METAPHYSICAL KNOWLEDGE, part I - by Guenther
Zuehlsdorf, translation from the original German edition into Portuguese by
Huberto Rohden and translated into English by Flavio de Mello.
"To know the multiple without the Uno
(God) is ignorance - but the knowing of the Uno is wisdom"
Ramakrishna.
In the chapter on "The Metaphysical Necessity of
Man", Schopenhauer explains the transcendental yearning of man. Says that no
being admires his own existence, except man. Only man have self-consciousness
and ask himself: Who am I? Investigates the enigma of his existence and it is
able to exalt admired, face to face with the common and everyday things.
Temples, churches, pagodas and mosques, in all countries, at all times, in power
and grandeur, testify the metaphysical yearning of man, strong and
inextinguishable, but runs, however, deceived by external circumstances, towards
in response to his material and sometimes superfluous needs.
But Schopenhauer confesses: the metaphysical
faculty(1) of man falls far short of physical needs, so that often man is
satisfied with unwise fables and insipid tales.
However, the power to live super-sensitive
realities, based on the own eternal nature of man, will never be lost. May,
however, fall into oblivion because of the traditional reliance on cults and
rites, under the action of mechanical repetition of pre-existing formulas, to
the point that man no longer feel the metaphysical longing. When the tendency of
organized institutions prevails, the feeling of ultimate Reality stays
atrophied.
This is what it is happening in our days: man is
content with things required by his sense of immediate use and abuse and by the
usual routine, though none of these things can satisfy his metaphysical
yearnings. Or, on the other hand, man falls into a pseudo mysticism, into magic
and occultism, which gives to him the illusion of a spiritual
pleasure.
Truth and illusion are neighbours at this level,
and it is required a well established and reliable criterion to distinguish one
from another. The superior element is not built gradually over the inferior
element; but, on the path of mystical and supra-rational knowledge, should the
level of rational(2) and discursive thought, according to Eckhart, be
"out-dated". The infusion of divine light, however, it is not, in any way, the
result or effect of a sensory meditation, although it is man's ultimate
goal.
The saints, at all times, said - that we can only
discover the ultimate Reality if we can meet and exceed the limits of everyday
experience. Although truth it is the ratio of their experiences that differ in
details, one from another, a sign that there are differences regarding the
clarity and impact of their mystical experiences, as well as the difficulty to
crystallize in words these intimate experiences.
The mystic, it is said, must live the whirlwind
of all paradoxes, because he still needs a standard to measure the level and the
unknown dimension of his new consciousness, once the Eternal in man cannot be
limited by his conscious nature.
Facing these paradoxes, originated from the
contact with the source of our Being, the rishis of
the Upanishads speak of the consequent delineation of two zones of our
knowledge. The Brahma initiated distinguish two kinds of knowledge. Refers to
Munkala - Upanishad: the inferior knowledge
(aparavydia), derived from the Vedas scriptures, the branches
of science and art - and, on the other hand, the superior knowledge
(paravydia) by which man sees the unchanging Reality itself;
this is the unique, true wisdom. The Upanishads refers to this knowledge as
invisible wisdom, inaudible, unthinkable, unknowable, thus showing that the
Truth only begins where all questions end. (Beyond the gods is
God)(3).
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Translator's Notes:
(1)- Metaphysics is a philosophical concept not
easily defined. According to Aristotle, it is the "first philosophy"; St. Thomas
Aquinas refer to "those that we study after having mastered the science that
deal with the physical world"; others, the science of the world beyond nature;
that branch of philosophy which treats of first principles, including both the
science of being and the science or theory of knowledge, but sometimes
restricted to either alone; or a traditional branch of philosophy concerned with
explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world that encompasses it;
the doctrine of the essence of things, theory of ideas, general and abstract
knowledge.
(2)- The author, as commonly used, although
inaccurate, uses the term rational rather than intellectual. Under precision
terminology, and strictly philological, the rational is the spiritual, the
mystical, the being in accordance with the "logos". Paul of Tarsus demands from
the first-century Christians that their religious worship to be "logical", or
rational, i.e., according to the logos, the ratio, which it is the immanent
expression of Transcendental Reality.
(3)- In Cosmic Philosophy would say: beyond God
is the Divinity. Gods are finite individual manifestations, from the Universal
Deity, Infinite. The Deity "is" God and the gods "exist". Reality is Divinity
itself, the Being; the truth consist in the harmony with our thinking about that
Reality, and untruth is the disharmony between our thinking and
Reality.
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