Reflections on Perennial Philosophy

Would you know whence it is that so many false spirits have appeared in the world, who have deceived themselves and others with false fire and false light, laying claim to information, illumination and openings of the divine Life, particularly to do wonders under extraordinary calls from God? It is this: they have turned to God without turning from themselves; would be alive to God before they are dead to their own nature. Now religion in the hands of self, or corrupt nature, serves only to discover vices of a worse kind than in nature left to itself. Hence are all the disorderly passions of religious men, which burn in a worse flame than passions only employed about worldly matters; pride, self-exaltation, hatred and persecution, under a cloak of religious zeal, will sanctify actions which nature, left to itself, would be ashamed to own.  (William Law)

In this reflection, I discuss the notion of “faith” in Huxley’s Perennial Philosophy.  “Perennial” means lasting or enduring for a long time.  The book is a journey in comparative religions and a joy to read and available in a PDF format online.  Huxley posits direct experience of God, mysticism, at the kernel of all major religions.  And he rightfully locates mystical experience on one major theme: self-naught.  Strangely all mystical traditions say the same thing: only by overcoming the self we can experience God.  This is more than being altruistic, because even if one may think one is altruistic or religious or a devotee, one can be destructive and egotistical in thousands fold.  The task is daunting and requires prayers, practice, knowledge, and devotion.  I started with a quote by William Law about how religions become destructive. In the long passage below (we can find similar examples in all religions, including Islam), Huxley gives us another example:

"The extract that follows is a moving protest against the crimes and follies perpetrated in the name of religion by those sixteenth-century Reformers who had turned to God without turning away from themselves and who were therefore far more keenly interested in the temporal aspects of historic Christianity the ecclesiastical organization, the logic-chopping, the letter of Scripture than in the Spirit who must be worshipped in spirit, the eternal Reality in the selfless knowledge of whom stands man's eternal life. Its author was Sebastian Castellio, who was at one time Calvin's favorite disciple, but who parted company with his master when the latter burned Servetus for heresy against his own heresy. Fortunately, Castellio was living in Basel when he made his plea for charity and common decency; penned in Geneva, it would have earned him torture and death:

‘If you, illustrious Prince (the words were addressed to the Duke of Wiirtemberg) had informed your subjects that you were coming to visit them at an unnamed time, and had requested them to be prepared in white garments to meet you at your coming, what would you do if on arrival you should find that, instead of robing themselves in white, they had spent their time in violent debate about your person some insisting that you were in France, others that you were in Spain; some declaring that you would come on horseback, others that you would come by chariot; some holding that you would come with great pomp and others that you would come without any train or following?

And what especially would you say if they debated not only with words, but with blows of fist and sword strokes, and if some succeeded in killing and destroying others who differed from them? 'He will come on horseback/ *No, he will not; it will be by chariot/ 'You lie/ I do not; you are the liar/ 'Take that' a blow with the fist. 'Take that' a sword-thrust through the body. Prince, what would you think of such citizens? Christ asked us to put on the white robes of a pure and holy life; but what occupies our thoughts? We dispute not only of the way to Christ, but of his relation to God the Father, of the Trinity, of predestination, of free will, of the nature of God, of the angels, of the condition of the soul after death of a multitude of matters that are not essential to salvation; matters, moreover, which can never be known until our hearts are pure; for they are things which must be spiritually perceived.’  Sebastian Castellio

People always get what they ask for; the only trouble is that they never know, until they get it, what it actually is that they have asked for. Thus, Protestants might, if they had so desired, have followed the lead of Castellio and Denk ; but they preferred Calvin and Luther preferred them because the doctrines of justification by faith and of predestination were more exciting than those of the Perennial Philosophy. And not only more exciting, but also less exacting; for if they were true, one could be saved without going through that distasteful process of self-naughting, which is the necessary pre-condition of deliverance into the knowledge of eternal Reality. And not only less exacting, but also more satisfying to the intellectual's appetite for clear-cut formulae and the syllogistic demonstrations of abstract truths. Waiting on God is a bore; but what fun to argue, to score off opponents, to lose one's temper and call it 'righteous indignation,' and at last to pass from controversy to blows, from words to what St. Augustine so deliciously described as the 'benignant asperity' of persecution and punishment!” (p.284-5)

Reflect on the following propositions.  I call it coincidentia oppositorum in my own way, meaning two opposite things or phenomena are tied and superimposed upon each other, and as we are unable to see how they work, we harshly oscillate from one to the other, while they belong together:

Ø  The very medium of the self is that which liberates us from egocentrism, parochialism, nepotism, despair and nihilism.

Ø  The very medium of otherness is the test of liberation of the self through charity and love and being imprisoned in the self in conformism and socio-centrism.  

Ø  The very time in its temporal aspect snares us into idolatry of hedonism and enjoying this one life, alienation from the eternal and nihilism, and liberates us into divine eternity;

Ø  The very religion that cultivates us and gives us creeds, prayers, rituals, and community, subjugates and destroys us and itself by losing itself in the talismans of “identity” and “doctrine”. 

Ø  The very faith that connects us to the divine, if not nurtured and examined can potentially turn into a gaze that sees evil all around itself.  Hence “my” salvation, “my” way, “my” religion”, darkens one’s horizon of interconnectedness and divine inclusive love.

Ø  The very desire to bring heaven on the earth, through political movements, technology, sciences, and ideologies, if not guided by spiritual education and opening a pathos to the universe and divine, ensnares us to and disconnects us from the earth, and hence it will destroy us and life on this planet.  The very science and technology that should help us to survive in love, alienates us from all living beings (turning them into resources) and level off all genuine differences and threatening life on this planet.

