No god is a philosopher or seeker after wisdom for he is wise already. Neither do the ignorant seek after wisdom for herein is the evil of ignorance, that he who is neither good nor wise is nevertheless satisfied with himself. ~ Socrates

it is obvious that, from the philosophical point of view, one can always think anything whatsoever and discuss a problem endlessly without ever reaching a conclusion; it is even what characterizes profane speculation ~ Rene Guenon, Letter IX to Julius Evola

The self-elevation of human reason, the pride of the mind, inevitably leads to its ultimate downfall and abasement. ~ Vladimir Solovyov

When reason comes out against the reality of life and knowledge with a consciousness of its own supreme rights, it finds that everything in life is alien, dark, and impenetrable. ~ Vladimir Solovyov

The limits of rationality

Vladimir Solovyov defines rationalism this way:

The essence of pure rationalism consists in the conviction that human reason is a law unto itself and gives laws to all that exists in the practical and social realm. This principle is expressed in the demand that all life, all social and political relations, be organized and directed exclusively on the basis worked out by personal reason, apart from all tradition and all immediate faith.

Any such schemes must necessarily fail for two reasons:

• In the practical domain, reason is impotent against passions and interests.
• In the theoretical domain, reason is impotent against empirical fact

An example of the first failure is the French Revolution which was allegedly founded on the rationalism of the Enlightenment and the goddess Reason, but devolved into an irrational blood orgy. Curiously, postmodernism has tried to solve the problem by consciously putting reason in the service of passions and interests. Then the only issue is to choose whose passions and interests to support. Of course, in continuity with the Revolution, those interest must needs be opposed to the traditional political and spiritual authorities.

The opponents of post-modernism, who often call themselves “conservatives” or the “right” etc., are clueless about the nature of Revolution. For the most part, they are modernists, that is, children of the enlightenment. They thus convince themselves that Reason alone will suffice against the postmodernists. Some will even proclaim allegiance to the “enlightenment” values of reason, free speech, etc., the intellectual equivalent of “bringing a knife to a gun fight”.

The postmodernists and the modernists, the former perverting reason, the latter not recognizing its limits, each produce egregores, i.e., man-caused spiritual beings. The antidote is a valid Tradition, faith, and gnosis. That Tradition is guided by the Logos, a spiritual reality, whose light exposes the egregores and dissipates them.

The way unintelligent people argue

If The Art of Controversy describes how the 1% resolve controversies, here the other 99% are described. The purpose of a rational dialog is to reach a conclusion, not to engage in endless debate. Yet, endless debate is what we get. It is worthwhile to consider why that is so. One cause is the lack of knowledge or understanding of the topic. Then, there is ineptness in logic.

Fundamentally, however, the real cause is the priority of passions and interests over rationality. In psychological terms, such a person is motivated by eros or thumos, corresponding respectively to passions and interests. Then, so-called debates become battles of partisans, more akin to arbitrarily rooting for the blue or the green team in a chariot race. Not only is one’s own position defined, but also the adversary’s. What follows typically are mutual accusations of inconsistency, often stated with great mirth and glee. Some snarky types will go a step further by posting an argument that, they hope, will upset equally both “sides”.

The end point can only be like kayfabe, a mock battle with no real winner. This is especially the case in the numerous televised debates between “both sides of an issue”. Never does one such side suddenly become converted to the other; were that the case, the show would be over and one of the debaters would be out of a job.

Yet, such shows draw an audience, just like professional wrestling. However, in any real sport there is always a referee, judge or other officials. Thus, televised debates need to have an impartial judge, i.e., one motivated by nous rather than by the lower forces to point out errors of facts and logic. Perhaps we will at a future point demonstrate how that might work in practice.

Reason and Evidence

I recently listened to one popular youtube philosopher who went on and on about reason and evidence being the only guides to life. What I didn’t hear was a discussion of the domains proper to each of those terms.

Of course, they are derived from the Traditional doctrine of two natures: the physical order of things and the metaphysical order of things. Reason applies to the world of Being, i.e., the metaphysical order, and Evidence to the world of Becoming, the physical order.

As we pointed out above, “reason is impotent against empirical fact”, i.e., the physical order. Although concepts are subject to logical laws, the empirical world is not. Logic is not discovered empirically, there is no evidence for it. A fortiori, there is probably more evidence against logic in the world.

Formation of the world

If we inspect an empirical fact, e.g., the Grand Canyon, we can reconstruct in our minds how the material and physical forces may have created it. The flow of water over millions of years dissolved the rock, creating a deeper and deeper crevice until it became what we see today.

On the other hand, can we be so certain that animal life arose in the same way as the Grand Canyon, i.e., as the result of the purely material forces. Valentin Tomberg asserts the contrary:

Tentacles, paws, arms, wings — are they not simply diverse forms manifesting a common prototype or principle? They are insofar as they express the desire to bear the sense of touch further, to be able to touch things more removed than those in the immediate neighbourhood of the surface of the body. They are active extensions of the passive and receptive sense of touch which is spread out over the surface of the organism.

