessly complete the work of Wisdom. His success as a “second God” depends on the correct and continuous exercise of an arduous dialectic between daring and humility, the relative and the absolute, liberation and participation, the transcendence of the Spirit and the immanence of the Incarnate Heart. The dynamism specific to the human personality, this surge of knowledge, love and creative activity which characterizes it, radically differentiates it and situates it outside the natural categories, whatever its height. The angel himself, who figures a determined “condition”, a particular ontological level, can be overcome by the ascending effort of man, whose true intention is nothing other than an endless journey to search for the Beloved (Sufi theme). The value of a being, of a life, is in the quality of this ascending effort, in the capacity to receive and radiate – here and now – the divine Energies. whose true intention is none other than an endless journey in search of the Beloved (Sufi theme). The value of a being, of a life, is in the quality of this ascending effort, in the capacity to receive and radiate – here and now – the divine Energies. whose true intention is none other than an endless journey in search of the Beloved (Sufi theme). The value of a being, of a life, is in the quality of this ascending effort, in the capacity to receive and radiate – here and now – the divine Energies.

 

This is what this incomparable “dignity” of man consists of, the object of our study and of our work. The “iconic” man will therefore be the common thread of our research: starting point, source of inspiration, model, pole. In this perspective, we also make ours this declaration of Jacob Boehme on the nature and the future of the human person ( Confessions , Fayard, 1973, p.173): “All that God the Father is, all the colors, the forces and the virtues of his eternal Wisdom will appear in me as his image; I will be a manifestation of the divine spiritual world, an instrument of the Spirit of God which he will play with my own sound which will be his signature ».

 

Consequently, all other conceptions of man can only be seen as fragmentary, insufficient, or parodic; and it will be necessary to struggle to complete them, to rebalance them, to convert them. In the extreme, we are faced with two absolutely opposite interpretations of man, that of maximalism – which is becoming scarce – and that of materialism – which, in this era of heaviness and confusion, tends to prevail. Because of a destiny in all points remarkable, it is Russian thought which, in its vicissitudes, presents us most clearly these two antagonistic poles which are the “iconic” man and the “Soviet” man. On the one hand, Saint Sergius of Radonge, André Rublev, Saint Seraphim of Sarov, Vladimir Soloviev, Father Serge Bulgakov, Nicolas Berdiaev, Paul Evdokimov, illustrating the splendor of the man-image of God and the sphere of transfiguration. On the other, Lenin, Stalin, Bolshevism, the Gulag, the “ratorium”, the factory of Homo Sovieticus and the world of flattening.

 

Between this light – scorned and unrecognized – and this obscurity – invasive and fascinating – the two Alexander, Solzhenitsyn and Zinoviev, strive to attract the attention of universal consciousness to save what can be saved, and return to a new “creative minority” the meaning of human totality and of the theandric ideal, outside of which there is only caricature and slavery [4] .

 

An anthropology worthy of the name must absolutely free man from entropy, from disintegration, from all these dark, blurry, grimacing masks. Philosophy (love of the Sophia), Philology (love of the Logos), Philocalie (love of Beauty), one and the same spirit, must guide him towards “the world of the wise archetypes” (Milosz), the fullness of gaze, the faces of the Divine (Cabbalah, Sufism), the fulfillment of the person in the transparency of the mystical Light. Anthropology, correctly conceived, leads to the indefinite growth of man, the capacity to perceive, to receive, to become, and to give. “Who will be able to trap the life of the Most High? Who will know how to mature it and who will know how to eat it in order to become like it, pure, free and eternal? »( The Rediscovered Message , XIX, 2).

 

 

 

Figure 1

Heinrich KHUNRATH, Amphitheater of Eternal Wisdom Alone True (Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae Solius Verae); plate I of the princeps edition of 1602: “Christ on the cross” (Milano, Archè, 1975. Sebastiani Collection. Illustration n ° 7).

This composition represents a Christ on the cross and in glory in a sovereign blaze. In fact, the cross does not appear concretely, because it is what the Acts of John call the “Cross of Light” (98). This figure is our archetype, our telos: this glorious Christ is the Conqueror by the alchemical and spiritual Fire (Khunrath wrote a treatise De igne magorum), the “accomplished Anthropocosm” (Schwaller de Lubicz), the Icon of icons, the Man-God who is above all, who lives at the heart of the manifestation, and who acts through all planes of ‘to be. And we, according to the Eastern Christian formula, have to become “isochrists” – a striking illustration of maximalism. The outer circle of the Ten Commandments corresponds to the world of incarnation and action, Assiah. The second circle is that of triple Love (of God, of Self, and of the Other; cf. Lk 10:27), which alone allows the free circulation of divine Energies throughout all reality. The circle of the Hebrew alphabet is equivalent to the formative world of Yetzirah; the wheel of the Sephiroth is the creative world of Beriah. The flaming rose of the Sacred Names (Shemoth), with the Pentagram YH Sh WH – the shin, at the top, symbolizing theandric nature – indicates the divine world of Atzilouth. In the central glory, above the phoenix, triumphs the Man-God, or the Deified Initiate. This is, of course, the essence of esoteric Christianity; but it is also that of creation anthropology. Heinrich Khunrath (1560-1605), of Leipzig, was a disciple of Paracelsus, a Christian cabbalist, and a Rosicrucian alchemist of the pansophic current (quest for universal Wisdom).

 

II. Globalism.

 

Gnosis is one and indivisible. Of course, our experience and our knowledge are divided into many branches or disciplines which have for their reason for being efficiency, pedagogy, and also the very nature of individual capacities. But these disciplines are all, without exception, complementary, and they must each take its rightful place in the coherence of a single Knowledge. If we notice divergences or conflicts between the so-called exact and natural sciences, anthropology, philosophy, religions, mysticism, spiritual tradition, parapsychology, or art, it is due to our present ignorance, to our momentary inability to discover the keys to integration. Any contradiction in our knowledge is an optical illusion that a change in the level of our vision will sooner or later disappear. We must therefore practice thinking “globally”, coordinating all the constituent elements of our research, systematically linking all the poles of our experience.

 

Approach very rightly explained by Jean Prieur when he said: “To seize simultaneously. Do not divide anymore. No longer be divided. No longer let yourself be torn apart. The element you neglect turns against you and destroys you. Matter, evil, spirit, flesh take revenge, each for its own account, on the systems and men who exclude them ”( Les Témoins de l’Invisible ,“ Le Livre de Poche ”, 1978, p.133) . And approach which is at the origin of the famous “intellectual yoga” developed by Raymond Abellio.

Above all, we must beware of the “reductionist” tendencies of a certain scientific or scientist positivism, which readily locks itself into a partial and artificial view of things – this in the name of “logic”, while a global perspective of the real requires a metalog. The true friends of Wisdom are those who have tried to present a gnosis integrating, in addition to the sciences, all the other aspects of human and divine energetics, with an intention of universal transmutation: let us quote Avicenna, Raymond Lulle, Leibniz, Novalis, Teilhard de Chardin, Stéphane Lupasco, Robert Linssen, Raymond Abellio, Jean E. Charon, etc.

 

It is necessary to go beyond the mind, this “divisive mind”, as Aurobindo calls it, to make oneself capable of the totality: “The Great Intelligence encompasses, the small intelligence discriminates” (Tchouang-tse). Didn’t Novalis declare in 1800: “To annihilate the principle of contradiction is perhaps the highest task of higher logic” ( Fragments , p.400)? Thus the Gnostic – or unitary, or “theory of great unification” – research uses the mind, the reason, but without being reducible to this plane. It demonstrates a “mathematical” rigor (in the precisely Novalisian sense of the term), but does not allow itself to be imprisoned in the relativity of the sciences, it obeys a transnationality.

 

Charles Duits, in La conscience demonique (Denoël, 1974, pp. 173-4), has shown very well the unbearable nature of the limits inherent in official ideologies, and the absolute necessity to take into account the whole man: of Conflict. – The current society, <capitalist> or <socialist>, rests entirely on the following postulate: the ordinary vigilant conscience, that which I <enjoy> at this moment, is the normal and natural state of the man. All other states are <marginal>, <seconds>, ​​or <twilight>, that is, lower. Drunkenness, madness, inspiration, ecstasy are by definition affected by the minus sign.

 

Of course, it is recognized that the ordinary vigilant conscience makes mistakes and that it is subject to many illusions. It is nonetheless true that society imposes on the individual its conception of the true, the false, the healthy, the pathological, the real and the unreal with increasing arrogance.

 

By calling itself normal and natural, the ordinary vigilant conscience begs the question. Both judge and party, it violates without even noticing the fundamental maxim of law; calls the instance in whose name it condemns states of consciousness other than its own the “tribunal of reason”. Above all, it is the jurisdiction of this tribunal that the <fools> and the <poets> challenge.

 

We lock up the first; the latter are stifled. Society instinctively understands that anyone who questions the sovereignty of the ordinary vigilante conscience and the legitimacy of its edicts attacks it itself and carries a fiery ax in the roots of the political mancenillier ”.

 

We can only subscribe to this desire for “dissent” – or openness – and make it our own, even if what the author calls “demonic consciousness” does not cover the entire field of Gnosis.

Let’s learn to see. Let us know how to see. Because everything depends on the quality of our gaze: our universe, our destiny, our sense of God and of man, our symbolism, our esotericism. “Between ‘those who see’”, said Henry Corbin, “and ‘those who do not see’ the debate is without issue” ( Temple et contemplation , Flammarion, 1980, p.385). And Gurdjieff: “A man cannot see anything above his own level of being” ( Fragments of an unknown teaching , Stock, 1968, p.434). The main thing is to educate, awaken, and develop this gaze (cf. the “Eye of the Heart”) until it is perfectly adequate to the multidimensionality of reality.

 

This is the opportunity to take up the famous kôan here:

“  In the beginning, mountains are mountains.

In the middle, the mountains are no longer mountains.

In the end, the mountains are mountains again ”.

 

st stage: the naive look. It is routine materialism closed in on itself, the reign of unfounded evidence, the station outside symbols, the superficial view of beings and things. – 2nd stage: the watchful eye. The symbols come alive, move, transform. They appear as intersections of meaning and planes, as “magical” structures, bundles of energies. We perceive the forces they convey, and we perceive ourselves as conveyed by them. The “primary” vision has faded, as have the “surface aspects”, and we move in the profusion of correlations, in the multiple light of deep reality, and in a training that seems endless. – 3 rdstage: the divine gaze. At a certain moment, which has the instantaneity of lightning, everything is organized in a coherent and hierarchical knowledge, in a global vision which is perfect circulation of the Meaning. All the planes are integrated, all the modes of being are penetrated and linked [5] .

 

We find moreover in Saint Paul this theme of the opening of the gaze, leading to epignôsis (I Cor. 13,12): “For the moment, I know (ginôskô) partially, but then (when the initiation will be sufficient) I will recognize (epignôsomai) in the same way that I was recognized (epegnosthèn). In other words: instead of perceiving only enigmatic reflections, which the multiple and the fragmentary, I will know with complete accuracy, from the very gaze of God. An ideal of which we must constantly be aware, a program to be carried out as quickly as possible in order to understand the nature of beings and the unity of Being. Let us therefore accomplish this conversion of the gaze of which Milosz speaks to us, for having experienced it, in The Canticle of Knowledge.: “Until one day, realizing that I was stopped in front of a mirror, I looked behind me. The source of lights and forms was there, the world of the profound, wise, chaste archetypes (= the mundus imaginalis, ‘alam al-Malakût, of Islamic gnosis) ”.

 

Precisely aware of the importance of the stake, Sufism is very explicit concerning this “true global knowledge”, or epignôsis. “Esoteric” wisdom, that is to say total and one, is for him al-ma’rifah, well beyond simple science, al-‘ilm; and the Gnostic is al-‘ârif, the one who has access to the Holy Mountain, to “the place of divine Proximity”, al-A’râf. De Hallaj: “Wisdom (ma’rifah) is the gradual introduction of the intimate consciousness (sirr) among the categories of thought”, excellent definition; and Rûmî indicates in his Mathnawî (III, 1123): “One must have a knowledge whose root is beyond, and of which each branch is a guide towards its root ..? This same Rumi quotes elsewhere this striking formula of Bayazid:Ezekiel’s eyes are open .

 

This full opening of the gaze, as Paul Evdokimov underlines, leads us to perceive through all the play of divine energies and the essential coherence of Creation (which, in the case of man, leads us back to maximalism): “The <ontological tenderness> of the great spirituals (Saint Isaac, Saint Macarius) towards all creatures, even reptiles and even demons, is accompanied by an iconographic way of contemplating the world, of detecting thought in it transparently. divine, to penetrate the cosmic shell to the almond, carrying meaning. It is from this source that comes the joyful cosmism of Orthodoxy, its unshakeable optimism, the maximum evaluation of the human being: ‘After God, consider every man as God’ (agraphon reported by Clement of Alexandria) ” ( The Art of the Icon, Desclee De Brouwer, 1972, p.55).

 

We must therefore go beyond the world of “forms”, the phenomenal plane, categories and limits, so as to reach the essential, the universal, the One. “The eternal spirit of man,” says Berdiaev, “claims for itself … the absolute central point, not of the closed planetary system, but of the whole being, of all the planes of being, of all the worlds. »( The Meaning of Creation , p.105).

 

And centrality is the key to transparency, a fundamental theme of Islamic gnosis. “The Sufi is the one who seeks to transcend the domain of forms, to move from multiplicity to unity, from the particular to the Universal. He abandons the multiple for the One, and this very process brings him the vision of the One in the multiple. For him all forms, including religious forms, become transparent and thus reveal to him their unique origin ”(SH Nasr, Essais sur le soufisme, p.209). Simultaneous necessity of the multiple – richness: not to limit the potentialities of Being – and of unity – coherence: not to get lost in the forest of phenomena. Simultaneous and complementary need for differences and a unifying gaze. The Sufis recognize as indispensable the plurality of prophets, religions, ways and schools of wisdom; and at the same time they insist on the obligation to seek the unique light of Truth, and to reach it beyond this plurality, in a total liberation of forms.

 

To perceive the One everywhere, like essence, dynamism, or Self, which makes it possible to understand everything and to link everything. “What makes me strong is to reject limitations,” said Ramakrishna; and he specified: “I accept everything: the superconscious state, the waking state, the dream, deep sleep, Brahman (transpersonal God), jîva (the person), creation; I accept all of this as various manifestations of Being. Otherwise Its integral value would be diminished. So I accept both the Absolute and the manifestation ”(The teaching of Râm., Albin Michel, 1972, n ° 1289). Saint Isaac the Syrian had detected in the whole of reality the irradiation of one and the same “Light of Glory” (PG 91, 1148): “The ineffable and prodigious fire hidden in the essence of things as in the burning bush is the fire of divine Love and the dazzling brilliance of its beauty within things”. And Angelus Silesius had perfectly grasped what constitutes the proper quality of this gaze, the dialectical movement between the inside and the above: “Man, it is only when you have become all things that you are in the Word, and in the ranks of the gods ”(I, 192), to be completed by:“ Lose all form, my child, you will become like God ”(II, 54).

