BOOK
OF GEMS
Dr. Abdul Lathief
(This Book contains Excerpts
and Quotes from Three Greatest Classics ;Viveka Chudamani- Sankara-India;
Fusus-al-Hikam- Ibn Arabi-Spain ; Encyclopedia of Philosophical
Sciences- G.W.F.Hegel-Germany.)
For my online book "Philosophical Reflections" visit http://lathief1.tripod.com/reflections.htm
I : Viveka Chudamani(Crest-Jewel of Wisdom) :(Sri Sankara-India-788-820)
(Sri Sankara is the father of "Advaita" Philosophy(Non-Dualism; Absolute Monism).Viveka Chudamani is his masterpiece explaining Advaita doctrine. Many consider him as the Grand Master From the Ancient Ages)
2. For all beings a human birth is difficult to obtain, more so is a male body; rarer than that is Brahmanahood; rarer still is the attachment to the path of Vedic religion; higher than this is erudition in the scriptures; discrimination between the Self and not-Self, Realisation, and continuing in a state of identity with Brahman - these come next in order. (This kind of) Mukti (Liberation) is not to be attained except through the well-earned merits of a hundred crore of births.
3. These are three things which are rare indeed and are due to the grace of God - namely, a human birth, the longing for Liberation, and the protecting care of a perfected sage
6. Let people quote the Scriptures and sacrifice to the gods, let them perform rituals and worship the deities, but there is no Liberation without the realisation of one’s identity with the Atman
8. Therefore the man of learning should strive his best for Liberation, having renounced his desire for pleasures from external objects, duly approaching a good and generous preceptor, and fixing his mind on the truth inculcated by him
11. Work leads to purification of the mind, not to perception of the Reality. The realisation of Truth is brought about by discrimination and not in the least by ten million of acts.
12. By adequate reasoning the conviction of the reality about the rope is gained, which puts an end to the great fear and misery caused by the snake worked up in the deluded mind.
13. The conviction of the Truth is seen to proceed from reasoning upon the salutary counsel of the wise, and not by bathing in the sacred waters, nor by gifts, nor by a hundred Pranayamas (control of the vital force).
15. Hence the seeker after the Reality of the Atman should take to reasoning, after duly approaching the Guru - who should be the best of the knowers of Brahman, and an ocean of mercy.
17. The man who discriminates between the Real and the unreal, whose mind is turned away from the unreal, who possesses calmness and the allied virtues, and who is longing for Liberation, is alone considered qualified to enquire after Brahman
18. Regarding this, sages have spoken of four means of attainment, which alone being present, the devotion to Brahman succeeds, and in the absence of which, it fails.
19. First is enumerated discrimination between the Real and the unreal; next comes aversion to the enjoyment of fruits (of one’s actions) here and hereafter; (next is) the group of six attributes, viz. calmness and the rest; and (last) is clearly the yearning for Liberation.
20. A firm conviction of the mind to the effect that Brahman is real and the universe unreal, is designated as discrimination (Viveka) between the Real and the unreal.
21. Vairagya or renunciation is the desire to give up all transitory enjoyments (ranging) from those of an (animate) body to those of Brahmahood (having already known their defects) from observation, instruction and so forth.
22. The resting of the mind steadfastly on its Goal (viz. Brahman) after having detached itself from manifold sense-objects by continually observing their defects, is called Shama or calmness.
23. Turning both kinds of sense-organs away from sense-objects and placing them in their respective centres, is called Dama or self-control. The best Uparati or self-withdrawal consists in the mind-function ceasing to be affected by external objects.
24. The bearing of all afflictions without caring to redress them, being free (at the same time) from anxiety or lament on their score, is called Titiksha or forbearance.
25. Acceptance by firm judgment as true of what the Scriptures and the Guru instruct, is called by sages Shraddha or faith, by means of which the Reality is perceived.
26. Not the mere indulgence of thought (in curiosity) but the constant concentration of the intellect (or the affirming faculty) on the ever-pure Brahman, is what is called Samadhana or self-settledness.
27. Mumukshuta or yearning for Freedom is the desire to free oneself, by realising one’s true nature, from all bondages from that of egoism to that of the body - bondages superimposed by Ignorance.
31. Among things conducive to Liberation, devotion (Bhakti) holds the supreme place. The seeking after one’s real nature is designated as devotion.
37. There are good souls, calm and magnanimous, who do good to others as does the spring, and who, having themselves crossed this dreadful ocean of birth and death, help others also to cross the same, without any motive whatsoever
45. Reasoning on the meaning of the Vedanta leads to efficient knowledge, which is immediately followed by the total annihilation of the misery born of relative existence.
46. Faith (Shraddha), devotion and the Yoga of meditation - these are mentioned by the Shruti as the immediate factors of Liberation in the case of a seeker; whoever abides in these gets Liberation from the bondage of the body, which is the conjuring of Ignorance.
47. It is verily through the touch of Ignorance that thou who art the Supreme Self findest thyself under the bondage of the non-Self, whence alone proceeds the round of births and deaths. The fire of knowledge, kindled by the discrimination between these two, burns up the effects of Ignorance together with their root
51. A father has got his sons and others to free him from his debts, but he has got none but himself to remove his bondage
54. The true nature of things is to be known personally, through the eye of clear illumination, and not through a sage: what the moon exactly is, is to be known with one’s own eyes; can others make him know it ?
56. Neither by Yoga, nor by Sankhya, nor by work, nor by learning, but by the realisation of one's identity with Brahman is Liberation possible, and by no other means
59. The study of the Scriptures is useless so long as the highest Truth is unknown, and it is equally useless when the highest Truth has already been known
61. For one who has been bitten by the serpent of Ignorance, the only remedy is the knowledge of Brahman. Of what avail are the Vedas and (other) Scriptures, Mantras (sacred formulae) and medicines to such a one ?
63. Without causing the objective universe to vanish and without knowing the truth of the Self, how is one to achieve Liberation by the mere utterance of the word Brahman ? -- It would result merely in an effort of speech.
65. As a treasure hidden underground requires (for its extraction) competent instruction, excavation, the removal of stones and other such things lying above it and (finally) grasping, but never comes out by being (merely) called out by name, so the transparent Truth of the self, which is hidden by Maya and its effects, is to be attained through the instructions of a knower of Brahman, followed by reflection, meditation and so forth, but not through perverted arguments
69. The first step to Liberation is the extreme aversion to all perishable things, then follow calmness, self-control, forbearance, and the utter relinquishment of all work enjoined in the Scriptures.
70. Then come hearing, reflection on that, and long, constant and unbroken meditation on the Truth for the Muni. After that the learned seeker attains the supreme Nirvikalpa state and realises the bliss of Nirvana even in this life
72. Composed of the seven ingredients, viz.
marrow, bones, fat, flesh, blood, skin and cuticle, and consisting of the
following limbs and their parts – legs, thighs, the chest, arms, the back and
the head:
73. This body, reputed to be the abode of the
delusion of ‘I and mine’, is designated by sages as the gross body. The sky,
air, fire, water and earth are subtle elements. They –
74. Being united with parts of one another and becoming gross, (they) form the gross body. And their subtle essences form sense-objects – the group of five such as sound, which conduce to the happiness of the experiencer, the individual soul.
77. Sense-objects are even more virulent in their evil effects than the poison of the cobra. Poison kills one who takes it, but those others kill one who even looks at them through the eyes
78. He who is free from the terrible snare of the hankering after sense-objects, so very difficult to get rid of, is alone fit for Liberation, and none else - even though he be versed in all the six Shastras.
80. He who has killed the shark known as sense-object with the sword of
mature dispassion, crosses the
82. If indeed thou hast a craving for Liberation, shun sense-objects from a good distance as thou wouldst do poison, and always cultivate carefully the nectar-like virtues of contentment, compassion, forgiveness, straight-forwardness, calmness and self-control.
83. Whoever leaves aside what should always be attempted, viz. emancipation from the bondage of Ignorance without beginning, and passionately seeks to nourish this body, which is an object for others to enjoy, commits suicide thereby.
84. Whoever seeks to realise the Self by devoting himself to the nourishment of the body, proceeds to cross a river by catching hold of a crocodile, mistaking it for a log.
88. The gross body is produced by one’s past
actions out of the gross elements formed by the union of the subtle elements
with each other, and is the medium of experience for the soul. That is its
waking state in which it perceives gross objects.
92. The ears, skin, eyes, nose and tongue are
organs of knowledge, for they help us to cognise objects; the vocal organs,
hands, legs, etc., are organs of action, owing to their tendency to work.
93-94. The inner organ (Antahkarana) is called
Manas, Buddhi, ego or Chitta, according to their respective functions: Manas,
from its considering the pros and cons of a thing; Buddhi, from its property of
determining the truth of objects; the ego, from its identification with this
body as one’s own self; and Chitta, from its function of remembering things it
is interested in.
95. One and the same Prana (vital force) becomes Prana, Apana, Vyana, Udana and Samana according to their diversity of functions and modifications, like gold, water, etc.
96. The five organs of action such as speech,
the five organs of knowledge such as the ear, the group of five Pranas, the
five elements ending with the ether, together with Buddhi and the rest as also
Nescience, desire and action – these eight "cities" make up what is
called the subtle body.
97. Listen – this subtle body, called also the
Linga body, is produced out of the elements before their subdividing and
combining with each other, is possessed of latent impressions and causes the
soul to experience the fruits of its past actions. It is a beginningless
superimposition on the soul brought on by its own ignorance.
98-99. Dream is a state of the soul distinct from the waking state, where it shines by itself. In dreams Buddhi, by itself, takes on the role of the agent and the like, owing to various latent impressions of the waking state, while the supreme Atman shines in Its own glory – with Buddhi as Its only superimposition, the witness of everything, and is not touched by the least work that Buddhi does. As It is wholly unattached, It is not touched by any work that Its superimpositions may perform
104. Know that it is egoism which, identifying itself with the body, becomes the doer or experiencer, and in conjunction with the Gunas such as the Sattva, assumes the three different states.
105. When sense-objects are favourable it becomes happy, and it becomes miserable when the case is contrary. So happiness and misery are characteristics of egoism, and not of the ever-blissful Atman
106. Sense-objects are pleasurable only as dependent on the Atman manifesting through them, and not independently, because the Atman is by Its very nature the most beloved of all. Therefore the Atman is ever blissful, and never suffers misery.
107. That in profound sleep we experience the
bliss of the Atman independent of sense-objects, is clearly attested by the
Shruti, direct perception, tradition and inference.
108. Avidya (Nescience) or Maya, called also the
Undifferentiated, is the power of the Lord. She is without beginning, is made
up of the three Gunas and is superior to the effects (as their cause). She is
to be inferred by one of clear intellect only from the effects She produces. It
is She who brings forth this whole universe.
109. She is neither existent nor non-existent nor partaking of both characters; neither same nor different nor both; neither composed of parts nor an indivisible whole nor both. She is most wonderful and cannot be described in words
.110. Maya can be destroyed by the realisation of the pure Brahman, the one without a second, just as the mistaken idea of a snake is removed by the discrimination of the rope.
111. Rajas has its Vikshepa-Shakti or projecting
power, which is of the nature of an activity, and from which this primeval flow
of activity has emanated. From this also, mental modifications such as
attachment and grief are continually produced.
113. Avriti or the veiling power is the power of
Tamas, which makes things appear other than what they are. It is this that
causes man’s repeated transmigrations, and starts the action of the projecting
power (Vikshepa).
117. Pure Sattva is (clear) like water, yet in
conjunction with Rajas and Tamas it makes for transmigration. The reality of
the Atman becomes reflected in Sattva and like the sun reveals the entire world
of matter.
119. The traits of pure Sattva are cheerfulness, the realisation of one’s own Self, supreme peace, contentment, bliss, and steady devotion to the Atman, by which the aspirant enjoys bliss everlasting
120. This Undifferentiated, spoken of as the compound of the three Gunas, is the causal body of the soul. Profound sleep is its special state, in which the functions of the mind and all its organs are suspended.
122. The body, organs, Pranas, Manas, egoism,
etc., all modifications, the sense-objects, pleasure and the rest, the gross
elements such as the ether, in fact, the whole universe, up to the
Undifferentiated – all this is the non-Self.
123. From Mahat down to the gross body
everything is the effect of Maya: These and Maya itself know thou to be the
non-Self, and therefore unreal like the mirage in a desert
125. There is some Absolute Entity, the eternal substratum of the consciousness of egoism, the witness of the three states, and distinct from the five sheaths or coverings
126. Which knows everything that happens in the waking state, in dream and in profound sleep; which is aware of the presence or absence of the mind and its functions; and which is the background of the notion of egoism. – This is That.
127. Which Itself sees all, but which no one beholds, which illumines the intellect etc., but which they cannot illumine. - This is That.
128. By which this universe is pervaded, but which nothing pervades, which shining, all this (universe) shines as Its reflection. - This is That
131. This is the innermost Self, the primeval
Purusha (Being), whose essence is the constant realisation of infinite Bliss,
which is ever the same, yet reflecting through the different mental
modifications, and commanded by which the organs and Pranas perform their
functions.
134. It is neither born nor dies, It neither grows nor decays, nor does It undergo any change, being eternal. It does not cease to exist even when this body is destroyed, like the sky in a jar (after it is broken), for It is independent.
135. The Supreme Self, different from the Prakriti and its modifications, of the essence of Pure Knowledge, and Absolute, directly manifests this entire gross and subtle universe, in the waking and other states, as the substratum of the persistent sense of egoism, and manifests Itself as the Witness of the Buddhi, the determinative faculty.
136.By means of a regulated mind and the purified intellect (Buddhi), realise directly thy own Self in the body so as to identify thyself with It, cross the boundless ocean of Samsara whose waves are birth and death, and firmly established in Brahman as thy own essence, be blessed.
138. One who is overpowered by ignorance mistakes a thing for what it is not; It is the absence of discrimination that causes one to mistake a snake for a rope, and great dangers overtake him when he seizes it through that wrong notion. Hence, listen, my friend, it is the mistaking of transitory things as real that constitutes bondage.
139. This veiling power (Avriti), which
preponderates in ignorance, covers the Self, whose glories are infinite and
which manifests Itself through the power of knowledge, indivisible, eternal and
one without a second – as Rahu does the orb of the sun.
140. When his own Self, endowed with the purest splendour, is hidden from view, a man through ignorance falsely identifies himself with this body, which is the non-Self. And then the great power of rajas called the projecting power sorely afflicts him through the binding fetters of lust, anger, etc
142. As layers of clouds generated by the sun’s rays cover the sun and alone appear (in the sky), so egoism generated by the Self, covers the reality of the Self and appears by itself.
143. Just as, on a cloudy day, when the sun is swallowed up by dense clouds, violent cold blasts trouble them, so when the Atman is hidden by intense ignorance, the dreadful Vikshepa Shakti (projecting power) afflicts the foolish man with numerous griefs.
144. It is from these two powers that man’s
bondage has proceeded – beguiled by which he mistakes the body for the Self and
wanders (from body to body).
145. Of the tree of Samsara ignorance is the seed, the identification with the body is its sprout, attachment its tender leaves, work its water, the body its trunk, the vital forces its branches, the organs its twigs, the sense-objects its flowers, various miseries due to diverse works are its fruits, and the individual soul is the bird on it.
146. This bondage of the non-Self springs from ignorance, is self-caused, and is described as without beginning and end. It subjects one to the long train of miseries such as birth, death, disease and decrepitude.
147. This bondage can be destroyed neither by weapons nor by wind, nor by fire, nor by millions of acts - by nothing except the wonderful sword of knowledge that comes of discrimination, sharpened by the grace of the Lord.
149. Covered by the five sheaths – the material
one and the rest – which are the products of Its own power, the Self ceases to
appear, like the water of a tank by its accumulation of sedge.
151. When all the five sheaths have been eliminated, the Self of man appears – pure, of the essence of everlasting and unalloyed bliss, indwelling, supreme and self-effulgent.
152. To remove his bondage the wise man should discriminate between the Self and the non-Self. By that alone he comes to know his own Self as Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute and becomes happy.
153. He indeed is free who discriminates between all sense-objects and the indwelling, unattached and inactive Self - as one separates a stalk of grass from its enveloping sheath - and merging everything in It, remains in a state of identity with That.
154. This body of ours
is the product of food and comprises the material sheath; it lives on food and
dies without it;
157. That the Atman as the abiding Reality is different from the body, its characteristics, its activities, its states, etc., of which It is the witness, is self-evident.
160. The stupid man thinks he is the body, the book-learned man identifies himself with the mixture of body and soul, while the sage possessed of realisation due to discrimination looks upon the eternal Atman as his Self, and thinks, "I am Brahman".
163. Just as thou dost not identify thyself with the shadow-body, the image-body, the dream-body, or the body thou hast in the imaginations of thy heart, cease thou to do likewise with the living body also.
165. The Prana, with which we are all familiar,
coupled with the five organs of action, forms the vital sheath, permeated by
which the material sheath engages itself in all activities as if it were
living.
167. The organs of knowledge together with the
mind form the mental sheath – the cause of the diversity of things such as
"I" and "mine". It is powerful and endued with the faculty
of creating differences of name etc., It manifests itself as permeating the
preceding, i.e. the vital sheath.
169. There is no Ignorance (Avidya) outside the mind. The mind alone is Avidya, the cause of the bondage of transmigration. When that is destroyed, all else is destroyed, and when it is manifested, everything else is manifested.
170. In dreams, when there is no actual contact with the external world, the mind alone creates the whole universe consisting of the experiencer etc. Similarly in the waking state also; there is no difference. Therefore all this (phenomenal universe) is the projection of the mind.
171. In dreamless sleep, when the mind is reduced to its causal state, there exists nothing (for the person asleep), as is evident from universal experience. Hence man’s relative existence is simply the creation of his mind, and has no objective reality.
172. Clouds are brought in by the wind and again driven away by the same agency. Similarly, man’s bondage is caused by the mind, and Liberation too is caused by that alone.
174. Therefore the mind is the only cause that brings about man’s bondage or Liberation: when tainted by the effects of Rajas it leads to bondage, and when pure and divested of the Rajas and Tamas elements it conduces to Liberation.
175. Attaining purity through a preponderance of discrimination and renunciation, the mind makes for Liberation. Hence the wise seeker after Liberation must first strengthen these two.
176. In the forest-tract of sense-pleasures there prowls a huge tiger called the mind. Let good people who have a longing for Liberation never go there.
178. Deluding the Jiva, which is unattached Pure
Intelligence, and binding it by the ties of body, organs and Pranas, the mind
causes it to wander, with ideas of "I" and "mine", amidst
the varied enjoyment of results achieved by itself.
180. Hence sages who have fathomed its secret have designated the mind as Avidya or ignorance, by which alone the universe is moved to and fro, like masses of clouds by the wind.
181. Therefore the seeker after Liberation must carefully purify the mind. When this is purified, Liberation is as easy of access as a fruit on the palm of one’s hand.
182. He who by means of one-pointed devotion to Liberation roots out the attachment to sense-objects, renounces all actions, and with faith in the Real Brahman regularly practices hearing, etc., succeeds in purging the Rajasika nature of the intellect.
183. Neither can the mental sheath be the
Supreme Self, because it has a beginning and an end, is subject to modifications,
is characterised by pain and suffering and is an object; whereas the subject
can never be identified with the objects of knowledge.
184. The Buddhi with its modifications and the
organs of knowledge, forms the Vijnanamaya Kosha or knowledge sheath, of the
agent, having the characteristics which is the cause of man’s transmigration.
185. This knowledge sheath, which seems to be
followed by a reflection of the power of the Chit, is a modification of the
Prakriti, is endowed with the function of knowledge, and always wholly
identifies itself with the body, organs, etc.
186-187. It is without beginning, characterised
by egoism, is called the Jiva, and carries on all the activities on the
relative plane. Through previous desires it performs good and evil actions and
experiences their results. Being born in various bodies, it comes and goes, up
and down. It is this knowledge sheath that has the waking, dream and other
states, and experiences joy and grief.
189. The self-effulgent Atman, which is Pure Knowledge, shines in the midst of the Pranas, within the heart. Though immutable, It becomes the agent and experiencer owing to Its superimposition, the knowledge sheath.
190. Though the Self of
everything that exists, this Atman, Itself assuming the limitations of the
Buddhi and wrongly identifying Itself with this totally unreal entity, looks
upon Itself as something different – like earthen jars from the clay of which
they are made
191. Owing to Its connection with the super-impositions, the Supreme Self, even thou naturally perfect (transcending Nature) and eternally unchanging, assumes the qualities of the superimpositions and appears to act just as they do - like the changeless fire assuming the modifications of the iron which it turns red-hot.
196. The Jivahood of the Atman, the Witness, which is beyond qualities and beyond activity, and which is realised within as Knowledge and Bliss Absolute - has been superimposed by the delusion of the Buddhi, and is not real. And because it is by nature an unreality, it ceases to exist when the delusion is gone.
197. It exists only so long as the delusion lasts, being caused by indiscrimination due to an illusion. The rope is supposed to be the snake only so long as the mistake lasts, and there is no more snake when the illusion has vanished. Similar is the case here.
198-199. Avidya or Nescience and its effects are likewise considered as beginningless. But with the rise of Vidya or realisation, the entire effects of Avidya, even though beginningless, are destroyed together with their root - like dreams on waking up from sleep. It is clear that the phenomenal universe, even though without beginning, is not eternal - like previous non-existence
200-201. Previous non-existence, even though
beginningless, is observed to have an end. So the Jivahood which is imagined to
be in the Atman through its relation with superimposed attributes such as the
Buddhi, is not real; whereas the other (the Atman) is essentially different
from it. The relation between the Atman and the Buddhi is due to a false
knowledge.
202. The cessation of that superimposition takes place through perfect knowledge, and by no other means. Perfect knowledge, according to the Shrutis, consists in the realisation of the identity of the individual soul and Brahman.
203. This realisation is attained by a perfect discrimination between the Self and the non-Self. Therefore one must strive for the discrimination between the individual soul and the eternal Self.
204. Just as the water which is very muddy again appears as transparent water when the mud is removed, so the Atman also manifests Its undimmed lustre when the taint has been removed.
205. When the unreal ceases to exist, this very individual soul is definitely realised as the eternal Self. Therefore one must make it a point completely to remove things like egoism from the eternal Self.
206. This knowledge sheath (Vijnanamaya Kosha)
that we have been speaking of, cannot be the Supreme Self for the following
reasons - because it is subject to change, is insentient, is a limited thing,
an object of the senses, and is not constantly present: An unreal thing cannot
indeed be taken for the real Atman.
207. The blissful sheath (Anandamaya Kosha) is
that modification of Nescience which manifests itself catching a reflection of
the Atman which is Bliss Absolute; whose attributes are pleasure and the rest;
and which appears in view when some object agreeable to oneself presents
itself. It makes itself spontaneously felt by the fortunate during the fruition
of their virtuous deeds; from which every corporeal being derives great joy
without the least effort.
208. The blissful sheath has its fullest play
during profound sleep, while in the dreaming and wakeful states it has only a partial
manifestation, occasioned by the sight of agreeable objects and so forth.
209. Nor is the blissful sheath the Supreme
Self, because it is endowed with the changeful attributes, is a modification of
the Prakriti, is the effect of past good deeds, and imbedded in the other
sheaths which are modifications.
210. When all the five sheaths have been eliminated by the reasoning on Shruti passages, what remains as the culminating point of the process, is the Witness, the Knowledge Absolute – the Atman
211. This self-effulgent Atman which is distinct from the five sheaths, the Witness of the three states, the Real, the Changeless, the Untainted, the everlasting Bliss - is to be realised by the wise man as his own Self.
215. That which is perceived by something else has for its witness the latter. When there is no agent to perceive a thing, we cannot speak of it as having been perceived at all.
216. This Atman is a self-cognised entity because It is cognised by Itself. Hence the individual soul is itself and directly the Supreme Brahman, and nothing else.
217. That which clearly manifests Itself in the states of wakefulness, dream and profound sleep; which is inwardly perceived in the mind in various forms as an unbroken series of egoistic impressions; which witnesses the egoism, the Buddhi, etc., which are of diverse forms and modifications; and which makes Itself felt as the Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute; know thou this Atman, thy own Self, within thy heart.
218. Seeing the reflection of the sun mirrored in the water of a jar, the fool thinks it is the sun itself. Similarly the stupid man, through delusion, identifies himself with the reflection of the Chit caught in the Buddhi, which is Its superimposition
223. The realisation of one’s identity with Brahman is the cause of Liberation from the bonds of Samsara, by means of which the wise man attains Brahman, the One without a second, the Bliss Absolute.
225. Brahman is Existence, Knowledge, Infinity, pure, supreme, self-existent, eternal and indivisible Bliss, not different (in reality) from the individual soul, and devoid of interior or exterior. It is (ever) triumphant.
226. It is this Supreme Oneness which alone is real, since there is nothing else but the Self. Verily, there remains no other independent entity in the state of realisation of the highest Truth.
227. All this universe which through ignorance appears as of diverse forms, is nothing else but Brahman which is absolutely free from all the limitations of human thought
230. Similarly, the whole universe, being the effect of the real Brahman, is in reality nothing but Brahman. Its essence is That, and it does not exist apart from It. He who says it does is still under delusion - he babbles like one asleep.
231. This universe is verily Brahman - such is the august pronouncement of the Atharva Veda. Therefore this universe is nothing but Brahman, for that which is superimposed (on something) has no separate existence from its substratum
235. Therefore the universe does not exist apart from the Supreme Self; and the perception of its separateness is false like the qualities (of blueness etc., in the sky). Has a superimposed attribute any meaning apart from its substratum ? It is the substratum which appears like that through delusion.
236. Whatever a deluded man perceives through mistake, is Brahman and Brahman alone: The silver is nothing but the mother-of-pearl. It is Brahman which is always considered as this universe, whereas that which is superimposed on the Brahman, viz. the universe, is merely a name.
237-238. Hence whatever is manifested, viz. this universe, is the Supreme Brahman Itself, the Real, the One without a second, pure, the Essence of Knowledge, taintless, serene, devoid of beginning and end, beyond activity, the Essence of Bliss Absolute - transcending all the diversities created by Maya or Nescience, eternal, ever beyond the reach of pain, indivisible, immeasurable, formless, undifferentiated, nameless, immutable, self-luminous.
239. Sages realise the Supreme Truth, Brahman, in which there is no differentiation of knower, knowledge and known, which is infinite, transcendent, and the Essence of Knowledge Absolute.
240. Which can be neither thrown away nor taken up, which is beyond the reach of mind and speech, immeasurable, without beginning and end, the Whole, one’s very Self, and of surpassing glory.
243. This contradiction between them is created
by superimposition, and is not something real. This superimposition, in the
case of Ishwara (the Lord), is Maya or Nescience, which is the cause of Mahat
and the rest, and in the case of the Jiva (the individual soul), listen – the
five sheaths, which are the effects of Maya, stand for it.
246. Neither this gross nor this subtle universe (is the Atman). Being imagined, they are not real - like the snake seen in the rope, and like dreams. Perfectly eliminating the objective world in this way by means of reasoning, one should next realise the oneness that underlies Ishwara and the Jiva.
251. All modifications of clay, such as the jar, which are always accepted by the mind as real, are (in reality) nothing but clay. Similarly, this entire universe which is produced from the real Brahman, is Brahman Itself and nothing but That. Because there is nothing else whatever but Brahman, and That is the only self-existent Reality, our very Self, therefore art thou that serene, pure, Supreme Brahman, the One without a second.
252. As the place, time, objects, knower, etc., called up in dream are all unreal, so is also the world experienced here in the waking state, for it is all an effect of one’s own ignorance. Because this body, the organs, the Pranas, egoism, etc., are also thus unreal, therefore art thou that serene, pure, supreme Brahman, the One without a second.
