/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 con tradictory, 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 “non-human”; 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 neces sary to repeat that if the individual were a com plete 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 manifes tations, 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 mani festation, 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.

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

https://discord.gg/gUFx4F4h