Surrender Your Line to the Circle

Another short one. Unless I've lost track of time and it's longer than I think.

We're still pondering Schuon's Man in the Cosmogonic Projection. I am at that phase in life where the following speaks for itself:

the cosmogonic movement is not merely centrifugal, it becomes centripetal in the final analysis, which is to say that it is circular; the circle of Maya closes in the heart of the deified man.

Self-evident, no?

Wait, no? 

Are we looking at the same thing? I'm looking at the world, which is looking back at me. Or rather, is always speaking to me. It was here when I arrived, but if I'm (I AM) not here, then there is no circle, and we are sealed in permanent stupidity, futility, and illusion. 

But man completes the circle, not just via knowledge of being (AKA truth), but also the other transcendentals -- love, beauty, and unity.

Regarding the latter, to even say "cosmos" is to say unity, a unity that is anterior to the (merely) material cosmos. No one ever has, or ever will, perceive "the cosmos," for perception is always of particulars. You can only perceive a piece of the pie, but why assume there's a pie? Where did that idea come from?

From the Circle. For it is the Circle, only frozen and bifurcated instead of seen for the cosmogonic movement it actually is. Which is again what I see. It's obviously there in the circular structure of the bOOk, but back then it was only dimly perceived -- or clearly intuited -- whereas now it's the context of everything. A first principle.

Why us? Because in a full employment cosmos, someone has to do it:

To the question of knowing why man has been placed in the world when his fundamental vocation is to leave [i.e., transcend] it, we would reply: it is precisely in order that there be someone who returns to God (ibid).

Surprisingly enough, this is completely orthodox, albeit with certain important caveats. If you want to look at it from the widest possible angle, you could say that the Fall represents a rupture in the Circle, while the Incarnation is its repair and completion ("it is accomplished").

Thus, sanctification, deification, and theosis are a participation in the circular movement. Christ is obviously the necessary condition, but this does not excuse us from a voluntary participation in him, which means we -- in our vertical freedom -- are the sufficient condition. The latter can only get so far in the absence of the former -- close but no avatar. 

Nowadays practically every book I read alludes to the Circle. When I see one, I put a symbol in the margin that looks like circle with an arrow. For example, just yesterday I read a little book by Peter Kreeft called The Philosophy of Jesus. In it he writes of how the divine goodness "spills out beyond itself like sunlight." That's the descending movement.

But then, "that-which-was-from-the-beginning," the "unmanifest Source of all manifestations became manifested," and "the distance between Heaven and earth" is bridged. Say what you like about it, but one must admit that "this is the most radical solution to the fundamental problem of metaphysics: how to know Being."

Yes, it's an audacious gamble, but I guess Einstein was wrong: God does like to play dice with the universe. 

Ironic: note how the Incarnation divides "time in two, cutting the Gordian knot of history," only to heal the divide at a higher level. One might say that continuity becomes discontinuous so that the discontinuous (i.e., broken, splintered, fragmented, conflicted, unintegrated) might become continuous, or at least participate in the continuity. 

For this reason, "when man crucifies truth, truth crucifies man." D'oh! God devises a way to transform man's narcissistic and self-glorifying rejection of, and attack on, the Circle to complete the Circle: "God's search for man is a success, and the name of that success is Jesus." 

"Jesus is Jacob's ladder..., and we see this ladder is upside down: it really rests on Heaven, not on earth like the Tower of Babel," much less the babble of tenure.  "He makes it possible to escape earth's gravity." You could say that levity becomes gravity in order for gravity to become levity.  Guffah-HA! 

Another book I read over the weekend, A Catholic Christian Meta-Model of the Person, discusses the same Circle in different terms, noting that "Self-knowledge and knowledge of the world are supported by bottom-up and top-down influences." The former are obvious, while the latter include such things as "the spiritual inclination to know the truth," "intellectual intuitions about good and evil," and the "movements of grace." 

Elsewhere the authors write of the "personagenesis" whereby

In the spiritual realm, which is at the core of the personality, it is listening to the call and love of God. Once initiated, the process of becoming a person continues as a "vertical transcendence" in which the person gives "the self to another."

Participation the trinitarian Circle revolves around receptivity to the gift and an active self-gift in response. The "theological virtues originate from God" and "lead one to God." And their practice forms the basis of our vertical metabolism.