254. That which is beyond caste and creed, family and lineage; devoid of name and form, merit and demerit; transcending space, time and sense-object - that Brahman art thou, meditate on this in thy mind.
255. That Supreme Brahman which is beyond the range of all speech, but accessible to the eye of pure illumination; which is pure, the Embodiment of Knowledge, the beginningless entity - that Brahman art thou, meditate on this in thy mind
257. That which is the substratum of the universe with its various subdivisions, which are all creations of delusion; which Itself has no other support; which is distinct from the gross and subtle; which has no parts, and has verily no exemplar - that Brahman art thou, meditate on this in thy mind.
258. That which is free from birth, growth, development, waste, disease and death; which is indestructible; which is the cause of the projection, maintenance and dissolution of the universe - that Brahman art thou, meditate on this in thy mind.
259. That which is free from differentiation; whose essence is never non-existent; which is unmoved like the ocean without waves; the ever-free; of indivisible Form - that Brahman art thou, meditate on this in thy mind.
260. That which, though One only, is the cause of the many; which refutes all other causes, but is Itself without cause; distinct from Maya and its effect, the universe; and independent - that Brahman art thou, meditate on this in thy mind.
261. That which is free from duality; which is infinite and indestructible; distinct from the universe and Maya, supreme, eternal; which is undying Bliss; taintless - that Brahman art thou, meditate on this in thy mind.
262. That Reality which (though One) appears variously owing to delusion, taking on names and forms, attributes and changes, Itself always unchanged, like gold in its modifications - that Brahman art thou, meditate on this in thy mind.
263. That beyond which there is nothing; which shines even above Maya, which again is superior to its effect, the universe; the inmost Self of all, free from differentiation; the Real Self, the Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute; infinite and immutable - that Brahman art thou, meditate on this in thy mind.
265. Realising in this body the Knowledge Absolute free from Nescience and its effects - like the king in an army - and being ever established in thy own Self by resting on that Knowledge, merge the universe in Brahman.
268. The idea of "me and mine" in the body, organs, etc., which are the non-Self - this superimposition the wise man must put a stop to, by identifying himself with the Atman.
269. Realising thy own Inmost Self, the Witness of the Buddhi and its modifications, and constantly revolving the positive thought, "I am That", conquer this identification with the non-Self
271. Owing to the desire to run after society, the passion for too much study of the Scriptures and the desire to keep the body in good trim, people cannot attain to proper Realisation.
272. For one who seeks deliverance from the prison of this world (Samsara), those three desires have been designated by the wise as strong iron fetters to shackle one’s feet. He who is free from them truly attains to Liberation
274. Like the fragrance of the sandal-wood, the perfume of the Supreme Self, which is covered with the dust of endless, violent impressions imbedded in the mind, when purified by the constant friction of Knowledge, is (again) clearly perceived.
275. The desire for Self-realisation is obscured by innumerable desires for things other than the Self. When they have been destroyed by the constant attachment to the Self, the Atman clearly manifests Itself of Its own accord.
276. As the mind becomes gradually established in the Inmost Self, it proportionately gives up the desires for external objects. And when all such desires have been eliminated, there takes place the unobstructed realisation of the Atman
278. Tamas is destroyed by both Sattva and
Rajas, Rajas by Sattva, and Sattva dies when purified. Therefore do way with
thy superimposition through the help of Sattva.
281. Realising thyself as the Self of all by means of Scripture, reasoning and by thy own realisation, do away thy superimposition, even when a trace of it seems to appear.
283. Through the realisation of the identity of Brahman and the soul, resulting from such great dicta as "Thou art That", do away with thy superimposition, with a view to strengthening thy identification with Brahman
288. Merging the finite soul in the Supreme Self, like the space enclosed by a jar in the infinite space, by means of meditation on their identity, always keep quiet, O sage
289. Becoming thyself the self-effulgent Brahman, the substratum of all phenomena - as that Reality give up both the macrocosm and the microcosm, like two filthy receptacles.
290. Transferring the identification now rooted in the body to the Atman, the Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute, and discarding the subtle body, be thou ever alone, independent(vivekachudamani)
292. That which is real and one’s own primeval Essence, that Knowledge and Bliss Absolute, the One without a second, which is beyond form and activity - attaining That one should cease to identify oneself with one’s false bodies, like an actor giving up his assumed mask.
294. But the real ‘I" is that which witnesses the ego and the rest. It exists always, even in the state of profound sleep. The Shruti itself says, "It is birthless, eternal", etc. Therefore the Paramatman is different from the gross and subtle bodies
296. Therefore give up the identification with this lump of flesh, the gross body, as well as with the ego or the subtle body, which are both imagined by the Buddhi. Realising thy own Self, which is Knowledge Absolute and not to be denied in the past, present or future, attain to Peace.
297. Cease to identify thyself with the family,
lineage, name, form and the order of life, which pertain to the body that is
like a rotten corpse (to a man of realisation). Similarly, giving up ideas of
agency and so forth, which are attributes of the subtle body, be the Essence of
Bliss Absolute.
298. Other obstacles are also observed to exist for men, which lead to transmigration. The root of them, for the above reasons, is the first modification of Nescience called egoism.
299. So long as one has any relation to this wicked ego, there should not be the least talk about Liberation, which is unique.
301. That which has been created by the Buddhi
extremely deluded by Nescience, and which is perceived in this body as "I
am such and such" – when that egoism is totally destroyed, one attains an
unobstructed identity with Brahman.
302. The treasure of the Bliss of Brahman is coiled round by the mighty and dreadful serpent of egoism, and guarded for its own use by means of its three fierce hoods consisting of the three Gunas. Only the wise man, destroying it by severing its three hoods with the great sword of realisation in accordance with the teachings of the Shrutis, can enjoy this treasure which confers bliss
304. Through the complete cessation of egoism, through the stoppage of the diverse mental waves due to it, and through the discrimination of the inner Reality, one realises that Reality as "I am This".
305. Give up immediately thy identification with egoism, the agent, which is by its nature a modification, is endued with a reflection of the Self, and diverts one from being established in the Self - identifying thyself with which thou hast come by this relative existence, full of the miseries of birth, decay and death, though thou art the Witness, the Essence of Knowledge and Bliss Absolute
308. Checking the activities of egoism etc., and giving up all attachment through the realisation of the Supreme Reality, be free from all duality through the enjoyment of the Bliss of Self, and remain quiet in Brahman, for thou hast attained thy infinite nature.
311. He alone who has identified himself with the body is greedy after sense-pleasures. How can one, devoid of the body-idea, be greedy (like him) ? Hence the tendency to think on the sense-objects is verily the cause of the bondage of transmigration, giving rise to an idea of distinction or duality.
312. When the effects are developed, the seed also is observed to be such, and when the effects are destroyed, the seed also is seen to be destroyed. Therefore one must subdue the effects
314. For the sake of breaking the chain of transmigration, the Sannyasin should burn to ashes those two; for thinking of the sense-objects and doing selfish acts lead to an increase of desires.
315-316. Augmented by these two, desires produce one’s transmigration. The way to destroy these three, however, lies in looking upon everything, under all circumstances, always, everywhere and in all respects, as Brahman and Brahman alone. Through the strengthening of the longing to be one with Brahman, those three are annihilated.
317. With the cessation of selfish action the brooding on the sense-objects is stopped, which is followed by the destruction of desires. The destruction of desires is Liberation, and this is considered as Liberation-in-life
318. When the desire for realising Brahman has a marked manifestation, the egoistic desires readily vanish, as the most intense darkness effectively vanishes before the glow of the rising sun.
319. Darkness and the numerous evils that attend on it are not noticed when the sun rises. Similarly, on the realisation of the Bliss Absolute, there is neither bondage nor the least trace of misery.
322. There is no greater danger for the Jnanin than carelessness about his own real nature. From this comes delusion, thence egoism, this is followed by bondage, and then comes misery
324. As sedge, even if removed, does not stay away for a moment, but covers the water again, so Maya or Nescience also covers even a wise man, if he is averse to meditation on the Self.
327. Hence to the discriminating knower of Brahman there is no worse death than inadvertence with regard to concentration. But the man who is concentrated attains complete success. (Therefore) carefully concentrate thy mind (on Brahman).
335. When the external world is shut out, the mind is cheerful, and cheerfulness of the mind brings on the vision of the Paramatman. When It is perfectly realised, the chain of birth and death is broken. Hence the shutting out of the external world is the stepping-stone to Liberation.
337. There is no Liberation for one who has attachment to the body etc., and the liberated man has no identification with the body etc. The sleeping man is not awake, nor is the waking man asleep, for these two states are contradictory in nature
338. He is free who, knowing through his mind the Self in moving and unmoving objects and observing It as their substratum, gives up all superimpositions and remains as the Absolute and the infinite Self.
339. To realise the whole universe as the Self is the means of getting rid of bondage. There is nothing higher than identifying the universe with the Self. One realises this state by excluding the objective world through steadfastness in the eternal Atman.
343. The projecting power, through the aid of
the veiling power, connects a man with the siren of an egoistic idea, and
distracts him through the attributes of that.
345. Perfect discrimination brought on by direct realisation distinguishes the true nature of the subject from that of the object, and breaks the bond of delusion created by Maya; and there is no more transmigration for one who has been freed from this.
346. The knowledge of the identity of the Jiva and Brahman entirely
consumes the impenetrable
347. The veil that hides Truth vanishes only when the Reality is fully realised. (Thence follow) the destruction of false knowledge and the cessation of misery brought about by its distracting influence.
348. These three are observed in the case of a rope when its real nature is fully known. Therefore the wise man should know the real nature of things for the breaking of his bonds.
349-350. Like iron manifesting as sparks through
contact with fire, the Buddhi manifests itself as knower and known through the
inherence of Brahman. As these two (knower and known), the effects of the
Buddhi, are observed to be unreal in the case of delusion, dream and fancy,
similarly, the modifications of the Prakriti, from egoism down to the body and
all sense-objects are also unreal. Their unreality is verily due to their being
subject to change every moment. But the Atman never changes.
351. The Supreme Self is ever of the nature of eternal, indivisible knowledge, one without a second, the Witness of the Buddhi and the rest, distinct from the gross and subtle, the implied meaning of the term and idea "I", the embodiment of inward, eternal bliss.
352. The wise man, discriminating thus the real and the unreal, ascertaining the Truth through his illuminative insight, and realising his own Self which is Knowledge Absolute, gets rid of the obstructions and directly attains Peace.
353. When the Atman, the One without a second, is realised by means of the Nirvikalpa Samadhi, then the heart’s knot of ignorance is totally destroyed.
354. Such imaginations as "thou", "I" or "this" take place through the defects of the Buddhi. But when the Paramatman, the Absolute, the One without a second, manifests Itself in Samadhi, all such imaginations are dissolved for the aspirant, through the realisation of the truth of Brahman
356. Those alone are free from the bondage of transmigration who, attaining Samadhi, have merged the objective world, the sense-organs, the mind, nay, the very ego, in the Atman, the Knowledge Absolute - and none else, who but dabble in second-hand talks.
358. The man who is attached to the Real becomes Real, through his one-pointed devotion. Just as the cockroach thinking intently on the Bhramara is transformed into a Bhramara.
361. As gold purified by thorough heating on the fire gives up its impurities and attains to its own lustre, so the mind, through meditation, gives up its impurities of Sattva, Rajas and Tamas, and attains to the reality of Brahman.
362. When the mind, thus purified by constant practice, is merged in Brahman, then Samadhi passes on from the Savikalpa to the Nirvikalpa stage, and leads directly to the realisation of the Bliss of Brahman, the One without a second.
364. Reflection should be considered a hundred times superior to hearing, and meditation a hundred thousand times superior even to reflection, but the Nirvikalpa Samadhi is infinite in its results.
366. Hence with the mind calm and the senses controlled always drown the mind in the Supreme Self that is within, and through the realisation of thy identity with that Reality destroy the darkness created by Nescience, which is without beginning.
367. The first steps to Yoga are control of speech, non-receiving of gifts, entertaining of no expectations, freedom from activity, and always living in a retired place.
368. Living in a retired place serves to control the sense-organs, control of the senses helps to control the mind, through control of the mind egoism is destroyed; and this again gives the Yogi an unbroken realisation of the Bliss of Brahman. Therefore the man of reflection should always strive only to control the mind.
369. Restrain speech in the Manas, and restrain Manas in the Buddhi; this again restrain in the witness of Buddhi, and merging that also in the Infinite Absolute Self, attain to supreme Peace.
372. It is the man of dispassion (Vairagya) who is fit for this internal as well as external renunciation; for the dispassionate man, out of the desire to be free, relinquishes both internal and external attachment.
374. Know, O wise man, dispassion and discrimination to be like the two wings of a bird in the case of an aspirant. Unless both are there, none can, with the help of either one, reach the creeper of Liberation that grows, as it were, on the top of an edifice
375. The extremely dispassionate man alone has Samadhi, and the man of Samadhi alone gets steady realisation; the man who has realised the Truth is alone free from bondage, and the free soul only experiences eternal Bliss
378. Fixing the mind firmly on the Ideal, Brahman, and restraining the external organs in their respective centres; with the body held steady and taking no thought for its maintenance; attaining identity with Brahman and being one with It - always drink joyfully of the Bliss of Brahman in thy own Self, without a break. What is the use of other things which are entirely hollow ?
379. Giving up the thought of the non-Self which is evil and productive of misery, think of the Self, the Bliss Absolute, which conduces to Liberation.
380. Here shines eternally the Atman, the Self-effulgent Witness of everything, which has the Buddhi for Its seat. Making this Atman which is distinct from the unreal, the goal, meditate on It as thy own Self, excluding all other thought.
381. Reflecting on this Atman continuously and without any foreign thought intervening, one must distinctly realise It to be one’s real Self.
383. Fixing the purified mind in the Self, the Witness, the Knowledge Absolute, and slowly making it still, one must then realise one’s own infinite Self.
384. One should behold the Atman, the Indivisible and Infinite, free from all limiting adjuncts such as the body, organs, Pranas, Manas and egoism, which are creations of one’s own ignorance – like the infinite sky.
385. The sky, divested of the hundreds of limiting adjuncts such as a jar, a pitcher, a receptacle for grains or a needle, is one, and not diverse; exactly in a similar way the pure Brahman, when divested of egoism etc., is verily One
387. That in which something is imagined to exist through error, is, when rightly discriminated, that thing itself, and not distinct from it. When the error is gone, the reality about the snake falsely perceived becomes the rope. Similarly the universe is in reality the Atman.
388. The Self is Brahma, the Self is Vishnu, the Self is Indra, the Self is Shiva; the Self is all this universe. Nothing exists except the Self
389. The Self is within, and the Self is without; the Self is before and the Self is behind; the Self is in the south, and the Self is in the north; the Self likewise is above as also below.
390. As the wave, the foam, the whirlpool, the bubble, etc., are all in essence but water, similarly the Chit (Knowledge Absolute) is all this, from the body up to egoism. Everything is verily the Chit, homogeneous and pure
391- All this universe known through speech and mind is nothing but Brahman; there is nothing besides Brahman, which exists beyond the utmost range of the Prakriti. Are the pitcher, jug, jar, etc., known to be distinct from the clay of which they are composed ? It is the deluded man who talks of "thou" and "I", as an effect of the wine of Maya
393. The Supreme Brahman is, like the sky, pure, absolute, infinite, motionless and changeless, devoid of interior or exterior, the One Existence, without a second, and is one’s own Self. Is there any other object of knowledge ?
394. What is the use of dilating on this subject ? The Jiva is no other than Brahman; this whole extended universe is Brahman Itself;
395. (First) destroy the hopes raised by egoism in this filthy gross body, then do the same forcibly with the air-like subtle body; and realising Brahman, the embodiment of eternal Bliss – whose glories the Scriptures proclaim – as thy own Self, live as Brahman.
399. In the One Entity (Brahman) the conception of the universe is a mere phantom. Whence can there be any diversity in That which is changeless, formless and Absolute ?
400. In the One Entity devoid of the concepts of seer, seeing and seen - which is changeless, formless and Absolute - whence can there be any diversity ?
401. In the One Entity which is changeless, formless and Absolute, and which is perfectly all-pervading and motionless like the ocean after the dissolution of the universe, whence can there be any diversity ?
402. Where the root of delusion is dissolved like darkness in light - in the supreme Reality, the One without a second, the Absolute - whence can there be any diversity ?
406. That which is superimposed upon something else is observed by the wise to be identical with the substratum, as in the case of the rope appearing as the snake. The apparent difference depends solely on error.
407. This apparent universe has its root in the mind, and never persists after the mind is annihilated. Therefore dissolve the mind by concentrating it on the Supreme Self, which is thy inmost Essence.
408. The wise man realises in his heart, through Samadhi, the Infinite Brahman, which is something of the nature of eternal Knowledge and absolute Bliss, which has no exemplar, which transcends all limitations, is ever free and without activity, and which is like the limitless sky, indivisible and absolute.
409. The wise man realises in his heart, through Samadhi, the Infinite Brahman, which is devoid of the ideas of cause and effect, which is the Reality beyond all imaginations, homogeneous, matchless, beyond the range of proofs, established by the pronouncements of the Vedas, and ever familiar to us as the sense of the ego.
410. The wise man realises in his heart, through Samadhi, the Infinite Brahman, which is undecaying and immortal, the positive Entity which precludes all negations, which resembles the placid ocean and is without a name, in which there are neither merits nor demerits, and which is eternal, pacified and One.
415. Burning all this, with its very root, in the fire of Brahman, the Eternal and Absolute Self, the truly wise man thereafter remains alone, as the Atman, the eternal, pure Knowledge and Bliss.
419. The result of dispassion is knowledge, that of Knowledge is withdrawal from sense-pleasures, which leads to the experience of the Bliss of the Self, whence follows Peace.
426. That Sannyasin has got a steady illumination who, having his soul wholly merged in Brahman, enjoys eternal bliss, is changeless and free from activity.
427. That kind of mental function which cognises only the identity of the Self and Brahman, purified of all adjuncts, which is free from duality, and which concerns itself only with Pure Intelligence, is called illumination. He who has this perfectly steady is called a man of steady illumination.
428. He whose illumination is steady, who has constant bliss, and who has almost forgotten the phenomenal universe, is accepted as a man liberated in this very life.
431. The absence of the ideas of "I" and "mine" even in this existing body which follows as a shadow, is a characteristic of one liberated-in-life.
432. Not dwelling on enjoyments of the past, taking no thought for the future and looking with indifference upon the present, are characteristics of one liberated-in-life. .
434. When things pleasant or painful present themselves, to remain unruffled in mind in both cases, through the sameness of attitude, is a characteristic of one liberated-in-life.
436. He who lives unconcerned, devoid of all ideas of "I" and "mine" with regard to the body, organs, etc., as well as to his duties, is known as a man liberated-in-life. 447. Through the realisation of one’s identity with Brahman, all the accumulated actions of a hundred crore of cycles come to nought, like the actions of dream-state on awakening.
439. He who through his illumination never differentiates the Jiva and Brahman, nor the universe and Brahman, is known as a man liberated-in-life.
447. Through the realisation of one’s identity with Brahman, all the accumulated actions of a hundred crore of cycles come to nought, like the actions of dream-state on awakening.
450. The sky is not affected by the smell of liquor merely through its connection with the jar; similarly, the Atman is not, through Its connection with the limitations, affected by the properties thereof
454. For the sage who lives in his own Self as Brahman, the One without a second, devoid of identification with the limiting adjuncts, the question of the existence of Prarabdha work is meaningless, like the question of a man who has awakened from sleep having any connection with the objects seen in the dream-state.
464. There is only Brahman, the One without a second, infinite, without beginning or end, transcendent and changeless; there is no duality whatsoever in It.
465. There is only Brahman, the One without a second, the Essence of Existence, Knowledge and Eternal Bliss, and devoid of activity; there is no duality whatsoever in It.
466. There is only Brahman, the One without a second, which is within all, homogeneous, infinite, endless, and all-pervading; there is no duality whatsoever in It.
467. There is only Brahman, the One without a second, which is neither to be shunned nor taken up nor accepted, and which is without any support, there is no duality whatsoever in It.
468. There is only Brahman, the One without a second, beyond attributes, without parts, subtle, absolute and taintless; there is no duality whatsoever in It.
469. There is only Brahman, the One without a second, whose real nature is incomprehensible, and which is beyond the range of mind and speech; there is no duality whatsoever in It.
470. There is only Brahman, the One without a second, the Reality, the One without a second, the Reality, effulgent, self-existent, pure, intelligent, and unlike anything finite; there is no duality whatsoever in It.
474. In the realisation of the Atman, the Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute, through the breaking of one’s connection with the bondage of Avidya or ignorance, the Scriptures, reasoning and the words of the Guru are the proofs, while one’s own experience earned by concentrating the mind is another proof.
476. The Gurus as well as the Shrutis instruct the disciple, standing aloof; while the man of realisation crosses (Avidya) through Illumination alone, backed by the grace of God.
489. I am unattached, I am disembodied, I am free from the subtle body, and undecaying, I am serene, I am infinite, I am taintless and eternal.
490. I am not the doer, I am not the experiencer, I am changeless and beyond activity; I am the essence of Pure Knowledge; I am Absolute and identified with Eternal Good.
491. I am indeed different from the seer, listener, speaker, doer and experiencer; I am the essence of Knowledge, eternal, without any break, beyond activity, limitless, unattached and infinite.
492. I am neither, this nor that, but the Supreme, the illuminer of both; I am indeed Brahman, the One without a second, pure, devoid of interior or exterior and infinite.
493. I am indeed Brahman, the One without a second, matchless, the Reality that has no beginning, beyond such imagination as thou or I, or this or that, the Essence of Eternal Bliss, the Truth.
495. I alone reside as knowledge in all beings, being their internal and external support. I myself am the experiencer and all that is experienced – whatever I looked upon as "this" or the not-Self previously
499. I am beyond contamination like the sky; I am distinct from things illumined, like the sun; I am always motionless like the mountain; I am limitless like the ocean.
503. If heat or cold, or good or evil, happens to touch the shadow of a man’s body, it affects not in the least the man himself, who is distinct from the shadow.
504. The properties of things observed do not affect the Witness, which is distinct from the, changeless and indifferent - as the properties of a room (do not affect) the lamp (that illumines it).
505. As the sun is a mere witness of men’s actions, as fire burns everything without distinction, and as the rope is related to a thing superimposed on it, so am I, the unchangeable Self, the Intelligence Absolute
506. I neither do nor make others do any action; I neither enjoy nor make others enjoy; I neither see nor make others see; I am that Self-effulgent, Transcendent Atman
511. I am verily that Brahman, the One without a second, which is like the sky, subtle, without beginning or end, in which the whole universe from the Undifferentiated down to the gross body, appears merely as a shadow.
512. I am verily that Brahman, the One without a second, which is the support of all, which illumines all things, which has infinite forms, is omnipresent, devoid of multiplicity, eternal, pure, unmoved and absolute.
513. I am verily that Brahman, the One without a second, which transcends the endless differentiations of Maya, which is the inmost essence of all, is beyond the range of consciousness, and which is Truth, Knowledge, Infinity and Bliss Absolute.
514. I am without activity, changeless, without parts, formless, absolute, eternal, without any other support, the One without a second.
515. I am the Universal, I am the All, I am transcendent, the One without a second. I am Absolute and Infinite Knowledge, I am Bliss and indivisible
520. The universe is an unbroken series of perceptions of Brahman; hence it is in all respects nothing but Brahman
521. What wise man would discard that enjoyment of Supreme Bliss and revel in things unsubstantial ? When the exceedingly charming moon is shining, who would wish to look at a painted moon
523. Beholding the Self alone in all circumstances, thinking of the Self, the One without a second, and enjoying the Bliss of the Self, pass thy time, O noble soul
536. A child plays with its toys forgetting hunger and bodily pains; exactly so does the man of realisation take pleasure in the Reality, without ideas of "I" or "mine", and is happy.
542. Though without riches, yet ever content; though helpless, yet very powerful, though not enjoying the sense-objects, yet eternally satisfied; though without an exemplar, yet looking upon all with an eye of equality.
543. Though doing, yet inactive; though experiencing fruits of past actions, yet untouched by them; though possessed of a body, yet without identification with it; though limited, yet omnipresent is he.
544. Neither pleasure nor pain, nor good nor evil, ever touches this knower of Brahman, who always lives without the body-idea.
552. He who, giving up all considerations of the fitness or otherwise of objects of meditation, lives as the Absolute Atman, is verily Shiva Himself, and he is the best among the knowers of Brahman.
553. Through the destruction of limitations, the perfect knower of Brahman is merged in the One Brahman without a second - which he had been all along - becomes very free even while living, and attains the goal of his life.
554. As an actor, when he puts on the dress of his role, or when he does not, is always a man, so the perfect knower of Brahman is always Brahman and nothing else.
558. For the giving up of the body is not Liberation, nor that of the staff and the water-bowl; but Liberation consists in the destruction of the heart’s knot which is Nescience
560. The destruction of the body, organs, Pranas and Buddhi is like that of a leaf or flower or fruit (to a tree). It does not affect the Atman, the Reality, the Embodiment of Bliss – which is one’s true nature. That survives, like the tree.
563. Just as a stone, a tree, grass, paddy, husk, etc., when burnt, are reduced to earth (ashes) only, even so the whole objective universe comprising the body, organs, Pranas, Manas and so forth, are, when burnt by the fire of realisation, reduced to the Supreme Self.
564. As darkness, which is distinct (from sunshine), vanishes in the sun’s radiance, so the whole objective universe dissolves in Brahman
565. As, when a jar is broken, the space enclosed by it becomes palpably the limitless space, so when the apparent limitations are destroyed, the knower of Brahman verily becomes Brahman Itself.
566. As milk poured into milk, oil into oil, and water into water, becomes united and one with it, so the sage who has realised the Atman becomes one in the Atman
569. Bondage and Liberation, which are conjured up by Maya, do not really exist in the Atman, one’s Reality, as the appearance and exit of the snake do not abide in the rope, which suffers no change
571. Bondage and Liberation are attributes of the Buddhi which ignorant people falsely superimpose on the Reality, as the covering of the eyes by a cloud is transferred to the sun. For this Immutable Brahman is Knowledge Absolute, the One without a second and unattached.
572. The idea that bondage exists, and the idea that it does not, are, with reference to the Reality, both attributes of the Buddhi merely, and never belong to the Eternal Reality, Brahman
574. There is neither death nor birth, neither a bound nor a struggling soul, neither a seeker after Liberation nor a liberated one - this is the ultimate truth.
580. For those who are afflicted, in the way of the world, by the burning pain due to the (scorching) sunshine of threefold misery, and who through delusion wander about in a desert in search of water - for them here is the triumphant message of Shankara pointing out, within easy reach, the soothing ocean of nectar, Brahman, the One without a second - to lead them on to Liberation.
(Courtesy-Celextel's spiritual library)
The
End
II: Fusus al Hikam(Bezels of Wisdom) : (Ibn Arabi-Spain-1164-1240)
(Ibn
Arabi is known as "Sheik al Akbar"(Greatest Master) among Sufis. He
is the proponent of "Wahdat al Wujud" (Unity of Being) and Fusus al
Hikam is his masterpiece expounding the doctrine of Wahdat al Wujud. He
is our Grand Master from the Middle Ages.)
The Seal of Divine Wisdom in the Word of Adam
God wanted to see His own Essence in one global object which having been blessed with existence summarised the Divine Order so that there He could manifest His mystery to Himself.
For the entire reality from its beginning to its end comes from God alone, and it is to Him that it returns. So then the Divine Order required the clarification of the mirror of the world; and Adam became the light itself of this mirror and the spirit of this form.
As for the Angels they represent certain faculties of this form of the world which the Sufis call the Great Man so that the angels are to it just as the spiritual and physical faculties are to the human organism.