Ø  And historically we violently oscillate from one to the other; and repeat the cycle of excess and aberrations in each pendulum swing.  Our reaction to the excesses of collectivism is individualism or vice versa, our reaction to the horror of the self is denial of the self or vice versa, our reaction to atrocities of religions is rejection of religions altogether or sinking into religious sectarianism and fanaticism, our reaction to the puzzle of meaning of life is “hell to all and let’s enjoy this one life” or asceticism and complete rejection of life, our reaction to our limitations and binding to the enigma of the earth and universe is alienation and disconnection from them in, as Huxley puts it, idolatry of technology and sciences, or losing ourselves in metaphysical speculations. 

This reminds me of the movie Cube that I used to show my students in an Intro to Existentialism course.  The structure of existence is designed in a way that the very first room in which we open our eyes is the bridge to eternity; however, we have to go through a whole series of spiritual transformations of consciousness, mistakes, flaws, self-observation, experiencing love and charity, atrocities, greed, fear, and horror to realize it.  There is no other way.  If we stay in the self we get just the self, if we move out of the self, we will throw ourselves into an abyss of unknown and will get wounded and meet our vulnerabilities and fears.  We will praise the self, we will deny the self (no self), we will desire immortality or death, we will fall into dark well of despair, into a disconnected, alien, indifferent, and cruel world.  We will harm ourselves and others and if we endure enough and hang onto the existential longing in our own self, we will overcome the self, reconnect to others and the divine, and love our self. One lesson is this: don’t fall into knee jerk reactions and don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater.  Stay calm and together when the storm blows, when you are angry, when you want to retaliate, when you want to prove yourself, when you are hurt, when you are disappointed, when you win, when you lose, when you succeed, when you desire, when you lose desire, don’t fall into violent pendulum swings, stay centered in the first room.

And this is my critique of Huxley: in a knee jerk reaction, he excludes “religious faith” and wish to turn it into a verifiable faith (an oxymoron).  He suggests that instead of unverifiable or blind faith, the sages and prophets who from the time immemorial experienced God through moral purity should tell their followers that “you don’t need to bring faith in anything that you yourself won’t experience.  If you partake in these rituals and prayers, for example, and purify your heart, speech, thoughts, and deeds, you will experience the Godhead for yourself.”   He thinks this is a verifiable faith.  Huxley admits that prior to this verifiable faith, the followers have to bring faith in the sages or prophet’s experience of God, in their words, actions, visions, and scriptures.  He also acknowledges the immanence and transcendence of God together[1] (so he is not pantheist and this is one of the central point of coincidentia oppositorum) and to the testimony of all major religions of God as a no-thing, ineffable, the nodal point of existence and love, an awareness who connects with us in all venues and through revelations.  

In this note, I will try to show why Huxley’s rejection of “religious faith” is not feasible and how his discussion on faith is confused and misleading.  If God sent us scriptures through prophets and sages, we have to use it as a nurturing source to be guided to the path of direct experience of God.  Faith is the beginning and the end, but the end and the beginning are not the same while they are the same.  We can’t make the initial faith verifiable, because faith itself is that which makes the truth or fact of the experience of the divine possible.  However, Huxley is right that we have to read scriptures critically and learn (knowledge is a mode of being) to discern the aberration and distortion in them by the astrolabe of love. 
Then, I will discuss Clifford, Pierce, and James views on the settlement of belief and elaborate on Pierce's metaphysics of science through Heidegger's questioning of the subject-object dichotomy and the metaphysical partition of sensible and nonsensible.  I finish with James The Will to Believe, which indeed is a response to Huxley, Pierce, and Clifford.

Questioning Religious Faith
  

In the Perennial Philosophy, Huxley briefly discusses four kinds of faith:

1)     Faith as a synonym for 'trust’ as when we say that we have faith in Dr. X's diagnostic skill or in lawyer Y's integrity.

2)    Analogous to this is our 'faith' in authority the belief that what certain persons say about certain subjects is likely, because of their special qualifications, to be true.

3)    On other occasions 'faith' stands for belief in propositions which we have not had occasion to verify for ourselves, but which we know that we could verify if we had the inclination, the opportunity and the necessary capacities.

4)    And finally there is the 'faith,' which is a belief in propositions which we know we cannot verify, even if we should desire to do so, propositions such as those of the Athanasian Creed or those which constitute the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. This kind of 'faith' is defined by the Scholastics as an act of the intellect moved to assent by the will.

Huxley adds:

“Faith in the first three senses of the word plays a very important part, not only in the activities of everyday life, but even in those of pure and applied science.  Faith is a pre-condition of all systematic knowing, all purposive doing and all decent living. Societies are held together, not primarily by the fear of the many for the coercive power of the few, but by a widespread faith in the other fellow's decency. Such a faith tends to create its own object, while the widespread mutual mistrust, due, for example, to war or domestic dissension, creates the object of mistrust.”

“Passing now from the moral to the intellectual sphere, we find faith lying at the root of all organized thinking.  Science and technology could not exist unless we had faith in the reliability of the universe unless, in Clerk Maxwell's words, we implicitly believed that the book of Nature is really a book and not a magazine, a coherent work of art and not a hodge-podge of mutually irrelevant snippets. To this general faith in the reasonableness and trustworthiness of the world the searcher after truth must add two kinds of special faith: faith in the authority of qualified experts, sufficient to permit him to take their word for statements which he personally has not verified; and faith in his own working hypotheses, sufficient to induce him to test his provisional beliefs by means of appropriate action. This action may confirm the belief which inspired it. Alternatively it may bring proof that the original working hypothesis was ill founded, in which case it will have to be modified until it becomes conformable to the facts and so passes from the realm of faith to that of knowledge.”