 

Differences, at their level, are a source of separation and conflict. But epignôsis, global knowledge, introduces into unity and peace. Let us also quote Rumi: “The difference between creatures results from their outward form (nâm). When one enters the inner meaning (ma’na), there is peace ”. This provides a precise definition of esotericism: to find the mysterious unity which underlies the diversity of forms by penetrating into the inner meaning. Let us add that this mysterious unity turns out to be, in fact, multi-unity – a concept familiar to the Cabala (Elohim, the Sephiroth, the three “Angels” at the oaks of Mambré, etc.), to Christianity (Trinity, “mystical body” ; cf. Coloss. 3:11), and Sufism (Simorgh, both One Bird and thirty birds).

 

However, one should not take for globalism – a superior vision due to the Eye of the Heart – some of its caricatures which, today more than ever, run the streets. It has nothing in common, in fact, with the confusion that reigns under its name, mixing and assimilating in contempt of all discernment, nor with syncretism, which is juxtaposition of heterogeneous elements without real integration, nor with parallelism, which wants to be objective but does not cross the threshold of synthesis, nor with eclecticism, individual choice of various components in relation to a given mentality, and rejection of all that is foreign to it; and this can not be any artificial construction, its nature would foredoom such as the Tour blasted (XVI eArcane du Tarot). As it is a deciphering of Life in itself, it proceeds by multiple throws, by unifying comparisons, by convergences and by irradiations, by an ascending dialectic which constantly corrects itself, hence an unlimited progression, in scope and in intensity, of the I which is at the heart of this work [6] .

 

Neo-anthropology will therefore have to discover the “omnidominant point of view”; it will have to obey the precept of Angelus Silesius, which is also that of Abellio: “Transport yourself to the center, you will see at the same time all that happens here and now, here and in the kingdom of heaven” (II, 183) . She will be established at the top of the Holy Mountain (al-A’râf; cf. Nasr, op. Cit., P.215), that is to say at the highest possible level of being and consciousness. , so that the separations, the limits and the conflicts of the phenomenal world disappear. She will join, in their extraordinary adventure, these pilgrims of the Absolute of whom A.-D. Grad ( The Golem and Knowledge, Edit. Dangles, 1978, p.158): “Both thinkers and poets, Kabbalists and Sufis reach the heights of spirituality and the highest language in joy and light. Through the Hûrqalyenne knowledge of the Real [7] , associated with the subtle knowledge of the states of the heart, they pursue their quest for the Ineffable, eager for the non-comparable and non-metaphorical Unity, the transcendent and yet pathetic Unity. What contemptuous of these seekers of the Divine Face would dare to assert that some day they will not appear, in the perspective of a prodigious history of human thought, like the fire stars of a universal Redemption? ”

 

At least, let us not have any illusions about the meaning to be given to the terms of globalism or wholeness. Certainly, there are privileged moments when one can think of having reached epignôsis, the global knowledge of things. But they are in fact fleeting and necessarily incomplete flashes, which must be judged relative to an infinity of other possible states, ever closer to the Absolute. There is no definitive station in Gnosis, but an inexhaustible dynamic. Globalism does not represent a determined grasp, however high, but a permanent attitude of mind. Rumi gives us this secret, paradoxical in appearance, but of a certain effectiveness: “Know the true definition of yourself; that is essential. And when you know the definition of yourself flee away from this definition, in order to reach Him who has no definition… ”And did not Shibli declare:“ True gnosis is the inability to attain gnosis ”? What is called integrality is, at each moment, the implementation of all the known in a consciousness polarized by the One. No knowledge can be closed, neither static, nor definitive; but a constant revival of the process of knowledge leads the Gnostic on a vertiginous journey. The main thing is never to stop, under penalty of being deprived of the transfiguring virtue of this esoteric approach: “Even if you reach the glorious Throne with your hand”, advises’ Attar, “do not stop for a moment. pronounce these words of the Qoran: “Is there nothing more?> Immerse yourself in the ocean of Science …” ( in order to reach Him who has no definition… ”And did not Shibli declare:“ True gnosis is the inability to attain gnosis ”? What is called integrality is, at each moment, the implementation of all the known in a consciousness polarized by the One. No knowledge can be closed, neither static, nor definitive; but a constant revival of the process of knowledge leads the Gnostic on a vertiginous journey. The main thing is never to stop, under penalty of being deprived of the transfiguring virtue of this esoteric approach: “Even if you reach the glorious Throne with your hand”, advises’ Attar, “do not stop for a moment. pronounce these words of the Qoran: “Is there nothing more?> Immerse yourself in the ocean of Science …” ( in order to reach Him who has no definition… ”And did not Shibli declare:“ True gnosis is the inability to attain gnosis ”? What is called integrality is, at each moment, the implementation of all the known in a consciousness polarized by the One. No knowledge can be closed, neither static, nor definitive; but a constant revival of the process of knowledge leads the Gnostic on a vertiginous journey. The main thing is never to stop, under penalty of being deprived of the transfiguring virtue of this esoteric approach: “Even if you reach the glorious Throne with your hand”, advises’ Attar, “do not stop for a moment. pronounce these words of the Qoran: “Is there nothing more?> Immerse yourself in the ocean of Science …” ( “True gnosis is the inability to achieve gnosis”? What is called integrality is, at each moment, the implementation of all the known in a consciousness polarized by the One. No knowledge can be closed, neither static, nor definitive; but a constant revival of the process of knowledge leads the Gnostic on a vertiginous journey. The main thing is never to stop, under penalty of being deprived of the transfiguring virtue of this esoteric approach: “Even if you reach the glorious Throne with your hand”, advises’ Attar, “do not stop for a moment. pronounce these words of the Qoran: “Is there nothing more?> Immerse yourself in the ocean of Science …” ( “True gnosis is the inability to achieve gnosis”? What is called integrality is, at each moment, the implementation of all the known in a consciousness polarized by the One. No knowledge can be closed, neither static, nor definitive; but a constant revival of the process of knowledge leads the Gnostic on a vertiginous journey. The main thing is never to stop, under penalty of being deprived of the transfiguring virtue of this esoteric approach: “Even if you reach the glorious Throne with your hand”, advises’ Attar, “do not stop for a moment. pronounce these words of the Qoran: “Is there nothing more?> Immerse yourself in the ocean of Science …” ( No knowledge can be closed, neither static, nor definitive; but a constant revival of the process of knowledge leads the Gnostic on a vertiginous journey. The main thing is never to stop, under penalty of being deprived of the transfiguring virtue of this esoteric approach: “Even if you reach the glorious Throne with your hand”, advises’ Attar, “do not stop for a moment. pronounce these words of the Qoran: “Is there nothing more?> Immerse yourself in the ocean of Science …” ( No knowledge can be closed, neither static, nor definitive; but a constant revival of the process of knowledge leads the Gnostic on a vertiginous journey. The main thing is never to stop, under penalty of being deprived of the transfiguring virtue of this esoteric approach: “Even if you reach the glorious Throne with your hand”, advises’ Attar, “do not stop for a moment. pronounce these words of the Qoran: “Is there nothing more?> Immerse yourself in the ocean of Science …” (Le Colloque des Oiseaux , ch. 40). The Logos always increases by itself; the Sophia has its center everywhere and nowhere; Beauty is played out through and beyond innumerable veils (seventy thousand, says Sufism).

 

Authentic anthropology will open up with discernment, patience, and freedom, on the totality of reality, verifying at all times the multidimensional character of all that exists. It will show itself capable of linking everything into an ever more coherent whole, the fields of knowledge, the levels of being, the various forms of energy. It will constantly bring together man, the cosmos and the Divine – themes of anthropocosm and theandrism – by jointly using all the tools, old and new, discovered or rediscovered, which accumulate in its service. With the ascension dialectic as a key. Dynamic unity of Gnosis, in accordance with the words of Novalis: “We will understand the world when we understand ourselves, because we, he and we, are integral halves. Children of God, divine seeds we are. One day we will be what our Father is ”(Fragments , p.70). Everything is here.

 

Let us add that in this way, beyond cultural, ideological or religious forms, a real elite – or community, if one prefers – of “free spirits”, an ontological elite, companionship of the Heart, capable of any experience, of all understanding, and all synthesis, without prejudices, without borders, without fanaticism; an elite of peacemakers, re-creators of man, transfigurators of the Earth. One can think here these people are archetypes as “People of the Cave” (Ahl al-Kahf, 18 thQuranic sura), to those “witnesses” who are neither Muslims, Jews nor Christians, and who are waiting, withdrawing from the world, but not outside the world, for the “Great Resurrection” – cf. the quote from Nietzsche at the beginning of this article. “Sleeping” in appearance, for the layman gaze; in reality, representatives of the Soul of the World. We can also think of the “Thirty-Six Righteous” (the Lamed-Vav) of the cabbalistic tradition…

 

In this perspective, two beautiful texts of Sufism stand out for themselves to bear witness to the transcendent and creative force of the Heart – or of the operative Intellect-Love. From Rûmî ( Diwan ; Anthologie du soufisme, by Eva de Vitray-Meyerovitch, Édit. Sindbad, 1978, p.262):

“  I am neither a Christian, nor a Jew, a Gebre, nor a Muslim;

I am neither of the East, nor of the West, nor of the land, nor of the sea …

I am not from the empyrean, nor from the dust; not of existence nor of being …

I am not from this world, nor from the other …

My place is to be without place, my trace to be without a trace …

Only one I am looking for, One only I know, One only I see, One only I call “.

 

From Ibn ‘Arabi (XI th ode of “The interpreter of ardent desires”, Tarjuman al-ashwaq):

“  Until this day, I rejected my companion

When my heart didn’t profess the same religion as him.

Now my Heart has become capable of all forms.

It is a meadow for gazelles and a convent for Christian monks,

A temple for the idols and the pilgrim’s Ka’ba,

The tables of the Torah and the book of the Qurân.

I profess the religion of Love, and some direction

That his camels take, Love is my religion and my faith ”.

 

 

Figure 2

 

“The triple chrism”. Mosaic baptistery Albenga (Liguria, V e / VI e s.). Drawing of

J. Phaure (see above). See also F. van der Meer & Christine Mohrmann, Atlas of Christian Antiquity (tr. Fr., Paris-Bruxelles, Edit. Sequoia, 1960), p.130, fig.414.

This motif was chosen to illustrate globalism in its dynamic unity. The chrism, or cross with six branches, solar sign of perpetual creativity, equivalent of the Bereshith (BR hA Sh Y Th) which opens Genesis (interpreted by the Zohar: “He created [by the] Six”), is presented here in a triple expansion. Image of extreme density suggesting: the propagation of the creative “Fiat”, the irradiation of the Word (Alpha and Omega, Universal Principle and End), the radiation of “waves of fire” in the field of manifestation (the letters A and W can be read Aleph and Shin, or hA Sh, Hebrew name for fire), the deployment of the senate / septenary rediscovered by Abellio as the capital dialectical key of transmutation [8], etc. The four eight-rayed stars in the angles (total 32) indicate the righteous circuits of divine Love. As for the twelve doves, which symbolize the ordered totality of “forms” and beings, not only do they gravitate around the central sun, but they are attracted by the ontological pole crowning the whole, obeying their vocation to transcend themselves in transparency. . So this composition does indeed come under epignosis, the global grasp of the mechanisms of being.

 

 

III. Creationism.

 

“Man is the creation of his thought: what he thinks about in this life, later he becomes it”, affirms the Chândogya Upanishad; and Bardo Thôdol: “What men think, they become, both in the present and later …” (theme highlighted by Dr Evans Wentz). A fortiori true Knowledge turns out to be operative. Perpetually dynamic and growing on its own, it is nothing other than an indefinite process of transformation, of man and his environment. Indeed, the divine and cosmic Energies are at the disposal of the human being: he is called to recognize them and to use them, in order to act as “second God”, as a universal and permanent Artifex. The considerable development of this doctrine in the West was very well analyzed by Vinzenz Rüfner in his study ” Homo secundus Deus . A study of the history of ideas on human creativity »(Philosophical Yearbook of the Görres Society 63, 1954, pp. 248-291).

 

The essential vocation of man is creativity. But it is difficult to be perfectly faithful to him. Let us propose here a suggestive parable of Nietzsche: “The travelers and their degrees. – It is necessary to distinguish five degrees among the travelers: those of the first degree, which is the lower degree, are the travelers that one sees, – to tell the truth one travels them and they are blind in a way; the following are those who truly watch the world; in the third degree, something happens to the traveler as a result of his observations; in the fourth, travelers retain what they have experienced and continue to carry it within them; and finally there are some men of a higher power who, necessarily, end up exposing everything they have seen, after having lived it and assimilated it:

 

– Similar to these five categories of travelers, all men go through the great pilgrimage of life, the inferiors in a purely passive way, the superiors in men of action who know how to live whatever happens to them, without keeping in themselves a surplus of ‘interior events’ ( Opinions and mixed sentences , tr.fr., “Bibl. Mediations”, Denoël / Gonthier, 1975, p.139).

 

Let us translate: each one is the son of his thought; who thinks little, or badly, perpetuates his mediocrity; every positive thought determines a mutation; the best are those who transform their fully integrated experience into a creative outpouring.

 

This same philosopher brings, in his Inactual Considerations (III, 5), this precision to which we can only give our assent: “The Philosophers, the Artists and the Saints, these are the true men, the men who separate themselves from the animal kingdom. . At their appearance and by their appearance, nature which never jumps makes its unique leap, and it is a leap of joy … This is the fundamental thought of culture, admitting that culture imposes a task on each of them. us: to accelerate the birth of the philosopher, the artist and the saint, in ourselves and outside us, and thus work for the fulfillment of nature ”.

 

But the one to whom we most readily refer, in our perspective, is Berdiaev, who at length developed an anthropology of creative freedom, or of the creative act – which corresponds to what we call anthropology. creative. In the book she dedicated to him, Marie-Madeleine Davy showed the importance of this essential reflection on. “The divine and human drama” (pp. 81 sq.), “Liberty and creation” (pp. 99 sq.), “Mysticism and gnosis” (pp. 119 sq.). At the end of the day, theandrism: “Man is rooted in God, as God is rooted in man” ( Essay on spiritual autobiography, p.224). However, creative activity is co-eternal with God, and therefore fundamental in man. “This one is not only called to the creative power as activity in the world and on the world, but he is himself the power of creation, and without this power he has no personality. Man is a microcosm and a microtheos [9] . He is only a person when he does not want to be part of something or be made up of parts. The figure of man is a creative unity ”( Essay on eschatological metaphysics , p.198).

 

Explaining this vocation which is specific to us, Berdiaev finds the demonstration of Pic de la Mirandole ( De hominis dignitate), built under the double sign of freedom and metamorphosis: “For the philosophy of creation, it is essential to recognize that man is not in a completed and stabilized system of being; it is only on this condition that his creative act is possible and understood… ”(ibid., p.197). An ontological status based on mutation, an indefinite evolutionary capacity, a constant arousing imperative to be (KN, Esto!): Such is the law of ascending energetics that characterizes us. “The creative power of man attests that he belongs to two worlds, and that he is called to a royal position in the universe” (ibid.). Two worlds indeed: the effort of the Gnostic-artifex is to enter into possession of the “two Kingdoms”, that of Earth and that of Heaven, that of time and that of eternity. RMSonnets to Orpheus : “Is he a being from here?” No. Its rich nature flourishes in both Kingdoms ”. The same is true of the hero of the Green Face, of whom Meyrink says: “He was a Living One, here below and in the Hereafter”, and – according to Islamic speculation – of the people of al-A’râf ( the Holy Mountain), Watchmen of dual citizenship.

