Tag: Rene Guenon

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The Bodhisattva in Consciousness

In Letter XXI, the Fool, Valentin Tomberg describes the characteristics of the Bodhisattva to come:

He will not simply explain the profound meaning of revelation, but he will bring human beings themselves to attain to the illuminating experience of revelation, of a kind that it will not be he who will win authority, but rather He who is “the true light that enlightens every man coming into the world” (John 1:9)—Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, who is the way, the truth and the life.

Not very long ago, a Jain was explaining that his people were expecting the coming of the next avatar. I asked him how he would recognize the avatar when he appeared. He was flummoxed by the question and told me he would get back to me after consulting with his guru in India. Needless to say, he never got back to me.

So how would we, in the West in our time, recognize the Bodhisattva when he comes? Does he arrive with a certificate of authenticity, a diploma, a letter of introduction? Perhaps he will appear on TV or even perform an occasional miracle? Rudolf Steiner made the same point this way:

It is certainly true that in our time there is a rooted disinclination to recognise genius in human beings. But on the other hand, mental laziness is very prevalent, with the result that people are only too ready to acknowledge some individual as a great soul, merely on authority.

The disinclination is the lack of the ability to recognize a higher teaching, or even the denial that such a teaching is possible. Although Tomberg warned about this, the personal and subjective elements are much more attractive than pure intellectuality. Mental laziness is tied to the “bandwagon effect”, so that a “great soul” is confounded with a “greatly popular soul”. Tomberg then gives us a clue:

The mission of the Buddha-Avatar to come will therefore not be the foundation of a new religion, but rather that of bringing human beings to firsthand experience of the source itself of all revelation ever received from above by mankind, as also of all essential truth ever conceived of by mankind. It will not be novelty to which he will aspire, but rather the conscious certainty of eternal truth.

We see that we will not recognize the Bodhisattva not through anything external, but rather by re-experiencing firsthand what the Bodhisattva experienced. Before considering Tomberg’s description of that experience, a short detour is necessary.

The Right Track

The teaching of moral development is not the same as the impulse for such development. ~ Rudolf Steiner

For the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power. 1 Corinthians 4:20

Tomberg claimed that Rudolf Steiner was “on the right track” in his understanding of the coming Bodhisattva. Now there are several areas of incompatibility between Steiner and Tomberg, so we will focus solely on what may have been on the right track. In 1911, Steiner delivered a lecture in Milan titled Buddha and Christ: The Sphere of the Bodhisattvas. There he expanded on a legend from the Middle Ages about the Bodhisattva:

Consciousness of this truth was demonstrated in a beautiful legend written down by John of Damascus in the eighth century and well known throughout Europe in the Middle Ages. It is the legend of Barlaam and Joshaphat, which relates how he who had become the successor of Buddha (Joshaphat is a phonetic variation of ‘Bodhisattva’) received teaching from Barlaam about the Christ Impulse. The legend, which was subsequently forgotten, tells us that the Bodhisattva who succeeded Gautama Buddha was instructed by Barlaam and his soul was fired by the Christian Impulse. This was the second impulse which, in addition to that of Buddha, continues to work in the evolution of humanity. It is the Christ Impulse and is connected with the future ascent of humanity to Morality. Although Buddha’s teaching is in a particular sense moral teaching, the Christ Impulse is not teaching but actual power which works as such and to an increasing degree imbues mankind with moral strength.

That passage makes the important distinction between a moral teaching (as an intellectual exercise) and the power to act on that teaching.

The Two Streams

In our period of evolution, two streams of spiritual life are at work; one of them is the stream of Wisdom, or the Buddha-stream, containing the most sublime teaching of wisdom, goodness of heart and peace on Earth. To enable this teaching of Buddha to permeate the hearts of all men, the Christ Impulse is indispensable. The second stream is the Christ-stream itself which will lead humanity from intellectuality, by way of aesthetic feeling and insight, to morality. ~ Rudolf Steiner

Tomberg sees the two streams in a slightly different way. He recognizes the Buddha-stream like Steiner, but he attributes the second stream to the coming of the Kalki Avatar as taught in Hinduism. The first stream represents spiritual humanism, i.e., the realization of all human possibilities on the natural plane. The second stream represents spiritual religion, or the realization of supernatural possibilities.