As for his quality as a Man it designates his synthesised nature( containing virtually all other natures created) and his aptitude to embrace the essential Truths. Man is to God that which the pupil is to the eye, the pupil being that by which seeing is effected; for through him (that is to say the Universal Man) God contemplates His creation and dispenses His mercy .Thus is man at once ephemeral and eternal, a being created perpetual and immortal, a Verb discriminating (by his distinctive knowledge) and unifying( by his divine essence). By his existence the world was completed.
Thus man finds himself entrusted with the Divine safe keeping of the world,and the will not cease to be safeguarded as long as the Universal Man(al-insan al-kamil) lives in it.
All that the Divine Form implies ,that is to say the total of the names (or Universal Qualities)is manifested in this human constitution ,which,by this means,distinguishes itself(from all other creatuers)by the(symbolic)integration of all existence.
For each does not know of God except that which he infers from himself.
Without doubt,the ephemeral is not conceivable as such,that is in its ephemeral and relative nature ,except in relation to a principle from which it derives its own possibility,so that it has no being in itself,but derives it from another to whom it is tied by its dependence.And it is certain that this principle is in itself necessary ,that it is subsistent by itself and independent, in its being,of any other thing.It is this principle ,which by its own essence,confers the being to the ephemeral which depends on it.
Since the ephemeral being manifests the form of the eternal ,it is by the contemplation of the ephemeral that God communicates to us the knowledge of Himself.
It is from ourselves that we conclude that He is;to Him we attribute no quality without ourselves having that quality with the exception of the principial autonomy.Since we know Him by ourselves and from ourselves ,we attribute to Him all that we attribute to ourselves,and it is because of that ,again,that the revelation was given by the mouth of the interpreters,(that is to say the prophets)and that God described Himself to us through our selves.In contemplating Him we contemplate ourselves,and in contemplating ourselves He contemplates Himself.,although we are obviously numerous as to the individuals and types;we are united,it is true,in a single and essential reality,but there exists none the less a distinction between individuals,without which,moreover,there would be no multiplicity in the unity.
We also know that God has described Himself as 'Exterior' and as 'Interior' and that He manifested the world at the same time as interior and exterior,so that we should know the 'interior' aspect(of God)by our own interior ,and the 'exterior' by our exterior.
He symbolised these couples of (complementary) qualities by the two hands which he held out towards the creation of Universal Man;this latter reunites in himself all the essential realities of the world in his totality,just as in each of his individuals.The world is the apparent,and the representative(of God in it) is the hidden.
The fact is the world does not participate in the autonomy of the Essential Being,so much so that it can never concieve Him.In this respect God remains always unknown ,to the intuition as well as to the contemplation,for the ephemeral has no hold on that(that is to say the eternal).
The representation of God belongs only to the Universal Man,whose exterior form is created of realities and forms of the world and whose interior form corresponds to the "Form" of God(that is to say to the 'total' of the Divine Names and Qualities).
If God did not penetrate existence by His 'Form' the world would not be;in the same way as individual would not be determined if they had not the Universal Ideas.According to this Truth ,the existence of the world resides in its dependence with regard to God.In reality each depends on the other:(the 'Divine Form' on that of the world and inversely):nothing is independent (of the other):this is the pure truth:we are not expressing ourself in metaphors.On the other hand when I speak of that which is absolutly independent you will know what I mean by it (that is to say the infinite unconditioned Essence).Each,(the 'Divine Form' as the world),is then tied one to the other and one cannot be separated from the other.
The Seal of Wisdom of the Breath of Angelic Inspiration in the Word of Shith (Seth)
Among these there is he who knows that the knowledge God
has of him,in each of his states,is identifiable to that which he is himself in
his state of (principal ) immutability before his manifestation:and he knows
that God will give him nothing that does not result from this essence(al-ayn),that
he is himself in his permanent principal state.He knows then from whence the
Divine Knowledge comes towards himself.
Now the Essence only reveals itself in the 'form' of the predisposition of the individual who receives this revelation; never does anything else happen.From that time ,the subject receiving the essential revelation will see his own 'form' in the 'mirror' of God: he will not see God-it is impossible that he should see Him,-knowing all the while that he sees only his own 'form' by virtue of this Divine mirror.
God ,then,is the mirror in which you sees yourself as you are His mirror in which He contemplates His Names.Now these are none other than Himself,so that reality reverses itself and becomes ambiguous.
It is from the Seal's(of Saints) own spirit that this knowledge(of God or Ultimate Reality) flows to all spirits(all messengers and saints)
Bu spiritual men consider only
the superiority with regard to the knowledge of God.
As for the Seal of the Saints,
he is the saint,the heir,who imbibes in the orgins,the one who contemplates all
ranks.
Such are the Divine gifts,for
God(in His personal or qualified aspect) never gives except through the
intermediary of one of the guardians of the temple which are His Names.
In truth, there is but one
single essential Reality which assumes all the relations and associations which
one ascribes to it by the Divine Names.Now ,this essential Reality causes each
of these Names which manifest themselves indefinitely to contain an essential
truth by which it distinguishes itself from the other Names;it is this
distinctive truth,and not that which it has in common with the others,which is
the proper determination of the Name.
Son is the secret reality of his
father.
Nobody receives something from
God,(that is to say)nobody receives anything which does not come from
himself,what ever may be the unpredictable variation of the forms.
Every time that an intuitive
person contemplates a form which communicates to him new knowledge which he had
not been able previously to comprehend,this form will be an expression of his
own essence and nothing unknown to him.It is from the tree of his own soul that
he gathers the fruit of his culture,in the same way that his image ,reflected
by a polished surface is nothing but himself....
He who knows his
pre-disposition,knows from himself what
he will receive.
The Seal of the Wisdom of the Breath of Divine Inspiration in the Word of Nuh (Noah)
One knows that the Scriptures
revealed as common law(shari'ah) express themselves ,in talking of
God,in such a way that the majority of men understand the most obvious meaning
,where as the elite understand all the meanings,so as to know the whole
significance included in each word conforming to the rules of the language
employed.
For God manifests Himself in
every creature in a particular way.It is He who reveals Himself in every
meaning ,and it is He who remains hidden to all understanding,except for he who
recognises in the world the 'form'and aseity of God,and(who sees the world
as)the Divine Name the Apparent.In the same way ,one conceives God conceptually
as the inherent spirit in all manifestations ,so that He is the Interior in
this respect,and He is to every form manifested in the world ,the spirit ruling
the corporeal form which depends on it.
As for God He 'defines' Himself
by the sum of all possible definitions .
In the same way ,he who compares
God without affirming at the same time His incomparability ,attributes to Him
limits,and does not recognise Him.But he who unites in his knowledge of God the
point of view of the transcendence with that of the immanence ,and attributes
to God the two 'aspects' globally -for it is impossible to conceive them in
detail,in the same way as one could not embrace all the 'forms' of the
universe-knows Him truly,that is to say,that he knows Him globally,not
distinctively,just as man knows himself globally and not distinctively.
You are His form and that He is
your spirit,so that you are(in your totality)for Him that which the corporeal
form is for you,and He is to you that which is the spirit which rules the form
of your body.
So that He is at once He who
praises and He who is praised.If you does affirm the Divine transcendence ,you
does condition(the conception of God)and if you affirm His immanence ,you does
limit Him;but if you does affirm simultaneously the one and the other point of
view ,you will be exempt from error and a model of knowledge.
He who affirms the duality(of
God and the world)falls in the error of assosiating something with God;and he
who affirms the singularity of God (excluding from his Reality everything which
manifests itself in multiplicity)commits the fault of confining Him to a
(rational)unity.Be careful of comparison when you does envisage duality;and be
careful not to separate the Divinity when you does envisage Unity!
You are not Him;and yet you are
Him;you will see Him in the essence of things ,sovereign and conditioned at the
same time.
So whoever among you imagines that he has seen Him, does not have gnosis, and whoever of you knows that he has seen himself, he is the gnostic
All belongs to Allah and is by Allah, rather it is Allah.
The Seal of the Wisdom of Purity (Quddûs)
in the Word of Idris(
Enoch
Now ,everything is nothing but
Him,Therefore He is the Eminent in himself.On the other hand ,since He is the
Being of all that exists ,the ephemeral existences are ,they too,eminent in
their essence,for they are essentially identical to Him.
God is the Eminent without
elativity;for the essences(of beings) which are(in themselves)nothing but
non-existence and which are immutable in this state ,have not even smelt the
odour of existence;they stay just as they were,in spite of the multiplicity of
the forms in the manifested realities.As for the essential determination of the
Being, it is unique among all and in all.The multiplicity exists only in the
Names,which are but non-existent relations and realities .There is only the
unique detemination of the Essence,which is the Essence in itself,without
relation to whatever it may be.And in this respect there is no relative
eminence;but since the aspects of the One ,contain a hierarchy among
themselves,relative eminence is to be found implied in the unique determination
(of the Being)by virtue of its multiple aspects.For this reason we say of the
relative that it is Him(that is to say God)and it is not Him ,and that thou are
thee and not thee.
Abu Sa'id al-Kharraz,who is
himself one of the multiple aspects of God and one of His tongues,says that God
can only be known (defined)by the synthesis of antinomic affirmations;for He is
the First and the Last,the Exterior and the Interior;He is the essence of that
which is manifested ,and the essence of that which remans hidden after His
manifestation.There is nobody other than He who can see Him,and nobody from
whom He can hide Himself.;It is He who manifests Himself to Himself,and it is
He who hides Himself from Himself.It is He who calls Himself "Karraz"
and by other names of ephemeral beings.The Interior says 'No' when the Exterior
says 'Me';and the Exterior says 'No' when the Interior says 'Me'.It follows in
the same way for all antinomy;yet ,there is only one who speaks,and He is
Himself His own listener.
Reality is the Creator
created;-or else the Reality is a creative creature.Al that is but the
expression of a single essence-no,it is at the same time the Unique Essence and
the multiple essences.
Adam married his own soul;from
him are descended both his companion and his child.It is thus that the (Divine)
Order is unique in the multiplicity.
The world of nature consists in
(varied)forms(reflecting themselves) in a unique manner :-or better:it is a
single form(reflecting itself) in diverse mirrors.
It is by virtue of this (that is
to say by virtue of this determination) that God differentiates Himself in the
'theatre' of His revelation,so that he assumes in turn diverse conditions; that
which determines Him(apparently) is but the essential determination in which He reveals Himself.Nothing else
exists.In one respect God is creature-so,interpret !-And He is not creature in
another respect-so, remember !
As for the Eminent in Himself,He
is the one who possesses the perfection (or the infinity:al-kamal) in
which are 'drowned' all the existential realities as well as all the
non-existent relations (in themselves),in the sense that He is not without any
of these 'attributes',whether the attribute be positive,logically or morally
,or whether it be negative,according to custom,reason or moral.Now,this
infinity belongs only to He who is designated by the name Allah(which is the
Name of the Essence)exclusively ;as for he who is designated by another name
,it is either one of His 'planes of revelation' or a form which is inherent to
Him:if it is a 'place of revelation' it contains a hierarchical degree,in the
same way that there is a distinction in that which is revealed and that in
which He is revealed;on the othe hand, if it is a question of a 'form'(in the sense of synthesis of the
Qualities ,contained) in God,this 'form' will be the immediate expression of
the infinite;since it is essentially identical to that which is revealed in
it.All that which belongs to Allah ,belongs then,equally to this (qualitative)
'form'.However ,one does not say of this 'form' that it is He;but neither does
one say it is other than He.
Imam Abu-l-Qasm
said"Truly,each Divine Name is qualified by all the Divine Names".It
is truly so ;each Name,in fact,affirms the essences at the same time as the
Essence,following its significance;in so far as it demonstrates the Essence
,all the other Names are implied in it,and in so far as it affirms a particular
significance ,it distnguishes itself from the others like 'the Creator' distinguishes
itself from 'He who gives the form'and so on.The Name,then,is on one hand essentially identical with the
Named,and on the other hand,distinct from Him by its particular significance.
The Seal of the Wisdom of Being Lost in Love in the Wisdom of Ibrahim (Abraham)
When one thing is penetrated by
something else,the first is contained by the second.;for thew penetrating hides
itself in the penetrated,so that the latter is apparent and the former,the
interior, is latent;the penetrating is also like the food of the penetrated,in
the manner that water spreads itself in wool and makes it more heavier and
voluminous.If it is the Divinity that appears ,and the creature is found hidden
there,this latter is assimilated into all the Names of God,into His
hearing,into His seeing,into all His attributes and His modes of knowledge;in turn,if if it is the creature
who is apparent and the Divinity is immanent to him and is found hidden
within,God is the hearing of the created beings,his sight,his hand,his foot and
all his faculties...
If the Essence was exempt from
these(universal)relations (which are the Divine Names and Qualities) It would
not be Divinity(ilah;that is to say It would not be Creator.)Noe these
relations become actualized by virtue of our own determinations (which are in
some ways the objects of it or the passive contents)so that we render the
Divinity such by our dependence on Him.God is not,then, known as such (that is
to say as Creator and Lord) before we are known.
Certainly,the eternal Essence
knows Itself;but it is not known as Divinity before one knows that which
depends on It,and which is thus the symbol which proves It.Then only ,in the
second state of knowledge ,you will have the intuition that God Himself is the symbol of Himself and of His
Divine Nature,that the world is but His own revelation in the form of
unalterable essences,which do not exist in any fashion outside Him,and that He
assumes diverse forms and modes following the realities which are implied by
the essences,and according to the states.But we recieve this intuition only
after having realized through God that we depend on a Divinity.After (these two
consecutive states of consiousness)there opens yet a last intuition,according
to which our forms appear to you in God ,so that beings manifest themselves
,the one and the other in God,recognising one another and distinguishing one
from another.Certain of us know of this reciprocal knowledge in God,and others
are ignorant of the Divine Presence in which is revealed this knowledge of
ourselves.
From the one as from the other of these
two intuitions (succeding from the first) ,it follows that God judges us only
by ourselves ,or more exactly ,it is we ourselves who judge ourselves ,but
through Him.
The Divine Will is one ,in its
relationship(with its objects).As an essential relation it depends on the
knowledge(just as man conceives first that which he wants);and knowledge
depends on its object; now,this object is you and your states.It is not the
knowledge which has an effect on that
which is known ,but this latter which acts on the knowledge,in the sense that
it communicates itself to it alone ,according to that which is in its own
essence.
But 'each of us has our
determined position' which means:such as you are in your permanant state(that
is to say as pure possibility)you will manifest yourself in your(relative)
existence always supposing that you do exist: but in return ,if existence is
attributable to God only,and not to you ,then it is,without doubt,you who will
judge yourself (or you who will determine)in Divine Existence(because you are
then entirely determination and nothing more);but if one admits it is you who
are the existing (and that you are not only pure determination),the
judgement again belongs to you (by
virtue of that which you are),even if the judge is God.From God comes only the
effusion of the Being on you(who are only pure possibility);where as your own
judgement (or your determination)comes from you.
Then,praise only yourself,and
blame only yourself.To God is due only the praises for His effusion of the
Being (or of the Existence)for that comes from Him alone ,and not from you (for
you are non-existent as such).From then on you are His nourushment because you
lends to Him your condition,and He is your nourishment by the Existence that He
communicated to you,so that He is determined by that which determines you.
He praises me ,and I praise Him;
He serves me,and I serve Him;
By my existence I affirm Him;
And by my determination I deny
Him;
It is He who knows me,when I
deny Him;
Then I discover Him and
contemplate Him;
Where then is His
Independence,when I glorify Him and help Him?
In the same way,as soon as God
manifests me,
I lend Him science and manifest
Him,
It is that which the Divine
Message teaches us .
And it is in me that His Will is
accomplished.
We are His as evidence
establishes,
And we are our own;
He is only Himself through my
existence,
So that we are His as we are by
ourselves
I have two aspects:He and me;
And He is not His Me in me,
But He finds there His place of
manifestation.
We are then for Him,like
receptacles.
The Seal of the Wisdom of the Real in the Word of Ishaq (Issac)
To the Unique ,the
Clement,belongs in each state of existence ,all forms hidden or manifested.If
you says :this is God ! you says the truth ; but when you affirms something
else ,it is then that you do interpret.His principle (of manifestation) does
not change from one state of existence to the other ; but He produces the Truth
to his creatures.When He reveals Himself to the eyes ,the reason refutes Him by
insistent proofs ;on the other hand ,He is accepted in His intellectual
revealation, and in that which one calls imagination ;but the true (vision) is
the direct 'vision'.
We have already alluded to this
spiritual station ,saying :'O You,Who creates everything in Yourself.;You
englobes all that You creates;now,You creates that whose existence has no end
in You,so that You are the Narrow,the Vast !If that which God created was in my
heart,His resplendent dawn would not shine there in;but ,that which contains
God excludes no creature;how then can that be ,O You who hears?.
But if the believer has created
by his spiritual will that which he has created ,and he possess that total
knowledge(englobing in principle all the Divine Presences),his creature will
manifest his 'form'(meaning the 'form' of the believer) in each of the
Presences,so that the (analogous) 'forms' (appearing in the different states)
will maintain each other in existence.; if the beleiver becomes unconsious of
any of the Presences or of many Presences-at the same time upholding,in the
(Divine) Presence that he continues to contemplate,the existence of the 'form'
that he has created all the (analogous)
'forms' will be conserved by the maintainance of this particular 'form' in the
Presence of which he remains consious-For consiousness is never total,neither
in ordinary men, nor in the elite...
At one moment the servant will
be the lord (by union),without doubt,
And at one moment the servant
will be the servant(by discrimination) certainly.
If he is the servant ,he is vast
through God,And if he is the Lord,he is in a restricted life.
So, then ,be the servant (by the manifest conscience,as well as being) Lord(by your essential identification with God) and do not be (in your distinctive conscience ) Lord of your own servant ,so that you do not become prey of the fire(of the Divine Rigour); and that you may not be delivered to the fusion.
The Seal of the Wisdom of Elevation in the Word of Isma'il (Ishmael)
Know that He who is called Allah is one in the Essence and all by His names and that all conditioned being is only attached(as such) to God by His own Lord(rabb) exclusively ;for it is impossible that the totality(of the Names or the Divine aspects) correspond to a particular being.For that which is of the Divine Unity none participate in it ,for one cannot designate aspects to it ;it is not subject to distinction.The Unity of God integrates the totality(of the Names or the Qualities) in the principial indifferentiation.
He who is (in principle) accepted by his Lord is loved by Him ;and all that the loved one does is equally loved ;every thing is ,then , accepted by the Lord ;for the individual would not know how to act unless the action belonged to the Lord which acts in him.It is for that the individual (knowing his Lord) is 'appeased' confident that no action will be attributed to him,and he is happy that that which appears in him is from the action of his Lord who,He ,accepts these actions,for every author is happy with his work,since he perfects his work according to that which his nature demands....
Again,every being that exists is (in principle) accepted by his Lord, with out that implying necessarily that each one is accepted by the Lord of the other,for the Lordship is only defined with respect to each particular one ,(because it is the 'personal'relationship of the individual towards God),so that it concerns God only according to one of His aspects,which corresponds to the predispositions of tha individual ;that is ,the 'Lord' of this particular individual-no one (particular being)attaches itself(as such) to God by virtue of His (supreme) Unity.It is because of this that the men of God cannot receive the 'revelation' in the Unity.;for if you contemplates Him through Himself ,it is He who is contemplating Himself ;-He does not then cease to be Himself contemplating Himself by Himself ;and if you contemplates Him through yourself ,Unity ceases to be Unity, because of you ;if you contemplates Him through Him and through you,Unity again ceases to be that which it is ,because the pronoun of the second person supposes that there is something else there than only the contemplated ;there will be necessarily some relation,and following that a duality of the contemplator and the one contemplated,from whence the cessation of Unity,although there exists (in principle) only He who contemplates Himself,for you know well that neither the contemplating nor the contemplated is 'other than He'.
Now, if you enter into His paradise ,you enter into yourself.,and you will know yourself by another knowledge different to that which made you know your Lord(in knowing your soul) so that you will possess two sorts of knowledge : you will know God with respect to you,and you will know Him through yourself in so much as it is Him,not because you do exist.
The Seal of the Wisdom of the Spirit (Rûh) in the Word of Ya'qub (Jacob)
As for its secret and inwardness, it
manifests itself in the mirror of the existence of Allah, so it does not refer
to possibilities from Allah other than what their essences in their states
accord. They have a form in every state, and their forms differ according to the
difference of their states. The tajalli differs according to the
difference of the state. The effect occurs in the slave according to what he is.
None gives him good except himself, and none gives him the opposite of good
except himself. Thus he gives bliss to his essence, and he also punishes it. He
only blames himself and only praises himself.
The existence of the created reality is
only by the forms of the states on which the possibilities are based in
themselves and their sources. Thus you know who has pleasure and who has pain,
and from each of these states you know what follows ('aqaba); and since
it follows, you derive punishment ('uquba) and penalty ('iqab)
from it. It permits good and evil as two opposites which custom calls the good
reward, and the evil punishment.
The Seal of the Wisdom of Light in the Word of Yusuf (Joseph)
Know that reality so called non-divine,meaning the world,belongs to God like the shadow to the person.The world is then the shadow of God ; that is really,the manner in which the One attributes Itself to the world ;for the shadow exists incontestably in the sensible order ,on condition,however,that there is something on which this shadow can project itself ;so that if one could remove all support from the shadow ,it would no longer sensibly be existent ,but only intelligible ;that is to say it would be potentially contained in the person on which it depends.The place of manifestation of this Divine shadow that one calls the world is the permanant essences of possibilities ;it is on them that the shadow projects itself.The shadow is known according as to where the Divine Being projects(His shadow) on these permanant essences of possibilities,and it is by the Divine Name,the Light,that the perception of the shadow takes place.The shadow that projects itself on the immutable essences of possibilities is 'in the image' of the unknown mystery.
You know the world in the degree of which one can know the shadows ;and you are ignorant of God in the degree of your ignorance of the person on whom this shadow depends (which is the world) ;in so much as He has a shadow,one knows him ;and in so far as one is ignorant of that which this shadow keeps secret of the 'form' of the person who projects it ,one is ignorant of God-May He be Exalted !-From which we say that God is known to us in a certain respect ,and that He is unknown to us in another respect.
"Then We retracted it towards Us by an easy way" ;God retracts the shadow towards Him,because it manifests itself from Him, and 'all reality returns to Him'.It is then Him,and it is other than Him,May He be Exalted !All that you do perceive is but the Being of God in the permanant essences of possibilities ;so that hte Ipseity(of that which you see) is God,it is He who is their being ,and so much as there is a difference of forms,they are the essences of the possibilities ; in the same way that there remains always 'shadow' by virtue of the difference of forms ,there remanis always by this same difference ,'world',or 'other than God',From its existential unity ,the shadow is God Himself,for God is the Unique,the One ;and in respect of the multiplicity of sensible forms ,it is the world ;so understand then,and realize what I am explaining to you !-Since the reality is that which I have just said the world is illusory ,it has not a veritable existence ;and it is that which one means by the imagination(encompassing the entire world);that is to say that you do imagine that (the world) is an autonomous reality, seperated from God and added on ,where as it is in itself nothing.
God is ,in His relation towards a particular shadow ,small or large and more or less pure,like light in respect of a filter of coloured glass ,which tints the light to its own colour whereas it is itself without colour ;it is thus that you can see the Divine Light ;and there lies the symbol of your reality with regard to your Lord.But ,if you says on seing It :'it is a green light' ,because the filter is green,you will be right ,as the visual experience proves; but if you says that It is not green and It has no colour (in itself) ,as reason proves ,you will tell the truth and the argument (extracted from sensible experience)will confirm it.
It is thus that the light projects itself through the shadow ,which is none other than the filter,and which is luminious by its transparancy.Such also is the man having realized God ; the 'form' of God will manifest itself in him more directly than it will manifest itself in others...
Now , as reality is such as we have affirmed ,know that you are imagination and all you perceives and that you do designate as 'other than me' is imagination ;for all existence is imagination in imagination (that is to say 'subjective' or microcosmic imagination in an 'objective' collective or macrocosmic imagination) ;whereas the veritable Being is God alone and exclusively ,in respect of His Essence and of His essential determination ,not in respect of His Names ,for His Names have a double significance ;on one hand they contain a unique significance ,that is to say the essential determination of God ,who is the 'named',and on the other hand their significance make it so that each Name distinguishes itself from the others ,the Forgiving from the Apparent , the Apparent from the Interior ,and so on ;but ,what then is the connection between one Name and another?for you will have understood that each Name is the essential determination of every other ; in so far as one name is the essential determination of the other ,it is God ,and in so far as it differs ,it is the 'imaginary' God, as we have exposed.Exalted may He be who is proved only by Himself and who exists only by His own unchangeable Essence !There is in existence only that which denotes Unity ;and there is in imagination only that which denotes multiplicity.So ,whoever belongs to multiplicity,is in the world,with the Divine Names and with the names of the world ;and whoever belongs to Unity ,is with God in respect of His Essence 'independent of the worlds'.If the Esence is 'independent of the worlds' it means that God must be essentially independent of 'nominal relations',for the Names do not denote the Essence only ,they denote at the same time other realities ,of which they define the manifestation.
The Unity of God which reveals itself in respect of the Divine Names, postulating our existence is the unity of the multiple ,and the Unity of God by which He is independent of us and of the Names ,is essential Unity ;the one and the other are contained in the Name the One (al-ahad).
Know then that if God manifested the shadows ,and if He made them "prostrate themselves and bend to the right and to the left" it is because He wanted to give you signs with regard to yourself and Himself ,so that you knows who you are ,what is your relation towards Him and His relation towards you ,so that you know by what ,or by virtue of what Divine reality that which is 'other than God' is qualified by complete indigence, towards God ,as well as relative indigence ,that is to say ,by a mutual dependence of its own parts ,and so that you know by what and by virtue of what essential reality God qualified Himself with independence with regard to men and by independence with regard to worlds,whereas the world is qualified by relative independence ,that is to say that each of its parts in a certain sense independent of the other ,as it is also,according to a different sense to this one dependent on the other ; for the world depends in contestably on causes ,its supreme cause being its Divine causability ;and there is no other Divine causability on which the world would depend other than the Divine Names ;the world depends on each of the Divine Names ,both in virtue of that which is analogous to such a Name in the world ,and because each Name is contained in the essential determination of God ,for it is God and nothing else.
Our own 'names' are in reality but the Divine Names ,since everything depends on Him.As for our own essences they are in reality His 'shadow', no more.For He is our ipseity ,just as He is not our ipseity.
The Seal of the Wisdom of
Divine Unity (Ahadiyya) in the Word of Hud
"There is no creature He does not hold by the forelock. My Lord is on a Straight Path." (11:56) So all that walks on the Straight Path of the Lord, and is not of those "against whom Allah is wrathful" from this aspect, nor is he "astray". As being astray is a non-essential quality, so divine wrath is also a non-essential quality. The source to which they return is the "mercy which extends to all things", and which preceded wrath. Everything which is other-than-Allah is a creature which crawls and which has a spirit. There is nothing which crawls by itself, rather it crawls by other than it. It crawls by the principle of following the One who is on a Straight Path.
If creation draws near you, Allah draws near you.
If Allah draws near you, creation does not follow.
So realise what we say on it,
and everything I have said to you is true.
There is no existent thing in phenomenal being
that you see which does not have articulation.
The eye only sees of creation
that its source is Allah.
But He is stored in it,
and for this reason, its forms are true.
There is no nearness nearer than that His He-ness be the source of the limbs of the slave and his faculties. The slave is not other than these limbs and faculties, so he is Allah witnessed in illusory creation. Creation is intelligible and Allah is felt and witnessed with the believers and the people of unveiling. Allah is intelligible with other classes, and creation is witnessed
Whoever recognises that Allah is the same as the Path, recognises the matter for what it is. Then Allah is travelling on it since there is no known except Him, and He is the source of the wayfarer and the traveller. There is no knower except Him. He is you, so know your reality and your Path (tariqa).