 

To achieve this goal, man – an essential condition – must achieve what Berdiaev calls the anthropological discovery of creation, that is, to understand the nature, the finality, and the instructions for use, the springs in one. a word of this creative dynamism which constitutes his personality. “If the ways of creation had been designated and justified in the Scriptures, then the creation would have been obedience, it would not have been creation… That the secret of creation and its ways would have been hidden in the Holy Scriptures, that is, is where the esoteric wisdom of Christianity resides. The mystery of creation is esoteric in itself, it is not revealed, but still hidden. Only law and redemption are revealed – creation is hidden. The revelation of creation should not be from above, but from below,The Meaning of Creation , pp. 129-130). Painful style, but capital text. It is to this discovery that we are invited; it is to her that we must devote our study.

 

From this perspective, “Christology” becomes “autology”, a deepening of our double nature, divine and human, grasping the power of the creative Word which is in germ in the Heart, way of deification. This was also the sentiment of Henry Corbin, and we are pleased to quote here a characteristic passage from En Islam iranien (IV, p.451), in which this consonance manifests itself in Christological research. “Berdiaev was able to write that the drama of Christianity was not to have discovered the totality of <the Christology of man>, that is to say the mystery of his divine nature, whereas this discovery is the mission of religious consciousness ( The Meaning of Creation, p.111). <The Church of Golgotha, in which Christological truth is only imperfectly revealed, is opposed to the integral Church of Christ> (ibid., P.426). Only the asceticism of the free creative act places man face to face with this new aspect of Christology. In a page of all Johannine and Joachimite inspiration, he wrote: <If redemption requires great obedience, creation (the act of creation) requires great recklessness. One sees Christ on the march only by a daring attempt. The spirit of obedience has always seen in Christ only the Crucified, the only aspect of the redeemer. It takes the sacrifice of courage, the heroic decision, to throw oneself off these safe shores. One must stand fearlessly above the abyss. The third revelation in the Spirit will not have its sacred text, it will not be a voice from above; it will be accomplished in man and in humanity, it will be the anthropological revelation, the discovery of the Christology of man> (ibid., p.142) ”.

 

It is therefore this “third revelation” that we are now dealing with. It is up to us to provoke it and implement it. What Berdiaev understands by Christology of man is in the direct line of esoteric Christianity (cf. the Gospel according to Thomas, Meister Eckhart, Angelus Silesius, and supra, note 3), joining in particular what the Eastern Orthodox considers as our “isochristic” destiny. And it is at the same time, by transposition into the framework of universal anthropology, the awareness of our multidimensional nature of the creative power that inhabits us, of the need to integrate ourselves into the circuit of divine energies – which is the fundamental object of our research. Deus Artifex and Homo Artifex: in short, this is the field of creation anthropology.

 

 

 

Figure 3

“Saint John seeing the 7 candlesticks and the Son of Man”. 2 nd board of the Apocalypse Albrecht Dürer ( The Woodcuts , Paris, Art & Culture, 1978 No. 13).

Dürer’s engraving reproduced here illustrates a well-known passage from Revelation (1,12-16): “I turned to look at the voice speaking to me; and being turned around, I saw seven golden candlesticks, 13. encircling like a Son of Man, clad in a long robe tightened at the waist by a golden belt. 14. His head, with his white hair, is like white wool, or snow, his eyes like a blazing flame, 15. his feet are like precious brass that would have been purified in the crucible, his voice like the roar of great waters. 16. In his right hand he has seven stars, and out of his mouth comes a sharp double-edged sword; and her face is like the sun shining in all its glory ”.

By a sudden conversion of his gaze (cf. Milosz, cited above, p.15), Saint John sees before him his true power and I. Distributed in the Burning Bush, amplification of the Menorah – or candelabra with 7 branches, of energetic and messianic meaning -, the 7 golden candlesticks symbolize the 7 faculties of the Heart whose awakening determines the insertion of the human person in the circuit. Creative Forces: Memory, Will, Purifying Wisdom, Intellect, Love, Creativity, and Unifying Wisdom. To these 7 faculties answer the 7 stars in the hand of the Word, because, according to the formula of the Sufi master Najmoddin Kobrâ, “each time a flame rises from you, behold a flame descends from the sky towards you”: it is the conjunction of Fire from above and Fire from the Heart. The Son of Men or Son-Man (cf.The secret treasure of Ishrael , Robert Laffont, 1970, pp. 195 ff.), A divine and cosmic entity, is none other than the I-Am of Saint John himself, his archetypal being: John sees himself as he is really in his eternal status of Alter Ego of God (Isochrist).

Furthermore, the mosaic radiance of the heavenly face announces the Father; the sharp sword corresponds to the Son; the book held in the left hand is down from the Father of Love (1 st spiration of the Spirit); and out to the stars, rising, is love of the Son amount (2 e spiration of the Spirit). The whole representing the Tetragrammaton (YHWH), which is the sacrosanct Name of God, and at the same time the Name of every man who recognizes himself as the image of God. This open vision of the Divine Energy Circuit therefore shows the roots and conditions of human creativity, the dual character of Artifex, and the dynamics specific to creation anthropology.

 

Let’s recap. Knowledge is operative: knowledge is power. Or better, the true Gnosis (epignosis) is by itself transforming who possesses it. To the sterile accumulation of information, to the silent juxtaposition of experiences, to the disasters caused by incomplete and mutilated knowledge, we must oppose the transfiguring, beneficial, infinite power of healthy Knowledge in its creative impetus. We can clarify what this Knowledge is by defining it as psycho-spiritual energy for universal metamorphosis. This concept of metamorphosis, as we have seen, is essential. By his median position in the world, by the complexity of its constituent elements, by the innumerable forces at his disposal, man is the one through whom “evolution becomes aware of itself” (Julian Huxley). His true vocation, tirelessly repeated to him by all the Gnostics and all the mystics, is to actualize in him the divine germ-principle which links him to God, this potentiality of indefinite surpassing, so as to become what he is, a “god, son of God”: this is the process of deification. It is in this sense that Shri Aurobindo declares that “man is only a stage” (Metaphysics and Psychology , Albin Michel, 1976, p.315), moreover explaining his thought in these terms: “The greatness of man does not reside in what he is, but in what he makes possible. Its glory is that it is the closed place and the secret workshop of a living work in which a divine Craftsman prepares superhumanity… ”(ibid., P.321).

 

However, by deifying himself, the human being must radically transform his environment, this world which surrounds him and which depends on him, because he necessarily allows him to benefit from this current of creative energies which springs up and radiates from himself. “If you have the Creator within you,” says Angelus Silesius in an admirable couplet, “just after you, man, angel, sun and moon, air, fire, earth and stream” (Pilgrim cherub., V, 110). As for the Johannine Christ, archetype of the perfect Man, does he not say: “And I, lifted up from the earth, will draw everything to myself” (Jn.12, 32)? [10]

 

Under these conditions, what is called art is of paramount importance: it is the creative activity, specific to “iconic” man, applied to himself, to nature, to the world. We must therefore at the same time study in the great artists and the great sages the keys, the processes, the developments of their transfiguring success, and, putting ourselves at their school, cultivate in us similar virtues. Epignosis has no other goal, creation anthropology is nothing else. Berdiaev, in his meditation on the human vocation, was not mistaken: he gave art its rightful place, that is to say the first. “Bridge thrown between two worlds” ( The Spirit of Dostoyevsky, Paris, 1946, p.25), it in fact indissolubly unites contemplation and action for a renewal of universal life and harmony; in the same movement, he prophesies and updates an ontology of light. “The meaning of art consists in giving an anticipated representation of the transfiguration of the world” ( Existential Dialectic of the Divine and the Human , Paris, 1947, p.179). But he can only succeed in this by orienting himself towards the Absolute, by rediscovering the timeless Source of divine Energies: “for the authentic creative act is no more aimed towards the old than towards the new: it is directed towards the eternal ”( From the destination of man , Paris, 1935, p.199).

 

In the footsteps of the Russian thinker, Maryse Choisy sees in art the very expression of human finality. About the “angel of the work”, she writes what we fully approve of ( Being and Silence , Geneva, Édit. Du Mont-Blanc, 1964, p.339): “In our civilization, the he artist is the last shaman who, like God, tries to transform matter into spirit. He must create what looks like men, but what men do not yet look like ”. To clearly distinguish this maximalist conception of art from any other, Frithjof Schuon uses the notion of the sacred – like Titus Burckhardt, moreover – and devotes many pages to this foundation of creation anthropology. He says for example ( Spiritual Perspectives and Human Facts, Paris, 1953, p. 37): “Sacred art is made to convey spiritual presences; it is made for God, angels and men at the same time; profane art only exists for men, and thereby betrays man. Sacred art helps man to find his own center, that nucleus which loves God by nature ”.

 

Art is multifaceted, embracing almost all of human activity. Let us stop for a moment at poetry, which, when it corresponds to a true ontological grasp of the real, constitutes an extraordinary means of communication between hearts – “sovereign” poetry which, one suspects, has nothing to do with it. see with this hollow or shapeless impressionism which develops today under this name. In his study on The Mysticism of the Superman(Gallimard, 1948, p.72), Michel Carrouges seems to us to have understood well what makes the essence and the rarity of this form of art. “The function of the poet is to begin to See…” Poetry “is man himself insofar as he anticipates the present state of this world and begins to guess the future splendours… It is our spirit as a ‘he himself is a fountain of youth. If it appears to us as a strange and surprising power, it is because it is the resurrection of a part of our being, but of the most precious part of our being that we have misunderstood, alienated and almost abolished. It is the highest development of our life, the fruit of its prophetic capacity. She is therefore creative… ”Let us read in this perspective Virgil, Rûmî, Angelus Silesius, Milosz.

 

Since we are talking about creative poetry and future splendours, we would like to pay homage here to an association of artists – few in number, but joining to the “eye of the Heart” the “hand of the Heart” – whose goals coincide exactly with our creative aim, the “Compagnons du Feu”, an association founded and chaired by our friend Claude Barbat. Here is what he declares, in his manifesto, concerning this capital, privileged moment that we are living, where everything invites us to accelerate the process of universal transfiguration for which we are responsible: “Convinced that a new Continent of Time and ‘Space is opening up to men, following the major cultural fractures of the 20th century century, we are among those who opt for the possibility of a Passage to an unprecedented mode of being of earthly existence, and who endeavor to recognize, to mark out this new Air which comes to transfigure our mind and our flesh as well. although our City and our Earth.

The hermetic tradition names this new era “Aquarius”, and defines Air and Gold (quintessence of the 4 elements) this Cycle of lightening of the matter of our minds and of the spirit of our matters that the accession of the man in the flight, for several decades, confirms …

We are at that moment in history when shaman and aviator come together, where natives forgotten in their Town and natives lost in their island are visited by the same waves, leaning in the same nameless religious expectation, being imbued with a similar hope of Living Relationship.

The greatest voices of East and West have already joined in a unique song of Aurora for these builders of ourselves that we are becoming, early risen in the workshop of a Metamorphosis of the inert stones of the old man in New Man of quickstones. Princeton responds to Auroville, ‘spiritual materialism’ to ‘gnostic’ physics… ”

 

And let us not forget this call to form a new race of Creators, vibrant resurgence of the calls of Nietzsche, Berdiaev, Aurobindo – and also of the Greek Fathers -, normal end of an authentic anthropology: “We discourage the scientists or the poets who are only scholars or poets, the artists who are only artists, the wise men who are only wise. But we salute and support the creative accomplishments which ‘sculpt’ the New Spirit in matter, flesh of one kind or another, which succeed in lifting, on this Earth, all the weight of the Past, all the condensation burdened with entropic images, which manage to liberate and manifest Grace, the Flight of the Living Spirit.

 

In the sense that the great poet Rilke said: “We must exercise God creatively”, let’s enter the Age of creativity,… creatively! (which, in our sleepy cultures, is far from obvious).

 

It is a new Look, a new Hand, a new Heart, a new Consciousness to open, to awaken on what is constantly being accomplished from man to himself, and from man to being ‘ close ‘(human, mineral, animal, plant, stellar, interior or exterior, visible or invisible…), this perpetually unrecognized neighbor! ”

 

So we must fight for a constructive, dynamic anthropology, focused on its own deepening, on its continual surpassing, and on the ever more conscious and efficient work of Artifex, which must actualize the virtual, link what is scattered, everywhere increase the coefficient of being and everywhere intensify the circulation of divine Energies. “May we be the ones to effect the Transfiguration of the Earth! “: This wish, which we find in the Avesta (Yasna 30, str.9), in the manifesto of the” Companions of the Fire “, and at the head of our study on” The heroic and gnostic way to the Self ” , we are taking it on more than ever on our own, in a spirit of both daring and humility. Inseparable are Gnosis and Art.

 

Summary and research directions.

 

“You have put on the new man, the one who walks towards true knowledge by being renewed in the image of his Creator” (Coloss.3, 10). Maximalism: man is an icon of God in constant evolution. Globalism: if its exploration is indefinite, true knowledge is one. Creationism: it is the perpetual renewal of man and his art. What to say? From descriptive, anthropology must become operative; from “modern”, fundamental; of parcel, global; reductionist, maximalist; of “intellectual”, creative. Need to work on a “great unification” theory and practice. Need to organize, connect, correct one by the other and go beyond the different darçana, points of view, means of approaching Reality; and that’s why, to have a higher key of understanding which can only be the vision of the accomplished “theo-anthropocosm”. There is a need to re-establish multidimensionality, “complex relativity”, pluri-unity everywhere.

 

It is neo-anthropology, which integrates science and Tradition, psycho-physical research and mystical disciplines, mathematics and art, the multiplicity of perspectives, keys to deciphering, and operating modes. Creation anthropology has as its goal the study of man in his totality, and in the entire unfolding of his context – the cosmos and the Divine -, with, as a constant orientation, his completion in the Light. Two complementary directions of work are essential: the “global path” of elucidation, to recognize ourselves as we are, and to recognize what we are called to become, – and the “dazzling path” of transfiguration. , to accelerate by all possible means the appearance of this becoming. Having thus the highest and most complete conception of man, the most demanding, we oppose all those who, in the name of unjustified limiting postulates, want at all costs to reduce the field of investigation or development that the human person demands. Or better, we relativize what they can bring of positive in our continuous effort of opening and synthesis. It is necessary to succeed in joining the fairest rigor, the broadest comprehension, and the greatest height of view.

 

This ideal of globality being established, this Absolute suggested by epignôsis being put in its true place, we therefore have a Polar Star, a magnetic North, to guide our steps, to some degree and in whatever domain. situate. We do not reject anything, we do not exclude any possibility, we do not deprive ourselves of any method or any collaboration, because we have the feeling of being able to bring everything together in the universality of our research, of being able to change multiple radiations photonics in coherent light.