Huxley concludes:

“The fourth kind of faith is the thing which is commonly called 'religious faith.' The usage is justifiable, not because the other kinds of faith are not fundamental in religion just as they are in secular affairs, but because this willed assent to propositions which are known to be unverifiable occurs in religion, and only in religion, as a characteristic addition to faith as trust, faith in authority and faith in unverified but verifiable propositions. This is the kind of faith which, according to Christian theologians, justifies and saves. In its extreme and most uncompromising form, such a doctrine can be very dangerous.”

Huxley adds:

"The core and spiritual heart of all the higher religions is the Perennial Philosophy; and the Perennial Philosophy can be assented to and acted upon without resort to the kind of faith about which Luther was writing in the foregoing passages. There must, of course, be: 

1) Faith as trust for confidence in one's fellows is the beginning of charity towards men, and confidence not only in the material, but also the moral and spiritual reliability of the universe, is the beginning of charity or love-knowledge in relation to God. 

2) There must also be faith in the authority of those whose selflessness has qualified them to know the spiritual Ground of all being by direct acquaintance as well as by report. 

3) And finally there must be faith in such propositions about Reality as are enunciated by philosophers in the light of genuine revelation propositions which the believer knows that s/he can, if s/he is prepared to fulfill the necessary conditions, verify for himself [or herself]. 

But, so long as the Perennial Philosophy is accepted in its essential simplicity, there is no need of willed assent to propositions known in advance to be unverifiable. 

Here it is necessary to add that such unverifiable propositions may become verifiable to the extent that intense faith affects the psychic substratum and so creates an existence, whose derived objectivity can actually be discovered 'out there’.  Let us, however, remember that an existence which derives its objectivity from the mental activity of those who intensely believe in it cannot possibly be the spiritual Ground of the world, and that a mind busily engaged in the voluntary and intellectual activity, which is religious faith, cannot possibly be in the state of selflessness and alert passivity which is the necessary condition of the unitive knowledge of the Ground. That is why the Buddhists affirm that Moving faith leads to heaven; but obedience to the Dharma leads to Nirvana. Faith in the existence and power of any supernatural entity which is less than ultimate spiritual Reality, and in any form of worship that falls short of self-naughting, will certainly, if the object of faith is intrinsically good, result in improvement of character, and probably in posthumous survival of the improved personality under 'heavenly' conditions. But this personal survival within what is still the temporal order is not the eternal life of timeless union with the Spirit. This eternal life 'stands in the knowledge' of the Godhead, not in faith in anything less than the Godhead." (p.271)

I restructured the above comments to make it clearer for reflection.  Huxley admits that we trust the "authority" of sages and prophets: "There must also be faith in the authority of those whose selflessness has qualified them to know the spiritual Ground of all being by direct acquaintance as well as by report."  Well, how do we bring faith in our sages and prophets if not through their saying and scriptures?  We know about Lao tzu through Dao de Ching, and Chuang Tzu, Confucius through Analects and Mencius, Buddha through Sutra’s, Hinduism through Vedas and Upanishads, Moses and abrahamic prophets through Torah and Talmud, Jesus through Gospels, Muhammad through the Quran. 

Huxley holds: “Let us, however, remember that an existence [God] which derives its objectivity from the mental activity of those who intensely believe in it cannot possibly be the spiritual Ground of the world, and that a mind busily engaged in the voluntary and intellectual activity, which is religious faith, cannot possibly be in the state of selflessness and alert passivity which is the necessary condition of the unitive knowledge of the Ground.”

Huxley’s interpretation of religious faith is mistaken.  Of course, some believers get lost in intellectual activities, but the essence of faith in God is concentration on the eternal which is both “outside” and “inside”.  In prayers, believers in God focus on something beyond the temporal and seek to reach out to the eternal.  This might start with some mental activity at the beginning but soon and by practice it moves from mental activity to concentration of psyche and soul on God.  This concentration is the cornerstone of all religious experiences and is based on faith in God, the eternal ineffable.  It is strange that after writing the interesting chapter on prayer in his book, Huxley falls into such a misreading of religious faith.  In the chapter, Prayer, Huxley divides prayers in this way:

“The word 'prayer’ is applied to at least four distinct procedures petition, intercession, adoration, contemplation.  Petition is the asking of something for ourselves. Intercession is the asking of something for other people. Adoration is the use of intellect, feeling, will and imagination in making acts of devotion directed towards God in his personal aspect or as incarnated in human form. Contemplation is that condition of alert passivity in which the soul lays itself open to the divine Ground within and without, the immanent and transcendent Godhead. Psychologically, it is all but impossible for a human being to practice contemplation without preparing for it by some kind of adoration and without feeling the need to revert at more or less frequent intervals to intercession and some form at least of petition.” (p.251)

He extensively quotes believers and mystics about prayer in terms of contemplation, but it is strange that in the chapter on Faith, he declares that this concentration is possible without “religious faith”, which means without faith in scriptures that actually set the scaffold and pathos for contemplation to happen.  Huxley says:

“And finally there must be faith in such propositions about Reality as are enunciated by philosophers in the light of genuine revelation propositions which the believer knows that he can, if he is prepared to fulfil the necessary conditions, verify for himself. But, so long as the Perennial Philosophy is accepted in its essential simplicity, there is no need of willed assent to propositions known in advance to be unverifiable.”   

