Regarding translations from Introduction to Magic:

1. Guido de Giorgio — Notes on Ascesis and anti-Europe
2. Julius Evola — Esoterism and Christian Mysticism

These essays deal with the question of finding a guru and recognizing the marks of an esoteric tradition. Before we do that, I am providing some questions to ponder, in anticipation that some light will be cast on them. The first issue is to grasp the ultimate source of an esoteric, metaphysical, or religious text. In the recent translation of Julius Evola’s review of Bhagavan Das and R. Pavese, he gave us two options: either deduction or transcendental experience.

Now Giovanni Gentile, in his brief talk to educators, said that philosophers will write a long work attempting to logically prove its main point, which suddenly arises at the end. In reality, he explains, the main point is arrived at first and the logical scaffolding added afterward. That established, it is fair to ask if the source of that idea is a random thought, a genuine insight, or a real spiritual vision. In the last case, the deductive and logical procedure can hint at, but cannot lead, to that same vision. As Evola wrote:

The Vedas are the expositions of what the rishis have seen; in the rishi, meaning those who have realized themselves up to the level of Brahman, the deductive procedure of their knowledge could have in itself a character of intrinsic evidence and a justification, that cannot appear to those who look at it from the level of finite existence.

This is the task and the hurdle. When reading a text, can we be sure it is the fruit of the self-realization of a spiritual clairvoyant?

Knowing Oneself

Since the command to “know thyself” is at the heart of the Western tradition inherited from the Greeks, that is where we shall start. On the one hand, there is the teaching of the person in the Medieval tradition; for this, we will rely on Reality by Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., particularly Chapter 58, “Ontological Personality”. The method will not be a logical analysis, which in any case is best left to academic philosophers, but rather to determine if it reflects, or could possibly reflect, a personal realization.

This will be compared to the method of Ramana Maharshi to recognize the real “I”. For this, I will rely on In Days of Great Peace by Mouni Sadhu and on the Vivekacudamani by Shankara, by way of the commentary of Swami Dayananda Saraswati.

Regarding the Person in the Thomist sense, which term is used also by Rene Guenon and Julius Evola, Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange tells us:

• Person (human, angelic, or divine) means a subject, a suppositum which can say “I”, which exists apart, which is sui juris.
• Ontological personality is that which constitutes the person as universal subject of all its attributes: essence, existence, accidents, operations.
• The person, or subject, is distinct from its existence, distinct from its nature
• Personality is form. It is real, distinct from nature and from existence. Personality is that by which a person is immediately capable of independent and separate existence.

Hence, in the Medieval understanding, the Person is the pure Subject, the “I”. It cannot be an object; it is transcendent to its existence, which can neither determine it nor create it. Not only that, it is prior even to its essence. It cannot be the results of genetics, biochemical processes, or even cultural influences.

The personality is the form. This is compatible with what Evola wrote in the Esoteric Origins of the Species. The matter of the person is the genetic configuration in which the personality incarnates itself. We would add here that there is also the psychic configuration to take into account. The personality, then, would include the spiritual race and sex of the person that manifests. The measure of his power is the degree to which he is capable of manifesting all his possibilities in a given time and place.

From this exposition, the two obvious questions arise. The first question is whether that is a legitimate deduction from the Thomist teaching of the Person. If so, it would certainly be consistent with other metaphysical teachings.

The second, and more important, question is whether the teaching on the Person comes from a “seeing”, i.e., a spiritual realization. The Person as subject, as pure “I”, is really the same as Atman in the Eastern teachings. It is the subject not just of its essence and existence, but of all its experiences (“accidents”). This is the ultimate “knowing oneself” and is also the goal of the Vedic teachings. It is actually non-trivial, since the large majority of people understand themselves as objects, not subjects. They believe they are their thoughts, feelings, opinions, likes, dislikes, and so on. Of course, there is nothing constant in that, since thoughts, feelings, etc., vary from day to day, from moment to moment. The Person as  subject, however, is transcendent to all that.

That is the certain and necessary deduction from the definition. Was the definition of the Person an intellectual exercise, a logical tour de force, or did Thomas truly understand himself as a Person? If so, that means the Thomist teaching has the marks of a Tradition. Now whether he had to undergo some initiation or special training to reach that point, we can’t know. Nevertheless, it is a mistake to presume that people at different times and places have the same interior experience of the Self. For example, the highly educated today believe that the mind or spirit is an illusion, at best the epiphenomenon of electro-biochemical processes. It is difficult for me to imagine how that feels from the inside in order to take it seriously, but it is a widely held opinion in intellectual circles.

The bottom line is that it is reasonable to presume that Thomas knew and understood himself as the absolute Subject of his experiences and the True Will of his operations. In Part 2: Vichara and Alchemical Marriage, we will look at the technique taught by Ramana Maharshi to reach that same self-understanding.