 

Some will judge us to be reckless or presumptuous: our perspective is however the only one which is ontologically legitimate and really effective. If we happen to err in the details, straightness of purpose and general direction will keep us from getting lost. And then you have to dare; nothing great can be accomplished without enthusiasm and danger. We are not the first to defend a maximum conception of man; we will perhaps be the first to draw inspiration from it systematically in a rigorous, polymorphic and unitary research. The higher a point of view, the more comprehensive, universal, balanced and useful it is: it is from such a point of view that we will strive to work. Epignôsis: constant reference to the Absolute in the patient elucidation of the relative; need for constant renewal, to avoid all imprisonment in theories, all sclerosis, all petrification, all routine, all excess of the “divisive mind”. This renewal will result in recourse to the Imaginal, the rejection of all psychic Jerichos, the thoughtful liberation of limits and obstacles, the passion for pilgrimage and adventure, the quest for the Source of creative Energies. It is not only a question of building a philosophy, of accumulating exegesis: it is a question of discovering the keys of operational knowledge and of creating oneself while working on a common work. the thoughtful liberation of limits and obstacles, the passion for pilgrimage and adventure, the quest for the Source of creative Energies. It is not only a question of building a philosophy, of accumulating exegesis: it is a question of discovering the keys of operational knowledge and of creating oneself while working on a common work. the thoughtful liberation of limits and obstacles, the passion for pilgrimage and adventure, the quest for the Source of creative Energies. It is not only a question of building a philosophy, of accumulating exegesis: it is a question of discovering the keys of operational knowledge and of creating oneself while working on a common work.

 

So these are the imperatives of Epignôsis: independence, rigor, comprehensiveness, perpetual renewal, creativity, “great unification”, human mutation. Without the utopias of futurism. Without nostalgia or archaism. Without opportunism or compromise. In the right line of Gnosis, one and universal.

 

We would now like to clarify the objective of our personal research, which lies at the very heart of creation anthropology.

 

During his study of the “latent powers” ​​of man, Colin Wilson was led to postulate the existence of an essential faculty which would be specific to us, and which he called Faculty X. His work on The Occult(tr.fr., Albin Michel, 1973) attempts to establish its characteristics: strength of concentration, imagination, intuition, breadth and intensity of consciousness, union of intelligence and instinct, capacity to cross the boundaries of the present and the everyday, to go beyond the limits of the ego, etc. A spring of total man, this faculty would be the key to mystical, poetic, or “magical” experiences, and it is on it that the future development of the human race would depend. Colin Wilson adds that we all have it to varying degrees, and that it should be systematically developed. He had, moreover, written in his novel, The Philosopher’s Stone , this magnificent sentence: “The will is nourished by immense perspectives; if it is deprived of it, it collapses ”.

 

We do not think, however, that this is the domain of the total man: our research on the foundations of the human person, on the transcendent I, on aspects of “transconsciousness”, have led us well. beyond Faculty X. We therefore believe it necessary to broaden its scope considerably, and to rename it. In other words, by giving this Faculty X its true dimension, its true nature, its true function, we find ourselves in the presence of something much deeper and more essential, which we call the Theta Faculty because of the initial Greek corresponding to the terms theotropism, theomorphism, theandrism, theurgy, etc. A large number of elements inherent in our personality, which go far beyond the domain of the psyche, psychotronics, ordinary states of consciousness, and which form on analysis a specific and coherent whole, can thus be studied in a clear, adequate, dynamic perspective. It is of this Faculty that the Sufi master Shabestarît speaks – one among many others, declaring (Golshan-e Râz, vv. 431 ff.): “Besides reason, man possesses a certain faculty thanks to which he perceives the hidden mysteries. Like fire in flint and steel, God has placed this faculty in the body and soul of man ”.

 

A few indications will suffice here to show the importance of this research concerning the Theta Faculty, a fundamental spring, at the level of the Heart and beyond, of human energetics.

 

First, there is theotropism, this over-attraction exerted on us by a personal God or by the abyss of Deity, this “ardent desire for God” which inflames the noblest among men, this mysterious quest for God. ‘Absolute, or even this more or less confused aspiration to a “deification” of our being, to an elevation “to the rank of the gods”. It is Teilhard de Chardin directing all his life on “the One Sufficient and Unique Necessary”. It is the Hoopoe of the Colloquium of Birds dying of the desire to find SIimorgh. It is Virgil Gheorghiu affirming that his vocation is to be a theodidact, “a man who has no other master than God”. It is Rûmî who sings in his Rubâ’îtyât (34): “Wherever I prostrate myself, it is before HIM. / In the six directions and outside the six directions, it is HIM. / The garden, the rose, the nightingale, the spiritual concert, the beloved, / Are pretexts: the one we are looking for is HIM ”. Flamboyant echo from Ramakrishna who proclaims: “I must reach God from this life; in three days I’ve got to find Him. No, I will attract Him to me just by saying His Name once ”(Teaching of Ram ., N ° 925), and who, by experience, issues this general judgment: “Those whose concentration and desire to reach God are very ardent reach Him more quickly than other men” (ibid., n ° 933). As for Aurobindo, he does not hesitate to maintain that the primordial imperative is to realize oneself in God: “Yoga is directed towards God, not towards man. () The real goal of yoga is not philanthropy; it is to find the Divine, to enter the divine consciousness, and to meet in the Divine one’s true being – which is not the ego ”( Le guide du yoga , Albin Michel, 1970, p.193) .

There is therefore, without a doubt, a magnetization of man by God, or more exactly a reciprocal magnetization between the two, which can only be founded on a real kinship, a conformity of nature. This corresponds to the dialogues between the Friend and the Beloved (cf. Raymond Lulle), the themes of “sacred twinness” (cf. the Gospel according to Thomas) and of the iconic man, or the idea of ‘an eternal couple HIM-God-Father and I-God-Son (cf. Angelus Silesius). We are there in the intimacy of the Heart, in the secret of the Soul, and it is very important to seek to understand how this human-divine complementarity works which directs us normally towards God – or the Self, or transcendence.

 

Another aspect of the Theta Faculty: the “sacred fire” which burns in the Heart as ascending and transfiguring energy, the germ principle of our divinity. Of the same nature as the Fire from above, from which it emanates to be recalled (cf. Lk.12, 49), this “living flame of Love”, this ardens uirtus, this artistic intensity, a Bush of Horeb interior in a way, represents our own dynamism, our need and our capacity for development. Thus Angelus Silesius says quite rightly (II, 158): “Coming out of God the Lightning, must not the soul / Return to Him from which this flame comes? »And Carlo Suarès, in his Memoir on the return of the Rabbi called Jesus(Robert Laffont, 1975, p.221), characterizes the ministry of the Master by these words: “the great fight which the Rebbe leads has for stake the birth of Fire in Water”, so that the soul “takes fire ” definitively. Same conception of the essential I in Pierre Emmanuel (Sophia, Seuil, 1973): “It is wrong to say: I was born. Wrong to say: I will die one day. The only thing to say is: I am burning. Or better still: Of that which burns, I am the fire ”. The Talking with Angelsgive an identical key (p.27): “What must be done to become ‘He who forms’? – BURNED! “, And bring this capital precision (p.165):” There is only ONE fire. What you deserve – is yours. What you can transmit – is yours. The larger the circle, the more fire there can be. And for you a new ME is born ”. Fire of growth and of the Covenant: a spiritual person, says Saint John Climachus, “never ceases to add a fire to the fire until the end of his life”. This consciousness-energy which pushes us irresistibly beyond ourselves has nothing in common with the psyche or with the ego: it is about a faculty of another order, that which we call Theta.

 

It is this which allows us to play our role in the “immense upward movement” of the creative Imperative (KN, Esto!), Which tears us away from terrestrial gravitation, entropy, negativity, so that we can fully integrate into the divine energy circuit. Theotropism and theomorphism are two sides of the same reality: the image seeks its model, the mirror is in search of its light, and also of another mirror which completes it, the son does not cease found the Father, and the Friend the Beloved. Extreme coherence of truths that must be admitted together – or rejected as a whole. But how to reject them without irremediably mutilating the human person? And in the name of what criterion? by what decree of the mind? by what self-censorship of conscience? Theomorphism appears not only as an unbreakable evidence, but as that which, in man, must be studied and developed above all.

 

To further clarify the nature of this Faculty, it is necessary to engage in an exhaustive analysis of all the testimonies of mystics, sages, poets, Gnostics, concerning the Heart, which is none other than its most tangible manifestation in we. Foundation and axis of our personality, place of spiritual perception, extreme projection of the divine Consciousness in the psychosomatic world, principle of our realization, key of our return towards the Self, this Heart is in short, to use the definition of the cabbalists and of the Sufis, our organ of reception of the Divine and of transmutation of the human. As Jâmî said: “Everything is there, in the heart (qalb). There you will discover everything ”. Now, precisely,[11].

 

There is 1) Memory, that is to say the “remembrance of oneself and of God” (cf. the techniques of Philocalia, or of Sufism), the firm awareness of one’s role and responsibility, constant intimate resonance of the creative Imperative;

– 2) the Will, the rigorous concentration of energy (cf. ekâgratâ in classical Yoga), the ardent desire to cooperate with the Divine (alliance) to “do what must be done” (cf. J. Evola, The doctrine of awakening , Adyar, 1956, p.441);

– 3) Sacrificial Wisdom, or Kenosis, a force of purification and liberation with the aim of rejecting the lower forms of being (the ego) and of action (so-called tamasic and rajasic behaviors); – 4) the Intellect, which is aptitude for knowledge, one and indivisible, of the Cosmic Law, of “human and divine realities”; —5) Love, which is the ability to give and to receive, to allow universal Life to flow unimpeded; – 6) Creativity, which consists in incessantly incarnating in this mobile and rebellious world the Ideas, the Archetypes contemplated at the level of the mundus imaginalis; – finally 7) unifying Wisdom, the capacity for fusion, aiming to bring the complex to the simple, the multiple to one, within a flawless energy circuit.

 

Here is, to show the coherence of this whole, and even the interweaving of these forces of the Heart, what Louis Cattiaux says about it in his Message rediscovered (XX, 73):

“Who remembers God (Memory / Will) loves God (Love).

Who loves God hears God (Intellect).

Whoever hears God obeys God (Will / Kenosis).

Whoever obeys God imitates God (Creativity).

Who imitates God knows God (Intellect).

Who knows God embraces God (Love).

Whoever embraces God becomes one with God (Fusion) ”.

 

Thus, when all the powers of the Heart are awakened and converted into the Burning Bush, the assumption of the divine I and the transmutation of the psychosomatic planes take place simultaneously. This is the goal of our work, that of the “dazzling path” of transfiguration.

 

Dr Thérèse Brosse has written a very fine book on “Conscience-Energy” (Structure of man and the universe. Scientific, social and spiritual implications. Éditions Présence, 1978). But we prefer, for our part, to speak of theo-energy – which has for relay, for focus, for center of irradiation, our Theta Faculty. It is this spiritual dynamis to which so many New Testament texts allude (cf. Mt 6:33; 17,20; Jn 14,12; Acts 1,8; Thomas 48, etc.) or patristic (cf. Myrrha Lot-Borodin, The deification of man according to the doctrine of the Greek Fathers, Edit. du Cerf, 1970). It is this extraordinary and infinite power of mutation that all esotericisms, all mystical, yogic or alchemical disciplines evoke. Let us quote only a revealing passage from the Dialogues with the Angel.(p.266): “The body and the blood are not enough, they are only the foundation to become: MAN. The Divine Light is given to the one who bears fruit, who walks on the sea, who remains at the top, who is never satisfied, in whom the divine Salt – the Word – creates the New Thirst ”. What is this to say? Bio-energy is not enough to constitute man in his fullness. There is a need for the theo-energy and the development of the Theta Faculty. Ability to receive, to give, to create (“which bears fruit”), to dominate the lower waters of the phenomenal world (“which walks on the sea”), to dialectically join the transcendent stillness (“which abides at the top” ) and the pilgrimage here below (“which walks”), to conceive and welcome the unlimited dynamism of Gnosis (“never satisfied”, “New Thirst”):

 

To try to gain a better understanding of its nature and methods of action, we have set ourselves a research program that is as complete and coherent as possible, focusing on the anthropology of metamorphosis. Its interest consists mainly in that it embraces the various fields of Gnosis (comparative esotericism), and that it must be carried out by one and the same person (real activity of synthesis). Here are the elements:

– Classical Antiquity: works on Virgilian esotericism. See Virgil, master of wisdom ; “Venus, Aeneas and the Androgyne”; “Aspects of Zodiac Symbolism in Virgil. The hero’s heliomorphs ”; “The Soul of the World in the Aeneid. Transcendence and immanence of the ‘Sophia’ according to Virgil ”; “The Thirteenth Book of the Aeneid. Astrology and energetics of metamorphosis ”; “Circuits of Light: the transfiguration in Virgil”, etc.

– Egypt: study on The Book of the Dead of the ancient Egyptians; review of the works of RASchwaller de Lubicz, Enel, Jean-Louis Bernard.

– Christianity: New Testament exegesis; studies on the Gospel according to Thomas, on the Acts of John and the Acts of Thomas; works on Master Eckhart, Angelus Silesius, Seraphim of Sarov, Teilhard de Chardin, and on Orthodoxy in general.

– Hebrew-Christian Cabala: review and extension of Jean-G’s research. Bardet and Annick de Souzenelle.

– Sufism: works on ‘Attâr, Rumi, Jili, and on Sufi doctrine in general.

– Hinduism: studies on Bhagavad-Gitâ, on Râmakrishna and Shri Aurobindo.

– Buddhism: review of the works of Lama Anagarika Govinda ( The Path of the White Clouds ; The Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism ; Creative Meditation and Multidimensional Consciousness ); study of Tantric Buddhism (Vajrayâna).

– Taoism: study of its mathematical, philosophical and alchemical aspects; work on Le Dominicain Blanc by Gustav Meyrink.

– Study of two key works: The Rediscovered Message by Louis Cattiaux, and The Dialogues with the Angel .

– Works on Abellio’s “yoga” (“The heroic and gnostic path to the Self. Reflections on the philosophy of Raymond Abellio, Christian and Iranian gnosis, and the esotericism of Virgil”), and on the “Fifth Tradition “, That of the couple God-Father and God-Son (”  Three mirrors of Wisdom : the Cabala, Christian Gnosis, Sufism. Synthesis essay “).

– Development of the “Science of Energies”, of the “Science of Balance”, and of the “Science of Symbols” (see below).

 

Some modalities of this anthropology.

 

Having already, on several occasions, spoken of esotericism – on which creational anthropology is based – it now seems essential to us to specify the content of this term, so as to avoid any misunderstanding, any futile quarrel.

