Thought and mental cristallizations

It is from this unintelligible—and in a sense “absurd”— aspect of Maya or of Prakriti(1) that arises in the main that disturbing element which insinuates itself into our mental crystallizations as soon as they depart from their normal function, which is indicative and not exhaustive; to speak of an absolute conformity of our thought to the Real is a contradiction in terms, since our thought is not the Real and since our sense of a partial conformity to the Real implies that our thought is separated from it or different from it.

To deduce from this that total truth is inaccessible to us is an even greater error, and it is of a piece with the other, being also a product of confusion between direct knowledge and thought. The fact that we can have a perfectly adequate notion of a tree cannot possibly signify that our thought is identified with the tree, but on the other hand neither can the fact that our adequation is not an identity signify that we cannot know the tree in any way.

However that may be, the desire to enclose universal Reality in an exclusive and exhaustive “explanation” brings with it a permanent disequilibrium due to the interferences of Maya; moreover it is just this disequilibrium and this anxiety that are the life of modem philosophy. Nevertheless this aspect of unintelligibility, this kind of “irrationality”, this elusive and almost “mocking” element in Maya that condemns philosophy “according to the flesh” (St. Paul) to a vicious circle and finally to suicide, proceeds in the last analysis from the transcendence of the Principle, which will no more allow itself to be imprisoned by blind ratiocinations than will our sensorial faculties allow themselves to be perceived by our senses; the use of the word “imprisoned” allows the “indicative” value of logical processes to remain unquestioned.

As regards the illegitimacy of any attempt to overstep the limits imposed by the mystery of Isis, it could be objected that metaphysics is also such an attempt. This argument applies to profane philosophy, but not to the scientia sacra by which Isis Herself consents to lift a veil, without however withdrawing it to the point of leaving no mystery.

The goal of the profane thinkers on the contrary is to propose to the intelligence only what is rationally verifiable and to "free" thought from all transcendence; the intention is to "demystify" the universe by explaining it once and for all; thus rationalistic language wishes to press the knowable to the last drop. Thought is then all that language expresses and nothing more.