The two activities that will activate these possibilities are respectively meditation and prayer.

Spirituality and Intellectuality

Even if the Bodhisattva arrives on the historical plane, we will recognize him by his inner teaching. Specifically, we need to re-enact the spiritual alchemy in our own consciousness; only then we will recognize the Bodhisattva. There are three stages:

  • the experience of the separation and opposition of the spiritual and intellectual elements within one’s soul
  • advancement to parallelism, i.e. a kind of “peaceful coexistence” of these two elements
  • cooperation between spirituality and intellectuality which, proving to be fruitful, eventually becomes the complete fusion of these two elements in a third element —the “philosopher’s stone” of the spiritual alchemy of Hermetism.

The third stage is reached when the intellectual life if no longer dominated by formal logic, but passes through organic logic and finally to moral logic. The urge to dispute, argue, analyze, and judge is the fruit of formal logic. This stage is dominated by the reign of quantity.

Organic logic deals with qualities rather than quantities. It sees the whole, while formal logic focuses on the parts. The former synthesizes, the latter analyzies.

Finally, moral logic deals with values. This manner of thinking is invisible to those on the first stage of formal logic. Using Tomberg’s example, the world, in terms of formal logic, operates by logical and natural necessity. However, according to moral logic, the world is created in an act of love. “Hate and indifference are not creative,” only love is. Vatican I made the dogmatic declaration that Christian faith could not be compelled by natural or formal logic. Otherwise, androids would all become Christians.

So Tomberg can assert that the essential articles of faith are established by moral logic. Hence, God is Love or else there would have been no creation. A big bang has no desire to create a universe. The soul is immortal, or else morality would make no sense. Man is free, otherwise he could not even be moral. Moral logic is the language of the spiritual world, so we should be sure to make it part of our prayer life.

Prayer and Meditation

Moral logic is, as Tomberg asserts, the logic of the head and heart united. It unites meditation and prayer. He describes prayer in these words:

Prayer—which asks, thanks, worships and blesses —is the radiation, the breath and the warmth of the awakened heart: expressed in formulae of the articulated word, in the wordless inner sighing of the soul and, lastly, in the silence, both outward and inward, of the breathing of the soul immersed in the element of divine respiration and breathing in unison with it.

Prayer has three aspects:

  • Magical aspect: formulaic and liturgical prayer
  • Gnostic aspect: an inexpressible inner sighing
  • Mystical aspect: the silence of union with the Divine

Meditation, which is the gradual deepening of thought, also has three stages:

  • Pure and simple concentration on a subject
  • Understanding the subject within the totality of relationships that is has with reality
  • Intuitive penetration into the very essence of the subject

Tomberg repeats Rene Guenon’s writings on this topic, and it is worth repeating here:

Metaphysics is not human knowledge. Thus, it is not in so far as he is man that man can attain it; it is the grasping in effective consciousness of supra-individual states. The very principle of metaphysical realisation is identification through knowledge—according to Aristotle’s axiom: a being is all that he knows.

The most important means is concentration. Realisation consists initially in the unlimited development of all possibilities contained virtually in the individual, then in finally going beyond the world of forms to a degree of universality which is that of pure being.

The final aim of metaphysical realisation is the absolutely unconditioned state, free from all limitation. The liberated being is then truly in possession of the fullness of his possibilities. This is union with the supreme Principle.

Christian Meditation

Guenon’s teaching is correct as far as it goes. Nevertheless, Christian meditation seeks to go beyond even that. God is revealed both through Scriptures and Creation. Christian meditation therefore seeks a more complete consciousness and appreciation of Christ’s work of redemption. Hence, the subject of mediation will be the seven stages of the Passion, for example. There are further subjects for mediation which will be covered at a different time. But the goal is to return to the state of primordial purity before the Fall.

By the alchemical marriage of prayer and meditation, we may recognize the Bodhisattva.

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Have You Ever Drunk the Silence?