 

Etymologically, the term esotericism corresponds to the interiorization of the gaze, or, more exactly, to the rigorous, deep, total approach, of one who wants to penetrate into the heart of himself, of beings and things, of creative energies, of the Divine. By the same token, esotericism excludes any superficiality, any partiality, any closure, any limitation; it tends towards the unity of vision, towards a clear dialectic between transcendence and immanence; it is none other than living Knowledge which endlessly increases of itself; and it demands high qualities: purity of intention, discernment, courage, perseverance. Understood in this way, we prefer this term to occultism, which drags behind it troubled consonances,

 

Naturally, as an interiorized, personal, ascending movement, polarized by the Absolute, esotericism goes far beyond the level of science, a tool of the senses and of the mind whose reach is necessarily reduced – that of religions, burdened with their institutional weight, – that of philosophy, altered by the spirit of the system, by the oscillation between the speculative and the pragmatic, or by political commitment, – and even that of Tradition, if it is satisfied, as it is often the case, to transmit a formalized and fixed heritage. The rediscovered Message declares with its customary vigor: “There is only one answer to temptations… and to the absurdity of the present world. It is the prayer of the saint, the rest of the sage, or the laughter of the absent! »(XVIII, 13). Triple aspect of authentic esotericism: the communion of love, the serenity of knowledge, the freedom of detachment; the first element and the third (dedication and distancing) are in dialectical relation thanks to the second: perfect coherence and infinite force.

 

Esotericism is therefore neither artificial construction, nor recipes for power, nor wandering in the imagination: it introduces to the fullness of Gnosis, and it constitutes for each of us an urgent call to become – really – this that it is – virtually. Definition attempt: radical awakening process aimed at the possession of essential Knowledge, which is also dynamic, liberated, totalizing, operative, and peaceful.

 

– 1. Essential knowledge (school of awareness and depth). Unlike the “Plats” (D. Merejkovski), who are always reductionist, the “Profonds” assiduously cultivate the acuity of the gaze to reach the heart of reality, or the roots of being, by going beyond the phenomenal world. , categories, shapes and limits. From awakening to awakening, they thus go to the discovery of interiority, of the essential or of the noumenal which constitutes, out of the vagueness of appearances, veils and languages, the source of our person, its axis and its end. . Their watchword: Introrsum ascendere, to turn inward to rise.

 

– 2. Dynamic knowledge (school of discernment and development). Correct perception of structures and mutations, esotericism consists of an incessant verification of three fundamental laws: relativity, universal interdependence, and the ascent of being. Inequality and hierarchy of planes, according to an immense ontological scale, and without a solution of continuity; general interaction, unlimited play of correspondences, multiform circulation of energies; process of recalling involuted forces to their Source. Without forgetting this principle which is at the heart of Gnostic dynamism: “Only like is intelligible to like”, or: “The knowing must become the known”.

 

– 3. Liberated knowledge (school of rigor and transparency). Do not “take” your word for it, but experience everything for yourself. Use tools appropriate to the goal pursued, act according to ontological levels. Proceed with a vast intellectual and spiritual asceticism, so as to avoid false problems, incompatibilities, pseudo-logical arbitrariness, a priori, and any distortion of the field to be explored. Reverse the “natural” course of things – which goes towards entropy – in order to find its “normal” movement – which rises towards Consciousness and the Self. Get out of forms (social, cultural, religious, etc.) in order to be able to appreciate them correctly; not suppress or deny them, but, having seen them from above, accepting them, invigorating them, making them translucent, communicative and effective.

 

– 4. Totalizing knowledge (unit school). The ideal is to succeed in incorporating everything into a coherent and useful vision of reality, by joining logic and metalogic, reason and trans-rationality, mental and overmind, through permanent dialectical work. As it is acquired, knowledge must circulate, and by circulating, be refined, and by being refined, organize itself into ever more integrating syntheses.

 

– 5. Operative knowledge (school of responsibility). The “practical” goal of esotericism is to transform man and to complete Creation. It is therefore an energetic of universal metamorphosis having as many starting points as there are people engaged in this process – because one must always start from oneself. The right understanding and the correct use of the Creative Energies – human, cosmic and divine – allow an integral development of all our potentialities. They confer on us beneficial omnipotence: the capacity to be above the world and, simultaneously, to live within the world, acting as an artifex through everything (cf. Ephes. 4, 6).

 

– 6. Peaceful knowledge (school of serenity and unification). To say that esotericism is peaceful is to understand that its object and result is peace, conceived not as a negative state (absence of conflict), but as the fullness and harmony of being. It is in fact the bodies and the psyches, the individualities, which are the cause of separation and discord; and it is only beyond that, at the level of the Heart, the Spirit, the I, that unity is possible. Intimately perceived and experienced, this unity generates serenity, “the ultimate word of all teaching” (Zen aphorism), a rare quality made up of understanding, love and sovereign freedom; and it is evidently the condition of true peace (Pax profunda).

Thus esotericism is interior vision, liberated, global and creative. It is a matter of knowledge that is not quantitative, but qualitative; not external, but deep; not static, but scalable. It is an urgent, uncompromising appeal to the personal responsibility of each of us. It is not addressed to the social character, to “man in his environment”, nor to the individual as a psychosomatic organism, but to the essential being, to the Person, to the eternal I. As long as one cannot place oneself at this level, there can be no authentic esotericism.

 

It is both the awareness of our nature, our vocation, and our power, and the “direct way” to become what we are. Now, sparks emanating from the divine Fire, Son of God, partners of the “I Am”, we all know that we are invited to return to the Kingdom. Everyone must therefore become their own master (Rumi), their own initiator (Nietzsche), their own savior (the Buddha), their own king and their own pope (Dante). And on the total transmutation of each depends the success of the universal transfiguration – the appearance “of a new heaven, of a new earth” (Rev. 21,1).

 

By dint of circulating through the different domains of Gnosis, by dint of traveling among doctrines and experiences, we see anthropology – or esotericism – gradually organizing itself into a living unit where each element is placed and is connects according to a logic that is also beauty. This set is then presented as articulated in a triple “Science” arranged as follows:

a) “Energy Science”, or universal dynamics;

b) the “Science of Libra”, or the combinatorial art of universal metamorphosis;

c) “Science of Symbols”, or universal hermeneutics.

 

It does not seem useless to us to provide here some explanations concerning these lines of force of Knowledge, because it is necessary to have a clear idea of ​​them to situate any particular study in its general context, to see the play of relations and correspondence, to give interdisciplinarity its maximum effectiveness.

 

Everything in the universe is energy (cf. the Kybalion theses), or rather infinite diversification of the same Energy (cf. the principles of Sufism). We make ours this assertion by Alain Daniélou that Jean-Claude Dussault and Jean Maillé have placed at the threshold of their work on the I Ching(Montreal, Edit. Libre Expression, 1982): “The substance of the world can always be reduced to relations of energetic elements”. Any study, any work, any asceticism then come within the framework of the “Science of Energies”. Whether it is experimental disciplines, morals, religion, philosophy, art, problems of chemistry or alchemy, all this comes under one and the same energy that is important absolutely to design in its unity. Immersed in this universal dynamic, where we have an essential role to play, we must everywhere and always recognize the poles and the structures, the ascending and descending currents, the concentrations and the irradiations; we must recognize and control all energetic mutations, from the field of microphysics to that of theology,

 

We need to work simultaneously on all levels of reality, in the spirit of Jean Maillé ( The mastery of changes , 3 vol., Research on the taôist tradition), of Jean E. Charon ( L’Etre et le Verbe ; Théorie of complex relativity ; The Spirit, this unknown ), of Timothy Leary ( The cosmic revolution ), of Robert Linssen ( Essays on Buddhism in general and on Zen in particular ; Reincarnation: ancient traditions, psychic electronics, modern physics ) , by CGJung (The roots of consciousness ; Psychology and Alchemy ; Mysterium coniunctionis, etc.), Marcelle Senard ( The Zodiac, key to ontology, applied to psychology ), Mircea Eliade ( Aspects of the myth ; Blacksmiths and Alchimists; Méphistophélès et l’Androgyne , etc.), R. Abellio ( The Absolute Structure ; The End of Esotericism ), Aldous Huxley ( The Eternal Philosophy ), Henry Babel ( Theology of Energy ), Paul Evdokimov ( Orthodoxy ; Mad Love of God ) , by Jean-G. Bardet ( Mysticism and magic ; The Keys to fundamental research ; The Signature of the Triune God ), etc.

 

Two esoteric fields, above all, provide us with the inspiration and the adequate methods: Cabala and Tantrism. What do we find in the first? A vast theo-energetic architecture with unlimited implications. “God” is above all (Ain = the unconditioned Absolute), passes through all (circulation of divine Forces or Sephiroth), and lives within all (by his Schekhinah, or omnipresence). Hence the deep unity of theology, cosmology and anthropology. It all depends on the activity of the ten Sephiroth, Constructive Energies-Measures emanating from the Supreme Principle. They form the triple Tree of Life rooted in Heaven, or even the artistic Lightning that crosses each plane and each being. It is the expression of the eternal divine dynamism, which we must understand in order to cooperate in it. To which is added the doctrine of the four “worlds” or modes of being (Atsilouth, Beriah, Yetzirah, Assiah) which explains the destiny of man. In this perspective, the latter appears as an eternal I, emanated from the “I Am”, created, formed, then incarnated, but above all recalled by God: he must complete a complete circuit between the spiritual and material poles, in order to take full awareness of the multiple and of the One, and of returning, rich in experience, to “the place of Proximity”. His current itinerary therefore consists of climbing the ladder of being (or of Jacob) by gradually removing all obstacles to the free passage of divine Energies, Knowledge and Love. emanated from the “I Am”, created, formed, then incarnated, but above all recalled by God: he must complete a complete circuit between the spiritual and material poles, in order to become fully aware of the multiple and of the One, and to return, rich in experience, instead of Proximity. His current itinerary therefore consists of climbing the ladder of being (or of Jacob) by gradually removing all obstacles to the free passage of divine Energies, Knowledge and Love. emanated from the “I Am”, created, formed, then incarnated, but above all recalled by God: he must complete a complete circuit between the spiritual and material poles, in order to become fully aware of the multiple and of the One, and to return, rich in experience, instead of Proximity. His current itinerary therefore consists of climbing the ladder of being (or of Jacob) by gradually removing all obstacles to the free passage of divine Energies, Knowledge and Love.

 

An Indo-Tibetan form of Mahayanist Buddhism, Tantrism is a critical and experimental path of inner development, the scope of which is immense. It is a constant work with chaos, conflict, phenomena and passions, for the transmutation of our being, for the full blossoming of the energies “which really are in us”. It is access to the “adamantine pride of being Buddha”, and to the continuity of the enlightened mind: it is the Vajrayana, or “Diamond Vehicle” [12]. All external and internal circumstances – instead of being suffered – are analyzed and modified to become weapons of progress and achievement. A methodical education of the gaze, a patient intensification of cognitive capacity (prajna), a balanced elucidation of the concepts of impermanence and ego, an “internal fire yoga”, and a constant practice of efficient meditation, necessarily lead to multidimensional and unified consciousness. Openness (or emptiness: shûnyatâ) and compassion (karuna, which is active participation in reality) then join in an indivisible power, in a total awakening of the being. Mastered and informed from above, the creative energy (Shakti) becomes “All-Achieving Wisdom”. Thus the “direct path” of Padmasambhava constitutes an excellent example of this operative knowledge where mental and overmind, in perfect harmony, dominate and use the universal dynamics. Let us add that, by the quality of their vision, Cabala like Tantrism today inspire as many scientists as mystics, and endow those who know how to use it with a truly incomparable tool of penetration and actualization.

 

The fundamental goal of “Science of Energies” is to understand the nature and functioning of what can be called the Divine (or Universal) Energy Circuit, because from this understanding results the adequacy of man’s behavior to his proper vocation. Here are some things to think about.

 

– The Source: it is the blazing Abyss, the Abyss of Life, one and multiple, motionless and overactive, infinite reservoir of all possibilities and receptacle of all realizations, which we call God. The Tetragrammaton YHWH, as shown by Jean-G. Bardet, appears at the same time source and archetype of all the circuits of energies. Divine Intention in Eternal Creation, the will of the “I Am”, is the indefinite diffusion / reunion of Images and Mirrors of Good and Beauty (mystical catoptric), Partners and Sons of Love (theogenesis ): Hebrew-Christian and Sufi thought.

– The normal “creative movement”: withdrawal of the divine Essence, allowing the manifestation of beings, and gift of divine Energies, allowing these beings not to fall, or to progress, or to return to their Source. Withdrawal and mercy from God are naturally simultaneous. Descent of the Creative Forces (Word, Sephiroth) to the planes of matter (= condensed, coagulated mind), and ascent to the Principle, through the innumerable ontological spheres, the endless scales of vibratory frequencies. Cosmic breathing: involution – evolution (cf. Jn 3.13: “No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man who is in heaven”). The essential law for the proper functioning of the Circuit is: not to keep anything for yourself, to receive and give as much as possible,

– The risks of Creation: the lack of being (consequence of the withdrawal of the divine Essence), the descent which becomes a fall (Adamic fault), the local ruptures of the Circuit, the separation, the No, the refusal of the blessing (which then turns into a curse), the formation of the ego (the entity closed in on itself), the will to power. This presents itself, in its unity and complexity, the problem of evil – this one having no essence of its own, but being eternal like the creative movement (cf. Rediscovered Message, XI, 32).

– How to re-establish the Circuit in its totality (reintegration into the transcendent Unity). Vacare Deo: reject all opacity, all egotism, to allow the perfect circulation of divine Energies. Awakening of the sacred Fire in the Heart, obedience to the Cosmic Law and to hypercosmic Grace, deployment of operative Love. The upward response: Yes, Amen, Am. Reintegration gives rise to the formation of pluri-units of “People” (cf. the Sîmorgh who is both a royal bird and thirty birds), pluri-units of increasing complexity and harmony as they rise. .

 

Thus, all the great metaphysical problems have their solution in a correct understanding of this Universal Energetic Circuit; and it is there that religions, philosophies, morals, art and science are founded.

 

The figure reproduced below is perfectly suited to illustrate this conception of the Energy Circuit. The Source is the divine “Fiat”, or the Imperative that gives rise to being, which, in the space-time left free by the “withdrawal” of the Principle, launches its luminous irradiation. In accordance with the circularity of the Tetragrammaton, this expansion of light unfolds in a circle and irresistibly tends towards fullness. The Dove, which traces the path of the creative Fire, symbolizes the Spirit with double spiration – descending and ascending -, and, according to the cabbalistic interpretation of its Hebrew name (YWNH, Ionah), means “the just circuits of Love divine “. When it has joined the Fiat, origin and end of the whole, unity will be achieved, Creation will live its true life. Image also of the journey of each human being, who, emanated from God, created,

 

Figure 4

“The creative movement”. R.FLUDD, Utriusque Cosmi… Historia (Tome I, a; Oppenheim, 1617, p.49), and S. HUTIN, Robert Fludd (“Omnium Littéraire”, 1972), p.116.

