Many Rivers to Cross

Every day I try to read a little Schuon in order to supplement whatever else I happen to be reading, the reason being that he never fails to pull me back to Celestial Central, where one can abide in the Essence. There, the light of the essential helps to illuminate and integrate everything else. 

Out on the periphery, a lot of things about exoteric religion frankly -- and inevitably -- don't add up. But viewed from the center out, one can better appreciate the nature of these forms. 

The Center is where everything coheres and makes sense, but life is a constant struggle against the forces that conspire pull us down and out. It's hardly a new dilemma, being that it's been going on since man became man. In may ways it is what we are: analysis and synthesis, dissipation and coherence, every moment of every day.

Come to think of it, just as creation implies creator, man God, and contingency necessity, it's accurate to say that Celestial Central can only be understood dialectically -- or complementarily -- with the terrestrial periphery. If you prefer a geometric analogy, the circle has a central point and a peripheral diameter. Just like us.

Except to say that we are more spherical; plus we're situated in time, so the sphere is moving; plus the sphere is ordered to O, so it has direction and finality, a vertical telovator. 

Speaking of which, one of the characteristics of Schuon's writing is its sphericality. What? You heard me: 

[T]he sphere contains the greatest volume for a given area. Schuon's style likewise contains the maximum amount of meaning for a given expression. His language, at once symbolic and dialectical, always possesses a dimension of depth and is not exhausted by its surface (Nasr).

That's the good news. The bad news -- or maybe even better news, depending -- is that his writings aren't for everyone, but rather, "open their embrace only for those for whom they are meant" (ibid.). 

This is not meant to sound elitist. It's just that not everything is for everybody -- this blog for example.

Can you imagine? Not to sound tautologous, but I only write for those few, if any, for whom my writing is intended. It would never occur to me to make a general raccoomendation to all and sundry! It would be crazy for me to address my writing to people who would only regard my writing as crazy. Thus, we can confidently say to every troll: I wasn't speaking to you.

I had intended to discuss Smith's The Vertical Ascent, but now that we're down this rabbit hole, might as well see where it leads. 

There is actually a peripheral relationship to the book, in that Smith also uses the image of the circle to convey his metaphysic: think of the central point as God in his atemporal heaven, and the periphery as the material/sensible world of horizontal causation subject to time and space. Between the center and periphery are lines of vertical or nonlocal causation that characterize the intelligible world. 

In The Essential Schuon, Nasr makes a point with which we wholeheadedly cooncur, that

to read his works is to be transplanted from the shell to the kernel, to be carried on a journey that is at once intellectual and spiritual from the circumference to the Center.

But again, I would no more recommend Schuon than I would myself. I would, however, emphasize the need for something in your life that effectuates this phase transition from circumference to center. 

Individual needs and abilities vary greatly, but there's always something for everyone, because this is The Way It Is -- i.e., the way we're structured. It's also the way God is structured, and if it's good enough for the macrocosm it's good enough for the microcosm.

But your transition, in whatever form it takes, needs to taken seriously and engaged consciously. For the vehicle -- the spoke from periphery to center -- is not the destination, rather, only the means of getting there. As they say in Zen, once you cross the river you can ditch the boat.

Well, not really, because while there's only one ocean, every day is a new river.