Faith is not insurance company.  One brings faith or take refuge in a dharma or religion in the hope for salvation.  Huxley’s point is valid when he asks for religions to invite their followers to aim for contemplation in prayers, and erase any image about God to experience God as such.  Quoting Augustine Baker, he rightly says: “The spirit, in order to work, must have all sensible images, both good and bad, removed.” (p.257)  But from this valid point, in the chapter on Faith, he draws three invalid points: 

First, the experience of union with God can happen without “religious faith”, which essentially includes faith in some unverifiable verses such as the Day of Judgment, life after death, and that God created the universe and us, or in the principle of Karma, and as such. 

And the second flaw is that as if faith doesn’t have any unverifiable roots.  Huxley is confused about the nature of faith when he asserts that even scientific metaphysical faith is verifiable.  In the last chapter, I discuss that the metaphysical foundation of science which is the partition of sensible and nonsensible is not verifiable and so is not scientifically refutable.   

And the third mistake is that followers of religions can sort out at the very beginning between the verifiable and unverifiable verses and bring faith in the first version and not in the second version.  Believers step in the path, take refuge in a religion, to connect to their primordial origin.  So many of them start from some simple hope for reward (Heaven) or fear of punishment (Hell).  Religions should encourage and guide their adherents to transcend this reward and punishment motivation to a desire for the experience of unity with God as such (so called "self-certifying" experience).  All authentic religions declare that having a virtuous life and devotion to God is the pathos to this salvation.  In this path of faith, they grow and learn how to approach or arrive at self-naught and experience God.  But the mystics of all religions, whom he quotes repeatedly in his book, have faith in some unverifiable components of their religions such as the Day of Judgment, life after death, karma, the creative God, etc.

I think Huxley has a valid point in that religions should show the path to their adherent through moral and spiritual purification in self-naught to experience God for themselves.   

However, and here are where Huxley falls, 1) the experience of union emerges in and affirms faith in some of unverifiable verses of scriptures such as the Day of Judgment and life after death.  2) The point of mystical experience is not the fallacious state of declaration of identity with God, as if a drop or wave can become the ocean in union, but one never can or should be quenched after one drink. 

Huxley believes that the first three faiths can be in principle verified while the fourth can’t and, so it is not reliable.  This is a strange claim: I mentioned above, and will discuss it more at the end, that the idea of verifiability of metaphysical foundation of science is absurd. In another note I elaborated the groundlessness of sciences and how they are grounded in faith.  I argued that indeed ethical truth is more reliable than scientific truth:

We all know now that “reason” as such can’t ground our belief system. In “On Certainty,” Wittgenstein says:

The difficulty is to realize the groundlessness of our believing. . . Giving grounds, however, justifying the evidence, comes to an end, – but the end is not certain propositions’ striking us immediately as true, i.e., it is not a kind of seeing on our part: it is our acting, which lies at the bottom of the language game. . . If the true is what is grounded, then the ground is not true, nor yet false. (Sections 166, 204, 205)

The problem is that we know now that a purely secular, rational, materialistic, physicalist, and naturalist view of truth is groundless. We know now that our adherence to our secular naturalistic truth is itself an item of faith. Popper states: “I too believe that our Western civilization owes its rationalism, its faith in the rational unity of human and in the open society, and especially its scientific outlook, to the ancient Socratic and Christian belief in the brotherhood [or sisterhood] of all humans, and in intellectual honesty and responsibility.” (Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, vol. 2, pp. 243-244) Moreover, he openly and clearly declares his irrational faith in critical rationalism and science:

Critical rationalism recognizes the fact that the fundamental rationalist attitude results from an (at least tentative) act of faith -from faith in reason. Accordingly, our choice is open. We may choose some form of irrationalism, even some radical or comprehensive form. But we are also free to choose a critical form of rationalism, one which frankly admits its origin in an irrational decision (and which, to that extent, admits a certain priority of irrationalism). The choice before us is not simply an intellectual affair, or a matter of taste. It is a moral decision (in the sense of chapter 5). For the question whether we adopt some more or less radical form of irrationalism, or whether we adopt that minimum concession to irrationalism which I have termed 'critical rationalism', will deeply affect our whole attitude towards other men, and towards the problems of social life. (Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, vol. 2, pp. 231-232).

In the same way, Foucault also confronts “ethical truth” with “scientific truth” (connaissance). In The Ethics of The Concern for The Self, he raises this important question:

Why are we concerned with truth, and more so than with the care of the self? And why must the care of the self occur only through the concern for truth? I think we are touching on a fundamental question here, what I would call the question for the West: How did it come about that all of Western culture began to revolve around this obligation of truth which has taken a lot of different forms? Things being as they are, nothing so far has shown that it is possible to define a strategy outside of this concern.

Huxley himself admits that the experience of God is paradoxical and at best can be expressed in contradictory terms and its “truth” is ineffable:

“The subject matter of the Perennial Philosophy is the nature of eternal, spiritual Reality; but the language in which it must be formulated was developed for the purpose of dealing with phenomena in time. That is why, in all these formulations, we find an element of paradox. The nature of Truth-the-Fact cannot be described by means of verbal symbols that do not adequately correspond to it. At best it can be hinted at in terms of non sequiturs and contradictions.” (p.148)

Moreover, he explains how language is limited to delineate the experience of God:

“So far, then, as a fully adequate expression of the Perennial Philosophy is concerned, there exists a problem in semantics that is finally insoluble. The fact is one which must be steadily borne in mind by all who read its formulations. Only in this way shall we be able to understand even remotely what is being talked about. Consider, for example, those negative definitions of the transcendent and immanent Ground of being. In statements such as Eckhart's, God is equated with nothing. And in a certain sense the equation is exact; for God is certainly no-thing. In the phrase used by Scotus Erigena God is not a what; He is a That. In other words, the Ground can be denoted as being there, but not defined as having qualities. This means that discursive knowledge about the Ground is not merely, like all inferential knowledge, a thing at one remove, or even at several removes, from the reality of immediate acquaintance; it is and, because of the very nature of our language and our standard patterns of thought, it must be, paradoxical knowledge. Direct knowledge of the Ground cannot be had except by union, and union can be achieved only by the annihilation of the self-regarding ego, which is the barrier separating the 'thou' from the 'That’” (p. 44)

So, the question is how does he want to make religious faith verifiable?  Huxley adamantly rejects the fundamental experience of all religions which is based on faith in scriptures, a longing and calling, a practice and participating in rituals, and leaves room for whatever goes, because he is hurt.