So other says: hearing is Zayd's hearing. The gnostic says that hearing is Allah. Thus nothing remains of the faculties and limbs. Therefore not everyone recognises Allah. People vie in excellence and ranks are differentiated, and the exceeding and exceeded are clear.
If we take "There is nothing like Him" as the negation of "like (mithl)", we realise the given and the sound transmissions that He is the source of things, and that things are defined. If their definitions differ, He is defined by the definition of everything with a definition. Nothing is defined unless it is a definition of Allah's. He moves in the designation of creatures and creation. Had the matter not been like that, existence would not have been valid, for He is the source of existence. He preserves everything by His Essence, and the preserving of something does not oppress Him. His preserving of all things is His preserving of His form in that the thing is other than His form. Only this is valid. He is the witness in the witness and the witnessed in the witnessed. He is the spirit of the universe which is managed by Him, and it is the Macrocosmic or Great man (al-insan al-kabir).
He is all phenomenal being
and He is the One (al-Wahid)
who establishes my phenomenal being by His being,
Since Allah is a safeguard for the slave by one aspect, the slave is a safeguard for Allah by another aspect. Say what you like about phenomenal being. If you like, say that it is creation. If you like, say that is the Real. If you like, say that it is both the Real and creation. If you like, say that it is not Real from every point of view and not creation from every point of view.
We are His, and by Him, in His hand, in every state, so we are with Him. For that reason, He is denied and recognised, disconnected and described. The one who sees Allah from Him in Him by His eye is a gnostic. The one who sees Allah from Him in Him by his own eye is not a gnostic. The one who does not see Allah from Him nor in Him, and waits to see Him by his own eye is veiled and ignorant.
On the whole, each person must have some doctrine of his Lord by which he refers to Him and in which he seeks Him. So when Allah manifests Himself to him in it, he knows Him and goes near Him. If He manifests Himself to him in other than it, he denies Him and takes refuge from Him and has bad adab in that matter while claiming he shows adab with Him. He only believes in a divinity according to the [subjective] form he gives that in himself. The divinity of creeds is based on subjective positing. People only see themselves and what they formulate in themselves.
Make yourself a vessel for all the forms of belief. Surely Allah is vaster and greater than being contained by one creed rather than another. So Allah says, "Wherever you turn, the face of Allah is there." (2:115) He did not mention one "where" less than another. He said there is the face of Allah. The face of the thing is its reality. By this He spoke to the hearts of the gnostics, that they might not occupy themselves with non-essentials in this life through seeking the like of this
There are only creeds, so all directions are correct. Every correct thing has a reward. Every rewarded thing is happy. Every happy one is approved.
The Seal of the Wisdom of Revelation (Futuh) in the Word of Salih
Its agreeing to comply with the command to take form is in counterbalance to His word "'Be!' and it is." Taking form is thus related to the thing. If it not had the capacity to take form from within itself when this is said, it would not have been. Allah only brought the thing into existence after it was not in the command of taking form, by the thing itself.
Allah confirmed that taking-form (takwin) belongs to the thing itself, not to Allah; and that that which belongs to Allah is His command. Similarly, He told us about Himself when He said, "Our Word to a thing when We desire it is just to say to it, "Be!" and it is." He ascribed taking-form to the thing itself from the command of Allah. Allah speaks the truth, so this is understood in the command itself. Someone who is feared and not disobeyed commands His slave: "Stand!" and the slave stands in obedience to his master's command. When this slave stands, the master only has the command to the slave to stand. Standing is the slave's action, not the master's action.
Whoever understands this wisdom and confirms it in himself and witnesses it, gives his self rest from connection to other. He knows that good and evil only come from him. By good, I mean what agrees with his goal and suits his nature and temperament. By evil, I mean what does not agree with his goal or suit his nature and temperament. The one who possesses this witnessing makes out excuses for all existent beings, even if they do not make excuses. He knows that all he has for himself is from himself, as we mentioned at the beginning, since knowledge follows the known. When something which does not agree with his goal comes to him, he tells himself , "Clench your fists and puff out your cheeks!"
The Seal of the Wisdom of the Heart in the Word of Shu'ayb ( Jethro)
Whoever limits Allah, denies Allah in other than what he limits Allah to, and confirms Allah in what he limits Him by, when Allah gives him a tajalli. Whoever frees Allah from limitation does not deny Allah, and so confirms Allah in every form in which Him changes. He is given from himself according to the form in which the tajalli infinitely occurs. The forms of the tajalli are without end. Similarly knowledge of Allah has no limit in the gnostic who understands the forms. Rather, he is a gnostic at every moment, seeking increase of knowledge by "Lord, increase me in knowledge! Lord, increase me in knowledge! Lord, increase me in knowledge!"
For the gnostic, Allah is the Recognised Who is not denied. The people of recognition in this world are the people of recognition in the Next World. This is why Allah said, "anyone who has a heart (qalb)" (50:37) since he knows the transformation (taqlib) of Allah in forms by the transformation in shape. He recognises himself from himself. His self is not other than the He-ness of Allah. There is nothing in phenomenal being from what is, or what will be, which is other than the He-ness of Allah. Rather, He is the source of He-ness. So He is the gnostic and the knower and the acknowledger in this form. He is the one who is neither gnostic nor knower. He is also the one who denies Him in the other form. This is the portion of the one who knows Allah from the tajalli and the witnessing in the source of gatheredness (jam').
He, the One, is not the same as the Last. Therefore the two semblances with the gnostic are similar dissimilars. The one possessed of realisation sees multiplicity in One, as he knows what the Divine Names indicate. Although their realities differ and are numerous, it is yet One Source. It is an intelligible multiplicity in the source of One. In the tajalli, it is multiplicity witnessed in the one source even as it matter which you obtain in the definition of each form. It and the multiplicity of forms and their variety derive, in fact, from one substance (jawhar). It is its own matter (hayula). Whoever recognises himself with this recognition recognises his Lord. Allah is in His creation due to His form, rather He is the source of its he-ness and its reality.
As for the people of unveiling, they see Allah in a tajalli of Himself in every breath, and there is no repetition of the tajalli. They also see by witnessing that every tajalli grants a new creation and takes away a creation. Thus its departure is annihilation in the presence of the tajalli, and it is going-on by what the other tajalli grants. So understand!
The Seal of the Wisdom of Power (Malk) in the Word of Lut (Lot)
However, you lack another knowledge, which is that gnosis does not leave the aspiration freedom of action. Whenever gnosis is great, then its freedom of action with the aspiration is weak. That has two reasons – one is his realisation of the station of slavedom and his regarding the root of his natural creation; 1 and the other reason is the oneness of the actor and the acted upon. The aspiration of a Messenger does not appear, since the latter aspect prevents it.
In this witnessing, he sees that his opponent does not turn from the reality on which he is based in the state of his source-form and the state of his non-existence. He only appears in existence through what he had in the state of non-existence by his source-form. He does not overstep his reality nor does he abandon his path. That is called dissent; yet it is a non-essential matter manifested by the veil which is over the eyes of the people, as Allah says, "but most people do not know."
Similarly, Allah said of the Messenger, "It is only his to deliver the message." 7 And He said, "You are not responsible for their guidance, but Allah guides whoever He wills," (2:272) and He added in Surat al-Qasas, "He has best knowledge of the guided," (28:56) those to whom knowledge of their guidance was given in the state of their non-existence in their source-forms. It is established that knowledge follows the known. Whoever is a believer in his source-form and in the state of his non-existence, appears in that form in the state of his existence. Allah knew that of him, so that is what he is like. For that reason, Allah said, "He has best knowledge of the guided."
When Allah said the like of that, He also said, "My Word, once given, is not subject to change," (50:29) because My Word is based on My knowledge of My creation. "and I do not wrong My slaves," that is, I do not decree that disbelief (kufr) on them which makes them wretched and then I demand of them what is not in their capacity to do. Rather, We only deal with them according to what We gave them knowledge of, and We only gave them knowledge of what they gave Us from themselves by that on which they are based. So if they do wrong, they are the ones who are unjust. For this reason, He said, "but they wronged themselves. Allah did not wronged them." Finally, We only said to them what Our essence accorded that We say to them. Our Essence is known to Us by what it is based on; so, if We say this, and do not say that, then We only spoke by what We knew to say. We spoke the word from Us, and obedience or lack of obedience is up to those who hear.
The Seal of the Wisdom of the Decree (Qadar) in the Word of 'Uzayr (Ezra)
Allah "gives everything its created form." (20:50) He sends down according to what He wills.2 He only wills what He knows, and so He commands it. What He knows is as we have stated. It is only by what the known accords.
Tajalli only occurs according to what you have of the predisposition by which the perception of taste occurs. You know that you only perceive according to your predisposition. You look at this matter which you are seeking. If you do not see it, you know that you do not have the predisposition which it requires. That is one of the properties of the Divine Essence. You have learned that Allah "gives everything its created form." (20:50) So if He did not give you this particular predisposition, then it is not your creation. If it had been your creation, then Allah, who informed you that "He gives everything its created for," would have given it to you. It is you who desist from this sort of question in yourself. There is no need for any other prohibition. This is a mark of concern Allah showed to 'Uzayr, peace be upon him. He knew that from his own knowledge and was ignorant of that from his own ignorance.
The Seal of the Wisdom of Prophethood in the Word of 'Isa (Jesus)
All existences are the "the Words of God which are inexhaustable" ;for all are but the word 'Be!'(kun) which is the Word of God.Now must one believe that the Word is related immediatly to God in His principial state ?If it is thus ,it is ,it is impossible for us to know its Quiddity ;or , is it that God 'descends' to the form of he who says ; 'Be' ,so that this word 'Be' is the essential reality of the form towards which God 'descends' ,or in which He manifests Himself.Some men of God assert the former ,and others the latter, and still others are disconcerted by the ambiguity of the aspects.This question can only be resolved by intuition. Abu-Yazid who blew on the ant that he had killed (inadvertently) , and brought it back to life ,knew quite well by whom he blew and that it was through Him that he blew ;his contemplation was Christ-like.
" Without Him (as active principal) and without us(as receptacles of His act) nothing would exist.
I adore Him truly ;
And God is our Master.
But I am He Himself
For so much as you consider (in me) the ( Universal) Man,
Then do not let yourself blinded by the veil of the individual man,
And he will be for you an evident symbol.
Be at once God (in your essence) and creature (by your form)
And you will be through God the dispenser of his grace.
Nourish His creation through Him,
You will be a 'reviving rest and a scent of life'.
(As determinations)We gave Him that by which He manifests Himself in us ;
whereas He gives us the being.
So that the Act(al-amr) belongs at once to Him and to us.
He who knew by my heart ,at the time when He gave us life ,revives it(by knowledge).
We were in Him ,existences, determinations and the relations of time.
This state(of the contemplation of our permanant possibilities in God) does not persist in us ,
But it is that which gave us life."
...For nature comprises the polarization ;the opposition of the Divine Names-which are the (universal )relations -the one to the others come preciously from the 'Breath of Clemancy'; whereas the Essence ,which is not submitted to this (polarizing) condition, is 'independent of the worlds'.As for the world, it was produced 'in the form' of its manifesting principle ,which is no other than the Divine breath.
He who wants to know the Divine Breath (nafas),let
him consider the world; for (according to the Word of the Prophet)'he who knows
his self (nafsahu ) knows his Lord' who manifests Himself in him ;I mean
that the world is manifested in the Breath of the Clement , by which God
'dilated' (naffasa) the possibilities implicit in Divine Names
,relieving them (naffasa) so to speak from the restraint of the state of
non manifestation ;and doing this ,He was generous towards Himself(nafsahu)
because He manifests in Himself (fi-nafsihi)..
"All is contained in the Divine Breath
Like the day in the morning's dawn.
The knowledge transmitted by demonstration is like the dawn for he who drawses ;
So that he sees that which I have said, as a dream, symbol of the Divine Breath,
Which ,after the shadows, consoles him of all distress.
He has long ago revealed Himself to he who came to fetch a fire brand,
And who saw Him as a fire ,whereas He is a Light in the (spiritual) kings and in the 'travellers',
If you understand my words you knows that you have need (of the apparent form ):
If (Moses) had searched for something other (than the fire)
He would have seen Him in that ,and not inversely."
Since the Divine Order(or the Act) reveals itself in conformity to the hierarchy of Existence ,all that which appears to whatever degree of this hierarchy colours itself according to the proper reality of this degree.The degree of he who submits to the Order(or the Act) implies a certain condition which appears in everyone who recieves an order ;in the same way,the degree of the Order(or of the Act) implies a condition appearing in all that which orders(or acts).Thus God said:'accomplsh the prayer!' In which He is the Ordering One , while the one obliged in the cult recieves the Order ;on the other hand ,the adorer says ; 'Lord,forgive me !'And this time it is he who is ordering ,while God receives the order.Now that which God demands by His Order from the adorer is no more than that which the adorer asks by his demand from God ;and it is for that,moreover, that all prayer is granted,even if the reply is retarded.
For the consiousness that a man has of himself is the consiousness of God towards Him.
When God obliges some one to persist in a prayer ,He does it only in view of granting it and satisfying his need.Let nobody, then,renounce the prayer that has been assigned to him, but let him persist with the endurance which the Mesenger of God had in reciting this verse ,in every state ,until he hears the reply with his ears or with his hearing -as you will,or as God will make him understand. If God accords you the prayer from the tongue,He will make you understand His answer by ear ;and if He accords the prayer by the spirit He will make you hear His answer by your hearing.
The Seal of the Wisdom of Mercy in the Word of Sulayman (Solomon)
For 'God prescribed Mercy to Himself ',destining it to His adorer in reward for the works that He mentioned (in the Holy writings)and from which the adorer acquired a right over God ;who ,He ,made a law to be merciful towards the author of these works.But whosoever amongst the servents of God possesses this state (which guarentees him the Divine Mercy)knows thereby who is really the author of his works.For one divides the works(of adoration) in relation to the eight 'organs' of man (which are:the hands,the feet,the eyes,the ears,the tongue,the heart,the stomach,and the sex) ;but God makes it known to us (by the word often mentioned) that He is Himself the 'One'(al-huwiyah) of each of these 'organs' ;then,God alone is author of all these acts ;it is only the form which belongs to the servent himself,the Divine 'One' being principially inherent in him that is to say in his 'name' (which is his 'personal form')-for God is the essence of everything that is manifested and which is called creature.
In all this we have before us only the two Divine Mercies that Solomon expressed by the two Names ,which,in Arabic, are ar-rahman(Clement) and ar-rahim(Merciful),God conditioned the Mercy which He imposed on Himself as law and spread the other beyond all limit ,according to His Word ;'My Mercy embraces everything',that is to say that it embraces even the Divine Names-I mean the essential relations,for He showed Himself merciful towards them in manifesting us ;we are the fruit of Divine unconditional genorosity towards the Divine Names(which demand creation as their logical compliment)just as the dominical relation(which demand the servent as the object).Then, God prescribes His Mercy to Himself (or for Himself)in manifesting us to ourselves. ;He makes us know our 'Being',so that we should know that He destinied His Mercy only to Himself,so that it never goes outside of Him;-and towards whom ,then,apart from Him,would He be merciful,since there is only Him?.
In the same way that each of the Divine Names to which one attributes a diginity superior to that of the others ,implies thereby the significance of all the others,each creature contains in itself the diginity of all that which is hierarchically subordinate ,-(In fact) each particle of the world is the entire world,in the sense that it receives in itself all the different Essential Realities which constitute the world.Thus our affirmation that such a one is inferior to such another in His knowledge ,does not contradict the truth that the Divine Aseity is the Essence at the same time of this one and that one ,nor that this Essence is more perfect and more knowing in the second than it is in the first ; in the same way that the Divine Names distinguish themselves ,Names which are however nothing else than God ;in His cognitive quality ,God possess a relationship(towards the possibilities) more universal than He possess in His volitive quality or His quality of power,and nevertheless He is always identical to Himself and never becomes other than Him.
In the being in whom the intelligence is vaster,the Divine Principle is more apparent than in another in which the knowledge is more limited.Do not then ,let yourself be confused by the difference of beings ,and do not say that it is false to affirm that the creature is essentially God,when we have shown you the hierarchy of the Divine Names ,of which however,you do not doubt that they are God,and that their implicit significance is nothing else than their subject,that is to say ,God.
It is thus that we go along the straight Path on which is found the Lord Himself,since He holds the 'forelock' in His Hand,so that we cannot be seperated from Him.We are with Him implicitly and He is with us sovereighnly.For He ays :'God is with you wheresoever you are '(Quran) whereas we are with Him because He caught hold of our 'lock'.In reality He is with Himself everywhere that He goes with us by His path, and in this sense, there is nobody in the world who is not on a straight path which is none other than the Path of the Lord. Exalted may He be !
When the Prophet said: 'men sleep ,and when they die,they waken',he meant by that ,that all that a man had perceived during His terrestrial life corresponds to the visions of someone who sleeps,so that everything demands interpretation-In truth ,the universe is imagination,and it is God according to His Essential Reality.He who understands that ,has grasped the secrets of the spiritual path.
The Seal of the Wisdom of Existence (Wujud) in the Word of Da'ud (David)
From this, we know that every valid judgement in the world today is the judgement of Allah even if it differs from the established judgement in its outward manifestation called the Shari'a. The only judgement which is valid belongs to Allah in the heart of the matter, because the matter which occurs in the world is based on the judgement of the Divine Will, not on the judgement of the established Shari'a, whose establishment itself comes from the Will. For that reason, He put His determination into effect. Therefore, Will only has determination in the matter, not in the act which it brings.
The power of the Will (mashi'a) is immense. This is why Abu Talib considered it to be the Throne of the Essence, since the will itself necessitates judgement. Nothing occurs in existence nor disappears from it without the Will. When there is opposition to the divine command here, it is called "rebellion". It is only commanding the means, not the command which brings things into being. None opposes Allah at all in what He does in respect to the command of the Will. Opposition only occurs in respect of the command of means. So understand that!
Properly speaking, the command of the Will is directed to bringing the action itself into existence, not to the one at whose hands the action manifests itself. It is impossible that the action should not be. However it takes place in a particular locus, and so, at one moment, it is called opposition to the command of Allah, and at another moment it is called agreement and obedience to the command of Allah. The language of praise and blame follow the action accordingly.
The Seal of the Wisdom of the Breath (Nafas) in the Word of Yunus (Jonah)
Whoever preserves the person, preserves Allah. Man is not blameable by his source, but by his action, and his action is not the same as him. We are discussing his action, and action belongs only to Allah, even though some actions are blamed and some are praised.
Since you know that Allah preserves this organism and preserves its continuance, you should also preserve it since you have that happiness. While man is still alive, he hopes that he will obtain the attribute of perfection for which he was created. Whoever strives to destroy it, strives to prevent the acquisition of that for which he was created.
Man is many but with a single source. Allah is one source but has many Divine Names, just as man has many parts.
The single thing has various modes in the eyes of the onlookers. The divine tajalli is also like that. If you wish, you could say that the tajalli of Allah resembles this, and if you wish, you could say that the world is in the eye of the beholder which contains the parable of Allah in the tajalli, and so it takes on various modes in the eye of the onlooker according to the onlooker's disposition. The onlooker¹s disposition varies with the modalities of the tajalli.
The Seal of the Wisdom of the Unseen in the Word of Ayyub (Job)
If you separate Allah from the universe, then High indeed is He exalted above this attribute! If Allah is the He-ness of the universe, then all principles appear only in Him and from Him. It is His word, "to Him the entire affair will be returned" in reality and unveiling, "so worship Him and put your trust in Him" (11:123) in veil and covering. There is nothing in the realm of possibility more original than this universe because it is based on the form of the Merciful which Allah brought into existence - He manifested His existence by the existence of the universe as man manifests the existence of the natural form. We are His manifest form, and His He-ness is the spirit of this form which governs it. There is no management except in Him as it is only from Him. He is the First by meaning and the Last by form, and the Manifest by the changing of judgements and states, and the Inner by management. "He has knowledge of all things." "He witnesses everything"5 so He knows by direct witnessing, not by thought.
He knew that with one group, patience is what holds the self back from complaint. That is not our definition of patience (sabr). Its definition is to hold the self back from complaint to other-than-Allah, not to Allah. The first group is veiled in their view that the complainer is lessened in contentment (rida) with the decree by complaint. That is not the case.
What hurt is greater than that Allah test you with affliction in your heedlessness of Him or a divine station which you do not know so that you return to Him with your complaint so that He can remove is from you? Thus the need which is your reality will be proven. The hurt is removed from Allah by your asking Him to repel it from you, since you are His manifest form.
The Seal of the Wisdom of Majesty in the Word of Yahya (John the Baptist)
This is the wisdom of firstness in the names. Allah called him Yahya, i.e. the memory of Zakariyya was (yahya) brought to life by him, and "a name We have given to no one else before." (19:7) He joined the attainment of the attribute, which is in the one who has passed on but left a son to revive his memory and his name through him. He called him "Yahya". His name Yahya is like knowledge by tasting
Allah was generous to Zakariyya, for He granted his need and named him by His attribute. Yahya's name was a remembrance for what His Prophet Zakariyya asked of Him; because he preferred the going-on of dhikru'llah after his death, since the son is the secret of his father.
The Seal of the Wisdom of Possession in the Word of Zakariyya (Zachariah)
The Divine Names are "things", but they derive from a single Source. The first thing that His mercy encompassed before time was its thingness, that source which gives existence to mercy by mercy. Thus the first thing that His mercy encompassed was itself, then the thingness indicated, then the thingness of every existent existing without end in this world and the Next, non-essential ('arad) and substance (jawhar), composite and simple. Neither the acquisition of a goal nor harmony of nature is taken into account – rather, harmonious and inharmonious things are all encompassed by divine mercy in existence.
First of all, know that mercy is in bringing-into-existence in general. In mercy by pains, only pains come into existence. So mercy has an effect in two ways - the first effect is by the essence, which is its bringing every existent source into existence. It does not regard desire or lack of it, suitability or lack of suitability. It looks at the source of every existent before its existence, or rather, it looks at its source-form. For this reason, it saw Allah-as-creature in creeds as a single source-form among the source-forms. Its mercy to itself is by bringing-into-existence. This is why we said that Allah-as-creature in creeds is the first thing shown mercy after its mercy to itself in its connection of bringing those shown mercy into existence
States are neither existent nor non-existent – they have no source in existence because they are relationships. They are not non-existent in principle because what knowledge establishes is called the "knower", and it is a state. The knower is an essence described by knowledge, but it is not the same as the essence nor is it the same as knowledge. There is only knowledge and the essence on which this knowledge is established. The being of the knower is a state of this essence when it is described by this meaning. The relationship of knowledge occurred to him, so he is called knowing. Mercy, properly speaking, is a relationship from the Mercy-giver, and it is necessarily part of the principle, so it is merciful. The One who brought it into existence in the one shown mercy did not bring it into existence in order to be shown mercy by it; He brought it into existence to show mercy to the one on whom it settled.
The Seal of the Wisdom of Intimacy in the Word of Ilyas (Elijah)
For him, Allah was pure without connection. He had only half of gnosis of Allah. When the intellect is free of the self in respect to gathering knowledges by its discernment, its gnosis of Allah is based on disconnection (tanzih) not connection (tashbih). When Allah gives gnosis by tajalli, then gnosis of Allah is perfected. Disconnection is used in one place and connection in another place.
The gnostic sees the diffusion of Allah by existence in natural and elemental forms. There is no form but that he sees the source of Allah in its source. This is the complete perfect gnosis which is brought the roads (shara'i) revealed from Allah. By this recognition, all illusions (awham) have authority. For this reason, illusion has a stronger power in this human organism than the intellect, because the man of intellect – even if his intellect reaches maturity – is not free of the power which illusion has over him and over the formation of what he reasons. Illusion is the greatest power in this perfect human organism. The revealed roads brought it, and so you use both connection and disconnection. You use connection in disconnection by illusion, and disconnection in connection by the intellect. So the whole is connected to the whole. It is not possible that disconnection be free of connection nor connection from disconnection.
It is one source which has the same function as the mirror. When the viewer looks in it at the form of his belief in Allah, he recognises Him, and so draws near Him. When it happens that he sees in it the belief of someone else, he denies Him since he sees his form and the form of someone else in the mirror. The mirror is but a single source while the forms are many in the eye of the viewer. There is no form in the mirror which comprises them all at once.
Although the phenomenal being of the mirror has an effect on the forms from one aspect, it does not have an effect on the forms from another aspect. The effect which it has makes the form change shape in smallness, largeness, length, and width, so it has an effect in quantities. This is attributable to it, but this changing of it is by the difference of the size of the mirrors. In the example, look at one of these mirrors, and do not look at all of them. It is your perception in respect to His being essence, and so He is independent of the universe, and in respect to the divine names. In that moment He is like the mirrors. Whatever Divine Name in which you look at yourself or simply look at. He manifests the reality of that Name in whoever looks. The matter is thus. If you understand, do not be anxious, and do not fear. Allah loves bravery, even to the extent of killing a snake. The snake is not other than your self, and the snake is alive through its self in form and reality. The thing is not killed by itself, even if the form is destroyed in the senses, The definition determines it, and imagination does not make it depart.
Since the matter is based on this, this is the safeguard of the essences and might and invincibility. You cannot destroy the definition. What might is greater than this might? You imagine by illusion that you have killed. By intellect and illusion, the form does not vanish from existence in the definition. The proof of that is, "You did not throw when you threw, but Allah threw." (8:17) The eye only perceived the form of Muhammad which had the throwing confirmed to it in the senses. It is what Allah denied the throwing to at first, and then confirmed in the middle, only to return to the perception that Allah was the One who threw in the form of Muhammad. One must believe this. So look at this effector when Allah descended into a Muhammadan form. Allah Himself informs His slaves of that, and none of us said that of Him, rather He said it of Himself.
"You did not kill them, it was Allah who killed them," (8:17) yet only iron, the blow and that which is behind this form killed them. In the whole, killing and throwing took place. So he witnesses matters by their roots and by their forms, and he is complete. When he witnesses the breath, he is completely perfect. The breath of the All-Merciful is the source of the overflowing of existence and life on all, rather the source of Allah's descent to all forms.
The Seal of the Wisdom of Ihsan in the Word of Luqman (Lokman)
He said, "Allah is Latif (Subtle, Kind)." (31:16) Part of His subtleness (latâfa) and His kindness (lutf) is that He is in the thing named by such-and-such a definition in such-and-such a source of that thing, so it is only what its name indicates by convention and usage. It is said that these are names: heaven, earth, rock, tree, animal, angel, provision and food, and yet the source of everything is One.
Then He is described when He says "the All-Aware (Khabir)," the One who knows by experience. It is His words, "We will test you until We know." (47:31) This is the knowledge of tastes. Allah put Himself with His knowledge of what the matter is in (our) profitable knowledge. No one can deny what Allah has written about Himself. Allah differentiated the knowledge of tasting and absolute knowledge. The knowledge of tasting is limited by the faculties. He said of Himself that He is the source of the faculties of His slave when He said, "I am his hearing," which is one of the faculties of the slave, "and his sight," which is one of the faculties of the slave, "and his tongue," which is one of the faculties of the slave, "and his foot and his hand." He did not restrict Himself to specifying the faculties, but He mentioned the members. The slave is not other than his members and faculties. The source called the slave is the Real, but the source of the slave is not the Compassionate Master.