“You have arranged everything with measure, number, and weight”, we read in The Wisdom of Solomon (XI, 20). This introduces us to the “Science of Libra”, a necessary complement to that of Energies. It is a question of the divine Qualities-measures, of the creative Numbers, of the forces, of the values, of the rhythms, of the proportions, of the attractions and polarizations, of the universal dialectic. In this same biblical book, we see that this key power of Sephirothic work called Wisdom (Hokhmah), “craftsman of everything” (VII, 21), has 21 attributes (22-23): “There is she an intelligent, holy, unique, diverse, subtle, mobile, clean, pure, clear, inviolable spirit, loving the good, penetrating, incoercible, beneficent, friend of man, firm, sure, quiet, almighty, overseer everything, and passing through all intelligent minds, pure and most subtle ”. 21 is the number of the Hebrew Shin which symbolizes the right orientation of human energies, the dialectical perfection, the theandric nature of the Friend of God or of the Avatar – by inserting this letter in the heart of the Tetragrammaton, we obtain YH Sh WH, the name of Jesus -, or the pluri-unity of divine “Persons” (Y + W + H = 21). Moreover, the catalog of these attributes leads us to the theme of Libra.

 

We are inspired here by the works of the famous alchemist Jâbir ibn Hayyan (or Geber, 8th century), linked to Sufism as well as to Ismailism (The search for perfection, The invention of Truth, The sum of the perfect magisterium, The book of the Glorious, etc.). This universal genius had developed a method that was both analytical and synthetic, structural and dynamic, explanatory and operative, the “Science of the Balance” (‘ilm al-Mizân), allowing to weigh and use all that exists. (principles, beings, numbers, shapes, letters, etc.), to discern everywhere the senses, the correspondences, the hierarchies, the movements, and especially to identify, to release in each of its applications the transfiguring psycho-spiritual energies. Rigor, comprehensiveness, ascending will, saving and unifying capacity of the operator: is this not precisely what characterizes our fundamental intention? It is necessary to appreciate, in each being, its vital, luminous coefficient, its essential igneous nucleus, which corresponds to the double desire of the Soul of the World to enrich itself (descent) and to unify (rise); and from this perception, from this weighing, it is necessary to proceed to a liberation-intensification of psycho-spiritual energy to accomplish the most glorious transmutation[13] . In other words, to discern in each one the degree and the form of his desire-for-truth-and-life, his own dynamism, and, on this basis, to establish a complex dialectical activity, between this being as he is and the others that they are, between this being such as he is and the one he must become.

 

 

Figure 5

“Ontological hierarchies”. Jacques BREYER Terre-omega , p.34.

The painting reveals, in a condensed but very convenient presentation, a fundamental ontological structure which can be meditated “statically” as well as used “dynamically”. The keyboard of correspondences, the scale of vibratory frequencies, the dividing line of the lower and upper “waters”, constitute as many explicit elements of appreciation and action. Thus summarized, the logic of being and the magisterium of becoming appear clearly dependent on this Science of Libra which has its source in the light of divine Wisdom.

 

“The notion of Libra”, according to Jabir, “has many aspects and varies according to the objects to which it applies. There are Scales to measure Intelligence, Soul of the world, Nature, Forms, celestial Spheres, stars, the four natural Qualities, animal, vegetable, mineral, finally the Scale of letters which is the most perfect of all ”(the Book of Fifty). Correct and coherent estimation, precise and efficient implementation of the innumerable creative virtues of beings and things which are deployed in the cosmos. Observation, intuition, algebra, cabbalah, alchemy come together in a kind of general mathematics which gives the key to becoming. The letters-numbers in particular, conceived as principles of structuring of the real, play in this mathematics a primordial role, which, moreover, finds, in various forms, modern science. The Jabirian alchemist Mohyiddin Ahmad Buni (+ 1225) specifies: “The secrets of the letters are in the numbers, and the epiphanies of the numbers are in the letters. The numbers are the realities above, belonging to the spiritual entities. The letters belong to the circle of material realities and of becoming ”[14] . This is confirmed today by the work of Jean de la Foye and Jean-G. Bardet, Jacques Ravatin, Léo-Georges Barry, Raymond Abellio, etc.

 

Interesting verification: what does true astrology – which is global – say about the characteristics of Libra? This sign, authentically cardinal, evokes the weighing of values, the discernment of degrees, the constant activity of synthesis, the axis between earth and sky (to integrate everything), the dialectic between knowledge and compassion, retirement and service. , the correct perception of capacities, the reestablishment of the hierarchical balance of energies, the peacemaker, the “androgynous” force … As for the three regents of Libra, they are quite eloquent: it is about Venus – universal “sympathy”, Platonic Eros, Avicennian ‘ishq -, of Uranus – instantaneous grasp of the sets -, and of Saturn – double power to condense the Spirit (? ) And to concentrate the Consciousness-Energy ( ?).

 

In the Cabala, the Sephirah which corresponds to Libra, both by its function of “justice”, by its place at the center of the sephirothic organism, and by the very structure of its name, is Tiphereth (Th Ph hA R Th), the Heart of God, the Sun of Gnosis and High Magic, the true ladder of Jacob. Moreover, the famous Bereshith (BR hA Sh Y Th) with the six letters of the beginning of Genesis – “He created [by the] Six” – alludes to this sixth Sephirah Tiphereth, which belongs to the “world of Creation” , and which is like the pivot of manifestation and the key to dialectical dynamism. To be compared to the Shin, mentioned above.

 

The Science of Libra therefore uses measures, numbers, forces, qualities, rhythms, in combinatorial and synthetic operations, so as to accelerate the processes of metamorphosis. Some examples of the power and scope of this discipline: the research of Matila C. Ghyka (see The Golden Number , Pythagorean Rites and Rhythms in the Development of Western Civilization, Gallimard, 1931, 2 vol.), those of André Lamouche (numerous volumes on Harmonic Theory ; La destin humaine , Flammarion, 1959), or those of Fritjof Capra (cf. Le Tao de la physique , tr.fr., Tchou, 1979; The time of change, Science, society and new culture, tr.fr., Edit. du Rocher, 1982). In fact, the importance of the studies undertaken today on the world of Tao, on the Yi-Ching, testifies to the interest shown in the possession of a complete and truly operative “combinatorial art” (see The mastery of changes by Jean Maillé, 3 vol.). And the Kabbalah, perfecting constantly the method of Abraham Abulafia (XIII th c.), That of tseruf (work on the letters-numbers) and dilloug ( “jumps” through successive ontological levels), is becoming a leading scientific tool (R. Abellio, Ch. Hirsch, J.-G. Bardet, A.-D. Grad, etc.).

 

But Libra is mainly dialectic, understood as the art of grasping opposing / complementary poles together, to escape the one-dimensional, to transcend the partial and the fragmentary, to create a perpetual flow of energy. This dialectic proves to be essential to free us from the chaos and excessiveness which try to invade us: “we are”, says Joseph Campbell, “the witnesses of the terrible clash of the Symplégades, these floating reefs between which the soul must pass without identifying with one or the other ”. It is also essential to transform each given situation, each determined set of forces into a coherent, liberating and creative energy field, so as to find ourselves in the One while fruiting in the multiple. This is Abellio’s “yoga”, founded on the six-pole structure, endlessly renewed asceticism to conquer the Whole. Finally, it is essential to us, who wander through the perils of metamorphosis, to elevate ourselves without getting lost. If, as Philaret of Moscow states, “the creatures are placed on the creative Word of God, comparable to a diamond bridge, below the Abyss of divine Infinity, and above the abyss of their own nothingness ”, only dialectical dynamism can lead them to their destination. We are to meet on the way the Archangel Mikhael – whose name means: “Who is like God? “And its” balance “between the human and the divine, so as to avoid the traps that maximalism can set for us, and to prevent any stopping on the asymptotic scale of deification … indefinitely renewed asceticism to conquer the Whole. Finally, it is essential to us, who wander through the perils of metamorphosis, to elevate ourselves without getting lost. If, as Philaret of Moscow states, “the creatures are placed on the creative Word of God, comparable to a diamond bridge, below the Abyss of divine Infinity, and above the abyss of their own nothingness ”, only dialectical dynamism can lead them to their destination. We are to meet on the way the Archangel Mikhael – whose name means: “Who is like God? “And its” balance “between the human and the divine, so as to avoid the traps that maximalism can set for us, and to prevent any stopping on the asymptotic scale of deification … indefinitely renewed asceticism to conquer the Whole. Finally, it is essential for us, who wander through the perils of metamorphosis, to elevate ourselves without getting lost. If, as Philaret of Moscow states, “the creatures are placed on the creative Word of God, comparable to a diamond bridge, below the Abyss of divine Infinity, and above the abyss of their own nothingness ”, only dialectical dynamism can lead them to their destination. We are to meet on the way the Archangel Mikhael – whose name means: “Who is like God? “And its” balance “between the human and the divine, so as to avoid the traps that maximalism can set for us, and to prevent any stopping on the asymptotic scale of deification … to elevate us without getting lost. If, as Philaret of Moscow states, “the creatures are placed on the creative Word of God, comparable to a diamond bridge, below the Abyss of divine Infinity, and above the abyss of their own nothingness ”, only dialectical dynamism can lead them to their destination. We are to meet on the way the Archangel Mikhael – whose name means: “Who is like God? “And its” balance “between the human and the divine, so as to avoid the traps that maximalism can set for us, and to prevent any stopping on the asymptotic scale of deification … to elevate us without getting lost. If, as Philaret of Moscow states, “the creatures are placed on the creative Word of God, comparable to a diamond bridge, below the Abyss of divine Infinity, and above the abyss of their own nothingness ”, only dialectical dynamism can lead them to their destination. We are to meet on the way the Archangel Mikhael – whose name means: “Who is like God? “And its” balance “between the human and the divine, so as to avoid the traps that maximalism can set for us, and to prevent any stopping on the asymptotic scale of deification … and above the abyss of their own nothingness ”, only dialectical dynamism can lead them to their destination. We are to meet on the way the Archangel Mikhael – whose name means: “Who is like God? “And its” balance “between the human and the divine, so as to avoid the traps that maximalism can set for us, and to prevent any stopping on the asymptotic scale of deification … and above the abyss of their own nothingness ”, only dialectical dynamism can lead them to their destination. We are to meet on the way the Archangel Mikhael – whose name means: “Who is like God? “And its” balance “between the human and the divine, so as to avoid the traps that maximalism can set for us, and to prevent any stopping on the asymptotic scale of deification …

 

The non-incompatibility of contradictory propositions or poles has always been one of the bases of Hindu philosophy (cf. Râmakrishna) as of the Hermetic tradition (cf. Kybalion); it is an essential key to Gnosis, which integrates everything in its living wholeness. The Science of Libra governs the movement, complementarity, and hierarchy of aspects of reality. The Zohar says: “It is taught: The Book of the Hidden (epignôsis) is the book describing what is weighed in Libra (the modalities of dialectical dynamism); for, before there is a Libra, the Face did not look at the Face (ie this Libra is the condition of universal intersubjectivity) ”. The Cabala also offers us a striking illustration of the theme that occupies us: it is the feminine Spirit with double spiration, descending and ascending, which is expressed in the two Hé of many circular structure words: YHWH, hA HYH (I am), hA HBH (Love), THRH (Purity), etc. These two Hey properly constitute Libra which assures these names their archetypal power of constant regeneration in equilibrium.

 

 

 

Innumerable are the applications of this dialectical activity where the true I, at the heart of all fields and all processes, holds Libra. Between audacity and humility, strength of will and the faculty of appeal; between the relative and the absolute, interiority and transcendence, personal God and transpersonal Deity; between created beauty and infinite Beauty; between the obligation to be “one’s own Savior” and the command to seek “the one Savior”; between total faith (“as if you…”) and total lucidity (“but in fact…”) the “You are That” and the “Become what you are”; between liberation and omnipresence, distance and dedication, openness to the Absolute and openness to phenomena, being above everything and living within everything; between the two “Saturnian” forces, that of incarnation and that of elevation… Dialectical movement that must always be clarified by a “divine” gaze; according to the beautiful formula of Seneca, “I will know the relativity of everything, when I have taken the measure of God” (Natural questions I, pr. 17).

 

Under the government of Libra is also what is today called ecology, that is, the science of mansions – in oikos, house, corresponds in Hebrew beith / beth: the universe is Beith -El, or Bethel, the house of God, the abode of Aleph and his representative, the Son. Do not forget that man is not only founded in God, but imago Dei in mundo, that he must become both a perfect theandric being and an “accomplished anthropocosm”. He is therefore closely linked to the cosmic environment in which he was placed, for which he is responsible, which he is responsible for making fruit and transfiguring (cf. the doctrine of the Avesta) by the irradiation of his own light and of his blessings. Ecology thus turns out to be an important part of theo-anthropo-cosmology.

 

(XIX Before the invention of the word e . S), the reality it expresses none existed less important as an aspect of Tradition: the Taoists focused on the law of sympathy and balance universal, the Sufis on the ceaseless circulation of Love-Beauty, the Orthodox Christians on the divine Fire which shines everywhere and links everything. Let us retain for example this declaration of the Chinese master Sêng-chao: “The sky, the earth and I have the same root, the ten thousand things and I are of a single substance”. Currently, Islamic philosophy is making a great effort of clarification and formulation in this area: witness the 10th chapter of the Essaysby Seyyed Hossein Nasr, entitled “The ecological problem in the light of Sufism” (pp. 217 sq.). We absolutely must get rid of our Western “barbaric” attitudes – already denounced by Bertrand de Jouvenel – to behave in accordance with this fundamental principle of interrelation – or universal-intersubjectivity, to bring in all attention, respect, the love necessary, to unite the true meaning of “non-action” with the will to pacify and transfiguration. Only the global vision of cosmic unity “can restore harmony between man and earth, and that by first creating harmony between man and heaven, and thus replacing the greedy attitude of man towards nature – attitude which is at the base of the unbridled exploitation of natural resources – by another,Essays on Sufism , p.232).

 

With us, the “Companions of the Fire” – mentioned above – try to convey this same message, by imagining what must be this regenerated world which they call “the New Living”, and by tracing the first lineaments in the symbolism of their art. As for Armand Petitjean, very concerned about this problem, he is looking for ways to awaken the combined action of the “three Sisters, guardians of life here below” and rulers of our destiny: “the Gaia of the earth, the celestial Sophia, and our anima, the Ariadne of men lost in the dark ”. The conversion of wills that he considers, as our only salvation, precisely joins the inspiration of the Science of Libra: “Ecology leads us to integrate ourselves, all human powers combined, into increasingly vast natural systems. and complex. And by the consciousness which transcends them all, by opening itself to the universal operator of transcendence, we are magnetized towards this dazzling point from which the spark of creation fires in all places, at all times. . With man, it has been said, evolution becomes conscious of itself: and if, through the opening of man, it was the Spirit who sought access to the consciousness of self? “(Why Klimax , 1983, pp.18 & 14).

 

To close this development, let us put in relation two quotations from thinkers who should be our masters in this discipline of universal communion. St. Isaac the Syrian (or Nineveh, VII th c.): “The unspeakable and prodigious fire hidden in the essence of things as in the Burning Bush is the fire of Divine Love and the dazzling brilliance of his beauty within things ”(PG 91,1148). De Novalis: “The tree can, in order to become, only change into a blooming flame, the man in flame who speaks, the animal in flame which walks” ( Fragments , Gallimard, 1975, p.191). Cosmic circulation of one and the same fire, which we must not only preserve, but also intensify.

