Beyond human knowledge and understanding

(Quotations from Titus Burckhardt)

...In spiritual practices there are always elements which ... offer no foothold for theoretical intelligence ... One can even notice a certain inversion of relationship, for it is those supports which are the least discursive and the most 'obscure' from the point of view of reasoning which, generally speaking, are the vehicles for the most powerful influences of grace.

He who seeks to approach that Reality must overcome not only ignorance and lack of awareness but also the grip which purely theoretical learning and other 'unreal' things of the same kind exert on him.
(p. 86)

Meditation is a 'wise ignorance', whereas (logical, methodical reasoning) which arises from mental individualism is an 'ignorant learnedness.'
(pp. 106-107)

The supreme and incomparable Unity is without 'aspects': it cannot be known at the same time as the world; that is, it is the object only of Divine, immediate and undifferentiated Knowledge.
(p. 55)

Muhyi-d-Din ibn 'Arabi from the chapter on Seth:
It is clearly beyond the faculties of the creature as such ... to know with Divine Knowledge which embraces the archetypes (al-a'yan ath-thabitah) in their unmanifest state, these archetypes being only pure relationships (within) the Essence and without form...
(p. 111)

©1999 by Deb Platt


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