Relationships are distinct by their essence. The one brought into relationship is not distinct. Then He equalized His source in all relationships, for it is but one source with various ascriptions, relationships and attributes
The Seal of the Wisdom of the Imam in the Word of Harun (Aaron)
Musa knew the matter better than Harun because by his knowledge he knew the One the people of the Calf worshipped since Allah decreed that only He would be worshipped. When Allah decrees something, it must occur. Musa chided his brother Harun since the business consisted of disavowal and inadequacy. The gnostic is the one who sees Allah in everything, rather he sees Him as the source of everything.
The truth of passion is
that passion is the cause of passion.
If there had not been passion in the heart,
passion would not have been worshipped.
Do you not see how perfect Allah's knowledge of things is? How it is completed it in respect of the one who worships his passion and takes it as a god? He said, "he who Allah has misguided knowlingly." (45:23) Being astray is bewilderment (hayra). That is when this worshipper sees that what he worships is only his passion, by following it in obedience to Him in what He commanded him of worship of whichever person worships Him, until his worship is for Allah the Great. That too is from passion because if passion had not occurred in him in that pure presence – and it is the will to love – he would neither have worshipped Allah nor preferred Him to others. In the same way, everyone worships a certain form among the forms of the universe, and takes it as a god, and he only takes it by passion. The worshipper is under the power of his passion.
The complete gnostic is the one who sees that every idol is a locus of Allah's tajalli in which He is worshipped. For that reason, they are all called "god" in spite of having a particular name of a stone, tree, animal, man, star, or angel. This is the nature of the personality in it. Divinity is a rank which the worshipper imagines it to have, and it is the rank of his idol. In reality, it is a locus for the tajalli of Allah belonging to the sight of this particular worshipper devoted to this idol in this particular locus of tajalli.
However, the gnostics know that they do not worship the forms themselves. Rather, they worship Allah in them according to the power of the tajalli which they know of these forms. The one who denies and has no knowledge of what Allah has manifested in tajalli is ignorant of this. The complete gnostic veils himself from the Prophet and Messenger and their heirs. He commands himself to leave that form which the Messenger of the moment left in order to follow the Messenger desiring Allah's love for them by His words, "Say: if you love Allah, then follow me and Allah will love you." (3:31) He called on a God to whom one has recourse and Who is known in respect to the whole and is not witnessed, "nor do the eyes perceive Him, but He perceives the eyes" (6:103) by His lutf and His diffusion in the source of things. The eyes do not perceive Him as they do not perceive their spirits which govern their shapes and outward forms. "...He is the Latif, the All- Aware."
Experience is tasting, and tasting is tajalli. Tajalli occurs in forms. They must be and it must be, and the one who sees Him by his passion must worship Him, if you only knew! Allah possesses the goal of the path.
The Seal of the Wisdom of Sublimity in the Word of Musa (Moses)
It is thus that Moses was exposed in his ark on the Nile,so that he should realize by these faculties the respective domains of knowledge.God thought him by this that if the spirit is the King (of the human organism),it rules however only through it ,that is to say by the intermediary of the facuties attached to this human receptacle of which the symbol is the ark.In the same way ,God rules the world only through the world itself or by its (qualitative)form.
In fact, we have not learnt a Divine Name of which we did not find the significance and the spirit in the world ;so that in this respect God only governs the world through the 'form' of the world..It is for that,that (the Prophet) said on the subject of the creation of Adam,who is the prototype synthesising all the categories of the Divine Presence-the Essence(dhat),the Qualities(sifat)and the Activities(af'al)-that 'God created Adam in His form'. But, His 'form' is none other than the Divine Presence Itself,so that God manifested in this noble 'resume' which is the Perfect Man(or Universal Man;al-insan al-kamil)all the Divine Names and the Essential Realities of everything that exists outside of him ,in the macrocosm ,in a 'detailed' manner.He made of the Perfect Man the spirit of the world and subjected to him the high and the law because of the perfection(or universality)of his 'form'.
In the same way ,the Divine Being assumes the multiplicity (of aspects) and Names ,which it designates as such or such ,in the view of the world ,which presupposes from its nature the multiple essences of the Names which it affirms therein.Inversely,the multiplicity of the world is unity, in respect of its essence.In the same way that the Hyle is multiple by virtue of the forms which appear in it ,and of which it is the substantial support ,God appears as multiple by virtue of the forms of His own revelation,so that He is the 'place of revelation'where the forms of the world reveal themselves the one to the other,at the same time remaining essentially one...
"I was a hidden treasure ,I loved to be known and I created the world",if there had not been this Divine Love the world would not have been manifested.The movement of the world from non-existence to existence is then (in reality) the movement of love manifesting itself .On the other hand the 'world' also loves to contemplate itself as existing ,just as if it contemplated itself in its state of principial immobility.Under which ever face one considers it,the movement of the world from its state of permanent non-existence towards its existence would be a movement of love ,from the Divine side as well as the worldly side.
For the Essence loves perfection ;but,the knowledge that God has of Himself in so far as He is independent of all worlds ,refers only to Himself ;so that knowledge be perfect in all degrees ,it is necesary that knowledge of the ephemeral ,knowledge which results precisely from these determinations ,-meaning the determinations of the world in so far as they exist -is realised equally.The Divine perfection (or the infinity)expresses itself then,in that it manifests relative knowledge as well as eternal knowledge ,so that the Divine diginity of Knowledge be perfect under the one and the other aspect (although relative knowledge adds nothing to Absolute Knowledge.)
In the same manner the Being perfects itself .For the Being is in one way eternal and in another way non eternal or to become.The eternal Being is the Being of God in Himself;the non-eternal being is the Divine Being (reflecting Himself) in the 'forms' of the immutable world (that is to say in the archetypes);it is that which one means by 'become'(or happening) because the Being is manifested there from one part to the other .He manifests Himself ,then,to Himself in the forms of the world,so that the Being be perfect (in every aspect although the relative can add nothing to the eternal).
The movement of the world ,then is born of the love of perfection(or of infinity).
In the same way ,all that the prophets brought of sciences is clothed in forms which are accessible to the most ordinary intellectual capacities,so that he who does not go to the heart of things stops at this clothing and takes it for that which is the most beautiful,whereas the man of subtle comprehension,the diver who fishes the pearls of Wisdom ,knows how to indicate for what reason such or such a Divine Truth is clothed in terrestrial form;he evaluates the robe and the material of which it is made ,and knows by that,all that it covers ,attaining thus to a science which remains in accessible to those who do not have knowledge of this order.
The linking of causes could not be abolished ,determined as it is by immutable essences, for these manifest themselves in existence according only to the 'forms' which they imply in their state of permanance;"There is no change for the Words of God";but,the Words of God are none other than the essences of living things;they are eternal in their state of immutability ,and they ae in the future(huduth) in so far as they appear in existence.
But Moses was chosen and close to God ,and if God causes one to approach Him,He reveals Himself to him as the object of his desire without his knowing.
As the fire of Moses,which he saw through the eye of his need,
And who is the Divinity that he didnot recognize.
The Seal of the Wisdom of What One Turns to (as-Samad) in the Word of Khalid
He knew that Allah had sent Muhammad as a mercy to the worlds, but Khalid was not a Messenger. He wanted to receive a generous share of this mercy contained in the message of Muhammad. He was not commanded to convey the message, but he wanted to have that share in the Interspace so that there would be stronger knowledge about the creation, and for this reason his people squandered him.
The Seal of the Unique Wisdom in the Word of Muhammad
He mentioned women in the first place and prayer in the last ,because woman is part of man through her orgin ,which manifested her ,and man must first know of his own soul before being able to know his Lord;for his knowledge of the Lord is like the fruit of his knowledge of himself ,from whence the Word of the Prophet: "He who knows himself ,knows his Lord".From this one may deduce ,either that God cannot be known and that one will be unable to reach Him-which is perfectly valid -or that God may be known.It is necessary that you know,first that you do not know yourself,and then you know yourself and that,in consequence ,you know your Lord.
When man contemplates God in woman ,his contemplation rests on which is passive ;if he contemplates Him in himself,seeing that woman comes from man ,he contemplates Him in that which is active ;and when he contemplates Him alone,without the presence of any form whatsoever issued from him,his contemplation corresponds to a state of passivity with regard to God,without intermediary.Consequently his contemplation of God in woman is the most perfect ,for it is then God,in so far as He is at once active and passive that he contemplates ,whereas in the purely interior contemplation ,He contemplates Him only in a passive way.So the prophet was to love woman because of the perfect contemplation of God in them.One would never be able to contemplate God directly in absence of all(sensible or spiritual) support ,for God ,in His Absolute Essence ,is independent of worlds..But as the (Divine) Reality is inaccessible in respect (of the Essence),and there is contemplation only in a substance ,the contemplation of God in woman is the most intense and the most perfect ;and the union which is the most intense (in the sensible order,which serves as support for this contemplation) is the conjugal act.
But,the Prophet loved woman preciously because of their ontological rank,because they were like the passive receptacle of his act ,and because they were situated in relation to him as the Universal Nature in relation to God,it is certainly in Universal Nature that God causes the forms of the world to blossom by the projection of His Will and by the Divine Command(or the Act),which manifests itself as the sexual act in the world of forms constituted by the elements ,like spiritual will(al-himmah)in the world of the spirits of light and as logical conclusion in the discursive order,the whole thing being but an act of love of the primordial ternary reflecting itself in each and all its aspects.
He who loves woman in this manner ,loves them by Divine Love;but he who loves them only by virtue of natural attraction ,deprives himself of the inherent knowledge of this contemplatin.
In the same way that woman(in her natural condition,not in her intelligent essence) occupies an inferior degree to that of man ;the being created 'in the form of God' occupies a degree hierarchically inferior to He who created him 'in His form',in spite of the identity of the form of the One and the other .It is precisely by this degree ,that the Creator is distinguished from His Creation,that God is 'independent of worlds',and the first agent ;for the second agent is the 'form',although it obiviously does not have the role of an autonomous principal.It is thus that the essential determinations distinguish themselves one from the other by virtue of their (ontological) ranks ,and it is in the same manner as that,that all who know (God) grant to every real thing its degree of reality; so Muhammed was to love woman through Divine Love.As for God,He 'gives to each thing its own nature'so its own reality: which comes back to saying that He gives to each thing,only that which is essentially due to it,by that which in itself it represents(as possibility).
Man finds himself (in fact ) placed as an intermediary between the Essence from which he emanates ,and women who emanates from him
Prayer is a secret call exchanged between God and the adorer;it is,then,also an invocation(dhikr) (this term meaning either invocation,mentioned,call,remembrance).But,who ever invokes God,finds himself in the presence of God,according to the Divine Word faithfully transmitted since the Prophet: 'I witness the invocation of he who invokes Me'and he who finds himself in the presence of He whom he invokes, contemplates Him,if he is endowed with intellectual vision.That is the contemplation(mushahadah) and vision(ru-ya); but he who does not have intellectual vision(basar)does not contemplate Him.It is by this actuality or absence of vision in the prayer that the adorer can judge of his own spiritual degree.
He who does not reach the degree of spiritual vision in prayer has not fully realized and does not yet find there 'the freshness of the eyes'; for he does not see He to whom he addressed himself.If he does not hear that which God answers him in the prayer, he is not one of those who 'lends his hearing' : he who is not present in front of his Lord when he prays,and does not hear Him and does not see Him,is not consiously in a state of prayer,and the Koranic Word 'who lends his hearing and is witness' does not apply to him.
That which one specifies by the term 'prayer' involves again other distinctions ;for according to the Koranic text,God orders us on one hand to address to Him the prayer,and,on the other,He tells us that He dispenses us Mercy from His own 'prayer' that He 'prays' over us,so that prayer goes from us towards Him and from Him to us .When it is He who 'prays',He does it by virtue of His Name the Last(al-akhir),for in this respect His manifestation supposes the previous manifestation of the created being.But,this(this Divine revelation according to the sense of the Name the Last) is none other than the determination of God that the adorer 'creates' in his ritual orientation ,be it by his intellectual vision,be it by his dogmatic belief.It is the conformation of the Divinity to the belief.:the Divinity varies according to the capacity of its 'place'(or receptacle) of revelation ;thus Junaid expressed it when he replied to the questian (on the connection which exists between the knowledge of God and he who knows):"The colour of water is the colour of its receptacle";this is certainly a masterly reply,touching the nature of that which is in question;that is (meaning;the Divine determination 'created' at the time of the prayer )-God ,in so far as He 'prays' over us .On the other hand if it is we who pray ,it is to us that the Name the Last is implied,in the sense that we are then implicated in this Name ,because of that which we explained just now on the Divine condition corresponding to this Name ;(note-we come 'after',since our prayer presupposes someone to whom it is addressed ,meaning God)we are then close to Him,in the measure of our own (spiritual)state,so that He looks at us only by virtue of the (spiritual) form that we ourselves manifest.
According to a certain point of view ,the pronoun,in the sentence:"Is there any thing which does not exalt His praise?" refers to the thing itself,that is to say the creature praises by that which it is.This is analogous to that which we were saying of the beleiver ,meaning that he praises the Divinity which conforms to his own belief and connects himself to it in this way ;but,all acts returns to their author,so that the believer praises himself ,as the work praises its artist ,all perfection and all lack that it manifests falling back on its author.In the same way ,the Divinity (as such,which)conforms to the belief is created by he who concentrates on It,and It is his own work.In praising that which he believes ,the believer praises his own soul,it is because of that that he condemns other beliefs than his own.;if he was just ,he would not do it;only, he who is fixed on a certain particular adoration is necessarily ignorant(of the intrinsic truths of other beliefs),in the same way that his belief in God implies a negation of the other forms of belief.If he understood the sense of the word of Junaid :"The colour of water is the colour of its receptacle" he would admit the validity of all beliefs,and he would recognise God in every form and every object of faith.
The Divinity conforming to the belief is that which can be defined,and it is That,the God ,which the heart can contain(according to the Divine Word :"Neither My heavens nor My earth contain Me,but the heart of My faithful servent contains Me").For the Absolute Divinity cannot be contained in anything since It is the very Essence of things and Its own Essence :one does not say of some being that he contains himself ;on the other hand ,nor does one say that he does not contain himself.Understand then !God-May He be Exalted !-speaks the truth,and it is He who guides on the right way.
(Courtesy-Angela Culme Seymour& Aisha Bewley)
The
End
III :
Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences:(G.W.F.Hegel-Germany-1770-1831)
(Hegel
is the founder of Absolute Idealism. Encyclopedia is his masterpiece expounding
the Identity and Unity of Being and Thought. Many consider him as the Grand Master
of the
Modern Age..)
Part :1: LOGIC
$1-The objects of philosophy, it is true, are upon the whole the same as those of religion. In both the object is Truth, in that supreme sense in which God and God only is the Truth.
That in point of time the mind makes general images of objects, long before it makes notions of them, and that it is only through these mental images, and by recourse to them, that the thinking mind rises to know and comprehend thinkingly.
$2-This thinking study of things may serve, in a general way, as a description of philosophy.
Philosophy, on the other hand, is a peculiar mode of thinking - a mode in which thinking becomes knowledge, and knowledge through notions.
These ideas would put feeling and thought so far apart as to make them opposites, and would represent them as so antagonistic, that feeling, particularly religious feeling is supposed to be contaminated, perverted, and even annihilated by thought. They also emphatically hold that religion and piety grow out of, and rest upon something else, and not on thought. But those who make this separation forget meanwhile that only man has the capacity for religion, and that animals no more have religion than they have law and morality.
Man - and that just because it is his nature to think - is the only being that possesses law, religion, and morality. In these spheres of human life, therefore, thinking, under the guise of feeling, faith, or generalised image, has not been inactive: its action and its productions are there present and therein contained. But it is one thing to have such feelings and generalised images that have been moulded and permeated by thought, and another thing to have thoughts about them. The thoughts, to which after-thought upon those modes of consciousness gives rise, are what is comprised under reflection, general reasoning, and the like, as well as under philosophy itself.
$3-The content of whatever kind it be, with which our consciousness is taken up, is what constitutes the qualitative character of our feelings, perceptions, fancies, and ideas; of our aims and duties; and of our thoughts and notions. From this point of view, feeling, perception, etc., are the forms assumed by these contents.
The several modes of feeling, perception, desire, and will, so far as we are aware of them, are in general called ideas (mental representations): and it may be roughly said that philosophy puts thoughts, categories, or, in more precise language, adequate notions, in the place of the generalised images we ordinarily call ideas. Mental impressions such as these may be regarded as the metaphors of thoughts and notions. But to have these figurate conceptions does not imply that we appreciate their intellectual significance, the thoughts and rational notions to which they correspond. Conversely, it is one thing to have thoughts and intelligent notions, and another to know what impressions, perceptions, and feelings correspond to them.
This difference will to some extent explain what people call the unintelligibility of philosophy. Their difficulty lies partly in an incapacity - which in itself is nothing but want of habit - for abstract thinking; i.e. in an inability to get hold of pure thoughts and move about in them.
But it is a very different thing to make the thoughts pure and simple our object.
But their complaint that philosophy is unintelligible is as much due to another reason; and that is an impatient wish to have before them as a mental picture that which is in the mind as a thought or notion. When people are asked to apprehend some notion, they often complain that they do not know what they have to think. But the fact is that in a notion there is nothing further to be thought than the notion itself. What the phrase reveals is a hankering after an image with which we are already familiar. The mind, denied the use of its familiar ideas, feels the ground where it once stood firm and at home taken away from beneath it, and, when transported into the region of pure thought, cannot tell where in the world it is.
$4-In dealing with the ordinary modes of mind, he will first of all, as we saw, have to prove and almost to awaken the need for his peculiar method of knowledge. In dealing with the objects of religion, and with truth as a whole, he will have to show that philosophy is capable of apprehending them from its own resources
$5-it may be well to recall another of these old unreasoned beliefs. And that is the conviction that to get at the truth of any object or event, even of feelings, perceptions, opinions, and mental ideas, we must think it over. Now in any case to think things over is at least to transform feelings, ordinary ideas, etc. into thoughts.
Everybody allows that to know any other science you must have first studied it, and that you can only claim to express a judgment upon it in virtue of such knowledge. Everybody allows that to make a shoe you must have learned and practised the craft of the shoemaker, though every man has a model in his own foot, and possesses in his hands the natural endowments for the operations required. For philosophy alone, it seems to be imagined, such study, care, and application are not in the least requisite
$6-It is no less desirable, on the other hand, that philosophy should understand that its content is no other than actuality, that core of truth which, originally produced and producing itself within the precincts of the mental life, has become the world, the inward and outward world, of consciousness
But even Experience, as it surveys the wide range of inward and outward existence, has sense enough to distinguish the mere appearence, which is transient and meaningless, from what in itself really deserves the name of actuality. As it is only in form that philosophy is distinguished from other modes of attaining an acquaintance with this same sum of being, it must necessarily be in harmony with actuality and experience. In fact, this harmony may be viewed as at least an extrinsic means of testing the truth of a philosophy. Similarly it may be held the highest and final aim of philosophic science to bring about, through the ascertainment of this harmony, a reconciliation of the self-conscious reason with the reason which is in the world - in other words, with actuality.
What is reasonable is actual and What is actual is reasonable
For their philosophic sense, we must presuppose intelligence enough to know, not only that God is actual, that He is the supreme actuality, that He alone is truly actual;
This divorce between idea and reality is especially dear to the analytic understanding which looks upon its own abstractions, dreams though they are, as something true and real, and prides itself on the imperative ‘ought’, which it takes especial pleasure in prescribing even on the field of politics. As if the world had waited on it to learn how it ought to be, and was not!
The object of philosophy is the Idea, and the Idea is not so impotent as merely to have a right or an obligation to exist without actually existing. The object of philosophy is an actuality of which those objects, social regulations and conditions, are only the superficial outside.
$7-Thus reflection - thinking things over - in a general way involves the principle (which also means the beginning) of philosophy
It thus appears that modern philosophy derives its materials from our own personal observations and perceptions of the external and internal world, from nature as well as from the mind and heart of man, when both stand in the immediate presence of the observer.
All instruments, such as the thermometer and barometer, which do not come under the special head of magnetic or electric apparatus, are styled philosophical instruments. Surely thought, and not a mere combination of wood, iron, etc., ought to be called the instrument of philosophy
$8-In the first place there is another circle of objects which it does not embrace. These are Freedom, Spirit, and God. They belong to a different sphere, not because it can be said that they have nothing to do with experience; for though they are certainly not experiences of the senses, it is quite an identical proposition to say that whatever is in consciousness is experienced
There is an old phrase often wrongly attributed to Aristotle, and supposed to express the general tenor of his philosophy. Nihil est in intellectu quod non fuerit in sensu: there is nothing in thought which has not been in sense and experience. If speculative philosophy refused to admit this maxim, it can only have done so from a misunderstanding. It will, however, on the converse side no less assert: Nihil est in sensu quod! non fuerit in intellectu
$9-As a species of reflection, therefore, which, though it has a certain community of nature with the reflection already mentioned, is nevertheless different from it, philosophic thought thus possesses, in addition to the common forms, some forms of its own, of which the Notion may be taken as the type.
$10-A main line of argument in the Critical Philosophy bids us pause before proceeding to inquire into God or into the true being of things, and tells us first of all to examine the faculty of cognition and see whether it is equal to such an effort. We ought, says Kant, to become acquainted with the instrument, before we undertake the work for which it is to be employed; for if the instrument be insufficient, all our trouble will be spent in vain.
Unless we wish to be deceived by words, it is easy to see what this amounts to. In the case of other instruments, we can try and criticise them in other ways than by setting about the special work for which they are destined. But the examination of knowledge can only be carried out by an act of knowledge. To examine this so-called instrument is the same thing as to know it. But to seek to know before we know is as absurd as the wise resolution of Scholasticus, not to venture into the water until he had learned to swim.
$11 The mind or spirit, when it is sentient or perceptive, finds its object in something sensuous; when it imagines, in a picture or image; when it wills, in an aim or end. But in contrast to, or it may be only in distinction from, these forms of its existence and of its objects, the mind has also to gratify the cravings of its highest and most inward life. That innermost self is thought. Thus the mind renders thought its object. In the best meaning of the phrase, it comes to itself;
To see that thought in its very nature is dialectical, and that, as understanding, it must fall into contradiction - the negative of itself - will form one of the main lessons of logic.
$12 Thus the knowledge of God, as of every supersensible reality, is in its true character an exaltation above sensations or perceptions: it consequently involves a negative attitude to the initial data of sense, and to that extent implies mediation
As a matter of fact, thinking is always the negation of what we have immediately before us
But there is also an a priori aspect of thought, where by a mediation, not made by anything external but by a reflection into self, we have that immediacy which is universality, the selfcomplacency of thought which is so much at home with itself that it feels an innate indifference to descend to particulars, and in that way to the development of its own nature.
Philosophy, then, owes its development to the empirical sciences. In return it gives their contents what is so vital to them, the freedom of thought - gives them, in short, an a priori character
$13 For these thousands of years the same Architect has directed the work: and that Architect is the one living Mind whose nature is to think, to bring to self-consciousness what it is, and, with its being thus set as object before it, to be at the same time raised above it, and so to reach a higher stage of its own being. The different systems which the history of philosophy presents are therefore not irreconcilable with unity.
In philosophy the latest birth of time is the result of all the systems that have preceded it, and must include their principles; and so, if, on other grounds, it deserve the title of philosophy, will be the fullest, most comprehensive, and most adequate system of all.
When the universal is made a mere form and co-ordinated with the particular, as if it were on the same level, it sinks into a particular itself. Even common sense in everyday matters is above the absurdity of setting a universal beside the particulars. Would any one, who wished for fruit, reject cherries, pears, and grapes, on the ground that they were cherries, pears, or grapes, and not fruit?
$14 The thought, which is genuine and self-supporting, must be intrinsically concrete; it must be an Idea; and when it is viewed in the whole of its universality, it is the Idea, or the Absolute
For the truth is concrete; that is, while it gives a bond and principle of unity, it also possesses an internal source of development. Truth, then, is only possible as a universe or totality of thought; and the freedom of the whole, as well as the necessity of the several sub-divisions, which it implies, are only possible when these are discriminated and defined.
$15 Each of the parts of philosophy is a philosophical whole, a circle rounded and complete in itself. In each of these parts, however, the philosophical Idea is found in a particular specificality or medium. The single circle, because it is a real totality, bursts through the limits imposed by its special medium, and gives rise to a wider circle. The whole of philosophy in this way resembles a circle of circles.
$17 It is by the free act of thought that it occupies a point of view, in which it is for its own self, and thus gives itself an object of its own production. Nor is this all. The very point of view, which originally is taken on its own evidence only, must in the course of the science be converted to a result - the ultimate result in which philosophy returns into itself and reaches the point with which it began. In this manner philosophy exhibits the appearance of a circle which closes with itself, and has no beginning in the same way as the other sciences have. To speak of a beginning of philosophy has a meaning only in relation to a person who proposes to commence the study, and not in relation to the science as science.
This is in short, the one single aim, action, and goal of philosophy - to arrive at the notion of its notion, and thus secure its return and its satisfaction.
$18 Here however it is premised that the Idea turns out to be the thought which is completely identical with itself, and not identical simply in the abstract, but also in its action of setting itself over against itself, so as to gain a being of its own, and yet of being in full possession of itself while it is in this other. Thus philosophy is subdivided into three parts:
I. Logic: the science of the Idea in and for itself.
II. The Philosophy of Nature: the science of the Idea in its otherness.
III. The Philosophy of Mind: the science of the Idea come back to itself out of
that otherness.
In Nature nothing else would have to be discerned, except the Idea; but the Idea has here divested itself of its proper being. In Mind, again, the Idea has asserted a being of its own, and is on the way to become absolute
$19 Logic is the science of the pure Idea; pure, that is, because the Idea is in the abstract medium of Thought.
It is true that Logic, being the absolute form of truth, and another name for the very truth itself, is something more than merely useful. Yet if what is noblest, most liberal, and most independent is also most useful, Logic has some claim to the latter character
$19n- The first question is: What is the object of our science? The simplest and most intelligible answer to this question is that Truth is the object of Logic.
In all this it is not humility which holds back from the knowledge and study of the truth, but a conviction that we are already in full possession of it.
People have a feeling that, if thinking passes the ordinary range of our ideas and impressions, it cannot but be on the evil road. They seem to be trusting themselves to a sea on which they will be tossed to and fro by the waves of thought, till at length they again reach the sandbank of this temporal scene, as utterly poor as when they left it
God is a spirit, it is said, and must be worshipped in spirit and in truth
The world of spiritual existences, God himself, exists in proper truth, only in thought and as thought. If this be so, therefore, thought, far from being a mere thought, is the highest and, in strict accuracy, the sole mode of apprehending the eternal and absolute.
It is in knowing what he is and what he does that man is distinguished from the brutes
If the science of Logic then considers thought in its action and its productions (and thought being no resultless energy produces thoughts and the particular thought required), the theme of Logic is in general the supersensible world, and to deal with that theme is to dwell for a while in that world. Mathematics is concerned with the abstractions of time and space. But these are still the object of sense, although the sensible is abstract and idealised. Thought bids adieu even to this last and abstract sensible
$20 Thought conceived as a subject (agent) is a thinker, and the subject existing as a thinker is simply denoted by the term ‘I’.
It will be shown in the Logic that thought (and the universal) is not a mere opposite of sense: it lets nothing escape it, but, outflanking its other, is at once that other and itself. Now language is the work of thought: and hence all that is expressed in language must be universal. What I only mean or suppose is mine: it belongs to me - this particular individual. But language expresses nothing but universality; and so I cannot say what I merely mean. And the unutterable - feeling or sensation - far from being the highest truth, is the most unimportant and untrue
To this extent, ‘I’ is the existence of a wholly abstract universality, a principle of abstract freedom. Hence thought, viewed as a subject, is what is expressed by the word ‘I’; and since I am at the same time in all my sensations, conceptions, and states of consciousness, thought is everywhere present, and is a category that runs through all these modifications.
