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In Hinduism the first of these four doctrines is stated in the most
categorical terms. The Divine Ground is Brahman, whose creative,
sustaining and transforming aspects are manifested in the Hindu
Trinity. A hierarchy of manifestations connects inanimate matter with
man, gods, High Gods and the undifferentiated Godhead beyond. In
Mahayana Buddhism the divine Ground is called Mind or the Pure Light
of the Void, the place of the High Gods is taken by the
Dhyani-Buddhas. Similar conceptions are perfectly compatible with
Christianity and have in fact been entertained, explicitly or
implicitly, by many Catholic and Protestant mystics, when formulating
a philosophy to fit facts observed by super-rational intuition. Thus,
for Eckhart and Ruysbroeck, there is an Abyss of Godhead underlying
the Trinity, just as Brahman underlying Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva.
 Suso
has even left a diagrammatic picture of the relations subsisting
between Godhead, triune God and creatures. In this very curious and
interesting drawing a chain of manifestation connects the mysterious
symbol of the Divine Ground with the three Persons of the Trinity, and
the Trinity in turn is connected in a descending scale with angels and
human beings. These last, as the drawing vividly shows, may make one
of two choices. They can either lead the life of the outer man, the
life of separative selfhood, in which case they are lost (for, in the
words of the Theologia Germanica, 'nothing burns in hell but the
self'). Or else they can identify themselves with the inner man, in
which case it becomes possible for them, as Suso shows, to ascend
again, through unitive knowledge, to the Trinity and even, beyond the
Trinity, to ultimate Unity of the Divine Ground.
Within the Mohammedan tradition such a rationalization of the
immediate mystical experience would have been dangerously unorthodox.
Nevertheless, one has the impression, while reading certain Sufi
texts, that their authors did in fact conceive of al baqq, the real,
as being the Divine Ground of Unity of Allah, underlying the active
and personal aspects of Godhead.
 The
second doctrine of the Perennial Philosophy - that it is possible to
know the Divine Ground by a direct intuition higher than discursive
reasoning-is to be found in all the great religions of the world. A
philosopher who is content merely to know about the ultimate
Reality-theoretically and by hearsay - is compared by Buddha to a
herdsman of other men's cows. Mohammed uses an even homelier barn -
yard metaphor. For him the philosopher who has not realized his
metaphysics is just an ass bearing a load of books. Christian, Hindu
and Taoist teachers write no less emphatically about the absurd
pretensions of mere learning and analytical reasoning. In the words of
the Anglican Prayer Book, our eternal life, now and hereafter, 'stands
in the knowledge of God'; and this knowledge is not discursive but 'of
the heart,' a super-rational intuition, direct, synthetic and
timeless.
The third doctrine of the Perennial Philosophy, that which affirms
the double nature of man is fundamental in all the higher religions.
The unitive knowledge of Divine Ground has, as its necessary
condition, self-abnegation and Charity. Only by means of
self-abnegation and charity can we clear away the evil, folly and
ignorance which constitute the thing we call our personality and
prevent us from becoming aware of the spark of divinity illuminating
the inner man. But the spark with in is akin to the Divine Ground. By
identifying ourselves with the first we can come to unitive knowledge
of the second. These empirical facts of the various religions.
Our gratitude to Ram
Krishna Math, Chennai, and Our granting also to authors Isharwood &
Swami Prabhavananda for their inspired translations
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Spiritual
Masters
