{"id":15773,"date":"2022-02-21T20:55:51","date_gmt":"2022-02-22T01:55:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gornahoor.net\/?p=15773"},"modified":"2022-02-22T22:37:55","modified_gmt":"2022-02-23T03:37:55","slug":"defects-and-accidents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/?p=15773","title":{"rendered":"Defects and Accidents"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>Among those who receive the same teaching, each one understands and assimilates it more or less completely and profoundly according to the extent of his own intellectual possibilities; and that is why selection comes about quite naturally, without which there could be no genuine hierarchy. ~ <strong>Rene Guenon<\/strong>, <em>Man and his Becoming<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>After the discussion of heredity in <em>The Great Triad<\/em>, Rene Guenon refers the reader to the chapter, <em>Qualifications for Initiation<\/em> in <em>Perspectives on Initiation<\/em>. This has broader interest than the narrow question of initiation, since it exposes the topic of human inequalities. After all, if the Self is somehow complicit in choosing the conditions and circumstances of birth, then why would not every Self choose to be Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise?<\/p>\n<p>First of all, the following fundamental distinction must be understood.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Person<\/strong>: The Person or Self (le Soi) is the transcendent and permanent principle of the being.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Individual<\/strong>: An individual is a transient and contingent modification of the Being. In this discussion, we mean, by \u201cindividual\u201d, the human being. The Ego (le moi) is the conscious element of the person.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Each individual starts from the state of manifestation in which he is situated. This state includes many determinate conditions which are of two types:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Those that are generally inherent to that state. For example, the human state includes conditions which are common to all humans.<\/li>\n<li>Those that are particular to the individual and distinguish him from other individuals.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Most contemporary thought in the West consider the individual to be the entire the human being, and the understanding of the \u201cPerson\u201d is restricted to the individual. Then the individual is then divided into a body and a soul (or mind, etc.) The former is the gross aspect and the latter contains the subtle aspects; there cannot be a duality between them, since they are all modalities of the Self. As such, they interact with each other according to the Law of Correspondences. Hence, the body may influence the mind and vice versa.<\/p>\n<h2>Obstacles to Initiation<\/h2>\n<p>Guenon explains the reasons why certain infirmities and bodily defects are considered obstacles to initiation. In themselves they may seem insignificant &mdash; for example, a stutterer, or those with asymmetries in the face or limbs, cannot become a Freemason &mdash; yet they are outward signs of certain psychic imperfections. This follows from the correspondences between the various states of the human being. The subtle states necessarily correspond to the gross, or physical, state.<\/p>\n<p>Curiously, he points out that the impediments to Masonic initiation are almost identical to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newadvent.org\/cathen\/08170a.htm\">impediments to Catholic Holy Orders<\/a>. The point is that certain defects affect the proper performance of some rites. Physical defects, as such, are not an indication of a moral failure.<\/p>\n<p>There are two types of defects:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Defects that the being exhibits from birth or that develop naturally over the course of its existence as a consequence of a certain predisposition.<\/li>\n<li>Those that are the result of an accident.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>The first type inheres in the very nature of the being, However, since nothing can happen to a being that does not correspond in some way to an essential element of his nature, then even apparent accidental infirmities cannot be considered indifferent.<\/p>\n<h2>Law of Accidents<\/h2>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cDon\u2019t you mind,\u201d said Puddleglum. \u201cThere are no accidents. Our guide is Aslan.\u201d ~ <strong>C S Lewis<\/strong>, <em>The Silver Chair<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It is certainly difficult, in contemporary worldviews, to accept that accidents are a necessary aspect of one\u2019s being. On the contrary, the commonsense view seems to be that all qualities and conditions of human birth are arbitrary and inessential. Hence, inequality in circumstances of birth is regarded as unjust. Guenon anticipates this view when he writes:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Some may be astonished that accidental infirmities thus correspond to something in the very nature of the being affected by them, but this is after all only a direct consequence of the real relationships the being has with the environment in which he manifests itself. Everything a being undergoes, as well as all he does, constitute a modification of that being, and must necessarily correspond to one of the possibilities in his nature, so that there can be nothing that is purely accidental if this word be understood in the sense of \u2018extrinsic\u2019, as it commonly is. ~ <strong>Rene Guenon<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<h2>Victim Souls<\/h2>\n<blockquote><p>Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ\u2019s afflictions for the sake of his body. ~ Colossians 1:24<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/catholicstand.com\/victim-souls-defeat-satan\/\">Victim souls<\/a> deliberately agree to a life of painful physical defects and suffering.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.carmelitedcj.org\/carmel\/saints-of-carmel\/160-bl-elizabeth-of-the-trinity\">Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity<\/a> is an example; in her writings, she seems to have known that her role would be to intercede for the sick and suffering.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Most contemporary thought in the West consider the individual to be the entire the human being, and the understanding of the \u201cPerson\u201d is restricted to the individual. <span class=\"continue-reading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/?p=15773\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15775,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,374],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guenon","category-spirituality-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15773"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15773\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15779,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15773\/revisions\/15779"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}