The organs of action are simply crystallized will. I walk not because I have legs but rather, on the contrary, I have legs because I have the will to move about. I touch, I take and I give not because I have arms, but I have arms because I have the will to touch, to take and to give.

That summarizes the Traditional view. The idea pre-exists in the World of Being, which the will brings into manifestation in the World of Becoming.

Creation of the I

The fundamental choice must be made: is the I, or Self, the creation of material forces like the Grand Canyon, or not? Obviously, the first option cannot be a choice. If matter creates the I, then whence does logic arise? The laws of logic are not the laws of matter, otherwise the Self would always be logical. That does not square with the evidence.

Therefore, the situation is the opposite: the I is independent of matter. Like tentacles, paws, arms, and wings, for spiritual development, the desire and effort to advance creates spiritual organs, i.e.., higher emotional and intellectual centres.

Gravity and Metaphysics

The force of gravity can be understood on a few levels:

1. Things fall
2. It is understood qualitatively and disparate phenomena are related: why a feather does not fall like a rock, the moon is kept in place by gravity without falling, the tides are caused by the moon’s gravity, etc.
3. Intelligent high school students can understand and use Newton’s formula for the force of gravity.
4. Very few students will be able to understand Einstein’s general theory of relativity due to the complexities of tensor calculus and non-Euclidean geometry.
5. Finally, there is the unified theory reconciling general relativity with quantum mechanics. No one, at present, understand this. Paradoxically, neither theory has been empirically refuted.

Yet when it comes to spiritual and metaphysical topics, certain types try to refute the moral equivalent of stage 1 of the understanding of gravity. Hence, for example, they have in mind the crudest conceptions of God, rather than that of the most advanced metaphysicians. If I were to refute Newton by claiming that a feather does not fall as quickly as a stone, would that be taken as a serious argument?

The Triune Brain

Paul MacLean famously created the model of the Triune Brain in the 1960s. He claims that there are three more or less independent brains in man:

• The reptilian brain, centred in the ganglia, is associated with aggression, dominance, territoriality, and ritual displays.
• The mammalian brain, centred in the limbic system, is associated with emotion, including with feeding, reproduction, and parenting.
• The human brain, centred in the neocortex, is associated with advanced qualities like language, abstraction, planning, etc.

Neuroscientists today may quibble about the exact boundaries of these centres in the quantitative sense, but in the qualitative sense the model is consistent with traditional and Hermetic teachings. The difference of course is that the model creates the biological brains, and not vice versa.

Hermetic teaching therefore goes much further, so that these “brains” actually correspond to the etheric body, the astral body, and the Self. In Letter XV of the Meditations, Tomberg describes the process of incarnation:

Incarnation is the addition of an astral body to the Self, the addition of an etheric body to the astral body and the Self, and lastly the addition of a physical body to the etheric body, the astral body and the Self.

In our current state, however, things are not so simple. The Self is not unified, so the lower bodies are not obedient to his commands. Moreover, the Self is unaware of most of the activity of the lower bodies. In Hermetic training, one learns to bring these unconscious processes into the light of consciousness. The obvious question should arise: if I, as the Self, am not in control of the activities of the etheric and astral bodies, then who or what is?

In the lectures delivered just prior to his conversion and collected in the book Inner Development, Tomberg reveals that there are two spiritual beings that attach themselves to the astral and etheric bodies. They each affect the human being negatively in different ways.

People have always had an intuition of the presence of alien spirits, even without special training. There is the popularity of writers like H. P. Lovecraft, and in our time, the large number of movies about devils, possession, etc.

One example is the recurring idea of reptilian beings in the world, disguised as humans. Although we can reject the notion of biological reptiles covered with human skins, there is certainly a spiritual race of humans who are centred in, or dominated by, the reptilian brain. These are caricatures of real human beings and includes psychopaths, sociopaths, etc. Such people have few genuine human feelings, yet they cause emotional turmoil in others. These people also strive to hide their real natures.

The distortions in the astral body lead people to be dominated by their passions. Howard Bloom, in his book The Lucifer Principle, provides a comprehensive history of human disorder and cruelty, strictly from a materialistic and biological point of view. The title however is curious, almost as if Lucifer wants to take credit for the human condition by using Bloom as his mouthpiece.

Bloom asserts at the beginning that the Lucifer principle is built into creation itself, thereby making God the creator of evil. One should therefore conclude that there is no escape, so that human life is eternally destined to a life of evil, cruelty, and conflict. Curiously, he blinks at the end; the final paragraph asserts that humanity may yet overcome that fate through the power of imagination.

That certainly does not follow from his initial premises, yet it has its truth from a higher perspective. The Luciferic principle (by which he conflates the etheric and astral distortions) may yet be redeemed and dissipated.