Archilogon 057 - 7. Dogma - 4. The Prophet and the Philosopher

Video transcription

The Theology of Revelation is closely bound up with Mysticism. In this video, we shall focus on visionary experience: the claim that an individual consciousness can communicate directly, without priestly mediation, with “entities” believed to inhabit a supersensible realm. We turn to this subject because it helped shape the historical period we are examining.

Our perspective departs from Henry Corbin’s approach to Mysticism and Prophetism. The question recalls Kant’s criticism of Swedenborg: on what grounds can a visionary experience claim to provide “knowledge” of the supersensible? Corbin grants mystical perceptions an ontological reference independent of the subject:

“The defining feature of imagination conjoined with the subject is that it remains bound to the imagining subject and disappears when that subject disappears. The second kind, imagination separable from the subject, possesses an autonomous reality that subsists in its own right, sui generis, at the level of being belonging to the intermediate world: the world of Image-Ideas, the ‘Mundus Imaginalis’.”

Corbin establishes this distinction by first separating the “imaginary” from the “imaginal”. Whereas the Imaginary is a product of fantasy, the Imaginal is held to be a real dimension accessible through a special human faculty. The question then becomes one of criteria: how can an authentic “imaginal perception” be recognised and distinguished from a representation produced by the subject alone?

To support his position, Corbin appeals to correspondences between different prophetic traditions:

“Between the Theosophy of an Ibn Arabi and that of a Renaissance theosopher or a thinker from the school of Jacob Boehme, there are correspondences so striking as to warrant comparative study. On both sides, we find the idea that the deity possesses the power of imagination, and that God created the universe by imagining it. That God brought this universe forth from the virtualities and eternal powers of his own being. That between the universe of pure spirit and the sensible world there lies an intermediate world: the world of Image-Ideas, the 'Mundus Imaginalis'. That this is the world over which imagination properly exercises its power; that imagination produces real effects within it, to the point that these can ‘mould’ the imagining subject, casting the human being into the form, the mental body, that it has imagined.”

These correspondences certainly warrant comparative study. Yet the recurrence of a representation does not establish the ontological independence of its object. Recurrent images have always been part of human experience, transmitted, transformed and recombined through different traditions. Similarities between accounts may arise from shared experiences or from the circulation of oral and written narratives.

Comparative studies of folktales, for example, classify recurring narrative types and motifs, as the international Aarne–Thompson–Uther index demonstrates. Recurring content allows us to identify families of narratives. It does not establish the independent reality of their objects.

Let us set aside any suspicion concerning the mystic’s sincerity. A vision may be experienced in complete good faith, with extraordinary intensity, and may profoundly transform the person who undergoes it. Yet the reality of an experience does not establish the reality of what it describes. To have experienced a “theophanic perception” is not to have demonstrated that a God, understood as a distinct and separate entity, has actually manifested himself.

Mystics may even swear that they possess an organ specifically suited to “theophanic perception”. But inward certainty, however intense, is insufficient to establish shared knowledge. The issue here is one of relevance, rather than value. A visionary experience can become an object of study, and its account may possess immense religious or artistic value. Yet anyone claiming that it attests to a reality independent of the subject must support that claim through an examination appropriate to the nature of the content asserted.

If “theophanic perception” claims to reveal empirically verifiable content, it must clearly submit to scientific examination. If it claims to reveal supersensible content, it must make its principles explicit and reconstruct the relations that render this content “necessary” in the eyes of Reason. The validity of any philosophical hypothesis depends entirely on the cogency of the reasons supporting it. The absence of both scientific verifiability and philosophical necessity thus undermines the status of “knowledge that can be shared” which Corbin seeks to confer on mystical experience.

This does not concern the personal relationship any of us may have with its content. Each of us is free to place trust in someone else’s dream. We may embrace its content because it moves us, consoles us or answers our needs. Such acceptance, however, remains a personal act of trust. What becomes shared is a belief, rather than knowledge.

“Theophanic perception” can therefore be examined as a psychic phenomenon. Merely having experienced it, however, does not make it a foundation for Metaphysics.

From the perspective of the Archilogon, the Intelligible World of Pythagoras and Plato is of an entirely different nature. It is not a realm populated by superhuman entities. It has neither light, nor colour, nor body: it consists of pure Forms and their Relations. Images can represent it through Geometry, but their sensible content, lines, circles and points, is distinct from what they represent. Like an algebraic equation, they serve only to help the mind understand constraints.

To clarify the difference between the mystic’s conception of the supersensible and that of Pythagoras, we should distinguish two orientations of creative thought: one develops “empirical” representations; the other explores Relations between “pure” Forms.