 

After the Science of Energies and that of Libra, there is the Science of Symbols. It is a question of perceiving everywhere the complex network and one of the meanings, intentions, calls; to read reality at all its levels thanks to a fundamental key of hierarchy-analogy-correspondence; to bring any work back to its ultimate meaning, any signature to its author, any form to the Spirit, any discourse to the Logos. “The symbol,” says SH Nasr, “is not based on human-made conventions. It is an aspect of the ontological reality of things, and as such it is independent of human perception of it. The symbol is the revelation of a higher order of reality in a lower order through which man can be brought back to the higher realm. Understand the symbols,Essays , p.123). It is also, to take up what Mircea Eliade says very well about Tantrism, to proceed with the abolition of secular language – determined, stereotyped, unidimensional – in favor of “intentional language” comprising a whole range of meanings, a whole range of meanings. frequency scale, to be deciphered endlessly. “This destruction of [everyday] language contributes to ‘breaking up’ the profane Universe and replacing it with a Universe with convertible and integrable levels. Symbolism, in general, achieves a universal ‘porosity’, ‘opening’ beings and things to transobjective meanings… ”( Le Yoga , Payot, 1968, p.250). This is the fruit of Knowledge, the foundation of art, the essence of poetry.

 

For us, men of the XX th and XXI th century, it is absolutely imperative to gain – or regain – that Nicolas Berdyaev calls “symbolic consciousness,” that is to say the ability to recognize in nature the reflections of the “hidden treasure”, the images of the spiritual spheres, the indices of divine Love. “The symbolic conception and contemplation of the world are the only profound ones, the only ones which make one feel and perceive the mysterious Abyss of being” ( Spirit and Freedom , p.75). Thus we will be able to both transcend the phenomenal plane and find there all the possible riches, corporealize the spirits and spiritualize the bodies, transmuting each opacity into a level of light.

 

Much of our book Virgil, Master of Wisdom is devoted to symbolism as a tool of exploration and realization. Allow us to quote a few lines here, quite apt to shed light on the nature of this discipline of which we are speaking.

 

“The symbol is essentially dynamic: it is neither a fixed figure, nor a static representation, but rather a source of radiation of multiple and complementary energies, an axis of circulation for knowledge and creation. It perpetuates the passage from the visible to the invisible, from bodies to spirits, from form to power – and vice versa – thanks to a series of hierarchical levels linked by a single path. As Henry Corbin rightly asserts: “The symbol is the number of a mystery” [15], that is to say the key to an initiatory teaching. To understand it, we must, through appropriate asceticism, be able to let ourselves be carried by it to the abysses of Wisdom, and the length of the journey necessarily depends on our personal strengths. If it is still possible to add a definition to so many others, we will gladly propose this one: “A symbol is a vehicle which leads everyone to where they can go”. The term vehicle, corresponding to Sanskrit yâna, indicates a process of knowledge, and consequently phases and degrees in the discovery of meaning, the “Hûrqalyenne” exploration of the spiritual “climate”, the ascent towards the Self. It also indicates a mediating function, between the world of forms, of the manifested, and that of essences, of the non-manifested;

 

Generally speaking, the study of symbols can only be undertaken successfully within the dual framework of the “signature of things” proper to divine manifestation, and of the “essential energy” proper to being. human who is moreover a “second God”. The genetics of these symbols are part of the creative dynamism of the divine gaze and art – whether it is God or man – through the different ontological levels and currents of cosmic forces. Their exegesis and their use are also linked to this recreating dynamism; there is therefore a need for a “qualified knower” (in possession of the divine gaze) and of a “proven operator” (in possession of the divine art) to find there all the power with which they are likely to be charged, to detect all the structural and functional modalities, dialectics (descending and ascending) that they contain, to see at the same time a single axis of light and a multiplicity of nuances, to discover the dominant effect with all its harmonics. We refer, on this subject, to the introductory text composed by Jean Chevalier for theDictionary of Symbols (Seghers), as well as to the pages dealing with “maieutics by the symbol” that Eva Meyerovitch placed in her work on Rumi, Mystique et poésie en Islam (Desclée De Brouwer, 1972, 50 ff.).

 

The great artists, the great poets must be studied in this perspective, and taken as daily companions in our deepening of reality and of ourselves. Thus Arturo Reghini is right to say: “For anyone who has any experience of this kind, there is no doubt about the existence, in the Divine Comedy and in the Aeneid, of an allegory. metaphysical-esoteric, which veils and exposes both the successive phases through which the consciousness of the initiate passes to reach immortality ” [16] . And Théodore Haecker ends his Foreword to Virgil, Father of the Westby these words which perfectly express our conception of true exegesis: “I will not lose sight of the whole, the totality of man for a moment. A purely philologico-aesthetic explanation of Virgil and his work is a falsification, a decomposition of the whole carried out by spirits in decomposition ”(p.21). Let us never lose sight of Dante’s recommendation, essential in this area (Inferno IX, 61-63):

O you who have sound intellects,

Look at the doctrine that hides itself

Under the veil of strange verses!

“You who have a healthy intelligence, Search the teaching which is hidden here Under the veil of mysterious worms” (tr. H. Longnon). Let us not forget either the magnificent exposition devoted by Henry Corbin to “the spiritual exegesis of the Qoran” ( History of Islamic Philosophy , pp.13-30), an exposition valid for any inspired text.

 

Fundamentally, the symbol is a function of the gaze: it only comes to life and delivers itself in proportion to the quality of the observer, his degree of evolution, his capacity to know. “You only see what you know,” proclaimed Goethe in a startling phrase. From CGCarus: “The deeper the qualities and dispositions of a man’s mind, the more will be revealed to him the symbolic meaning of all knowledge and all experience.” As for Gurdjieff, an expert in these questions, he affirmed: “A man cannot see anything above his own level of being” ( Fragments of an unknown teaching, p.434). However, it generally takes long years of work and maturation to educate, awaken, internalize the gaze, to open the “eye of the Heart”, to capture all light, to penetrate fully into the secret universe of Canticle of canticles or of the Divine Comedy, of the orthodox icon or of the Zen garden, to understand Rumi, Angelus Silesius, or Milosz … Universal hermeneutics, which is always to be reinstated to escape the weight of systems, gravitation psychic, to the materiality of signs, requires from us total freedom of mind, a global perception of things, a keen sense of the circuits of Life, and requires the constant presence of the “personal Angel of Knowledge”.

 

Elements for a work discipline.

 

We can find in our Virgil, master of wisdom and in our article “Light of esotericism: sustainability and topicality” 3 rd Millennium, n ° 9) precise indications on the elementary rules to follow to give all its meaning and all its effectiveness of this new anthropological research. Let us content ourselves here with evoking three fundamental conditions for the success of this work: rigor, wonder, integration.

 

The rigor consists first of not “believing” anything, but to experience everything for oneself. Wording without appeal by the Buddha: “Do not believe anything on the sole authority of your masters or priests. That which you yourself will have experienced, experienced and recognized as true, which will be in accordance with your good and that of others, that, believe it and conform your conduct to it ”(Anguttara Nikâya). But Rûmî goes in the same direction by declaring: “He who does not taste does not know”; and if Saint Paul wrote (I Thess. 5, 21): “Check everything: what is good, remember it”, the Dialogues with the Angelhave a much more radical emphasis: “The new Light sweeps away all belief.” He who believes in God goes astray. No longer put your faith in Him, be one with Him ”(p.246). Now, in order to experiment, to taste, to “enter the garden”, it is obviously necessary to use instruments appropriate to the goal pursued, and to act according to the ontological planes. The formidable question of knowing God, in particular, cannot be resolved otherwise. A Sufi expressed on this subject this masterful opinion: “Anyone who seeks God by demonstrations (ie with the mind) is like someone who seeks the Sun with a lamp”, which joins the position of universal esotericism which knows that God does not prove himself, but experiences himself.

 

You have to convert your gaze and your energy, so that you are no longer a prisoner of the illusions of the “dividing mind” or of the fluctuations of the psyche; to carry out a vast work of intellectual and spiritual purification, to communicate freely with all aspects of reality – without distortion of the field, without disturbance of the operator. You have to swim against the tide, get out of the involutionary cycle at the top, free yourself from spatio-temporal categories, free yourself from idolatry and fanaticism: allow the maximum amount of light to pass through yourself, through yourself, travel “without baggage. », According to Seneca’s expression, among the cosmic and divine spheres. Everything that needs to be put into perspective must be put into perspective: bodies, mentalities, families, societies, nations, cultures, religions, philosophies, in short, the world of forms, that it is certainly necessary to assume, but after having left it to dominate it. This is how we will become capable of the Truth, because we are free for the Truth; that having avoided the psychic and formal traps, we will be available for interior Revelation; that we will be able to welcome everything, the Absolute as well as the phenomena, with simplicity and insight.

 

We must also escape the labyrinths of hasty comparativism, insufficiently deepened, unenlightened from above, the swamps of confusion, arbitrariness, inconsistency, and all false constructions. It is not a question either of rejecting logic or reason, but of informing them and of vivifying them by a metalogic, by a transrationality which, alone, can escape the limits and the mirages of here below. Immediately relate to the Logos, of which the mind is the reflection in the “lower waters”, and always polish the mirror of the Heart more and more so that the Light, without obscuration or deviation, comes to strike it with its vertical power. This rigor is therefore, in short, the correct orientation of the will and of the gaze, the precise and operative perception of the Cosmic Law,

Another condition for success in this endeavor is the capacity for wonder. What to say? Concept familiar to mystics, it is quite difficult to explain to “intellectuals”. It is the constant renewal of the gaze focused on beings and things, the dazzled welcome of the riches offered, of the mysteries offered, the perpetual astonishment, admiration before the depth and the beauty of the world (“game of God” ), of life (deployment of divine signs), of the work of art (triple mirror: of God, of the artist, and of the “witness” of the work), and lasting joy, joy never disappointed, because of an inexhaustible treasure at our disposal.

 

Jesus declares, at the threshold of the Gospel according to Thomas (log. 2): “Let him not cease, he who seeks, to seek, until he finds, and when he finds, he will be upset, and when he is upset he will be amazed; he will then reign over the Whole, and, in that kingship, will rest ”(see our study“ The Way to the Self ”, pp. 74-75). This gives the following six points: seek (with the ability to wonder) -> find -> be upset -> marvel -> reign -> rest (in wonder). Note that “upset” and “amazed” translate two inseparable aspects of the exaltation following the discovery, the understanding of the Word, the deciphering of the symbol, and that this wonder is a source of “royalty” and “priesthood” , of sovereignty and intimately linked contemplation.

 

Dialogues with the Angel, for their part, affirm: “Wonder and curiosity are two. There are a lot of curious people, but there were people amazed ..? (p.52), and this, which is of great importance: “Around him who knows how to be amazed, marvels hatch” (p.53). Among the Sufis, stupor, dazzling, wonder (bayrat) play an essential role in the itinerary of the mystic – or of the Gnostic – it is the endless awareness of the splendor of Being. “Sell intelligence,” Rumi advises, “and buy wonder in God”; as for Shibli, he points out that “gnosis is a continual wonder”; so that this spiritual intensification is both a generator of discoveries and nourished by discoveries, in an incessant relaunch of the quest for the Divine (seeMysticism and Poetry in Islam , pp. 65 & 202-204).

 

So, if rigor makes us understand the Cosmic Law (cf. the Sephirah Dîin), wonder plunges us into the ocean of Grace, which is cosmic and supracosmic (cf. the Sephirah Hesed). Rigor and wonder thus constitute the two complementary sides of a truly creative attitude: the first without the second would turn into drought, and the second without the first could become confusion. Our approach must always be lucid and always dazzled, in accordance with the meaning of the recapitulating and central Sephirah Tiphereth, divine “Justice” and “Beauty”.

 

If we really manage to become “free spirits”, without a priori, without prejudices, without partiality, if we succeed in avoiding any imprisonment in the systems closed on themselves, in the forms which repel each other, in the innumerable Predominantly psycho-social “magic circles”, if we are ready to question ourselves every day by a total openness to the multiple aspects of Truth and Life, we will then be able to realize, patiently and firmly, the Great work of synthesis which is the ultimate reason for our research. The destiny of our time is, without a doubt, to move from a fragmentary and contradictory state of knowledge to a multidimensional and unified gnosis. This is the goal we set for ourselves – in all daring and humility, and in perfect communion of spirit with all seekers animated by the same fire. We must therefore be able to operate integrations that are more and more comprehensive, more and more inclusive, by the adequacy of our operating methods and the elevation of our point of view. So that our knowledge is the authentic epignôsis, coherent light, simple and universal lines of force, easy circulation of ideas and experiences, transparent complementarity of perspectives.

 

Let us repeat it: it all depends on our fundamental attitude, the orientation of our will, the penetration of our gaze, our receptivity and our creativity. Let us take great advantage, by applying them to our approach, both personal and collective, of these two key sentences of the Cherubinic Pilgrim:

1.178. “Your fault. That you are blinded when you see the sun, your eyes are the cause, and not its great brilliance ”.

II, 17. “God does not deny himself to anyone. Take, drink as much as you want and as you can, everything is for you: all of Deity itself is your feast ».

 

The goal is synthesis and serenity. By advancing in the “interior meaning” of things – which is properly esotericism – we rediscover the mysterious unity which underlies the diversity of forms, we see everything in agreement and harmony, we discover Peace. This Peace, which is that of Virgil, of Jesus, of Ibn ‘Arabi, of Egyptian gnosis, of the Celtic tradition, of the Cabala, of Taoism, of the Rosicrucians (Pax profunda), etc., is in fact the free passage of the creative Energies through all the planes of reality thanks to these excellent “conductors” of life and light that are the Gnostics, the “pure hearts”, whom Matthew precisely calls “peacemakers” (5,8 -9). Lao-Tzu had already written: “Hold fast to the Big Idea (to the Tao), and the world will progress. He will progress without difficulty, in peace,

 

As for us, humble researcher in such a vast field, we will be satisfied if only we could conform to the program defined by the cabbalist Christian Knorr von Rosenroth:

I ask, not say it, not at all this I determine the one dictating.

Second, Conor, put together the year, the cremation.

“I research without prejudice; my opinions do not impose any exclusivity; I reconcile, I try, I compare, I experiment, I question ”.

 

On the whole, there is an extraordinary dynamic specific to our time, an astonishing convergence of themes of regeneration which concern it at the highest point. To it applies the Joachimite typology of the reign of the Spirit: leaving the zones of gravity, deviation, secularization, to access the fullness of the circuit of divine energies, rises the elite of the “third period”, that of the Viri spirituales, filled with creative joy, contemplatives and artists, Friends of God and of all, linked to the perennial Source of Wisdom and Life. To it applies the time, announced by the reformed Ismailism of Alamut, of the “Resurrection of the Resurrections” (Qiyâmat al-Qiyâmât): end of the domination of signs, clues, allusions, speeches and gestures, awakening of Hearts , spiritual freedom, proximity to essential realities, intensification of mystical knowledge. The Berdiaevian conception of christo-anthropological revelation applies to it: man’s awareness of his vocation as a creator, of God’s Alter Ego, a participant in the transmuting and illuminating power of the Word; which matches what Nikolaus Lenau said in his poem in 1842Die Albigenser : “The total Christ has not yet manifested himself on earth, his figure of Man-God has yet to be completed. One day will be accomplished the salvation of the world, the redemption, when God and Man enter into each other alive in the Spirit. Even if the image of Jesus, reflection of our senses, in the incessant flow of time would blur and vanish, even if all the testimonies of Jesus were shattered, the Man-God is the center, the luminous heart of all worlds ”.