As I noted, historically, we have been saved and hurt by religions.  It is one of those bifurcations that I mentioned at the beginning, the very religion that saves us turns against itself because some adherents to the religion are trapped in the self.  Huxley and so many are rightfully hurt by excesses and violence of religions (and I will quote him later on how we are hurt also by modern and secular idolatry).  He mentions so many atrocities by religions and quotes Luther:

“Here, for example, is a passage from one of Luther's letters…'Be a sinner and sin strongly; but yet more strongly believe and rejoice in Christ, who is the conqueror of sin, death and the world. So long as we are as we are, there must be sinning; this life is not the dwelling place of righteousness.”  To the danger that faith in the doctrine of justification by faith may serve as an excuse for and even an invitation to sin must be added another danger, namely, that the faith which is supposed to save may be faith in propositions not merely unverifiable, but repugnant to reason and the moral sense, and entirely at variance with the findings of those who have fulfilled the conditions of spiritual insight into the Nature of Things. 'This is the acme of faith’, says Luther in his De Servo Arbitrio, 'to believe that God who saves so few and condemns so many, is merciful; that He is just who, at his own pleasure, has made us necessarily doomed to damnation, so that He seems to delight in the torture of the wretched and to be more deserving of hate than of love. If by any effort of reason, I could conceive how God, who shows so much anger and harshness, could be merciful and just, there would be no need of faith.”  Revelation (which, when it is genuine, is simply the record of the immediate experience of those who are pure enough in heart and poor enough in spirit to be able to see God) says nothing at all of these hideous doctrines, to which the will forces the quite naturally and rightly reluctant intellect to give assent. Such notions are the product, not of the insight of saints, but of the busy phantasy of jurists, who were so far from having transcended selfness and the prejudices of education that they had the folly and presumption to interpret the universe in terms of the Jewish and Roman law with which they happened to be familiar. 'Woe unto you lawyers”, said Christ. The denunciation was prophetic and for all time.” (p.269-270)

It seems that Huxley sets a measure for accepting the accounts of those who claim to have an immediate experience of Godhead, and it is that those claims should be verifiable and conform to our natural intellect and tendencies.  Also he discusses the fruit of experience of God, which should be instructive and can establish a loving community of believers.  Huxley believes: “The core and spiritual heart of all the higher religions is the Perennial Philosophy; and the Perennial Philosophy can be assented to and acted upon without resort to the kind of faith about which Luther was writing in the foregoing passages.” (p.270)

True, we have to discern the wheat from chaff.  We need a clear examination of the spiritual experience of the sages and prophets before bringing faith in them. But the initial faith in scriptures cannot wait for a full examination, either we begin with faith in the scripture and seek its rectification or we get lost in an unguided way.  Huxley, however, doesn’t exclude faith in the authority of sages.  He states:

“There must, of course, be faith as trust for confidence in one's fellows is the beginning of charity towards men, and confidence not only in the material, but also the moral and spiritual reliability of the universe, is the beginning of charity or love-knowledge in relation to God. There must also be faith in the authority of those whose selflessness has qualified them to know the spiritual Ground of all being by direct acquaintance as well as by report. And finally there must be faith in such propositions about Reality as are enunciated by philosophers in the light of genuine revelation propositions which the believer knows that he can, if he is prepared to fulfil the necessary conditions, verify for himself. But, so long as the Perennial Philosophy is accepted in its essential simplicity, there is no need of willed assent to propositions known in advance to be unverifiable.”

But how can we verify “the moral and spiritual reliability of the universe”? How can the experience of God, which is explained in term of temporality and eternity in his own propositions, can be verified?  Huxley believes we have to bring faith in the experience of sages and prophets of Perennial Philosophy.  He repeatedly quotes Jesus and agrees that Jesus is one of the Perennial philosophers, but didn’t Jesus also talk about Hell?

“Matthew 13:41-42, 49-50 “The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.  So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Mark 9:43, 48-49 “And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire…where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.’ For everyone will be salted with fire.”

And how much the idea of reincarnation is verifiable in Buddha, who is one of the major sources of Perennial experience for Huxley?  As well, in explaining Karma, how much these accounts are verifiable?:

“In other words, the causal process takes place within time and cannot possibly result in deliverance from time. Such a deliverance can only be achieved as a consequence of the intervention of eternity in the temporal domain; and eternity cannot intervene unless the individual will makes a creative act of self-denial, thus producing, as it were, a vacuum into which eternity can flow. To suppose that the causal process in time can of

itself result in deliverance from time is like supposing that water will rise into a space from which the air has not been previously exhausted.” (p.276)

So Huxley rejects “religious faith” which is the kernel of the negative theology[2] about which he talks extensively, because he as well as so many of us are hurt by pseudo-religious authorities and their violence in the course of history.  But as I said, historically we are used to saying “hell to all of it,” if we are hurt too much.  It is like nihilistic tendency, “hell to all of it, nothing matters and there is no account and justification for our existence.  We are an accident.  The universe is indifferent to us and anything goes, let’s enjoy this one life in pleasures of sense and intellect.  Hell to all of it!” 