The fault in conception lies deeper. These ideas, though implicitly possessing the organic unity of mind, stand isolated here and there on the broad ground of conception, with its inward and abstract generality
$20n -Logic is to be studied not for its utility, but for its own sake; the superexcellent is not to be sought for the sake of mere utility.
Particular ends can be attained only in the attainment of what absolutely is and exists in its own right.
$21n -The sensible appearance is individual and evanescent: the permanent in it is discovered by reflection.
Individuals are born and perish: the species abides and recurs in them all: and its existence is only visible to reflection
In thus characterising the universal, we become aware of its antithesis to something else. This something else is the merely immediate, outward and individual, as opposed to the mediate, inward, and universal. The universal does not exist externally to the outward eye as a universal. The kind as kind cannot be perceived: the laws of the celestial motions are not written on the sky. The universal is neither seen nor heard, its existence is only for the mind. Religion leads us to a universal, which embraces all else within itself, to an Absolute by which all else is brought into being: and this Absolute is an object not of the senses but of the mind and of thought.
$22-It has been the conviction of every age that the only way of reaching the permanent substratum was to transmute the given phenomenon by means of reflection.
It marks the diseased state of the age when we see it adopt the despairing creed that our knowledge is only subjective, and that beyond this subjective we cannot go. Whereas, rightly understood, truth is objective, and ought so to regulate the conviction of every one, that the conviction of the individual is stamped as wrong when it does not agree with this rule
If this be so, it also implies that everything we know both of outward and inward nature, in one word, the objective world, is in its own self the same as it is in thought, and that to think is to bring out the truth of our object, be it what it may. The business of philosophy is only to bring into explicit consciousness what the world in all ages has believed about thought.
$23-To think is in fact ipso facto to be free, for thought as the action of the universal is an abstract relating of self to self, where, being at home with ourselves, and as regards our subjectivity utterly blank, our consciousness is, in the matter of its contents, only in the fact and its characteristics
$24-Logic therefore coincides with Metaphysics, the science of things set and held in thoughts - thoughts accredited able to express the essential reality of things.
$24n-It would be necessary, therefore, if we use the term thought at all, to speak of nature as the system of unconscious thought, or, to use Schelling’s expression, a petrified intelligence. And in order to prevent misconception, ‘thought-form’ or ‘thought-type’ should be substituted for the ambiguous term thought.
From what has been said the principles of logic are to be sought in a system of thought-types or fundamental categories, in which the opposition between subjective and objective, in its usual sense vanishes. The signification thus attached to thought and its characteristic forms may be illustrated by the ancient saying that ‘nous governs the world’, or by our own phrase that ‘Reason is in the world’; which means that Reason is the soul of the world it inhabits, its immanent principle, its most proper and inward nature, its universal.
All things have a permanent inward nature, as well as an outward existence. They live and die, arise and pass away; but their essential and universal part is the kind; and this means much more than something common to them all.
When it is presented in this light, thought has a different part to play from what it has if we speak of a faculty of thought, one among a crowd of other faculties, such as perception, conception, and will, with which it stands on the same level. When it is seen to be the true universal of all that nature and mind contain, it extends its scope far beyond all these, and becomes the basis of everything
Man is a thinker, and is universal; but he is a thinker only because he feels his own universality
Nature does not bring its nous into consciousness: it is man who first makes himself double so as to be a universal for a universal.
By the term ‘I’ I mean myself, a single and altogether determinate person. And yet I really utter nothing peculiar to myself, for every one else is an ‘I’ or ‘Ego’, and when I call myself ‘I’, though I indubitably mean the single person myself, I express a thorough universal. ‘I’, therefore, is mere being-for-self, in which everything peculiar or marked is renounced and buried out of sight; it is as it were the ultimate and unanalysable point of consciousness. We may say ‘I’ and thought are the same, or, more definitely, ‘I’ is thought as a thinker. What I have in my consciousness is for me. ‘I’ is the vacuum or receptacle for anything and everything: for which everything is and which stores up everything in itself. Every man is a whole world of conceptions, that lie buried in the night of the ‘Ego’. It follows that the ‘Ego’ is the universal in which we leave aside all that is particular, and in which at the same time all the particulars have a latent existence. In other words, it is not a mere universality and nothing more, but the universality which includes in it everything.
While the brute cannot say ‘I’, man can, because it is his nature to think. Now in the ‘Ego’ there are a variety of contents, derived both from within and from without, and according to the nature of these contents our state may be described as perception, or conception, or reminiscence. But in all of them the ‘I’ is found: or in them all thought is present. Man, therefore, is always thinking, even in his perceptions
Logic is the study of thought pure and simple, or of the pure thought-forms
Whereas in logic a thought is understood to include nothing else but what depends on thinking and what thinking has brought into existence. It is in these circumstances that thoughts are pure thoughts. The mind is then in its own home-element and therefore free; for freedom means that the other thing with which you deal is a second self - so that you never leave your own ground but give the law to yourself.
But when we think, we renounce our selfish and particular being, sink ourselves in the thing, allow thought to follow its own course, and if we add anything of our own, we think ill.
If in pursuance of the foregoing remarks we consider Logic to be the system of the pure types of thought, we find that the other philosophical sciences, the Philosophy of Nature and the Philosophy of Mind, take the place, as it were, of an Applied Logic, and that Logic is the soul which animates them both. Their problem in that case is only to recognise the logical forms under the shapes they assume in Nature and Mind - shapes which are only a particular mode of expression for the forms of pure thought.
Everything that exists is a particular, which couples together the universal and the singular. But Nature is weak and fails to exhibit the logical forms in their purity.
It will now be understood that Logic is the all-animating spirit of all the sciences, and its categories the spiritual hierarchy. They are the heart and centre of things
Common fancy puts the Absolute far away in a world beyond. The Absolute is rather directly before us, so present that so long as we think, we must, though without express consciousness of it, always carry it with us and always use it.
Logic is usually said to be concerned with forms only and to derive the material for them from elsewhere. But this ‘only’, which assumes that the logical thoughts are nothing in comparison with the rest of the contents, is not the word to use about forms which are the absolutely real ground of everything. Everything else rather is an ‘only’ compared with these thoughts. To make such abstract forms a problem presupposes in the inquirer a higher level of culture than ordinary; and to study them in themselves and for their own sake signifies in addition that these thought-types must be deduced out of thought itself, and their truth or reality examined by the light of their own laws
In common life truth means the agreement of an object with our conception of it. We thus presuppose an object to which our conception must conform. In the philosophical sense of the word, on the other hand, truth may be described, in general abstract terms, as the agreement of a thought-content with itself.
and evil and untruth may be said to consist in the contradiction subsisting between the function or notion and the existence of the object
God alone is the thorough harmony of notion and reality. All finite things involve an untruth: they have a notion and an existence, but their existence does not meet the requirements of the notion. For this reason they must perish, and then the incompatibility between their notion and their existence becomes manifest. It is in the kind that the individual animal has its notion; and the kind liberates itself from this individuality by death
We may also express the problem of logic by saying that it examines the forms of thought touching their capability to hold truth
For in experience everything depends upon the mind we bring to bear upon
actuality. A great mind is great in its experience; and in the motley play of
phenomena at once perceives the point of real significance. The idea is
present, in actual shape, not something, as it were, over the hill and far
away. The genius of a Goethe, for example, looking into nature or history, has
great experiences, catches sight of the living principle, and gives expression
to it.
The most perfect method of knowledge proceeds in the pure form of
thought: and here the attitude of man is one of entire freedom.
That the form of thought is the perfect form, and that it presents the truth as it intrinsically and actually is, is the general dogma of all philosophy.
This lapse from natural unity has not escaped notice, and nations from the earliest times have asked the meaning of the wonderful division of the spirit against itself. No such inward disunion is found in nature: natural things do nothing wicked.
The spiritual is distinguished from the natural, and more especially from the animal, life, in the circumstance that it does not continue a mere stream of tendency, but sunders itself to self-realisation. But this position of severed life has in its turn to be suppressed, and the spirit has by its own act to win its way to concord again. The final concord then is spiritual; that is, the principle of restoration is found in thought, and thought only. The hand that inflicts the wound is also the hand which heals it.
But it is a mistake to regard the natural and immediate harmony as the right state. The mind is not mere instinct: on the contrary, it essentially involves the tendency to reasoning and meditation. Childlike innocence no doubt has in it something fascinating and attractive: but only because it reminds us of what the spirit must win for itself. The harmoniousness of childhood is a gift from the hand of nature: the second harmony must spring from the labour and culture of the spirit. And so the words of Christ, ‘Except ye become as little children’, etc., are very far from telling us that we must always remain children.
The first reflection of awakened consciousness in men told them that they were naked. This is a naive and profound trait. For the sense of shame bears evidence to the separation of man from his natural and sensuous life. The beasts never get so far as this separation, and they feel no shame. And it is in the human feeling of shame that we are to seek the spiritual and moral origin of dress, compared with which the merely physical need is a secondary matter.
Philosophy is knowledge, and it is through knowledge that man first realises his original vocation, to be the image of God
For the very notion of spirit is enough to show that man is evil by nature, and it is an error to imagine that he could ever be otherwise. To such extent as man is and acts like a creature of nature, his whole behaviour is what it ought not to be. For the spirit it is a duty to be free, and to realise itself by its own act. Nature is for man only the starting-point which he has to transform. The theological doctrine of original sin is a profound truth; but modem enlightenment prefers to believe that man is naturally good, and that he acts right so long as he continues true to nature.
$25-The term ‘Objective Thoughts’ indicates the truth - the truth which is to be the absolute object of philosophy, and not merely the goal at which it aims.
$28n-The Metaphysic of the past assumed, as unsophisticated belief always does, that thought apprehends the very self of things, and that things, to become what they truly are, require to be thought
But in using the term thought we must not forget the difference between finite or discursive thinking and the thinking which is infinite and rational.
The phrase infinite thought may excite surprise, if we adhere to the modern conception that thought is always limited. But it is, speaking rightly, the very essence of thought to be infinite. The nominal explanation of calling a thing finite is that it has an end, that it exists up to a certain point only, where it comes into contact with, and is limited by, its other. The finite therefore subsists in reference to its other, which is its negation and presents itself as its limit. Now thought is always in its own sphere its relations are with itself, and it is its own object. In having a thought for object, I am at home with myself. The thinking power, the ‘I’, is therefore infinite, because, when it thinks, it is in relation to an object which is itself. Generally speaking, an object means a something else, a negative confronting me. But in the case where thought thinks itself, it has an object which is at the same time no object: in other words, its objectivity is suppressed and transformed into an idea. Thought, as thought, therefore in its unmixed nature involves no limits; it is finite only when it keeps to limited categories, which it believes to be ultimate. Infinite or speculative thought, on the contrary, while it no less defines, does in the very act of limiting and defining make that defect vanish.
But the objects of reason cannot be defined by these finite predicates. To try to do so was the defect of the old metaphysic
$31n-Metaphysic was not free or objective thinking. Instead of letting the object freely and spontaneously expound its own characteristics, metaphysic presupposed it ready-made
This feeling that we are all our own is characteristic of free thought - of that voyage into the open, where nothing is below us or above us, and we stand in solitude with ourselves alone.
$32n-But in the narrower sense, Dogmatism consists in the tenacity which draws a hard and fast line between certain terms and others opposite to them. We may see this clearly in the strict ‘either - or’: for instance, The world is either finite or infinite; but one of these two it must be. The contrary of this rigidity is the characteristic of all Speculative truth. There no such inadequate formulae are allowed, nor can they possibly exhaust it. These formulae Speculative truth holds in union as a totality, whereas Dogmatism invests them in their isolation with a title to fixity and truth.
The metaphysic of understanding is dogmatic, because it maintains half-truths in their isolation: whereas the idealism of speculative philosophy carries out the principle of totality and shows that it can reach beyond the inadequate formularies of abstract thought. Thus idealism would say: The soul is neither finite only, nor infinite only; it is really the one just as much as the other, and in that way neither the one nor the other. In other words, such formularies in their isolation are inadmissible, and only come into account as formative elements in a larger notion
The battle of reason is the struggle to break up the rigidity to which the understanding has reduced everything.
$34n-The rationalists endeavoured to ascertain the inner nature of the soul as it is in itself and as it is for thought. In philosophy at present we hear little of the soul: the favourite term is now mind (spirit). The two are distinct, soul being as it were the middle term between body and spirit, or the bond between the two. The mind, as soul, is immersed in corporeity, and the soul is the animating principle of the body.
Mind is essentially active in the same sense as the Schoolmen [Scholastics] said that God is ‘absolute actuosity’. But if the mind is active it must as it were utter itself. It is wrong therefore to take the mind for a processless ens, as did the old metaphysic which divided the processless inward life of the mind from its outward life. The mind, of all things, must be looked at in its concrete actuality, in its energy; and in such a way that its manifestations are seen to be determined by its inward force.
$35-A freedom involving no necessity, and mere necessity without freedom, are abstract and in this way untrue formulae of thought. Freedom is no blank indeterminateness: essentially concrete, and unvaryingly self-determinate, it is so far at the same time necessary
The error arises when we take Evil as a permanent positive, instead of - what it really is - a negative which, though it would fain assert itself, has no real persistence, and is, in fact, only the absolute sham-existence of negativity in itself
$36-This mode of proof, guided as it is by the canon of mere analytical identity, is embarrassed by the difficulty of passing from the finite to the infinite. Either the finitude of the existing world, which is left as much a fact as it was before, clings to the notion of Deity, and God has to be defined as the immediate substance of that world - which is Pantheism: or he remains an object set over against the subject, and in this way, finite - which is Dualism.
Certainly a reason derived knowledge of God is the highest problem of philosophy
But such a harmony surpassed the efforts of rational theology. It proposed to define the figurate conception of God in terms of thought; but it resulted in a notion of God which was what we may call the abstract of positivity or reality, to the exclusion of all negation. God was accordingly defined to be the most real of all beings. Anyone can see however that this most real of beings, in which negation forms no part, is the very opposite of what it ought to be and of what understanding supposes it to be. Instead of being rich and full above all measure, it is so narrowly conceived that it is, on the contrary, extremely poor and altogether empty. It is with reason that the heart craves a concrete body of truth; but without definite feature, that is, without negation, contained in the notion, there can only be an abstraction. When the notion of God is apprehended only as that of the abstract or most real being, God is, as it were, relegated to another world beyond: and to speak of a knowledge of him would be meaningless. Where there is no definite quality, knowledge is impossible. Mere light is mere darknes
The demonstration of reason no doubt starts from something which is not God. But, as it advances, it does not leave the starting-point a mere unexplained fact, which is what it was. On the contrary it exhibits that point as derivative and called into being, and then God is seen to be primary, truly immediate, and self-subsisting, with the means of derivation wrapped up and absorbed in himself. Those who say: ‘Consider Nature, and Nature will lead you to God; you will find an absolute final cause’ do not mean that God is something derivative: they mean that it is we who proceed to God himself from another; and in this way God, though the consequence, is also the absolute ground of the initial step. The relation of the two things is reversed; and what came as a consequence being shown to be an antecedent, the original antecedent is reduced to a consequence
In speculative philosophy the understanding undoubtedly forms a stage, but not a stage at which we should keep for ever standing.
$37-Such was the genesis of Empirical philosophy, which abandons the search for truth in thought itself, and goes to fetch it from Experience, the outward and the inward present.
$38-But, on the other hand, it must be noted that the single sensation is not the same thing as experience, and that the Empirical School elevates the facts included under sensation, feeling, and perception into the form of general ideas propositions, or laws
In Empiricism lies the great principle that whatever is true must be in the actual world and present to sensation.
On the subjective side, too, it is right to notice the valuable principle of freedom involved in Empiricism. For the main lesson of Empiricism is that man must see for himself and feel that he is present in every fact of knowledge which he has to accept.
$38n-The external world is the truth, it if could but know it: for the truth is actual and must exist. The infinite principle, the self-centred truth, therefore, is in the world for reason to discover: though it exists in an individual and sensible shape, and not in its truth.
Besides, this school makes sense-perception the form in which fact is to be apprehended; and in this consists the defect of Empiricism
Yet analysis is the process from the immediacy of sensation to thought: those attributes, which the object analysed contains in union, acquire the form of universality by being separated. Empiricism therefore labours under a delusion, if it supposes that, while analysing the objects, it leaves them as they were: it really transforms the concrete into an abstract. And as a consequence of this change, the living thing is killed: life can exist only in the concrete and one. Not that we can do without this division, if it be our intention to comprehend. Mind itself is an inherent division. The error lies in forgetting that this is only one half of the process, and that the main point is the reunion of what has been parted
Empiricism deals with a finite material, and the old metaphysicians had an infinite - though, let us add, they made this infinite content finite by the finite form of the understanding
Generally speaking, Empiricism finds the truth in the outward world, and even if it allow a supersensible world, it holds knowledge of that world to be impossible, and would restrict us to the province of sense-perception.
So long then as this sensible sphere is and continues to be for Empiricism a mere datum we have a doctrine of bondage: for we become free, when we are confronted by no absolutely alien world, but depend upon a fact which we ourselves are.
$39-It is an important corollary of this theory, that on this empirical mode of treatment legal and ethical principles and laws, as well as the truths of religion, are exhibited as the work of chance, and stripped of their objective character and inner truth.
$40-In common with Empiricism the Critical Philosophy assumes that experience affords the one sole foundation for cognitions which however it does not allow to rank as truths, but only as knowledge of phenomena
The Categories or Notions of the Understanding constitute the objectivity of experiential cognitions.
$41-If, as has been said, it is characteristic of free thought to allow no assumptions to pass unquestioned, the old metaphysicians were not free thinkers. They accepted their categories as they were, without further trouble, as an a priori datum, not yet tested by reflection.
Kant undertook to examine how far the forms of thought were capable of leading to the knowledge of truth. In particular he demanded a criticism of the faculty of cognition as preliminary to its exercise. That is a fair demand, if it mean that even the forms of thought must be made an object of investigation. Unfortunately there soon creeps in the misconception of already knowing before you know - the error of refusing to enter the water until you have learnt to swim. True, indeed, the forms of thought should be subjected to a scrutiny before they are used: yet what is this scrutiny but ipso facto a cognition?
So that what we want is to combine in our process of inquiry the action of the forms of thought with a criticism of them. The forms of thought must be studied in their essential nature and complete development: they are at once the object of research and the action of that object. Hence they examine themselves: in their own action they must determine their limits, and point out their defects. This is that action of thought, which will hereafter be specially considered under the name of Dialectic and regarding which we need only at the outset observe that, instead of being brought to bear upon the categories from without, it is Immanent in their own actio
We may therefore state the first point in Kant’s philosophy as follows: Thought must itself investigate its own capacity of knowledge
Kant’s examination of the categories suffers from the grave defect of viewing them, not absolutely and for their own sake, but in order to see whether they are subjective or objective. In the language of common life we mean by objective what exists outside of us and reaches us from without by means of sensation. What Kant did was to deny that the categories, such as cause and effect were, in this sense of the word, objective, or given in sensation, and to maintain on the contrary that they belonged to our own thought itself, to the spontaneity of thought. To that extent therefore they were subjective. And yet in spite of this, Kant gives the name objective to what is thought, to the universal and necessary, while he describes as subjective whatever is merely felt
The vulgar believe that the objects of perception which confront them, such as an individual animal, or a single star, are independent and permanent existences, compared with which thoughts are unsubstantial and dependent on something else. In fact however the perceptions of sense are the properly dependent and secondary feature, while the thoughts are really independent and primary. This being so, Kant gave the title objective to the intellectual factor, to the universal and necessary: and he was quite justified in so doing. Our sensations on the other hand are subjective; for sensations lack stability in their own nature, and are no less fleeting and evanescent than thought is permanent and self-subsisting.
But after all, objectivity of thought, in Kant’s sense, is again to a certain extent subjective. Thoughts, according to Kant, although universal and necessary categories, are only our thoughts - separated by an impassable gulf from the thing, as it exists apart from our knowledge. But the true objectivity of thinking means that the thoughts, far from being merely ours, must at the same time be the real essence of the things, and of whatever is an object to us.
Objective and subjective are convenient expressions in current use, the employment of which may easily lead to confusion. Up to this point, the discussion has shown three meanings of objectivity. First, it means what has external existence, in distinction from which the subjective is what is only supposed, dreamed, &c. Secondly, it has the meaning, attached to it by Kant, of the universal and necessary, as distinguished from the particular, subjective, and occasional element which belongs to our sensations. Thirdly, as has been just explained, it means the thought-apprehended essence of the existing thing, in contradistinction from what is merely our thought, and what consequently is still separated from the thing itself, as it exists in independent essence.
$42-One might have expected that the general laws of thought, the usual stock-in-trade of logicians, or the classification of notions, judgments, and syllogisms, would be no longer taken merely from observation and so only empirically treated, but be deduced from thought itself. If thought is to be capable of proving anything at all, if logic must insist upon the necessity of proofs, and if it proposes to teach the theory of demonstration, its first care should be to give a reason for its own subject.
$42n-Kant therefore holds that the categories have their source in the ‘Ego and that the ‘Ego’ consequently supplies the characteristics of universality and necessity
The world of sense is a scene of mutual exclusion: its being is outside itself. That is the fundamental feature of the sensible. ‘Now’ has no meaning except in reference to a before and a hereafter. Red, in the same way, only subsists by being opposed to yellow and blue. Now this other thing is outside the sensible; which latter is, only in so far as it is not the other, and only in so far as that other is. But thought, or the ‘Ego’, occupies a position the very reverse of the sensible, with its mutual exclusions, and its being outside itself. The ‘I’ is the primary identity - at one with itself and all at home in itself. The word ‘I’ expresses the mere act of bringing-to-bear-upon-self: and whatever is placed in this unit or focus is affected by it and transformed into it. The ‘I’ is as it were the crucible and the fire which consumes the loose plurality of sense and reduces it to unity.
The tendency of all man’s endeavours is to understand the world, to appropriate and subdue it to himself: and to this end the positive reality of the world must be as it were crushed and pounded, in other words, idealised. At the same time we must note that it is not the mere act of our personal self-consciousness which introduces an absolute unity into the variety of sense. Rather, this identity is itself the absolute. The absolute is, as it were, so kind as to leave individual things to their own enjoyment, and it again drives them back to the absolute unity.
Kant’s meaning of transcendental may be gathered by the way he distinguishes it from transcendent. The transcendent may be said to be what steps out beyond the categories of the understanding: a sense in which the term is first employed in mathematics. Thus in geometry you are told to conceive the circumference of a circle as formed of an infinite number of infinitely small straight lines. In other words, characteristics which the understanding holds to be totally different, the straight line and the curve, are expressly invested with identity. Another transcendent of the same kind is the self-consciousness which is identical with itself and infinite in itself, as distinguished from the ordinary consciousness which derives its form and tone from finite materials. That unity of self-consciousness, however, Kant called transcendental only; and he meant thereby that the unity was only in our minds and did not attach to the objects apart from our knowledge of them.
Still, though the categories, such as unity, or cause and effect, are strictly the property of thought, it by no means follows that they must be ours merely and not also characteristics of the objects. Kant however confines them to the subject-mind, and his philosophy may be styled subjective idealism: for he holds that both the form and the matter of knowledge are supplied by the Ego - or knowing subject - the form by our intellectual, the matter by our sentient ego
It might perhaps at first sight be imagined, that objects would lose their reality when their unity was transferred to the subject. But neither we nor the objects would have anything to gain by the mere fact that they possessed being.
The main point is not, that they are, but what they are, and whether or not their content is true. It does no good to the things to say merely that they have being. What has being, will also cease to be when time creeps over it. It might also be alleged that subjective idealism tended to promote self-conceit. But surely if a man’s world be the sum of his sensible perceptions, he has no reason to be vain of such a world. Laying aside therefore as unimportant this distinction between subjective and objective, we are chiefly interested in knowing what a thing is: i.e. its content, which is no more objective than it is subjective. If mere existence be enough to make objectivity, even a crime is objective: but it is an existence which is nullity at the core, as is definitely made apparent when the day of punishment comes.
$43n-To assert that the categories taken by themselves are empty can scarcely be right, seeing that they have a content, at all events, in the special stamp and significance which they possess. Of course the content of the categories is not perceptible to the senses, nor is it in time and space: but that is rather a merit than a defect. A glimpse of this meaning of content may be observed to affect our ordinary thinking. A book or a speech for example is said to have a great deal in it, to be full of content in proportion to the greater number of thoughts and general results to be found in it:
And yet it is not altogether wrong, it should be added, to call the categories of themselves empty, if it be meant that they and the logical Idea, of which they are the members, do not constitute the whole of philosophy, but necessarily lead onwards in due progress to the real departments of Nature and Mind
$45n-Kant was the first definitely to signalise the distinction between Reason and Understanding. The object of the former, as he applied the term, was the infinite and unconditioned, of the latter the finite and conditioned.
It degrades Reason to a finite and conditioned thing, to identify it with a mere stepping beyond the finite and conditioned range of understanding. The real infinite, far from being a mere transcendence of the finite, always involves the absorption of the finite into its own fuller nature.
The view that the objects of immediate consciousness, which constitute the body of experience, are mere appearances (phenomena) was another important result of the Kantian philosophy
The things immediately known are mere appearances - in other words, the ground of their being is not in themselves but in something else.
The things of which we have direct consciousness are mere phenomena, not for us only, but in their own nature; and the true and proper case of these things, finite as they are, is to have their existence founded not in themselves but in the universal divine Idea. This view of things, it is true, is as idealist as Kant’s; but in contradistinction to the subjective idealism of the Critical philosophy should be termed absolute idealism
$48-And to offer the idea that the contradiction introduced into the world of Reason by the categories of Understanding is inevitable and essential was to make one of the most important steps in the progress of Modern Philosophy
Probably nobody will feel disposed to deny that the phenomenal world presents contradictions to the observing mind; meaning by ‘phenomenal’ the world as it presents itself to the senses and understanding, to the subjective mind. But if a comparison is instituted between the essence of the world and the essence of the mind, it does seem strange to hear how calmly and confidently the modest dogma has been advanced by one, and repeated by others, that thought or Reason, and not the World, is the seat of contradiction.
Here it will be sufficient to say that the Antinomies are not confined to the four special objects taken from Cosmology: they appear in all objects of every kind, in all conceptions, notions, and Ideas. To be aware of this and to know objects in this property of theirs makes a vital part in a philosophical theory. For the property thus indicated is what we shall afterwards describe as the Dialectical influence in Logic.
$48n-That true and positive meaning of the antinomies is this: that every actual thing involves a coexistence of opposed elements. Consequently to know, or, in other words, to comprehend an object is equivalent to being conscious of it as a concrete unity of opposed determinations.
The first antinomy is on the question: Whether we are or are not to think the world limited in space and time. In the second antinomy we have a discussion of the dilemma: Matter must be conceived either as endlessly divisible, or as consisting of atoms. The third antinomy bears upon the antithesis of freedom and necessity, to such extent as it is embraced in the question, Whether everything in the world must be supposed subject to the condition of causality, or if we can also assume free beings, in other words absolute initial points of action, in the world. Finally, the fourth antinomy is the dilemma: Either the world as a whole has a cause or it is uncaused
The main gist of it is that freedom and necessity as understood by abstract thinkers are not independently real, as these thinkers suppose, but merely ideal factors (moments) of the true freedom and the true necessity, and that to abstract and isolate either conception is to make it false.
$49-Accordingly God, when he is defined to be the sum of all realities, the most real of beings, turns into a mere abstract. And the only term under which that most real of real things can be defined is that of Being itself the height of abstraction.