 

Figure 6

Fifteenth and last plank of the Apocalypse or Revelations of St. John, by Albrecht Dürer (The Woodcuts. N o 26)

Let’s take his eyes on the 15 thplate from Dürer’s Apocalypse, the symbolism of which is perfectly suited to our times and our business. The so-called key of the Abyss is exactly that of the passage; its ring is cordiform (allusion to the race of the Heart), and seven minor keys are attached to it, which makes it the eighth – the eight representing the righteous circuits of divine Love and the moment of transfiguration. Passage: end of the dark age, of the domination of the inferior forces – which enter the underground Abyss to fertilize new vegetation – and the beginning of the Age of Light. At the top of the Sacred Mountain, Saint John and the Watchman contemplate in the West the divine City, or theandric, at the same time dense and airy, solid and elegant, obeying a vertical appeal as well as a horizontal expansion. The forest blends with the buildings, the sea adjoins the mountains, the birds, above, draw soul movements in the sky. It is a synthesis of Eden and the heavenly Jerusalem. As for the two towers of the main entrance, one impeccable, the other decapitated, they express the double aspect of the human adventure and testify to the necessity of a perpetual effort. The Angels surround this regenerated world with their protection: that of the center represents Malkhuth, that of the Mountain, Tiphereth – between rigor (stripped tree) and mercy (leafy tree); that of the gate, at the outlet of the left bridge, is Yesod – a replica of the Cherub who guarded the threshold of Eden. They can also be assimilated to the Son, the Spirit, and the Father. There are still other angels to manifest the omnipresence of the beneficial powers. Summary interpretation: it is true Knowledge, epignôsis, victorious over the rajaso-tamasic, or psycho-material shadow forces. It is also, as N. Berdiaev says (Le Sens de la creation , p.194), the blossoming of the “transformed consciousness” of the eighth day, the appearance of solar humanity, a completely new reality: “The content of freedom, its positive and creative goal, primitive man could not see him, he who still belonged to the stage of creation of the seven days – before the revelation of absolute Man and the eighth day of creation ”.

 

To it also applies the abundant thematic of the Parousia, of the coming – or the return – of a great spiritual Entity, not only on this earth, but especially in the conscience: glorious reappearance of Christ (cf. II Peter 3 , 12-13: let us hasten the advent of the “Day of God” which will be the renewal of all things around “Justice”, that is to say of Tiphereth, the King, or the Son, or the Heart of YHWH), descent of the interior Light (cf. the Memoir on the return of the Rabbi called Jesus , by Carlo Suarès), arrival and dissemination of the Paraclete, full manifestation of the 12th centuryImam (Shi’ism) putting an end to the Great Occultation (ghaybat), explosion of hierohistory, epiphany of the bodhisattva Maitreya, or even of the Kalkin-avatar. And this in a redeployment, in a remarkable intensification of the creative and transmuting “waves of fire” – ha-Shamaïm of Genesis I, 1 and Matthew. 6,9, the fire of Luke 12,49 and Thomas 82, the conflagration of II Peter 3,12 and Rev. 22,23 -, and in relation to the concepts, so current, of the Grail and Aquarius. Thomas Dowding had announced at the beginning of this century (Jean Prieur, The witnesses of the invisible, p.348): “The childhood of the human race will soon end. Great spiritual purifying powers are waiting to be poured out. Create vases for this purpose. Make yourself a vessel so that you can receive the gift of the Spirit. You don’t need any teaching from outside. It is from within that revelation will come to you (cf. Berdiaev). Retreat to the abode of silence …

 

To it finally applies the idea of ​​a reconstitution, of a resurgence of the “race of the Heart”, of the true ontological and artistic elite which the world needs to escape its demons and fulfill its destiny: to see, among others, the book by Raymond Abellio, written in 1945-1946, Vers un nouveau Prophétisme, Henry Corbin’s article “For a new knighthood” (in Question of n ° 1, 1973), and our proposals for “A new race of Gnostics” (Epignôsis II). In fact, the increasingly unbearable pressure of totalitarianisms, materialisms, psychic and economic sociologies, reductionisms of all kinds, pseudo-spiritualities, fanaticisms, violence and lack of culture, will necessarily favor the emergence – awareness, development, coming together – of the old and at the same time new spiritual race destined to triumph over chaos. The condensation of night and mists, the unleashing of black fire, the extension of torpid waters, by reaction, will stimulate the increase and crystallization of lights, the circulation of divine energies. This apocalyptic atmosphere which surrounds us on all sides proves to be essential to detachment, to settling, to sorting out wills, and can only help to bring out the blaze of the Kingdom, to multiply the brilliance of the Thirty-Six Righteous. All of this constitutes an objectively observable process, which is the keystone of our anthropological work.

 

Note on the meanings of the Tetramorph of Vatopédi.

 

This complex figure, called the Tetramorph, arises from a combination of the visions of Ezekiel (1,4-14), of Isaiah (6,2), and of John (Rev. 4,6-8: the “Four Living”). The different characteristic elements of these visions were recast in a single Entity, the whole being then organized around the face of the Angel, or of the Son-Man, representative of the creative mediation. For more details, see the Introduction to the world of symbols , by G. de Champeaux and Dom S. Sterckx (“Zodiaque” collection, 1966), pp. 427 sq., In the work of Pierre Weil , The Sphinx, mystery and structure of man (Épi, 1972), as well as the explanations of the 21 stBlade of the Tarot (Le Monde). The Tetramorph reproduced here is that of Vatopédi, monastery of Mount Athos: it is a Byzantine mosaic from 1213.

The symbolic richness of this composition is absolutely extraordinary. We can see there the image of the Anthropos (cf. CG Jung, Psychologie et Alchimie , p.174), that of the essential I, that of the Monakhos (cf. Thomas 16; 49; 75), that of the Heart: the representation of the Divine Name (YHWH / YH Sh WH), of the circulation of the creative Energies, of the blazing Globality, of the perfect Group of the Transfiguration, of the Epignosis, of the Resurrection of the Resurrections, etc. Here are some interpretations.

 

– The essence of the Heart, or the operative Intellect-Love. The eyes: the Intellect, the Fire of the Logos, the sphere of the Cherubim (cf. Jnâna-yoga). The hands: Love-blessing, the Fire of the Agape, the sphere of the Seraphim (cf. Bhakti-yoga). Wings and wheels: action, Creativity, Fire artist, the sphere of Thrones (cf. Karma-yoga). See the excellent commentary by Pic de la Mirandole on the three angelic orders in his De hominis dignitate (ed. P.-M.Cordier, pp. 130 sq.).

– The divine Name. The eagle: the Yod, the Father. The bull: the first Hey, the Spirit of the Father, or the Mother. The lion: the second Hey, the Spirit of the Son, or the Daughter. The angel: the Vav and the Shin, the Son. The circularity of the Name is represented by the nimbuses and the wheels.

– The essential I, the Monakhos, the Perfect Man. Eagle – angel: bipole Father – Son, or more precisely Him-God-Father – Me-God-Son; axis of the sword duality. Taurus – lion: double spiration of the Spirit, duality of the balance (involution / evolution, Saturn the condenser / Saturn the liberator). The six wings: fire of triple Love, dialectical fire of the senary-septenary; dynamism of the circulation of Energies. The eyes: awakening (bodhicitta), simultaneous awareness of the multiple and the One. The hands: receptivity and blessing (cf. Dialogues with the Angel). The two wheels with eight spokes, inflamed and winged: operative fire, transmuter, organizer of divine Love; image of the Throne-Chariot (Merkabah) measuring, actualizing, vivifying all the plans of the manifestation. General dialectic between “static” and “dynamism”, immobility or rest and movement (cf. Thomas 50, as well as the icon of the Holy Trinity by Rublev).

– The Perfect Group (coherent and creative) of the Transfiguration (with 7 characters: cf. Matth. 17,1 sq., And Visions of Anne-Catherine Emmerich, II, 361 sq.). The angel: Christ, the superessential Sun of the group (the Son of God). The eagle: Malachi, the Egregore Angel of the group (the archetypal I). The bull: Moses, the demiurgic Spirit (descending divine energies, “projections” of the I). The lion: She, the Theurgic Spirit (rising divine energies, “reminders” of the I). The right hand: John, the Prophet, the Brahmâtmâ (the Spirit). The left hand: Jacques, the Priest, the Mahatma (the essential Soul). The feet: Peter, the King, the Mahânga (the Incarnate Heart). The wings and the wheels: dynamism of the whole. This group, of Abellian structure, corresponds to the complete and operative manifestation of the “King of the World” (cf. the work, under this title, by R.Guénon).

– The cycle of Epignosis. The eagle: theology, metaphysics, contemplation. The angel: the Science of the Heart and the Libra. The bull: process of condensation of the Spirit; measurements, combinations, analyzes. The left hand: encyclopedic knowledge; structural, descriptive anthropology; systems (philosophical, religious); arts (incarnation of Ideas). The feet: psyche (psychology, psychoanalysis, psychotronics) and space-time-matter (exact and natural sciences); social and political anthropology. The right hand: hermeneutics, alchemy, energetics of metamorphosis. The lion: gnosis / mysticism, process of liberation of the Consciousness; syntheses, unification, reintegration. Back to the eagle. The wings and the eyes: dialectic of awakening and progression, the power of simultaneity / globality. The wheels: perpetual renewal,

 

In short, figure of the harmonious totality, of the creative unity, of the Man of Fire and Light, of artistic sovereignty.

Illustrations.

 

Fig.l. “Christ on the Cross”. Heinrich KHUNRATH, Amphitheater of the Eternal Sapience (Milano, Arch, 1975. Sebastiani Collection), plate I of the princeps edition of 1602.

 

Fig. 2. “The triple chrism”. Mosaic of the Baptistery of Albenga (V e / VI th c.), Drawing by Jean Phaure, p.66 of his book The cycle of humanity Adamic (Paris, Dervy-Books, 1973).

 

Fig. 3. “Saint John seeing the seven candlesticks”. 2 nd board or The Apocalypse of St. John’s Revelations (1497 to 1498) by Albrecht Dürer (The Woodcuts, Paris, Art & Culture, 1978 No. 13).

 

Fig. 4. “The creative movement”. R.FLUDD, Utriusque Cosmi… Historia (Tome I, a; Oppenheim, 1617, p.49), and Serge HUTIN, Robert Fludd, Rosicrucian alchemist and philosopher (Paris, “Omnium Littéraire”, 1972)

 

Fig. 5. “Ontological hierarchies”. Jacques BREYER, Terre-Oméga (Paris, Édit. Robert Dumas, 1974), p.34 (courtesy of the author).

 

Fig. 6. “The Angel at the key of the abyss and another Angel showing the new Jerusalem to Saint John”. 15 th and last board of the Apocalypse Dürer (supra, fig.3), in The Wood engravings, No. 26.

 

Fig. 7. The Tetramorph of Vatopédi (Athos). Drawing by Bernard Gandet, taken from the Dictionary of Symbols (Paris, Seghers, 1974, vol.4).

 

Thumbnails. – Hermès psychopompe (gem of a Roman ring), in Ch.W.KING, The Gnostics and Their Remains, London, 1864 (fig. 14), and CGJUNG, Psychologie et Alchimie (tr.fr., Paris, Buchet / Chastel, 1970), p.134.

 

– Symbol of sovereignty. Wood drawn and engraved by Andrée Karpels for Les Questions de Milinda (translated Louis Finot, Paris, Édit. Bossard, 1923), p.15.

***

“Wake up, get up, and walk!” »(After Mt. 9.5).

 


[1] This is the title of our contribution to Cahier de l’Herne n ° 36 (1979) devoted to Raymond Abellio (pp.47-83), a contribution written in 1976 and in which we threw the first outlines of a comparative energy of transfiguration.

[2] See our Virgil, master of wisdom (Milano, Arche, 1983), I, note 33 (bibliography).

[3] We have given some guidance on this concept in our article “Three mirrors of Wisdom  ” (3 e Millennium 3, July-August 1982, pp. 62-75), the second part refers to “Christian gnosis or sacred twinning ”(pp. 67 ff.).

[4] See in particular: A. Soljenitsyne, The Western Error , Grasset, 1980; A. Zinoviev, Nous et l’Occident , L’Âge d’Homme, 1981, and Homo sovieticus , Julliard / L’Âge d’Homme, 1983.

[5] See our Virgil, master of wisdom (note 2), II, chap.6.

[6] A similar warning from SH Nasr ( Essays , p.210): “It is hardly necessary to point out that this vision of the transcendent unity of religions is the very antipode of modern syncretisms and pseudo-spiritualities which have developed over the past few decades as a result of the weakening of tradition in the West. Not only do they fail in transcendent forms, but they fall below those forms, thus opening the door to all manner of nefarious forces, and these forces prey on people who are unfortunate enough to be fooled by their so-called universalism ”.

[7] The “Hûrqalyenne knowledge” is that of the real spiritual events specific to the “world of Herqalyâ”, celestial Earth, Earth of visions, where only the intuitive sense can access.

[8] See our study “The Heroic and Gnostic Path to the Self” (supra, note 1), p. 62 sq., And Raymond Abellio, The End of Esotericism (Flammarion, 1973), pp.81 sq. (Figure 2, p.86).

[9] On the nature of this “personality”, see the analysis of the concept of ichîouth by A.-D. Grad ( The Secret Keys of Israel , Robert Laffont, 1973, pp. 170-2). Concerning man “image of God” and “image of the world”, consult M.-M. Davy, Self-knowledge (PUF, 1966), pp. 76-89.

[10] See “The Heroic and Gnostic Path to the Self” (supra, n.1), pp.69 sq. (”  Artifex and its art in the world “).

[11] See our Virgil, master of wisdom , I, chapter 1, as well as our article on the “Heart” in the 1 st volume of the Encyclopedia of Esoteric Sciences, at Éditions Quillet.

[12] See John Blofeld, Le bouddhisme tantrique du Tibet (Seuil, 1976), and Lama Anagarika Govinda, The foundations of Tibetan mysticism (Albin Michel, 1960).

[13] See H. Corbin, History of Islamic Philosophy (Gallimard, 1964), pp. 184 sq., And Temple et contemplation (Flammarion, 1980), pp. 67 sq.

[14] H. Corbin, History of Islamic Philosophy , p.205.

[15] The Creative Imagination in Sufism of Ibn ‘Arabi (Flammarion, 1958), p.13.

[16] “The Esoteric Allegory of Dante” (in Nuovo Patto, Sept.-Nov. 1921, 541-548), p.546. Cf. R. Guénon, The Esotericism of Dante , p.28.

2021-08-13T03:35:34-05:00
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