Oriental Metaphysics

Thus it is to the East that one must look if one wishes to discover the true meaning of metaphysics; or even if one's wish is to recover some of the metaphysical traditions formerly existing in a West that was in many respects much closer to the East than it is today, it is above all with the help of Oriental doctrines and by comparison with them that one may succeed, since these are the only doctrines in the domain of metaphysics that can still be studied directly. As for these, however, it is quite clear that they must be studied as the Orientals themselves study them, and one must certainly not indulge in more or less hypothetical interpretations, which may sometimes be quite imaginary; it is too often forgotten that Eastern civilizations still exist and still have qualified representatives from whom it is possible to inquire in order to discover the exact truth about the subject in question.

… there are no objections to this, since they are only different expressions of the same thing. Once again, truth is one, and it is the same for all those who, by whatever way, have attained to its understanding.

We are prepared to accept such an analogy, since if one does not go beyond nature—that is to say, the manifest world in its entirety (and not only the world of the senses, which is only an infinitesimal part of it)—one is still in the realm of the physical. Metaphysics is, as we have already said, that which lies beyond and above nature; hence it can properly be described as "supernatural.”

Nobody can truly attain to any knowledge other than by a strictly personal effort; all that one can do for another is to offer him the opportunity and indicate the means by which to attain the same knowledge. That is why it would be vain to attempt to impose any belief in the purely intellectual realm; the best argument in the world could not in this respect replace direct and effective knowledge.

Metaphysics might be partly described, for example, by saying that it is the knowledge of universal principles, but that is not a definition in the proper sense and only conveys a rough idea. Something can be added by saying that the scope of these principles is far greater than was thought by some Occidentals who, although really studying metaphysics, did so in a partial and incomplete way.

Thus when Aristotle envisages metaphysics as a knowledge of being qua being, he identifies it with ontology; that is to say, he takes the part for the whole. For Oriental metaphysics, pure being is neither the first nor the most universal principle, for it is already a determination. It is thus necessary to go beyond being, and it is this that is of the greatest significance. That is why in all true metaphysical conceptions it is necessary to take into account the inexpressible: Just as everything that can be expressed is literally nothing in comparison with that which surpasses expression, so the finite, whatever its magnitude, is nothing when faced with the infinite. One can hint at much more than can be expressed, and this is the part played by exterior forms. All forms, whether it is a matter of words or symbols, act only as a support, a fulcrum for rising to possibilities of conception that far outstrip them; we will return to this later.

The scholastics of the Middle Ages stopped short at Being (related: p. 14o ”une chose à peine concevable”)

… it is no longer an individual faculty, and to consider it as such would be contradictory, as it is not within the power of the individual to go beyond his own limits and leave the conditions that limit him qua individual. Reason is a specifically human faculty, but that which lies beyond reason is truly "nonhuman”; it is this that makes metaphysical knowledge possible, and that knowledge, one must again emphasize, is not a human knowledge.

It is the attainment of effective consciousness of supraindividual states that is the real object of metaphysics, or better still, of metaphysical knowledge itself.

We come here to one of the most vital points, and it is necessary to repeat that if the individual were a complete being, if he made up a closed system like the monad of Leibnitz, metaphysics would not be possible; irremediably confined in himself, this being would have no means of knowing anything outside his own mode of existence.

But such is not the case; in reality the individuality represents nothing more than a transitory and contingent manifestation of the real being. It is only one particular state among an indefinite multitude of other states of the same being; and this being is, in itself, absolutely independent of all its manifestations, just as, to use an illustration that occurs frequently in [ancient] texts, the sun is absolutely independent of the manifold images in which it is reflected.

Such is the fundamental distinction between "self” and "I,” the personality and the individuality; as the images are connected by the luminous rays with their solar source, without which they would have neither existence nor reality, so the individuality, either of the human individual or of any other similar state of manifestation, is bound by the personality to the principial center of being by this transcendent intellect of which we are speaking.

(It is impossible, within the limits of this exposition, to develop these lines of thought more completely or to give a more exact idea of the theory of multiple states of being, but I think I have said enough to show the extreme importance of all truly metaphysical doctrine.)