Huxley calls the experience of unity with God a verifiable faith, but as I argued this is a strange claim, because faith is the beginning and the end of the religious experience.  It is not the case that one is walking around and then suddenly experiences God.  As Huxley himself repeatedly mentions cultivation of love and spiritual practices are the condition of the experience of God.  One can’t arrive at this experience without having a deep inclination and longing and faith in certain scriptures or walking the path of knowledge of and faith in their kernel.  The experience of God happens when one purifies oneself to some degree and also when one is already responsive to the call of God.  Hearing the call and having a deep longing is a kind of unverifiable faith.  As Heidegger says: “What speaks to us only becomes perceivable through our response.  Hearing itself is a responding.” (The Principle of Reason, p.48).  Faith is our response to the calling of the experience not an aftereffect.  And our interpretation, after the experience happens, hinges upon spiritual education and transformation of consciousness based on prior faith and practices.  As he himself mentions: “Knowledge is in the knower according to the mode of the knower”. 

Clifford, Pierce, James

Clifford’s conclusion in the Ethics of Belief is famous: “It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything without sufficient evidence.” (Lectures and Essays, p.188).  Clifford’s arguments are interesting and he shows how in so many cases credulity is an ethical harm to oneself and others, but he is unable to categorize different variations of beliefs and consequently doesn’t leave any room for the experience of God and faith.  If we gauge our longing for God by the principle of “sufficient evidence”, it is like to measure an ocean with a spoon, or to try to bring clouds to home.  

In The Fixation of Belief, Pierce is more discerning.  He believes the irritation of doubt can be settled by not truth (with capital T, or sufficient evidence) but by a firm belief.  He describes four ways for the settlement of opinion. 

1) The method of tenacity:

“If the settlement of opinion is the sole object of inquiry, and if belief is of the nature of a habit, why should we not attain the desired end, by taking any answer to a question which we may fancy and constantly reiterating it to ourselves, dwelling on all which may conduce to that belief, and learning to turn with contempt and hatred from anything which might disturb it?... A similar consideration seems to have weight with many persons in religious topics ….”

2) The method of authority:

“Let the will of the state act, then, instead of that of the individual.  Let an institution be created which shall have for its object to keep correct doctrines before the attention of the people, to reiterate them perpetually, and to teach them to the young; having at the same time power to prevent contrary doctrines from being taught, advocated, or expressed…This method has, from the earliest times, been one of the chief means of upholding correct theological and political doctrines, and to preserving their universal and catholic doctrine.”

3) A priori method:

“This method is far more intellectual and respectable from the point of view of reason than either of the others which we have noticed.  But its failure has been the most manifest.  It makes of inquiry something similar to the development of the taste, but taste, unfortunately, is always more or less a matter of fashion, and accordingly metaphysicians have never come to any fixed agreement, but the pendulum has swung backward and forward between a more material and a more spiritual philosophy, from the earliest times to the latest.”

4) Method of science:

“Some mystics imagine that they have such a method in a private inspiration from on high.  But that is only a form of the method of tenacity, in which the conception of truth as something public is not yet developed.  Our external permanency would not be external, in our sense, if it was restricted in its influence to one individual.  It must be something which affects, or might affect, every man…and this is the method of science.  Its fundamental hypothesis, restated in more familiar language, is this: There are real things, whose characters are entirely different of our opinions about them; those realities affect our senses according to regular laws, and though our sensations are as different as our relations to the objects, yet, by taking advantage of the laws of perception, we can ascertain by reasoning how things really are, and any man, if he has sufficient experience and reason enough about it, will be led to the one true conclusion.”

Now what are problems with these arguments?  It seems Huxley hopes to make mystical experience experiential like sciences.  But how can we make the mode of experience of coincidentia oppositorum of the negative theology, immersed in practices of self-observation and erasure of the self and opening up to love, verifiable in Pierce’s sense?  Pierce’s description seems so fascinating and convincing.  The method of science is the method of complete disengagement of the subject against the world of object.  The real world is in front of us and we can perceive how things are really by our perception.  Is it not the most reliable method?  What are the unverifiable axioms or metaphysics of this view?  First of all, there is a faith in a disengaged subject, as if there is a gap between us and the world and we look into the abyss of the world from the void in which we live.  Second, what is “real”?  What is “perception”?  What are “regular laws of nature”?   After all, Hume long time ago and Goodman recently problematized the uniformity of nature as being an item of faith.  As well our “perception” is not passive observant, if Heidegger is right, subject-object relationships and the notion that our senses represent an independent reality is also problematized.

In The Principle of Reason, Heidegger wrote:

“When we perceive something in hearing and seeing, the manner in which this happens is through the senses, it is sensible.  This assessment is correct.  Nevertheless, it is still untrue, for it leaves out something essential.  Of course, we hear a Bach fugue with our ears, but if we leave what is heard only at this, with what strikes the tympanum as sound waves, then we can never hear a Bach fugue.  We hear, not the ear.  Of course, we hear through the ear, but not with the ear if “with” here means the ear is a sense organ that conveys to us what is heard.  If at some later time the human ear becomes dull, that is, deaf, then it can be, as is clear in the case of Beethoven, that a person nevertheless still hears, perhaps hears even more and something greater than before….

Whatever is heard by us never exhausts itself in what our ears, which from a certain point of view can be seen as separate sense organs, can pick up.  More precisely, if we hear, something is not simply added to what the ear picks up; rather, what the ear perceives and how it perceives will already be attuned and determined by what we hear, be this only that we hear the titmouse and the robin and the lark.  Of course our hearing organs are in a certain regard necessary, but they are never sufficient condition for our hearing, for that hearing which accords and affords us whatever there really is to hear.