$50-The empirical conception of the world therefore gives no warrant for the idea of universality. And so any attempt on the part of thought to ascend from the empirical conception of the world to God is checked by the argument of Hume (as in the paralogisms, § 47), according to which we have no right to think sensations, that is, to elicit universality and necessity from them
Man is essentially a thinker: and therefore sound Common Sense, as well as Philosophy, will not yield up their right of rising to God from and out of the empirical view of the world. The only basis on which this rise is possible is the thinking study of the world, not the bare sensuous, animal, attuition of it. Thought and thought alone has eyes for the essence, substance, universal power, and ultimate design of the world. And what men call the proofs of God’s existence are, rightly understood, ways of describing and analysing the native course of the mind, the course of thought thinking the data of the senses. The rise of thought beyond the world of sense, its passage from the finite to the infinite, the leap into the supersensible which it takes when it snaps asunder the chain of sense, all this transition is thought and nothing but thought. Say there must be no such passage, and you say there is to be no thinking. And in sooth, animals make no such transition. They never get further than sensation and the perception of the senses, and in consequence they have no religion.
To think the phenomenal world rather means to recast its form, and transmute it into a universal. And thus the action of thought has also a negative effect upon its basis: and the matter of sensation, when it receives the stamp of universality, at once loses its first and phenomenal shape. By the removal and negation of the shell, the kernel within the sense-percept is brought to the light .
If the world is only a sum of incidents, it follows that it is also deciduous and phenomenal, in esse and posse null. That upward spring of the mind signifies that the being which the world has is only a semblance, no real being, no absolute truth; it signifies that, beyond and above that appearance, truth abides in God, so that true being is another name for God
It is the affirmative aspect of this relation, as supposed to subsist between two things, either of which is as much as the other, which Jacobi mainly has in his eye when he attacks the demonstrations of the understanding. Justly censuring them for seeking conditions (i.e. the world) for the unconditioned, he remarks that the Infinite or God must on such a method be presented as dependent and derivative. But that elevation, as it takes place in the mind, serves to correct this semblance: in fact, it has no other meaning than to correct that semblance. Jacobi, however, failed to recognise the genuine nature of essential thought-by which it cancels the mediation in the very act of mediating; and consequently, his objection, though it tells against the merely ‘reflective’ understanding, is false when applied to thought as a whole, and in particular to reasonable thought.
The absolute Substance of Spinoza certainly falls short of absolute spirit, and it is a right and proper requirement that God should be defined as absolute spirit
In the first place Spinoza does not define God as the unity of God with the world, but as the union of thought with extension, that is, with the material world.And secondly, even if we accept this awkward popular statement as to this unity, it would still be true that the system of Spinoza was not Atheism but Acosmism, defining the world to be an appearance lacking in true reality. A philosophy which affirms that God and God alone is should not be stigmatised as atheistic, when even those nations which worship the ape, the cow, or images of stone and brass, are credited with some religion. But as things stand the imagination of ordinary men feels a vehement reluctance to surrender its dearest conviction, that this aggregate of finitude, which it calls a world, has actual reality; and to hold that there is no world is a way of thinking they are fain to believe impossible, or at least much less possible than to entertain the idea that there is no God. Human nature, not much to its credit, is more ready to believe that a system denies God, than that it denies the world. A denial of God seems so much more intelligible than a denial of the world.
God is more than life: he is Spirit. And therefore if the thought of the Absolute takes a starting-point for its rise, and desires to take the nearest, the most true and adequate starting-point will be found in the nature of spirit alone
$51-And, putting that mistake aside, those who perpetually urge against the philosophic Idea the difference between Being and Thought might have admitted that philosophers were not wholly ignorant of the fact. Can there be any proposition more trite than this? But after all, it is well to remember, when we speak of God, that we have an object of another kind than any hundred sovereigns, and unlike any one particular notion, representation, or however else it may be styled. It is in fact this and this alone which marks everything finite: its being in time and space is discrepant from its notion. God, on the contrary, expressly has to be what can only be ‘thought as existing’; his notion involves being. It is this unity of the notion and being that constitutes the notion of God
Certainly it would be strange if the notion, the very inmost of mind, if even the ‘Ego’, or above all the concrete totality we call God, were not rich enough to include so poor a category as being, the very poorest and most abstract of all.
$52-In its final analysis this criticism is summed up in the assertion that in strictness thought is only the indeterminate unity and the action of this indeterminate unity.
For reason is unconditioned only in so far as its character and quality are not due to an extraneous and foreign content, only in so far as it is self-characterising, and thus, in point of content, is its own master
$54n-To estimate rightly what we owe to Kant in the matter, we ought to set before our minds the form of practical philosophy and in particular of ‘moral philosophy’ which prevailed in his time. It may be generally described as a system of Eudaemonism, which, when asked what man’s chief end ought to be, replied Happiness. And by happiness Eudaemonism understood the satisfaction of the private appetites, wishes, and wants of the man: thus raising the contingent and particular into a principle for the will and its actualisation
The theoretical reason, as has been made evident in the preceding paragraphs, is identified by Kant with the negative faculty of the infinite; and as it has no positive content of its own, it is restricted to the function of detecting the finitude of experiential knowledge. To the practical reason, on the contrary, he has expressly allowed a positive infinity, by ascribing to the will the power of modifying itself in universal modes, i.e. by thought. Such a power the will undoubtedly has: and it is well to remember that man is free only in so far as he possesses it and avails himself of it in his conduct. But a recognition of the existence of this power is not enough and does not avail to tell us what are the contents of the will or practical reason.
$55 The work of Art, as well as the living individual, is, it must be owned, of limited content. But in the postulated harmony of nature (or necessity) and free purpose in the final purpose of the world conceived as realised, Kant has put before us the Idea, comprehensive even in its content. Yet what may be called the laziness of thought, when dealing with the supreme Idea, finds a too easy mode of evasion in the ‘ought to be’: instead of the actual realisation of the ultimate end, it clings hard to the disjunction of the notion from reality. Yet if thought will not think the ideal realised, the senses and the intuition can at any rate see it in the present reality of living organisms and of the beautiful in Art. And consequently Kant’s remarks on these objects were well adapted to lead the mind on to grasp and think the concrete Idea.
$60 In every dualistic system, and especially in that of Kant, the fundamental defect makes itself visible in the inconsistency of unifying at one moment what a moment before had been explained to be independent and therefore incapable of unification. And then, at the very moment after unification has been alleged to be the truth, we suddenly come upon the doctrine that the two elements, which, in their true status of unification, had been refused all independent subsistence, are only true and actual in their state of separation.
It argues an utter want of consistency to say, on the one hand, that the understanding only knows phenomena, and, on the other, assert the absolute character of this knowledge, by such statements as ‘Cognition can go no further’; ‘Here is the natural and absolute limit of human knowledge.’
No one knows, or even feels, that anything is a limit or defect, until he is at the same time above and beyond it.
For living beings as such possess within them a universal vitality, which overpasses and includes the single mode; and thus, as they maintain themselves in the negative of themselves, they feel the contradiction to exist within them. But the contradiction is within them only in so far as one and the same subject includes both the universality of their sense of life, and the individual mode which is in negation with it. This illustration will show how a limit or imperfection in knowledge comes to be termed a limit or imperfection, only when it is compared with the actually present Idea of the universal, of a total and perfect. A very little consideration might show that to call a thing finite or limited proves by implication the very presence of the infinite and unlimited, and that our knowledge of a limit can only be when the unlimited is on this side in consciousnes
Natural plain Empiricism, though it unquestionably insists most upon sensuous perception, still allows a supersensible world or spiritual reality, whatever may be its structure and constitution, and whether derived from intellect, or from imagination, etc. So far as form goes, the facts of this supersensible world rest on the authority of mind, in the same way as the other facts embraced in empirical knowledge rest on the authority of external perception.
$60n-In fact, however, it is not because they are subjective that the categories are finite: they are finite by their very nature, and it is on their own selves that it is requisite to exhibit their finitude. Kant however holds that what we think is false, because it is we who think it
And as it is true at least that all finite thinking is concerned with appearances, so far the conclusion is justified. This stage of ‘appearance’ however - the phenomenal world - is not the terminus of thought: there is another and a higher region. But that region was to the Kantian philosophy an inaccessible ‘other world’.
But in Fichte the ‘Ego’ is not really presented as a free, spontaneous energy; it is supposed to receive its first excitation by a shock or impulse from without. Against this shock the ‘Ego’ will, it is assumed, react, and only through this reaction does it first become conscious of itself
Fichte, in consequence, never advanced beyond Kant’s conclusion, that the finite only is knowable, while the infinite transcends the range of thought.
$63-All the while the doctrine that truth exists for the mind was so strongly maintained by Jacobi, that Reason alone is declared to be that by which man lives. This Reason is the knowledge of God. But, seeing that derivative knowledge is restricted to the compass of finite facts, Reason is knowledge underivative, or Faith
Thus, we often find knowledge contrasted with faith, and faith at the same time explained to be an underivative or intuitive knowledge - so that it must be at least some sort of knowledge. And, besides, it is unquestionably a fact of experience, firstly, that what we believe is in our consciousness-which implies that we know about it; and secondly, that this belief is a certainty in our consciousness - which implies that we know it.
We believe, says Jacobi, that we have a body-we believe in the existence of the things of sense. But if we are speaking of faith in the True and Eternal, and saying that God is given and revealed to us in immediate knowledge or intuition, we are concerned not with the things of sense, but with objects special to our thinking mind, with truths of inherently universal significance. And when the individuals, or in other words personality, is under discussion-not the ‘I’ of experience, or a single private person - above all, when the personality of God is before us’, we are speaking of personality unalloyed - of a personality in its own nature universal. Such personality is a thought, and falls within the province of thought only. More than this. Pure and simple intuition is completely the same as pure and simple thought
$64 This immediate knowledge, consists in knowing that the Infinite, the Eternal, the God which is in our Idea, really is: or, it asserts that in our consciousness there is immediately and inseparably bound up with this idea the certainty of its actual being
The true marvel rather is that any one could suppose that these principles were opposed to philosophy-the maxims, viz., that whatever is held to be true is immanent in the mind, and that there is truth for the mind (§ 63). From a formal point of view, there is a peculiar interest in the maxim that the being of God is immediately and inseparably bound up with the thought of God, that objectivity is bound up with the subjectivity which the thought originally presents. Not content with that, the philosophy of immediate knowledge goes so far in its one-sided view, as to affirm that the attribute of existence, even in perception, is quite as inseparably connected with the conception we have of our own bodies and of external things, as it is with the thought of God. Now it is the endeavour of philosophy to prove such a unity, to show that it lies in the very nature of thought and subjectivity, to be inseparable from being and objectivity.
$66 If that be so, we need only note, as the commonest of experiences, that truths which we well know to be results of complicated and highly mediated trains of thought present themselves immediately and without effort to the mind of any man who is familiar with the subject. The mathematician, like everyone who has mastered a particular science, meets any problem with ready-made solutions which presuppose most complicated analyses: and every educated man has a number of general views and maxims which he can muster without trouble, but which can only have sprung from frequent reflection and long experience. The facility we attain in any sort of knowledge, art, or technical expertness, consists in having the particular knowledge or kind of action present to our mind in any case that occurs, even, we may say, immediate in our very limbs, in an outgoing activity. In all these instances, immediacy of knowledge is so far from excluding mediation, that the two things are linked together - immediate knowledge being actually the product and result of mediated knowledge.
It is no less obvious that immediate existence is bound up with its mediation. The seed and the parents are immediate and initial existences in respect of the offspring which they generate. But the seed and the parents, though they exist and are therefore immediate, are yet in their turn generated; and the child, without prejudice to the mediation of its existence, is immediate, because it is
$67 In short, religion and morals, however much they may be faith or immediate knowledge, are still on every side conditioned by the mediating process which is termed development, education, training
The reminiscence of ideas spoken of by Plato is equivalent to saying that ideas implicitly exist in man, instead of being, as the Sophists assert, a foreign importation into his mind. But to conceive knowledge as reminiscence does not interfere with, or set aside as useless, the development of what is implicitly in man; which development is another word for mediation. The same holds good of the innate ideas that we find in Descartes and the Scotch philosophers. These ideas are only potential in the first instance, and should be looked at as being a sort of mere capacity in man.
$68 But, again, if this immediate consciousness, as exhibited in experience, be taken separately, so far as it is a consciousness of God and the divine nature, the state of mind which it implies is generally described as an exaltation above the finite, above the senses, and above the instinctive desires and affections of the natural heart: which exaltation passes over into, and terminates in, faith in God and a divine order. It is apparent, therefore, that, though faith may be an immediate knowledge and certainty, it equally implies the interposition of this process as its antecedent and conditio
$70 For, what this theory asserts is that truth lies neither in the Idea as a merely subjective thought, nor in mere being on its own account - that mere being per se, a being that is not of the Idea, is the sensible finite being of the world. Now all this only affirms, without demonstration, that the Idea has truth only by means of being, and being has truth only by means of the Idea. The maxim of immediate knowledge rejects an indefinite empty immediacy (and such is abstract being, or pure unity taken by itself), and affirms in its stead the unity of the Idea with being. And it acts rightly in so doing. But it is stupid not to see that the unity of distinct terms or modes is not merely a purely immediate unity, i.e. unity empty and indeterminate, but that - with equal emphasis - the one term is shown to have truth only as mediated through the other - or, if the phrase be preferred, that either term is only mediated with truth through the other.
$71 Since the criterion of truth is found, not in the nature of the content, but in the mere fact of consciousness, every alleged truth has no other basis than subjective certitude and the assertion that we discover a certain fact in our consciousness. What I discover in my consciousness is thus exaggerated into a fact of the consciousness of all, and even passed off for the very nature of consciousness
The danger in these questions lies in looking at what the mind may make out of an object, and not what that object actually and explicitly is. If we fail to note this distinction, the commonest perceptions of men’s senses will be religion: for every such perception, and indeed every act of mind, implicitly contains the principle which, when it is purified and developed, rises to religion. But to be capable of religion is one thing, to have it another. And religion yet implicit is only a capacity or a possibility.
But there can be nothing shorter and more convenient than to have the bare assertion to make, that we discover a fact in our consciousness, and are certain that it is true: and to declare that this certainty, instead of proceeding from our particular mental constitution only, belongs to the very nature of the mind.
$72 A second corollary which results from holding immediacy of consciousness to be the criterion of truth is that all superstition or idolatry is allowed to be truth, and that an apology is prepared for any contents of the will, however wrong and immoral. It is because he believes in them, and not from the reasoning and syllogism of what is termed mediate knowledge, that the Hindu finds God in the cow, the monkey, the Brahmin, or the Lama.
$73 Thirdly and lastly, the immediate consciousness of God goes no further than to tell us that he is: to tell us what he is would be an act of cognition, involving mediation. So that God as an object of religion is expressly narrowed down to the indeterminate supersensible, God in general: and the significance of religion is reduced to a minimum.
$74 And, first, it makes the universal no better than an abstraction external to the particulars, and God a being without determinate quality. But God can only be called a spirit when he is known to be at once the beginning and end, as well as the mean, in the process of mediation
The only content which can be held to be the truth is one not mediated with something else, not limited by other things: or, otherwise expressed, it is one mediated by itself, where mediation and immediate reference-to-self coincide
Abstract thought (the scientific form used by ‘reflective’ metaphysic) and abstract intuition (the form used by immediate knowledge) are one and the same
Immediacy means, upon the whole, an abstract reference-to-self, that is, an abstract identity or abstract universality. Accordingly the essential and real universal, when taken merely in its immediacy, is a mere abstract universal; and from this point of view God is conceived as a being altogether without determinate quality. To call God spirit is in that case only a phrase: for the consciousness and self-consciousness which spirit implies are impossible without a distinguishing of it from itself and from something else, i.e. without mediation.
$76 To say that God is Substance, the only Substance, and that, as Substance is Causa Sui, God therefore exists necessarily, is merely stating that God is that of which the notion and the being are inseparable
To have such a thing is the slightest of all cognitions: and the only thing worth knowing about it is that such immediate knowledge of the being of things external is error and delusion, that the sensible world as such is altogether void of truth; that the being of these external things is accidental and passes away as a show; and that their very nature is to have only an existence which is separable from their essence and notion.
$78 To require such a scepticism accomplished is the same as to insist on science being preceded by universal doubt, or a total absence of presupposition. Strictly speaking, in the resolve that wills pure thought, this requirement is accomplished by freedom which, abstracting from everything, grasps its pure abstraction, the simplicity of thought.
$79-In point of form Logical doctrine has three sides: [a] the Abstract side, or that of understanding; [b] the Dialectical, or that of negative reason; [c] the Speculative, or that of positive reason
$80-Thought, as Understanding, sticks to fixity of characters and their distinctness from one another: every such limited abstract it treats as having a subsistence and being of its own.
$80n-In this separating and abstracting attitude towards its objects, Understanding is the reverse of immediate perception and sensation, which, as such, keep completely to their native sphere of action in the concrete
It must be added, however, that the merit and rights of the mere Understanding should unhesitatingly be admitted. And that merit lies in the fact that apart from Understanding there is no fixity or accuracy in the region of theory or of practice.
But Understanding is as indispensable in practice as it is in theory. Character is an essential in conduct, and a man of character is an understanding man, who in that capacity has definite ends in view and undeviatingly pursues them. The man who will do something great must learn, as Goethe says, to limit himself. The man who, on the contrary, would do everything, really would do nothing, and fails
Understanding in this larger sense corresponds to what we call the goodness of God, so far as that means that finite things are and subsist
That Philosophy never can get on without the understanding hardly calls for special remark after what has been said. Its foremost requirement is that every thought shall be grasped in its full precision, and nothing allowed to remain vague and indefinite.
$81-B-In the Dialectical stage these finite characterisations or formulae supersede themselves, and pass into their opposites
But in its true and proper character, Dialectic is the very nature and essence of everything predicated by mere understanding - the law of things and of the finite as a whole
But by Dialectic is meant the indwelling tendency outwards by which the one-sidedness and limitation of the predicates of understanding is seen in its true light, and shown to be the negation of them
$81n-Wherever there is movement, wherever there is life, wherever anything is carried into effect in the actual world, there Dialectic is at work. It is also the soul of all knowledge which is truly scientific
But when we look more closely, we find that the limitations of the finite do not merely come from without; that its own nature is the cause of its abrogation, and that by its own nature is the cause of its abrogation, and that man is mortal, and seem to think that the ground of his death is in external circumstances only; so that if this way of looking were correct, man would have two special properties, vitality and - also - mortality. But the true view of the matter is that life as life, involves the germ of death, and that the finite, being radically self-contradictory, involves its own self-suppression
The essence of Sophistry lies in giving authority to a partial and abstract principle, in its isolation, as may suit the interest and particular situation of the individual at the time.
Everything that surrounds us may be viewed as an instance of Dialectic.
We are aware that everything finite, instead of being
stable and ultimate, is rather changeable and transient; and this is exactly
what we mean by that Dialectic of the finite, by which the finite, as
implicitly other than what it is, forced beyond its own immediate or
natural being to turn suddenly into its opposite
We have ... identified Understanding with what is implied in the popular idea of the goodness of God; we may now remark of Dialectic, the in same objective signification, that its principle answers to the idea of his power
The category of power does not, it is true, exhaust the depth of the divine nature of the notion of ; but it certainly forms a vital element in all religious consciousness.
Even feeling, bodily as well as mental, has its dialectic. Everyone knows how the extremes of pain and pleasure pass into each other: the heart overflowing with joy seeks relief in tears, and the deepest melancholy will at times betray its presence by a smile.
Scepticism properly so called is a very different thing: its is complete hopelessness about all which understanding counts stable, and the feeling to which it gives birth is one of unbroken calmness and inward repose
philosophy includes the sceptical principle as a subordinate function of its own, in the shape of Dialectic. In contradistinction to mere scepticism, however, philosophy does not remain content with the purely negative result of Dialectic.
For the negative which emerges as the result of dialectic is, because a result, at the same time positive: it contains what it results from, absorbed into itself, and made part of its own nature. Thus conceived, however, the dialectical stage has the features characterising the third grade of logical truth, the speculative form, or form of positive reason
$82-[c] The Speculative stage, or stage of Positive Reason, apprehends the unity of terms (propositions) in their opposition - the affirmative, which is involved in their disintegration and in their transition
It follows from this that the 'reasonable' result, though it be only a thought and abstract, is still a concrete, being not a plain formal unity, but a unity of distinct propositions. Bare abstractions or formal thoughts are therefore no business of philosophy, which has to deal only with concrete thoughts.
The general mode by which experience first makes us aware of the reasonable order of things is by accepted and unreasoned belief; and the character of the rational, as already noted (s. 45), is to be unconditioned, self-contained, and thus to be self-determining.
To this the answer is, that the speculative is in its true signification, neither preliminary nor even definitively, something merely subjective: that, on the contrary, it expressly rises above such oppositions as that between subjective and objective, which the understanding cannot get over, and absorbing them in itself, evinces its own concrete and all-embracing nature.
A one-sided proposition therefore can never even give expression to a speculative truth. If we say, for example, that the absolute is the unity of subjective and objective, we are undoubtedly in the right, but so far one-sided, as we enunciate the unity only and lay the accent upon it, forgetting that in reality the subjective and objective are not merely identical but also distinct.
Speculative truth, it may also be noted, means very much the same as what, in special connection with religious experience and doctrines, used to be called Mysticism. The term Mysticism is at present used, as a rule, to designate what is mysterious and incomprehensible: and in proportion as their general culture and way of thinking vary, the epithet is applied by one class to denote the real and the true, by another to name everything connected with superstition and deception
On which we first of all remark that there is mystery in the mystical, only however for the understanding which is ruled by the principle of abstract identity; whereas the mystical, as synonymous with the speculative, is the concrete unity of those propositions which understanding only accepts in their separation and opposition. And if those who recognise Mysticism as the highest truth are content to leave it in its original utter mystery, their conduct only proves that for them too, as well as for their antagonists, thinking means abstract identification, and that in their opinion, therefore truth can only be won by renouncing thought, or as it is frequently expressed, by leading the reason captive.
But, as we have seen, the abstract thinking of understanding is so far from being either ultimate or stable, that it shows a perpetual tendency to work its own dissolution and swing round into its opposite. Reasonableness, on the contrary, just consists in embracing within itself these opposites as unsubstantial elements. Thus the reason-world may be equally styled mystical - not however because thought cannot both reach and comprehend it, but merely because it lies beyond the compass of understanding
$83-Logic is subdivided into three parts:
I. The Doctrine of Being
II. The Doctrine of Essence
III. The Doctrine of Notion and Idea
That is, the Theory of Thought in:
II. its reflection and mediation , the being-for-self and show of the notion,
III. its return into self, and its developed abiding by itself - the
notion in and for itself.
i :Being
$84-Being is the notion implicit only:
$85-Being itself and the special sub-categories of it which follow, as well as those of logic in general, may be looked upon as definitions of the Absolute, or metaphysical definitions of God
For a metaphysical definition of God is the expression of his nature in thoughts as such: and logic embraces all thoughts so long as they continue in the thought-form.
$85n-Each of the three spheres of the logical idea proves to be a systematic whole of thought-terms, and a phase of the Absolute. This is the case with Being, containing the three grades of quality, quantity and measure
Quality is, in the first place, the character identical with being: so identical that a thing ceases to be what it is, if it loses its quality. Quantity, on the contrary, is the character external to being, and does not affect the being at all.
Measure, the third grade of being, which is the unity of the first two, is a qualitative quantity
From measure follows the advance to the second subdivision of the idea, Essence
The three forms of being here mentioned, just because they are the first,
are also the poorest, i.e. the most abstract .Immediate (sensible)
consciousness,
in so far as it simultaneously includes an intellectual element, is especially
restricted to the abstract categories of quality and quantity.
The sensuous consciousness is in ordinary estimation the most concrete and thus
also the richest; but
that is true only as regards materials, whereas, in reference to the thought it
contains, it is really the
poorest and most abstract".
$86-Pure Being makes the beginning : because it is on the one hand pure thought, and on the other immediacy itself, simple and indeterminate ; and the first beginning cannot be mediated by anything, or be further determined
for all mediation implies advance made from a first on to a second, and proceeding from something different
If we enunciate Being as a predicate of the Absolute, we get the first definition of the latter. The Absolute is Being.This is (in thought) the absolutely initial definition, the most abstract and stinted
It is possible to define being as 'I = I', as 'Absolute Indifference' or Identity, and so on. Where it is felt necessary to begin either with what is absolutely certain, i.e. certainty of oneself, or with a definition or intuition of the absolute truth, these and other forms of the kind may be looked on as if they must be the first. But each of these forms contains a mediation, and hence cannot be the real first: for all mediation implies advance made from a first on to a second, and proceeding from something different. If I = I, or even the intellectual intuition, are really taken to mean no more than the first, they are in this mere immediacy identical with being: while conversely, pure being, if abstract no longer, but including in it mediation, is pure thought or intuition
$86n-When thinking is to begin, we have nothing but thought in its merest indeterminate : for we cannot determine unless there is both one and another: and yet in the beginning there is yet no other. The indeterminate, as we have it, is the blank we begin with, not a featurelessness reached by abstraction, not the elimination of all character, but the original featurelessness which precedes all definite character and is the very first of all. And this we call Being. It is not to be felt, or perceived by sense, or pictured in imagination: it is only and merely thought, and as such it forms the beginning
As the logical Idea is seen to unfold itself in a process from the abstract to the concrete, so in the history of philosophy the earliest systems are the most abstract, and thus at the same time the poorest. The relation too of the earlier to the later systems of philosophy is much like the relation of the corresponding stages of the logical Idea : in other words, the earlier are preserved in the later: but subordinated and submerged.
Philosophy began in the Eleatic school, especially with Parmenides. Parmenides, who conceives the absolute as Being, says that ‘Being alone is and Nothing is not’. Such was the true starting point of philosophy, which is always knowledge by thought: and here for the first time we find pure thought seized and made an object to itself.
The Eleatics are celebrated as daring thinkers. But this nominal admiration is often accompanied by the remark that they went too far, when they made Being alone true, and denied the truth of every other object of consciousness. We must go further than mere Being, it is true: and yet it is absurd to speak of the other contents of our consciousness as somewhat as it were outside and beside Being, or to say that there are other things, as well as Being. The true state of the case is rather as follows. Being, as Being, is nothing fixed or ultimate: it yields to dialectic and sinks into its opposite, which, also taken immediately, is Nothing.
$87-But this mere Being, as it is mere abstraction, is therefore the absolutely negative : which, in a similarly immediate aspect, is just Nothing . Hence was derived the second definition of the Absolute: the Absolute is the Nought
The supreme form of Nought as a separate principle would be Freedom
It is natural too for us to represent Being as absolute riches, and nothing as absolute poverty. But if when we wish to view the whole world we can only say that everything is, and nothing more, we are neglecting all speciality and, instead of plenitude, we have absolute emptiness. The same stricture is applicable to those who define God to be mere Being; a definition not a whit better than that of the Buddhists, who make God to be Nought, and who from that principle draw the further conclusion that self-annihilation is the means by which man becomes God.
$88-Nothing, if it be thus immediate and equal to itself, is also conversely the same as Being is. The truth of Being and of Nothing is accordingly the unity of the two: and this unity is Becoming.
indeed the whole progress of philosophising in every case, if it be a methodical, that is to say a necessary, progress, merely renders explicit what is implicit in a notion.
For that matter indeed, the teaching of philosophy is precisely what frees man from the endless crowd of finite aims and intentions, by making him so insensible to them that their existence or non-existence is to him a matter of indifference
And so long as ordinary incomprehensibility means only the want habituation for the effort needed to grasp an abstract thought, free from all sensuous admixture, and to seize a speculative truth, the reply to the criticism is that philosophical knowledge is undoubtedly distinct in kind from the mode of knowledge best known in common life, as well as from that which reigns in the other sciences.
Everyone has a mental idea of Becoming, and will even allow that it is one idea: he will further allow that, when it is analysed, it involves the attribute of Being, and also what is the very reverse of Being, viz., Nothing: and that these two attributes lie undivided in the one idea: so that Becoming is the unity of Being and Nothing
The fact is, no speculative principle can be correctly expressed by any such propositional form, for the unity has to be conceived in the diversity, which is all the while present and explicit.
