Gnosis
by Frithjof
Schuon (In To Have a Center, 1990, p. 67)
It is a fact that too many authors — we would almost say:
general opinion — attribute to gnosis what is proper to Gnosticism and to other
counterfeits of the sophia perennis, and moreover make no distinction
between the latter and the most freakish movements, such as spiritualism,
theosophism and the pseudo-esoterisms that saw the light of day in the
twentieth century. It is particularly regrettable that these confusions are
taken seriously by most theologians, who obviously have an interest in
entertaining the worst opinion possible concerning gnosis; now the fact that an
imposture necessarily imitates a good, since otherwise it could not even exist,
does not authorize charging this good with all the sins of the imitation.
In reality, gnosis is essentially the path of the intellect
and hence of intellection; the driving force of this path is above all
intelligence, and not will and sentiment as is the case in the Semitic
monotheistic mysticisms, including average Sufism. Gnosis is characterized by
its recourse to pure metaphysics: the distinction between Atma and Maya
and the consciousness of the potential identity between the human subject, jivatma,
and the Divine Subject, Paramatma. The path comprises on the one hand
"comprehension," and on the other "concentration"; hence
doctrine and method. The modalities of the latter are quite diverse: in
particular, there is on the one hand the mantra, the evocative and
transforming formula, and on the other hand, the yantra, the visual
symbol. The path is the passage from potentiality to virtuality, and from
virtuality to actuality, its summit being the state of the one "delivered
in this life," the jivan-mukta.
As for Gnosticism, whether it arises in a Christian, Moslem
or other climate, it is a fabric of more or less disordered speculations, often
of Manichean origin; and it is a mythomania characterizd by a dangerous mixture
of exoteric and esoteric concepts. Doubtless it contains symbolisms that are
not without interest — the contrary would be astonishing — but it is said that
"the road to hell is paved with good intentions"; it could just as
well be said that it is paved with symbolisms.
It may be remarked, perhaps, that in gnosis as well as in
Gnosticism, "illumination" plays a preponderant role; but this is to
confuse "illumination" with intellection, or
the latter with the former; whereas in reality intellection is active, and
illumination, passive, whatever the level of experiences involved. This is not
to say that the phenomenon of illumination does not arise in the climate of
gnosis; it does so necessarily, but not by way of method or as a point of
reference. An analogous remark could be made regarding hermeneutics, that is,
the interpretation of sacred scriptures; no doubt commentary on the scriptures
is practiced in the climate of gnosis — for example, it goes without saying
that the Upanishads have been explicated — but this is quite different from the
far-removed and unverifiable interpretation of scriptural formulas whose
literal meanings do not at all indicate what the mystical exegetes try to draw
from them — with the aid of "illumination," precisely.(1)
It is true that the word "illumination" can have a
superior meaning, in which case it no longer designates a passive phenomenon;
unitive and liberating illumination is beyond the distinction between passivity
and activity. Or more exactly, illumination is the Divine Activity in us, but
for that very reason it also possesses an aspect of supreme Passivity in the
sense that it coincides with the "extinction" of the passional and
dark elements separating man from his immanent Divine Essence; this extinction
constitutes receptivity to the Influx of Heaven — without losing sight of the
fact that the Divine Order comprises a "Passive Perfection" as well
as an "Active Perfection," and that the human spirit must in the
final analysis participate in both mysteries.
In gnosis, there is first of all the intellective knowledge
of the Absolute — not merely of the "personal God" — and then
self-knowledge; for one cannot know the Divine Order without knowing oneself.
"Know thyself," says the inscription over the portal of the
initiatory temple at
Just as the ether is present in each of the sensible
elements, such as fire and water, and just as intelligence is present in each
of the mental faculties, such as imagination and memory, so gnosis is
necessarily present in each of the great religions, whether we grasp its traces
or not.
We have said that the driving force of the path of gnosis is
intelligence; now it is far from being the case that this principle is
applicable in a spiritual society — unless it is not very numerous — for in
general, intelligence is largely inoperative once it is called upon to hold a
collectivity in balance; in all justice, one cannot deny in sentimental and
humilitarian moralism a certain realism and hence a corresponding efficacy. It
follows from all this, not that gnosis has to repudiate socially its principle
of the primacy of intelligence, but that it must put each thing in its place
and take men as they are; that is precisely why the perspective of gnosis will
be the first to insist, not upon a simplifying moralism, but upon intrinsic
virtue, which — like beauty — is "the splendor of the true."
Intelligence must be not only objective and conceptual, but also subjective and
existential; the unicity of the object demands the totality of the subject.
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When one has experienced the usual pious sophistries of
voluntaristic and moralistic doctrines, it becomes quite clear that gnosis is
not a luxury, and that it alone can extricate us from the impasses of the
alternativism that is part and parcel of the confessional spirit. There is, for
instance, the stupefying thesis of the Asharites, according to which there are
no natural causes: fire burns, not because it is in its nature to burn, but
because, each time something burns, it is God who intervenes directly and who
"creates" the burning.(2) Ibn Rushd pertinently objects — against
Ghazali, who made this holy absurdity his own — that "if something did not
have its specific nature, it would have no name proper to it . . . Intelligence
is nothing else than the perception of causes . . . and whoever denies causes
must also deny the intellect."
What the Asharites have not understood — and this is
characteristic of the alternativism of exoteric thought — is that natural
causes, such as the function of fire to burn, in no way exclude immanent
supernatural causality,(3) any more than the limited subjectivity of the
creature excludes the immanence of the absolute Subject. Immanent divine
causality is "vertical" and supernatural, whereas cosmic causality is
"horizontal" and natural, or in other words: the first is comparable
to centrifugal radii, and the second to concentric circles. It is this
combination of two relationships or of two perspectives that characterizes
integrally metaphysical thought, hence gnosis.(4)
There is intelligence and there is intelligence; there is
knowledge and there is knowledge; there is on the one hand a fallible mind that
registers and elaborates, and on the other hand a heart-intellect that
perceives and projects its infallible vision onto thought. Here lies the entire
difference between a logical certitude that can replace another logical
certitude, and a quasi-ontological certitude that nothing can replace because
it is what we are, or because we are what it is.
1. We do not contest that a word or an image in a sacred text may have a
meaning that cannot be divined at a first reading; but in such cases this
meaning cannot be contrary to the literal meaning nor incompatible with the
context.
2. Equally antimetaphysical is the Christian opinion that the hypostases
are neither substances nor modes, that they are merely "relations"
and yet that they are persons. It is appropriate to distinguish between the
Trinity and Trinitarian theology, and no less so between Unity and unitarian theology.
3. According to the Koran, God ordered the fire that was to burn
Abraham: "Be coolness ..!" which would be meaningless if the nature
of fire were not to burn, and which therefore refutes a priori and divinely the
Asharite opinion.
4. Let it be noted that, just as there is a "relatively
absolute" — the logical absurdity of this formulation does not preclude
its ontologically plausible meaning — so too is there a "naturally
supernatural," and this is precisely the permanent divine intervention, in
virtue of immanence, in cosmic causality.