The same holds for our eyes and our vision.  If human vision remained confined to what is piped in as sensations through the eye to the retina, then, for instance, the Greek would never have been able to see Apollo in a statue of a young man or, to put this in a better way, they would never have been able to see the statue in and through Apollo.”

Then Heidegger shows how the seemingly common sense understanding of the relation of the subject with the real and representing the real to the senses and perceiving objects is based on a metaphysical assumption (call it faith) to separate the sensible from nonsensible:

“But here the following consideration suffices.  Because our hearing and seeing is never a mere sensible registering, it is therefore also off the mark to insist that thinking as listening and bringing-into-view are only meant as a transposition of meaning, namely as transposing the supposedly sensible into the nonsensible.  The idea of ‘transposing’ and of metaphor is based upon the distinguishing, if not complete separation, of the sensible and the nonsensible as two realms that subsist on their own.  The setting up of this partition between the sensible and nonsensible, between physical and nonphysical is a basic trait of what is called metaphysics and which normatively determines Western thinking.  Metaphysics loses the rank of the normative mode of thinking when one gains the insight that the above-mentioned partitioning of the sensible and nonsensible is insufficient.” (p.48)     

Huxley wishes to make faith verifiable similar to sciences but we saw that the verifiability of sciences itself is based on a metaphysical faith in the separation of the sensible and nonsensible.  Huxley thinks the four faiths, including intellectual faith in uniformity of nature and regular laws are “verifiable”, but by definition metaphysical assumptions are not verifiable.  Basically to say that faith is verifiable is a kind of oxymoron, then it won’t be faith anymore.

Unlike Clifford and Pierce, in The Will to Believe, James contextualizes different beliefs and show religious faith is possible.  First, based on context, he divides our beliefs or hypotheses to dead and alive options.  For example, theosophy is not an alive option for a person who is not familiar with theosophy but Christianity is a live option for a Christian.  Then he introduces another division:

“Next, let us call the decision between two hypotheses an option.  Options may be of several kinds.  They may be—1. living or dead; 2. forced or avoidable; 3. Momentous or trivial; and for our purposes we may call an option a genuine option when it is of the forced, living, and momentous kind.”

James holds that “every dilemma based on a complete logical disjunction, with no possibility of not choosing, is an option of this forced kind”.  For example, love me or hate me is not a forced one because you can be indifferent to me, but if I say “either accept religious faith or go without it”, I put on you a forced option.  For “momentous”, we can have the example of the movie Stalker, when and where one has to choose to go with the guide to the dangerous Zone to enter the Room of Wishes or not.  The choice is momentous, not trivial.  James states:

“Per contra, the option is trivial when the opportunity is not unique, when the stake is insignificant, or when the decision is reversible if it later prove unwise.  Such trivial options abound in the scientific life.  A chemist finds a hypothesis live enough to spend a year in its verification: he believes in it to that extent.  But if his experiments prove inconclusive either way, he is quit for his loss of time, no vital harm being done.”

After this preliminary definitions, James expresses his thesis about belief-formation:

“Our passional nature not only lawfully may, but must, decide an option between propositions, whenever it is a genuine option that cannot by its nature be decided on intellectual grounds; for to say, under such circumstances, “Do not decide, but leave the question open,” is itself a passional decision—just like deciding yes or no—and is attended with the same risk of losing the truth…”

One may argue, Huxley’s rejection of religious faith and asking for a verifiable faith is to confound a trivial option (scientific verifiability) with a momentous one (religious faith).  James argues that there are two different commandments: believe truth! Shun error!  Clifford asks for “sufficient evidence” for all beliefs.  Pierce finds scientific method as the only reliable one.  Huxley asks for verifiable faith, both Clifford and Huxley seek to shun error.  James resembles Clifford’s “sufficient evidence” for all beliefs similar to “a general informing his soldiers that it is better to keep out of battle forever than to risk a single wound.”  To postpone religious faith for verifiability rings the same for me.  James bring the examples of beliefs that cannot wait for scientific proof.  For example, moral decisions cannot wait for sensible proof.  As Huxley himself mentions our everyday actual interactions are based on certain faith.  Indeed, the faith in our collaboration precedes or brings about the fact of our collaboration.  As well, the faith in God brings about the experience of God, not the reverse.  Actually, James discusses religious belief in detail and I finish this part with a long quotation of him:

“What do we now mean by the religious hypothesis? Science says things are; morality says some things are better than other things; and religion says essentially two things. First, she says that the best things are the most eternal things, the overlapping things, the things in the universe that throw the last stone, so to speak, and say the final word. “Perfection is eternal”—this phrase of Charles Secretan seems a good way of putting this first affirmation of religion, an affirmation which obviously cannot yet be verified scientifically at all. The second affirmation of religion is that we are better off even now if we believe her first affirmation to be true.

Now, let us consider what the logical elements of this situation are in case the religious hypothesis in both its branches be really true. (Of course, we must admit that possibility at the outset. If we are to discuss the question at all, it must involve a living option. If for any of you, religion be a hypothesis that cannot, by any living possibility be true, then you need go no farther. I speak to the 'saving remnant' alone.) So proceeding, we see, first that religion offers itself as a momentous option.
We are supposed to gain, even now, by our belief, and to lose by our nonbelief, a certain vital good. 