Concentration without effort … is your life tossed to and fro by random events, thoughts, feelings? Or do you live life consciously? It begins with Silence …

Le Bateleur

Rene Guenon claimed that at times when the authorities had lost the inner meaning of things, initiates would pose as jugglers or horse traders. That way, they could travel from village to village, under cover as it were, to meet with other initiates. One can imagine them carrying Tarot cards as a teaching tool, since they appear to be a harmless game, and are much more compact than transporting a library. That is how I see the first card, Le Bateleur (the Juggler or Magician), as an itinerant initiate. The name of the card is a French pun on “the low deceives you” (“le bas te leurre”), but the initiates are not deceived.

Valentin Tomberg relates this card to “concentration without effort”, reminiscent of Taoism, which is the necessary first step on the journey through the deck. Our Friend writes:

Concentration without effort, which means there is nothing to suppress and where contemplation becomes as natural as breathing and the beating of the heart, is the state of consciousness — of the intellect, the imagination, the feelings, and the will — a state of perfect calm, accompanied by the complete relaxation of the nerves and muscles of the body. It is the deep silence of desires, concerns, imagination, memory, and discursive thought. We would say that the entire being has become like the surface of calm waters reflecting the immense presence of the starry sky and its inexpressible harmony. And the waters are deep, oh how deep! And the silence increases, always increasing, what SILENCE! Its growth takes place in regular waves which pass, one after the other, through your being: one wave of silence followed by another wave of deeper silence, then yet another wave of even deeper silence … Have you ever drunk the silence. If so, you know what concentration without effort it.

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The Kind Heart

In Insights into Christian Esoterism Rene Guenon points out that the traditional significance of the heart refers to the intellect and not to feelings. This is one of the clues to unlocking the secret language of Dante of the Divine Comedy.

The cuore gentile [kind heart] of the Fedeli d’Amore is the heart purified, that is, devoid of all that concerns worldly objects, and by this very fact made ready to receive interior illumination. It is remarkable that an identical doctrine is found in Taoism.

What is also remarkable is that an identical doctrine is found in Meditations on the Tarot. On the Bateleur, Valentin Tomberg writes:

The first Arcanum, the underlying principle of the other 21 Major Arcana of the Tarot, is that of the connection between personal effort and spiritual reality. It holds the first place in the series because if one does not understand it (i.e., grasped in cognitive and realized practical experience), one will not know what to do with all the other arcana. For it is the Bateleur who is called to reveal the practical method relating to all the arcana.

So here are the two terms in the connection.

  1. Personal Effort: the heart purified.
  2. Spiritual Reality: interior illumination.

We can immediately see the connection between the practice of the Fedeli d’Amore and the first two arcana. In the second Arcana of the High Priestess, where we learn to clarify the soul as was pointed out in The Word is made Flesh. So for Dante, the personal effort of purifying the heart makes it ready to receive the interior illumination of the spirit.

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The Church of John

John IconAt the end of his Gospel, John mentions that Peter was questioning Jesus’ relation with John. Jesus replied bluntly, “What’s it to you?”

In Meditations on the Tarot, Tomberg brings up the often-made distinction between the Church of Peter and the Church of John, the former structured and hierarchical, the latter free and mystical. Someone asked me the question: “Does the Roman Catholic Church need Hermetism?” To answer properly, the question needs to be adjusted: “Does the Church of Peter need Hermetism?” and the answer to this question is “certainly not”.

The real question is really about the Church of John, and there are several questions: “Does it even exist, has it existed continuously, is its core Hermetism?”

According to the theologian Hans Ur von Balthazar, it does exist (The von Balthazar Reader, #66), although he calls the two churches “Official Church” and “Church of Love”, and its source can be found in the Gospel of John. He says there is a two-peaked church in harmonious tension, although the Church of John respectfully gives precedence to the Church of Peter. There are no clear boundaries between the two. This interesting discussion concludes with this:

Between these two impossible ecclesiologies, the Gospel of John leaves and dismisses us in a suspended middle point whose foundation lies solely with the Lord. The last thing said to the servant Peter, the last word of the Lord in the gospel, is the admonition (for the church and theology of all times), “What’s it to you?”

