/lit/ - Literature

>To comprehend universal principles directly the transcendent intellect must itself be of the universal order; it is no longer an individual faculty, and to consider it as such would be contradictory, as it is not within the power of the individual to go beyond his own limits and leave the conditions which limit him qua individual. Reason is a specifically human faculty, but that which lies beyond reason is truly “nonhuman”; it is this which makes metaphysical knowledge possible, and that knowledge, one must again em phasize, is not a human knowledge. In other words, it is not as man that man can attain it, but because this being which is human in one of its aspects is at the same time something other and more than a human being. It is the attainment of effective consciousness of supra-individual states which is the real object of metaphysics, or better still, of metaphysical knowledge itself.

>We come here to one of the most vital points, and it is necessary to repeat that if the individual were a complete being, if he made up a closed system like the monad of Leibnitz, metaphysics would not be possible; irremediably confined in himself, this being would have no means of knowing anything outside his own mode of existence. But such is not the case; in reality the individuality represents nothing more than a transitory and contingent manifestation of the real being. It is only one particular state amongst an indefinite multitude of other states of the same being; and this being is, in itself, absolutely independent of all its manifestations, just as, to use an illustration which occurs frequently in Hindu texts, the sun is absolutely independent of the manifold images in which it is reflected. Such is the fundamental distinction between “Self” and “I,” the personality and the individuality; as the images are connected by the luminous rays with their solar source, without which they would have neither existence nor reality, so the individuality, either of the human individual or of any other similar state of manifestation, is bound by the personality to the principial center of being by this transcendent intellect of which we are speaking. It is impossible, within the limits of this exposition, to develop these lines of thought more completely, or to give a more exact idea of the theory of multiple states of being;* but I think I have said enough to show the extreme importance of all truly metaphysical doctrine

-René Guénon, Oriental Metaphysics

http://www.worldwisdom.com/public/viewpdf/default.aspx?article-title=Oriental_Metaphysics_by_Rene_Guenon.pdf

>>14381477
For the moment we would like to insist on one point only: That the quarrel of spiritualism and materialism, around which almost all the philosophical thought since Descartes revolves, is of no interest at all for pure metaphysics; this is besides an example of those one-time questions[1], to which we shall return at once. Indeed the duality of "soul-matter" has never been posed as absolutely und unsurmountably before the Cartesian conception; the Ancients, notably the Greek, did not even possess a notion of "matter" in the modern sense of the word, not more than in our time [2] (for) most of the Orientals: in Sanskrit there is no word corresponding to this notion, not even close.

The concept of this kind of duality has its sole merit to rather well represent the outer appearance of things; but - precisely because it stays with appearances it is wholly superficial, and by taking up a special point of view which is purely individual, it becomes negative of the whole of metaphysics, [especially] as soon as one wants to ascribe to it an absolute value by affirming the unsurmountability[3] of its two terms [soul and matter], an affirmation in which abides the actual duality. ...

In a very general fashion [one can say that], the distinctive character dualism is to halt at an opposition between two more or less particular terms, an opposition which without doubt really exists from a certain point of view.[This certain point of view] corresponds to the part of dualism which is real, but [the problem starts where] by declaring this opposition as unsurmountable and absolute, instead of [it being] entirely relative and dependant, it becomes impossible[4] to proceed beyond those terms, which have been posited against each other. ...

Al-Ghazali on the esoteric

>What I understand by the science of outward behaviours and usages is the knowledge of practical religion attended with actions in accordance with that knowledge. The object of this work is only to narrate the science of practical religion and usages and not to narrate the science of revelation and inspiration, as there is no permission to put the latter into black and white though the science of revelation is the ultimate object of those who search after truth and the most coveted matter in the eye of the extremely truthful, and the best way of acquiring knowledge of worldly uses. The Holy Prophet did not speak anything about the science of revelation except through signs and symbols, because he knew that the wisdom of men to understand it is very little. There is no means of the learned other than the path of the prophets, as the learned are the heirs of the prophets.


https://wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Revival_of_the_Religious_Sciences

“A word that rose to honor at the time of the Renaissance, and that summarized in advance the whole program of modern civilization is 'humanism'. Men were indeed concerned to reduce everything to purely human proportions, to eliminate every principle of a higher order, and, one might say, symbolically to turn away from the heavens under pretext of conquering the earth; the Greeks, whose example they claimed to follow, had never gone as far in this direction, even at the time of their greatest intellectual decadence, and with them utilitarian considerations had at least never claimed the first place, as they were very soon to do with the moderns. Humanism was form of what has subsequently become contemporary secularism; and, owing to its desire to reduce everything to the measure of man as an end in himself, modern civilization has sunk stage by stage until it has reached the level of the lowest elements in man and aims at little more than satisfying the needs inherent in the material side of his nature, an aim that is in any case quite illusory since it constantly creates more artificial needs than it can satisfy.”