‘To become’ is the true expression for the resultant of ‘to be’ and ‘not to be’; it is the unity of the two; but not only is it the unity, it is also inherent unrest - the unity, which is no mere reference-to-self and therefore without movement, but which through the diversity of Being and Nothing that is in it, is at war with itself. Determinate Being on the other hand, is this unity, or Becoming in this form of unity:
The maxim of Becoming, that Being is the passage into Nought, and Nought the passage into Being, is controverted by the maxim of Pantheism, the doctrine of the eternity of matter, that from nothing comes nothing, and that something can only come out of something
$88n-Becoming is the first concrete thought, and therefore the first notion: whereas Being and Nought are empty abstractions
in Being then we have Nothing, and in Nothing, Being; but this Being which does not lose itself in Nothing is Becoming.
Becoming is only the explicit statement of what Being is in its truth.
As the first concrete thought-form, Becoming is the first adequate vehicle of truth. In the history of philosophy, this stage of the logical Idea finds its analogue in the system of Heraclitus
When Heraclitus says ‘All is flowing’, he enunciates Becoming as the fundamental feature of all existence, whereas the Eleatics, as already remarked, saw only truth in Being, rigid processless Being.
To refute a philosophy is to exhibit the dialectical movement in its principle, and thus reduce it to a constituent member of a higher concrete form of the Idea.
Even Becoming however, taken at its best on its own ground, is an
extremely poor term: it needs to grow in depth and weight of meaning.
Such deepened force we find e.g. in Life.Life is a Becoming but that is not enough to exhaust the notion of life.
A still higher form is found in Mind. Here too is Becoming, but richer and more
intensive than mere logical
Becoming. The elements whose unity constitute mind
are not the bare abstracts of Being and Nought, but
the system of the logical Idea and of Nature.
$89-In Becoming, the Being which is one with Nothing, and the Nothing which is one with Being, are only vanishing factors; they are and they are not. Thus by its inherent contradiction Becoming collapses into the unity in which the two elements are absorbed. This result is accordingly Being Determinate (Being there and so).
In this first example we must call to mind, once for all, [that]: the only way to secure any growth and progress in knowledge is to hold results fast in their truth.
since the result is the abolition of the contradiction, it comes in the shape of a simple unity with itself: that is to say, it also is Being with negation or determinateness: it is Becoming expressly put in the form of one of its elements, viz., Being.
for, since Being and Nothing vanish in Becoming (and that is the very notion of Becoming), the latter must vanish also. Becoming is as it were a fire, which dies out in itself, when it consumes its material. The result of this process however is not empty Nothing, but Being identical with the negation - what we call Being Determinate (being then and there):
$90-Determinate Being is Being with a character or mode - which simply is; and such unmediated character is Quality
$90n-Quality may be described as the determinate mode immediate and identical with Being - as distinguished from Quantity (to come afterwards), which, although a mode of Being, is no longer immediately identical with Being, but a mode indifferent and external to it. A something is what it is in virtue of its quality, and losing its quality it ceases to be what it is.
Quality, moreover, is completely a category only of the finite, and for that reason too it has its proper place in Nature , not in the world of the Mind. Thus, for example, in Nature what are styled elementary bodies, oxygen, nitrogen, etc., should be regarded as existing qualities. But in the sphere of mind, Quality appears in a subordinate way only, and not as if its qualitativeness could exhaust any specific aspect of mind. If, for example, we consider the subjective mind, which forms the object of psychology, we may describe what is called (moral and mental) character, as in logical language identical with Quality. This however does not mean that character is a mode of being which pervades the soul and is immediately identical with it, as is the case in the natural world with elementary bodies beforementioned
Quality, as determinateness which is, as contrasted with the Negation which is involved in it but distinguished from it, is Reality. Negation is no longer an abstract nothing, but, as a determinate being and somewhat, is only a form of such being - it is as Otherness. Since this otherness, though a determination of Quality itself, is in the first instance distinct from it, Quality is Being-for-another - an expansion of the mere point of Determinate Being, or of Somewhat. The Being as such of Quality, contrasted with this reference to somewhat else, is Being-for-self.
$91n-The foundation of all determinateness is negation. The unreflecting observer supposes that determinate things are merely positive, and pins them down under the form of being
$92-In Being (determinate there and then), the determinateness is one with Being; yet at the same time, when explicitly made a negation, it is a Limit, a Barrier. Hence the otherness is not something indifferent and outside it, but a function proper to it. Somewhat is by its quality, firstly finite, secondly alterable; so that finitude and variability appertain to its being.
In Being-there-and-then, the negation is still directly one with the Being, and this negation is what we call a Limit (Boundary). A thing is what it is, only in and by reason of its limit. We cannot therefore regard the limit as only external to being which is then and there. It rather goes through and through the whole of such existence.
But, again, the limit, as the negation of something, is not an abstract nothing but a nothing which is - what we call an "other"
Plato says: God made the world out of the nature of the "one" and the "other": having brought these together, he formed from them a third, which is of the nature of the "one" and the "other".
But the fact is, mutability
lies in the notion of existence, and change is only the manifestation of what
it implicitly is. The living die, simply because as living they bear in
themselves the germ of death.
$93-Something becomes an other; this other is itself somewhat; therefore it
likewise becomes an other, and so on ad infinitum
$94n-If we let somewhat and another, the elements of determinate Being, fall asunder, the result is that some becomes other, and this other is itself a somewhat, which then as such changes likewise, and so on ad infinitum. This result seems to superficial reflection something very grand, the grandest possible. But such a progression to infinity is not the real infinite. That consists in being at home with itself in its other, or, if enunciated as a process, in coming to itself in its other
It is tedious to expatiate in the contemplation of this infinite progression, because the same thing is constantly recurring. We lay down a limit: then we pass it: next we have a limit once more, and so on for ever. All this is but superficial alternation, which never leaves the region of the finite behind. To suppose that by stepping out and away into that infinity we release ourselves from the finite, is in truth but to seek the release which comes by flight. But the man who flees is not yet free: in fleeing he is still conditioned by that from which he flees.
No doubt philosophy has also sometimes been set the task of finding an answer to the question, how the infinite comes to the resolution of issuing out of itself. This question, founded, as it is, upon the assumption of a rigid opposition between finite and infinite, may be answered by saying that the opposition is false, and that in point of fact the infinite eternally proceeds out of itself, and yet does not proceed out of itself. If we further say that the infinite is the not-finite, we have in point of fact virtually expressed the truth: for as the finite itself is the first negative, the not-finite is the negative of that negation, the negation which is identical with itself and thus at the same time a true affirmation.
$95-Thus essentially relative to another, somewhat is virtually an other against it: and since what is passed into is quite the same as what passes over, since both have one and the same attribute, viz. to be an other, it follows that something in its passage into other only joins with itself. To be thus self-related in the passage, and in the other, is the genuine Infinity. Or, under a negative aspect: what is altered is the other, it becomes the other of the other. Thus Being, but as negation of the negation, is restored again: it is now Being-for-self.
Dualism, in putting an insuperable opposition between finite and infinite, fails to note the simple circumstance that the infinite is thereby only one of two, and is reduced to a particular, to which the finite forms the other particular.
The genuine infinite however is not merely in the position of the one-sided acid, and so does not lose itself. The negation of negation is not a neutralisation: the infinite is the affirmative, and it is only the finite which is absorbed.
In Being-for-self enters the category of Ideality
This ideality of the finite is the chief maxim of philosophy; and for that reason every genuine philosophy is idealism.
$96-Being-for-self, as reference to itself, is immediacy, and as reference of the negative to itself, is a self-subsistent, the One.
To be for self - to be one - is completed Quality, and as such, contains abstract Being and Being modified a non-substantial elements
The readiest instance of Being-for-self is found in the ‘I’. We know ourselves as existents, distinguished in the first place from other existents, and with certain relations thereto. But we also come to know this expansion of existence (in these relations) reduced, as it were, to a point in the simple form of being-for-self. When we say ‘I’, we express this reference-to-self which is infinite, and at the same time negative. Man, it may be said, is distinguished from the animal world, and in that way from our nature altogether, by knowing himself as ‘I’: which amounts to saying that natural things never attain free Being-for-self, but as limited to Being-there-and-then, are always and only Being for another.
Again, Being-for-self may be described as ideality, just as Being-there-and-then was described as reality. It is said that besides reality there is also an ideality.
Ideality only has a meaning when it is the ideality of something: but this something is not a mere indefinite this or that, but existence characterised as reality, which, if retained in isolation, possesses no truth.The distinction between Nature and Mind is not improperly conceived, when the former is traced back to reality, and the latter so fixed and complete as to subsist even without Nature: in Mind it first, as it were, attains its goal and its truth. And similarly, Mind on its part is not merely a world beyond Nature and nothing more: it is really, and with full proof, seen to be mind, only when it involves Nature as absorbed in itself
$97-The relation of the negative to itself is a negative relation, and so a distinguishing of the One from itself, the repulsion of the One; that is, it makes Many Ones.
But the philosophic notion
teaches, contrariwise, that the One forms the presupposition of the Many: and
in the thought of the One is implied that it explicitly make itself Many. ...
The One, as already remarked, just is self-exclusion and explicit putting
itself as the Many. Each of the Many however is itself a One, and in virtue of
its so behaving, this all rounded repulsion is by one stroke converted into its
opposite - Attraction.
$98-The repulsion therefore has an equal right to be called Attraction; and the exclusive One, or Being-for-self, suppresses itself. The qualitative character, which in the One or unit has reached the extreme point of its characterisation, has thus passed over into determinateness (quality) suppressed, i.e. into Being as Quantity.
The philosophy of the Atomists is the doctrine in which the Absolute is formulated as Being-for-self, as One, and many ones.
$98n-The Atomic philosophy forms a vital stage in the historical evolution of the Idea. The principle of that system may be described as Being-for-itself in the shape of the Many
The atom, in fact, is itself a thought; and hence the theory which holds matter to consist of atoms is a metaphysical theory
The only mere physicists are the animals: they alone do not think: while man is a thinking being and a born metaphysician. The real question is not whether we shall apply metaphysics, but whether our metaphysics are of the right kind: in other words, whether we are not, instead of the concrete logical Idea, adopting one-sided forms of thought, rigidly fixed by understanding, and making these the basis of our theoretical as well as our practical work.
The fact is, quantity just means quality superseded and absorbed:
First of all, we had Being: as the truth of Being, came Becoming: which formed the passage into Being Determinate: and the truth of that we found to be Alteration. And in its result Alteration showed itself to be Being-for-self, finally, in the two sides of the process, Repulsion and Attraction, was clearly seen to annul itself, and thereby to annul quality in the totality of its stages.
Still this superseded and absorbed quality is neither an abstract nothing, nor an equally abstract and featureless being: it is only being as indifferent to determinateness or character. This aspect of being is also what appears as quantity in our ordinary conceptions. We observe things, first of all, with an eye to their quality - which we take to be the character identical with the being of the thing. If we proceed to consider their quantity, we get the conception of an indifferent and external character or mode, of such a kind that a thing remains what it is, though its quantity is altered, and the thing becomes greater or less.
$99-Quantity is pure Being, where the mode or character is no longer taken as one with the being itself, but explicitly put as superseded or indifferent.
The Absolute is pure Quantity. This point of view is on the whole the same as when the Absolute is defined to be Matter, in which, though form undoubtedly is present, the form is a characteristic of no importance one way or another. Quantity too constitutes the main characteristic of the Absolute, when the Absolute is regarded as absolute indifference, and only admitting of quantitative distinction.
Our knowledge would be in a very awkward predicament if such objects as freedom, law, morality, or even God himself, because they cannot be measured and calculated, or expressed in a mathematical formula, were to be reckoned beyond the reach of exact knowledge, and we had to put up with a vague generalised image of them, leaving their details or particulars to the pleasure of each individual, to make out of them what he will. The pernicious consequences, to which such a theory gives rise in practice, are at once evident. And this mere mathematical view, which identifies with the Idea one of its special stages, viz., quantity, is no other than the principle of Materialism.
Quantity, of course, is a stage of the Idea: and as such it must have its due, first as a logical category, and then in the world of objects, natural as well as spiritual. Still, even so, there soon emerges the different importance attaching to the category of quantity according as its objects belong to the natural or to the spiritual world. For in Nature, where the form of the Idea is to be other than, and at the same time outside, itself, greater importance is for that very reason attached to quantity than in the spiritual world, the world of free inwardness
After all that has been said, we cannot but hold it, in the interest of exact and thorough knowledge, one of the most hurtful prejudices, to seek all distinction and determinateness of objects merely in quantitative considerations. Mind to be sure is more than Nature and the animal is more than the plant: but we know very little of these objects and the distinction between them, if a more and less is enough for us, and if we do not proceed to comprehend them in their peculiar, that is, their qualitative character
$100-Quantity, as we saw, has two sources: the exclusive unit, and the identification or equalisation of these units. When we look therefore at its immediate relation to self, or at the characteristic of self-sameness made explicit by attraction, quantity is Continuous magnitude; but when We look at the other characteristic, the One implied in it, it is Discrete magnitude.
The Antinomy of space, of time, or of matter, which discusses the question of their being divisible for ever, or of consisting of indivisible units, just means that we maintain quantity as at one time Discrete, at another Continuous
Quantity, as the proximate result of Being-for-self, involves the two sides in the process of the latter, attraction and repulsion, as constitutive elements of its own idea. It is consequently Continuous as well as Discrete. Each of these two elements involves the other also, and hence there is no such thing as a merely Continuous or a merely Discrete quantity
$101-Quantum is, as it were, the determinate Being of quantity: whereas mere quantity corresponds to abstract Being, and the Degree, which is next to be considered, corresponds to Being-for-self.
that while in mere quantity the distinction, as a distinction of continuity and discreteness, is at first only implicit, in a quantum the distinction is actually made, so that quantity in general now appears as distinguished or limited. But in this way the quantum breaks up at the same time into an indefinite multitude of quanta or definite magnitudes. Each of these definite magnitudes, as distinguished from the others, forms a unity, while on the other hand, viewed per se, it is a many. And, when that is done, the quantum is described as Number.
$102-In Number the quantum reaches its development and perfect mode. Like the One, the medium in which it exists, Number involves two qualitative/factors or functions; Annumeration or Sum, which depends on the factor discreteness, and Unity, which depends on continuity
$103-The limit (in a quantum) is identical with the whole of the quantum itself. As in itself multiple, the limit is Extensive magnitude; as in itself simple determinateness (qualitative simplicity), it is Intensive magnitude or Degree.
The distinction between Continuous and Discrete magnitude differs from that between Extensive and Intensive in the circumstance that the former apply !o quantity in general, while the latter apply to the limit or determinateness of it as such
Intensive magnitude or Degree is in its notion distinct from Extensive magnitude or the Quantum
Every Intensive magnitude is also Extensive, and vice versa. Thus a certain degree of temperature is an Intensive magnitude, which has a perfectly simple sensation corresponding to it as such. If we look at a thermometer, we find this degree of temperature has a certain expansion of the column of mercury corresponding to it; which Extensive magnitude changes simultaneously with the temperature or Intensive magnitude. The case is similar in the world of mind: a more intensive character has a wider range with its effects than a less intensive
$104-The quantitative infinite progression is what the reflective understanding usually relies upon when it is engaged with the general question of Infinity.
Now number is undoubtedly a thought: it is the thought nearest the sensible, or, more precisely expressed, it is the thought of the sensible itself, if we take the sensible to mean what is many, and in reciprocal exclusion. The attempt to apprehend the universe as number is therefore the first step to metaphysics
These numbers, it is said, conceal a profound meaning, and suggest a deal to think about. But the point in philosophy is, not what you may think, but what you do think: and the genuine air of thought is to be sought in thought itself, and not in arbitrarily selected symbols.
$105-That the Quantum in its independent character is external to itself, is what constitutes its quality. In that externality it is itself and referred connectively to itself. There is a union in it of externality, i.e. the quantitative, and of independency (Being-for-self)-the qualitative. The Quantum when explicitly put thus in its own self is the Quantitative Ratio, a mode of being which, while, in its Exponent, it is an immediate quantum, is also mediation, viz. the reference of some one quantum to another, forming the two sides of the ratio
$106-The two sides of the ratio are still immediate quanta: and the qualitative and quantitative characteristics still external to one another. But in their truth, seeing that the quantitative itself in its externality is relation to self, or seeing that the independence and the indifference of the character are combined, it is Measure.
Thus quantity by means of the dialectical movement so far studied through its several stages, turns out to be a return to quality
107-Measure is the qualitative quantum, in the first place as immediate - a quantum, to which a determinate being or a quality is attached
$107n-Measure, like the other stages of Being, may serve as a definition of the Absolute; God, it has been said, is the Measure of all things
$109-In this case, when a measure through its quantitative nature has gone in excess of its qualitative character, we meet what is at first an absence of measure, the Measureless
$111-Being or immediacy, which by the negation of itself is a mediation with self and a reference to self - which consequently is also a mediation which cancels itself into reference to self, or immediacy - is Essence.
$111n-In measure, quality and quantity originally confront each other, like some and other. But quality is implicitly quantity and conversely quantity is implicitly quality. In the process of measure, therefore, these two pass into each other: each of them becomes what it already was implicitly: and thus we get Being thrown into abeyance and absorbed, with its several characteristics negatived. Such Being is Essence. Measure is implicitly Essence
The ordinary consciousness conceives things as being, and studies them in quality, quantity, and measure. These immediate characteristics, however, soon show themselves to be not fixed but transient; and Essence is the result of their dialectic.
In the sphere of Being the reference of one term to another is only implicit; in Essence on the contrary it is explicit. And this in general is the distinction between the forms of Being and Essence: in Being everything is immediate , in Essence everything is relative.
ii:Essence.
$112-Essence - which is Being coming into mediation with itself through the negativity of itself - is self-relatedness, only in so far as it is relation to an Other - this Other however coming to view at first not as something which is, but as postulated and hypothesised
Essence accordingly is Being thus reflecting light into itself.
The Absolute is the Essence. This is the same definition as the previous one that the Absolute is Being, in so far as Being likewise is simple self-relation. But it is at the same time higher, because Essence is Being that has gone into itself
But as this negativity, instead of being external to Being, is its own dialectic, the truth of the latter, viz., Essence, will be Being as retired within itself - immanent Being.
That reflection , or light thrown into itself, constitutes the distinction between Essence and immediate Being, and is the peculiar characteristic of Essence itself
The problem or aim of philosophy is often represented as the ascertainment of the essence of things: a phrase which only means that things, instead of being left in their immediacy, must be shown to be mediated by, or based upon, something else. The immediate Being of things is thus conceived under the image of a rind or curtain behind which the Essence is hidden.
Everything, it is said, has an Essence; that is, things really are not what they immediately show themselves. There is something more to be done than merely rove from one quality to another, and merely to advance from qualitative to quantitative, and vice versa: there is a permanence in things, and that permanence is in the first instance their Essence.
But God, the absolutely infinite, is not something outside and beside whom there are other essences. All else outside God, if separated from him, possesses no essentiality: in its isolation it becomes a mere show or seeming, without stay or essence of its own. But, secondly, it is a poor way of talking to call God the highest or supreme Essence. The category of quantity which the phrase employs has its proper place within the compass of the finite.
If we consider God as the Essence only, and nothing more, we know Him only as the universal and irresistible Power; in other words, as the Lord. Now the fear of the Lord is, doubtless, the beginning, bait only the beginning, of wisdom. To look at God in this light, as the Lord, and the Lord alone, is especially characteristic of Judaism and also of Mohammedanism. The defect of these religions lies in their scant recognition of the finite, which, be it as natural things or as finite phases of mind, it is characteristic of the heathen and (as they also for that reason are) polytheistic religions to maintain intact
If we consider God as the Essence only, and nothing more, we know Him only as the universal and irresistible Power; in other words, as the Lord. Now the fear of the Lord is, doubtless, the beginning, bait only the beginning, of wisdom.
To speak thus, and treat God merely as the supreme other-world Being, implies that we look upon the world before us in its immediacy as something permanent and positive, and forget that true Being is just the superseding of all that is immediate. If God be the abstract supersensible Being, outside whom therefore lies all difference and all specific character, he is only a bare name, a mere caput mortuum of abstracting understanding. The true knowledge of God begins when we know that things, as they immediately are, have no truth.
Still it should be remembered that the only means by which the Essence and the inner self can be verified is their appearance in outward reality; whereas the appeal which men make to the essential life, as distinct from the material facts of conduct, is generally prompted by a desire to assert their own subjectivity and to elude an absolute and objective judgement
$113-Self-relation in Essence is the form of Identity or of reflection-into-self, which has here taken the place of the immediacy of Being
As this one notion is the common principle underlying all logic, there appear in the development of Essence the same attributes or terms as in the development of Being, but in reflex form. Instead of Being and Nought we have now the forms of Positive and Negative; the former at first as Identity corresponding to pure and uncontrasted Being, the latter developed (showing in itself) as Difference .So also, we have Being represented by the Ground of determinate Being: which shows itself, when reflected upon the Ground, as Existence.
The theory of Essence is the most difficult branch of Logic. It includes the categories of metaphysic and of the sciences in general. These are the products of reflective understanding, which, while it assumes the differences to possess a footing of their own, and at the same time also expressly affirms their relativity , still combines the two statements, side by side, or one after the other, by an 'also', without bringing these thoughts into one, or unifying them into the notion.
$115-The Essence lights up in itself or is mere reflection: and therefore is only self-relation, not as immediate but as reflected. And that reflex relation is self-identity .
Identity is, in the first place, the repetition of what we had earlier as Being, but as become, through supersession of its character of immediateness. It is therefore Being as Ideality
Identity in its truth, as an Ideality of what immediately is, is a high category for our religious modes of mind as well as all other forms of thought and mental activity. The true knowledge of God, it may be said, begins when we know him as identity - as absolute identity. To know so much is to see all the power and glory of the world sinks into nothing in God's presence, and subsists only as the reflection of his power and his glory. In the same way, Identity, as self-consciousness, is what distinguishes man from nature, particularly from the brutes which never reach the point of comprehending themselves as 'I'; that is, pure self-contained unity.
No doubt the notion, and the idea too, are identical with themselves: but identical only in so far as they at the same time involve distinction
$116-Essence is mere Identity and reflection in itself only as it is self-relating negativity, and in that way self-repulsion. It contains therefore essentially the characteristic of Difference .
As we have seen, besides, Identity is undoubtedly a negative - not however an abstract empty Nought, but the negation of Being and its characteristics. Being so, Identity is at the same time self-relation, and, what is more, negative self-relation; in other words, it draws a distinction between it and itself.
$117-Difference is first of all immediate difference, i.e. Diversity or Variety
In consequence of the various things being thus indifferent to the difference between them, it falls outside them into a third thing, the agent of Comparison. This external difference, as an identity of the objects related, is Likeness; as a non-identity of them, is Unlikeness.
$117n-All the same, as regards the principle of Leibnitz, difference must be understood to mean not an external and indifferent diversity merely, but difference essential. Hence the very nature of things implies that they must be different.
$118-Likeness is an identity only of those things which are not the same, not identical with each other: and Unlikeness is a relation of things alike.
$118n-This advance from simple variety to opposition appears in our common acts of thought when we allow that comparison has a meaning only upon the hypothesis of an existing difference, and that on the other hand we can distinguish only on the hypothesis of existing similarity.
In the case of difference, in short, we like to see identity, and in the case of identity, we like to see difference.
$119-Difference implicit is essential difference, the Positive and the negative
But the aim of philosophy is to banish indifference, and to ascertain the necessity of things. By that means the other is seen to stand over against its other. Thus, for example, inorganic nature is not to be considered merely something else than organic nature, but the necessary antithesis of it. Both are in essential relation to one another; and the one of the two is, only in so far as it excludes the other from it, and thus relates itself thereto. Nature in like manner is not without mind, nor mind without nature. An important step has been taken, when we cease in thinking to use phrases like: Of course something else is also possible. While we speak, we are still tainted with contingency: and all true thinking, we have already said, is a thinking of necessity.
Whatever exists is concrete, with difference and opposition in itself. The finitude of things will then lie in the want of correspondence between their immediate being, and what they essentially are
Contradiction is the very moving principle of the world: and it is ridiculous to say that contradiction is unthinkable. The only thing correct in that statement is that contradiction is not the end of the matter, but cancels itself. But contradiction, when cancelled, does not leave abstract identity; for that is itself only one side of the contrariety. The proximate result of opposition (when realised as contradiction) is the Ground, which contains identity as well as difference superseded and deposited to elements in the completer notion.
$120-Both Positive and Negative are therefore explicit contradiction; both are potentially the same. Both are so actually also; since either is the abrogation of the other and of itself. Thus they fall to the Ground .Or as is plain, the essential difference, as a difference, is only the difference of it from itself, and thus contains the identical: so that to essential and actual difference there belongs itself as well as identity
$121-The Ground is the unity of identity and difference, the truth of what difference and identity have turned out to be - the reflection-into-self, which is equally a reflection-into-other, and vice-versa
$123-Existence is the immediate unity of reflection-into-self and reflection-into-other
$123n-Existence is Being which has proceeded from the ground, and has reinstated by annulling its intermediation. The Essence, as Being set aside and absorbed, originally came are identity, difference and ground. The last is the unity of identity and difference; and because it unifies them it has at the same time to distinguish itself from itself. But that which is in this way distinguished from the ground is as little mere difference as the ground itself is abstract sameness. The ground works its own suspension: and when suspended, the result of its negation is existence. Having issued from the ground, existence contains the ground in it; the ground does not remain, as it were, behind existence, but by its very nature supersedes itself and translates itself into existence.
$124-The reflection-on-another of the existent is however inseparable from reflection-into-self: the ground is their unity, from which existence has issued. The existent therefore includes relativity, and has on its own part its multiple interconnections with other existents: it is reflected on itself as its ground. The existent is, when so described, a Thing.
The 'thing-in-itself' (or thing in the abstract), so famous in the philosophy of Kant shows itself here in its genesis .It is seen to be the abstract reflection-on-self, which is so clung to, to the exclusion of reflection-into-other-things and of all predication of difference
$124n-If to know means to comprehend an object in its concrete character, then the thing-in-itself, which is nothing but the quite abstract and indeterminate thing in general, must certainly be as unknowable as it is alleged to be
For if we stick to the mere 'in-itself' of an object, we apprehend it not in its truth, but in the inadequate form of mere abstraction. Thus the man, in himself, is the child. And what the child has to do is to rise out of this abstract and undeveloped 'in-himself' and become 'for himself' what he is at first only 'in-himself' - a free and reasonable being.
All things are originally in-themselves, but that is not the end of the matter. As the germ, being the plant-in-itself, means self-development, so the thing in general passes beyond its in-itself (the abstract reflection on self) to manifest itself further as a reflection on other things. It is this sense that it has properties.
$125-The Thing is the totality-the development in explicit unity of the categories of the ground and of existence.
$125n-Property, besides, should not be confused with quality. No doubt, we also say, a thing has qualities. But the phraseology is a misplaced one: 'having' hints at an independence, foreign to the 'somewhat', which is still directly identical with its quality. Somewhat is what it is only by its quality: whereas, though the thing indeed exists only as it has its properties, it is not confined to this or that definite property, and can therefore lose it, without ceasing to be what it is.
$126-Even in the ground, however, the reflection-on-something-else is directly convertible with reflection-on-self. And hence the properties are not merely different from each other; they are also self-identical, independent, and relieved from their attachment to the thing. Still, as they are the characters of the thing distinguished from one another (as reflected-into-self), they are not themselves things, if things be concrete; but only existences reflected into themselves as abstract characters. They are what are called Matters.