Metaphysics
Reality immediately reveals itself to man as being absolute. The very term implies that anything which does not participate in it is pure nothingness. It is beyond all opposition, beyond any limitation, hence it is without-duality (Advaita Vedanta in Sanskrit). In this principial state (or non-state to be more accurate), every possibility is contained in its pure Essence. From this knowledge, which reveals itself directly to our intuition, it is possible to trace a path leading downward from the principial, to the conditioned state of human and cosmic existence. The Absolute is by definition Infinite, that is to say it is unlimited, and if it were not so it could not be identified with the term reality, which is all embracing. It is necessary therefore that for every possibility to be realized, the Absolute must ‘radiate’ its content through indefinite degrees and variations, eventually resulting in the diversity of universal manifestation.
A reservation must be made here in order that our statements here are not misunderstood; when speaking of anything which is not the Infinite and unconditioned itself, we are necessarily speaking of an illusion, because from the point of view of the Absolute every possibility is already fully realised and contained within the principle. For this reason the notion of change is completely alien to metaphysical speculation, and any temporal or spatial symbolism that may be employed serves purely as illustration, and should under no circumstances be taken literally, these being conditions which apply only to corporeal existence. In reality there can be no common measure between an endless extension in time, space, or number and the Infinite, because the conditions mentioned contitute their limitations, and limitations can have no part in the unlimited. Modern people are prone to thinking of infinity as a number, even though it cannot be defined numerically. An endless extension in number should therefore be called indefinite, rather than infinite, in order to avoid confusion.
Given that nothing can exist outside the Absolute except in a purely illusory manner, it is central to metaphysics that any object which reveals itself to man is necessarily a symbol which communicates some aspect of the Absolute. Nature exists purely as a symbolic expression of Truth which is its essential content. Traditionalist author Frithjof Schuon commonly employs a spatial symbolism whereby the Absolute is represented by a point, its Infinity with rays emanating from that point, and its third quality Perfection with a circle which binds those rays. In religious terminology these three aspects are often known by the terms God, Love and Creation.
Two things must be understood clearly to make this symbolic expression of metaphysical truths strictly accurate. Firstly, that the point itself contains the rays and the circle in principle, so that these only appear in an illusory manner and from a limited point of view. Secondly, that the point itself, despite being all-possibility in relation to everything that surrounds it, is already limited by its location, and even more so by the fact that its visualization already implies the distinction between subject and object, whereas symbolically the point contains both. This brings us to the most subtle distinction of all. This is the distinction between the unconditioned, and the first conditioned state of existence.
Reality is without any condition or limitation whatsoever. The first conditioned state which may be discerned within Reality is Being. The condition of Being is self-awareness. Although there is no distinction in Being between subject and object, the division is implied, whereas without any condition whatsoever the distinction cannot be made. Containing as it does the elements of Being and Consciousness, for these cannot exist apart from one another, being reducible to two aspects of the same thing. Being is the immediate principle of manifestation, for these two elements are combined in every form, be it the mental form of the human, where Consciousness predominates, or the physical forms of lifeless matter, where Being predominates. It is of interest here that in order for universal possibilities to be fully realized, one of the elements may be manifested to a greater or lesser degree where this is not usually the case. Examples are the diamond, which is, metaphysically speaking, intelligent matter, and the bug, which is Consciousness reduced to a mere animation of matter which is otherwise lifeless. This should suffice as an explanation as to why the former is beautiful and the latter repulsive.
The third element in Being, after Consciousness, is the logical intersection of these two, and is in a sense the reduction of these two elements to unity. This is Bliss, which completes the Hindu ternary Sat (Being), Chit (Consciousness), Ananda (Bliss). This ternary necessarily corresponds to the ternary of Absolute, Infinite, Perfect, which we have already discussed, given that all aspects of existence must be in some way analogous to others, given that they are all outward appearances of the Absolute which is without duality. This law of correspondence is also a fundamental law in the science of cosmology, which we will discuss further on.
Metaphysical knowledge differs from every other type of knowledge because it alone is immediate. From what has been said, it is already evident that the true center of every individual state of existence is the Absolute itself, for it is only through it that they exist. It is only through illusory limitations which apply in a relative way that the being can perceive itself as individual. The realization of our true nature as the Absolute is central to every metaphysical organization, and they expound the various methods by which this realization can be achieved. What they all have in common is the agreement that pure knowledge is fundamentally the same as being, that is to say we can only know what we are, “the soul is all that it knows” as Aristotle says. It is for this reason that the soul must be pure in order to attain realization. The impure soul which is bound to earthly desires is unreceptive to the Divine, whereas the pure soul is like the perfectly receptive feminine principle. It is the goal of spiritual life to receive illumination ‘from within’, so that we move from a state of knowing only through indirect rationality and empirical observances, which are lunar types of knowledge because they require premises outside themselves and do not identify the subject (knower) with the object (known) completely, to a solar knowledge, in which the subject and object are identified with each other, therefore the knower becomes the known and also his own light, no longer relying on an outward source. In the corporeal domain, the moon is illuminated by the sun but still remains apart from it, but in the spiritual domain, when man is illuminated by God, there is no longer any separation between them, as the appearance of duality is now seen for what it is, an illusion. This type of knowledge, which is direct and therefore infallible, much like our knowledge of the individual consciousness, which is obviously unquestionable, is called intellectual intuition by traditionalists, and is fundamental to metaphysical understanding.
Intellectual intuition is inconceivable to most modern people, including and possibly applying with even greater force to modern philosophers, whose theories are always purely rational in nature, and modern scientists, whose theories are always purely empirical in nature. It is because these thinkers always rely on indirect and reflective knowledge that they are never able to reconcile all the contradictions they encounter, and so are forced to patch over these with new and ever more complex theories, which in turn are discredited. The knowledge modern man attains in these fields begins in an illusory realm of opposites, and as such it can never come to any conclusion. Without a central point of reference which would render it stable, the modern men who seek knowledge in these realms wander aimlessly, unable to comprehend the reason for their own impotence. This is not to say that the facts collected by modern scientists are untrue, but they are purely relative, and by treating them as if they were absolute scientists are often draw false conclusions from physical facts, Darwinism being the classic example.