So the Church of John exists and has existed continuously. The next question is about Hermetism. There have been many clues about this. Dionysius, Clement of Alexandria, Origen are close to Hermetism. There were the alchemists, Ramon Lull, Ficino, Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin … all clues that Hermetism has always existed in the Church and only occasionally makes a public appearance.

Rene Guenon claims that the Church used to have an esoteric teaching which he claims was Hermetism. He points to Dante as a member of an esoteric order, and even Thomas Aquinas. The Templars, the Grail Legend, the story of the Magi, Medieval Romances, St Bernard, Ramon Lull, Michael Scott, and so on, all point to the existence of a Christian esoterism. In Perspectives on Initiation, Guenon writes in a similar vein about a dual church:

Within a single organization, a kind of double hierarchy can exist, especially when the apparent leaders are themselves unaware of any link to a spiritual center. In such cases there may exist beside the visible hierarchy made up by those apparent leaders, an invisible hierarchy of which the members may not fulfill any ‘official’ function but who, by their presence alone, nonetheless assure an effective liaison with this center. In the more exterior organizations these representatives of the spiritual centers obviously need not reveal themselves as such …

Tomberg and van Balthazar agree on the Church of John. It is not separate from the Church of Peter on which it depends for structure and support. Rather it is a less formal entity, in parallel with, yet not opposed to, the official church. Historically, there have been times they got along, and other times in opposition. With the destruction of the Templars, came the Rosicrusians who found themselves opposed to the Church. Then other Hermetists, such as Cagliostro, Giordano Bruno, or Thomas Campanella were imprisoned and even executed.

Yet to create a visible Church of John with its own separate structure, clergy, doctrine, and so on is, in my opinion, a mistake; actually I believe it to be impossible. That is because it will eventually degenerate into a vacuous, undifferentiated and amorphous entity, not holding firm to anything in particular. As a witness to that, we need only point to the various so-called New Age and occult movements active today.

The Church of John is in your heart and mind, especially when you are joined with 2 or 3 others. So to any self-appointed guardians of orthodoxy, I ask “What’s it to you?”

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The Word is Silence Expressed

Major Arcanum 1

The Multiple States of the Being is Rene Guenon‘s fundamental work on metaphysics. In it he explains that “just as Unity (Being) is nothing but the metaphysical Zero (Non-Being) affirmed, the word is silence expressed.” That is, Silence contains within itself the possibility of the Word.

But the Silence is more than the word. The latter is silence expressed, but Silence must needs include as well the inexpressible. Hence, Silence is related to mystery, which refers to something inexpressible, not incomprehensible (which is a common misconception). The implication here is that the understanding of a mystery requires intuition, a direct knowing of the inexpressible; what can be expressed can, on the other hand, be known through discursive thought.

Guenon makes some interesting etymological connections. The Greek mysterion derives from myein which means “to be silent”. The same root mu in Latin is used in mutus, “mute”, but more significantly in the word mythos, “myth”. So a myth refers to that which is inexpressible, that is, something that can only be expressed indirectly by means of symbolic representations.

In Meditations on the Tarot, this Silence is related to concentration without effort. To know this Silence is to be this Silence. That is, the discursive mind is quieted of its thoughts, images, desires. This is a concentration, not of something, but the effortless concentration of the Silence. We read there:

Concentration without effort, which means there is nothing to suppress and where contemplation becomes as natural as breathing and the beating of the heart, is the state of consciousness — of the intellect, the imagination, the feelings, and the will — a state of perfect calm, accompanied by the complete relaxation of the nerves and muscles of the body. It is the deep silence of desires, concerns, imagination, memory, and discursive thought. We would say that the entire being has become like the surface of calm waters reflecting the immense presence of the starry sky and its inexpressible harmony. And the waters are deep, oh how deep! And the silence increases, always increasing, what SILENCE! Its growth takes place in regular waves which pass, one after the other, through your being: one wave of silence followed by another wave of deeper silence, then yet another wave of even deeper silence … Have you ever drunk the silence. If so, you know what concentration without effort it.