“Empirical” creative thought recombines abstract representations of Phenomena. When it arranges them into contingent configurations, we call it “Fantasy”. This faculty underlies ordinary Art: it can produce worlds that do not exist, characters who have never lived and events that have never occurred. Fantasy is under no obligation to obey physical laws or preserve the logical coherence of the world it depicts.

“Pure” creative thought, by contrast, explores formal configurations and seeks to identify their constraints. It does not invent the necessity of Relations: it attempts to understand it. When this exploration remains a free exercise in possibilities, it may take the form of mathematical play. When it seeks to reconstruct actual intelligible constraints through hypotheses and deductions, we call it 'Speculation'.

Speculation can contribute to the development of the mathematical structures of Theoretical Physics, which must subsequently be tested against phenomena. It can also guide Ideal Art, where images are arranged to represent intelligible relations, producing extraordinary metaphors. In very different fields, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and Dante’s Divine Comedy offer two opportunities to examine the power of formal thought.

A further distinction is that Speculation on Forms does not involve relinquishing wakeful consciousness. It demands exceptionally lucid reflection. Even a sudden intuition must remain open to subsequent examination and questioning, and must be traced back to the necessary Relations that support it. Its cognitive power depends on this work, rather than on the emotional intensity with which it first arose.

A vision, by contrast, is a dream whose content aspires to be accepted as “certainty” even by those who have not dreamt it. This does not deny its effect on the dreamer. Imagination can indeed reshape the psychic life of the subject who produces it: what we imagine intensely can alter our expectations, our behaviour and even our perception. Yet an image’s efficacy does not establish the reality of its object. It demonstrates its power to transform the subject.

When a theophanic narrative such as Revelation engages enough people, its power can bring about extraordinary transformations in the physical world: magnificent works of art, new communities or devastating religious wars. These are real effects of a shared representation. They do not, as such, provide evidence of a realm beyond the physical.

With all this in mind, can we nevertheless regard the visionary, in a metaphysical sense, as an “instrument in the hands of God”? As a vehicle through which something transcending the individual finds expression? If by “God” we mean Reality in its unfolding, then certainly we can. Like every other Phenomenon, the visionary is an expression of Reality: an actualised possibility.

The problem for knowledge arises when visionaries and their interpreters attribute universal motives and intentions to their accounts. They are inclined to select whatever supports their cause and reject whatever contradicts it. In claiming that the message is universal, the “divine messenger” then purports to express the super-logic of the Whole, while merely extending the sub-logic of the Part to a community of followers. When this selection is imposed upon individual consciousnesses as an unquestionable truth, it becomes manipulation, even if those imposing it sincerely believe in their mission.

We must nevertheless recognise that the prophet, like every other manifestation, is not an “error” of Reality, but fulfils a specific metaphysical function. Reality gives expression to the prophet as a catalyst for both fusion and division among human groups. Through the prophet, we see the movement from Unity to Multiplicity, and from Multiplicity to Unity, reproduced in the empirical realm. The prophet’s words can bring scattered individuals together, create a community, separate it from other communities, and provoke conflict and reconciliation, separation and reunion.

Reality gives expression equally to Christ and the Antichrist as catalysts for two possibilities. Both fulfil a function within the Whole, even when they prove unacceptable from the standpoint of the Part. Even the horrors of History must be understood through the conditions and relations that made their emergence possible. The question of how a benevolent and omnipotent God could have permitted such atrocities arises from a one-sided representation of the divine. To contemplate the super-logic of the Whole, we must instead examine Reality without excluding whatever overturns our expectations.

There is a profound difference between the prophet who announces a better world and the philosopher. The prophet denounces the world’s imperfection and offers us an ideal horizon. Seeking consolation and meaning, we long to place our hopes in these words. The philosopher who seeks to understand the super-logic of the Whole, however, regards the world as perfect and the individual mind as imperfect: insufficiently prepared to comprehend it.

Here, “perfect” means complete as a Whole. None of its Parts can be excluded from Reality merely because it contradicts an individual’s desires and expectations. Understanding the Whole clearly does not exempt us from action. It does, however, require us to recognise that our own desire to transform the world also belongs to Reality. Our actions express a particular position within it, rather than a universal standpoint.

Plato’s political project does not contradict this perspective. To understand the perfection of the Whole is not to judge every social order perfect. It is to recognise that injustice, and the action through which we seek to correct it, both belong to the unfolding of Reality. It means consciously accepting responsibility for becoming catalysts in an analytic or synthetic process: a process of division or recomposition.

To aspire to an understanding of the super-logic of the Whole, we must therefore learn to remain silent: to suspend the claim to speak in God’s name and contemplate Reality, examining its Forms and reconstructing its Relations. For only Reality, in the entirety of its unfolding, is the direct and unmediated expression of the logic that informs it.

"To the Principle!"