SUFISM AND MYSTICISM 17

 

\ . 2 s :
- mysteriously identical with God. As Meister Eckhart

wrote : “There is somewhat in the soul which is un-
create and uncreatable; if all the souls were such it
would be uncreate and uncreatable ; and this somewhat
is Intellect.” This is a truth which all esotericism admits
a priori, whatever the manner in which it is expressed.
A purely religious teaching on the other hand either
does not take it into account or even explicitly denies
it, because of the danger that the great majority of
believers would confuse the Divine Intellect with its
human, “created” reflection and would not be able to
conceive of their transcendent unity except in the like-
ness of a substance the quasi-material coherence of
which would be contrary to the essential uniqueness of
every being. It is true that the Intellect has a “‘created”’
aspect both in the human and in the cosmic order, but
the whole scope of the meaning that can be given to the
word ““Intellect” ! is not what concerns us here since,
independently of this question, esotericism is character-
ised by its affirmation of the essentially divine nature
of knowledge. Exotericism stands on the level of
formal intelligence which is conditioned by its objects,
which are partial and mutually exclusive truths. As

1. Thedoctrine of the Christian contemplatives of the Orthodox Church,
though clearly esoteric, maintains an apparently irreducible distinction
between the “Uncreated Light™ and the nous or intellect, which is a human,
and so created faculty, created to know that Light. Here the ‘“‘identity of
essence’” is expressed by the immanence of the *‘Uncreated Light’’ and its
presence in the heart. From the point of view of method the distinction be-
tween the intellect and that Light is a safeguard against a * luciferean’’ con-
fusion of the intellectual organ with the Divine Intellect. The Divine Intellect
immanent in the world may even be conceived as the *‘void”, for the Intellect
which “grasps’’ all cannot itself be *‘grasped.”” The intrinsic orthodoxy of
this point of view—which is also the Buddhist point of view—is seen in the
identification of the essential reality of everything with this *“‘void”* (shunya).
2