Secondly, religion is a forced option, so far as that good goes.
We cannot escape the issue by remaining skeptical and waiting for more light, because, although we do avoid error in that way if religion be untrue, we lose the good, if it be true, just as certainly as if we positively chose to disbelieve. It is as if a man should hesitate indefinitely to ask a certain woman to marry him because he was not perfectly sure that she would prove an angel after he brought her home.

Would he not cut himself off from that particular angel-possibility as decisively as if he went and married some one else? Skepticism, then, is not avoidance of option; it is option of a certain particular kind of risk. Better risk loss of truth than chance of error,-that is your faith-vetoer's exact position. He is actively playing his stake as much as the believer is; he is backing the field against the religious hypothesis, just as the believer is backing the religious hypothesis against the field.

To preach skepticism to us as a duty until 'sufficient evidence' for religion be found, is tantamount therefore to telling us, when in presence of the religious hypothesis, that to yield to our fear of its being error is wiser and better than to yield to our hope that it may be true. It is not intellect against all passions, then; it is only intellect with one passion laying down its law. And by what, forsooth, is the supreme wisdom of this passion warranted? Dupery for dupery, what proof is there that dupery through hope is so much worse than dupery through fear ? I, for one, can see no proof; and I simply refuse obedience to the scientist's command to imitate his kind of option, in a case where my own stake is important enough to give me the right to choose my own form of risk. If religion be true and the evidence for it be still insufficient, I do not wish, by putting your extinguisher upon my nature (which feels to me as if it had after all some business in this matter), to forfeit my sole chance in life of getting upon the winning side,--that chance depending, of course, on my willingness to run the risk of acting as if my passional need of taking the world religiously might be prophetic and right.

All this is on the supposition that it really may be prophetic and right, and that, even to us who are discussing the matter, religion is a live hypothesis which may be true. Now, to most of us religion comes in a still further way that makes a veto on our active faith even more illogical. The more perfect and more eternal aspect of the universe is represented in our religions as having personal form. The universe is no longer a mere It to us, but a Thou, if we are religious; and any relation that may be possible from person to person might be possible here. For instance, although in one sense we are passive portions of the universe, in another we show a curious autonomy, as if we were small active centers on our own account. We feel, too, as if the appeal of religion to us were made to our own active good will, as if evidence might be forever withheld from us unless we met the hypothesis halfway.

To take a trivial illustration: just as a man who in a company of gentlemen made no advances, asked a warrant for every concession, and believed no one's word without proof, would cut himself off by such churlishness from all the social rewards that a more trusting spirit would earn,--so here, one who should shut himself up in snarling logicality and try to make the gods extort his recognition willy-nilly, or not get it at all, might cut himself off forever from his only opportunity of making the gods' acquaintance. This feeling, forced on us we know not whence, that by obstinately believing that there are gods (although not to do so would be so easy both for our logic and our life) we are doing the universe the deepest service we can, seems part of the living essence of the religious hypothesis. If the hypothesis were true in all its parts, including this one, then pure intellectualism, with its veto on our making willing advances, would be an absurdity; and some participation of our sympathetic nature would be logically required. I, therefore, for one, cannot see my way to accepting the agnostic rules for truth seeking, or willfully agree to keep my willing nature out of the game. I cannot do so for this plain reason, that a rule of thinking which would absolutely prevent me from acknowledging certain kinds of truth if those kinds of truth were really there, would be an irrational rule. That for me is the long and short of the formal logic of the situation, no matter what the kinds of truth might materially be.”
https://www.mnsu.edu/philosophy/THE%20WILL%20TO%20BELIEVE%20.pdf

Conclusion

Huxley contends: “Like any other form of imperialism, theological imperialism is a menace to permanent world peace.  The reign of violence will never come to an end until, first, most human beings accept the same, true philosophy of life; until, second, this perennial philosophy is recognized as the highest factor common to all the world religions; until, third, the adherents of every religion renounce the idolatrous time-philosophies, with which, in their own particular faith, the Perennial Philosophy of eternity has been overlaid; until, fourth, there is a world-wide rejection of all the political pseudo-religions, which place man's supreme good in future time and therefore justify and commend the commission of every sort of present iniquity as a means to that end. If these conditions are not fulfilled, no amount of political planning, no economic blue-prints however ingeniously drawn, can prevent the recrudescence of war and revolution.” (p.229)

Most items in this wish list make sense to me.  And I admire Huxley for his insightful ideas about religious experience and his critique of technology, political, and moral idolatry.  However, I doubt we can achieve his goal to set Perennial Philosophy as the highest factor common to all the world religions due to his major flaw in understanding the dynamism of faith.  

The dilemma of religious institutions and rituals such as church, synagogue, mosque, and 
temples is that the very medium through which God is recollected and praised becomes a 
veil to a refreshing experience of God. We are inclined to a reflex reaction to throw the baby out with the bathwater. But this will end up to the desert of nihilism and forgetfulness of God again. We can’t invent God or change religious institutions by destruction based on our merely rational reasoning. Jesus transformed Judaism by “completion”, not “rejection”. My hypothesis is that the multiplicity of religious institutions will not and cannot be reduced to one mega unitary institution. What is the most feasible and desirable (in the spirit of completion, not rejection) is that each religion will be unified within its domain by opening up to each other. Rituals of prayer and temples are respected and revered. Nonetheless, all religions see and seek the unity, the overlapping, and mutual learning, against parochialism and being closed off, by rejecting the politics of identity and a congealed self. 

We are stuck in a mental-spiritual cramp: to level off all the differences to one. This is 
exactly, one may say, what will deprive us from the completion of the experience of God in 
the richness of differences that are connected to the same source, or as the old story goes, 
perceive the same elephant in the room. This opens us up to listen to the other, rather 
righteous indignation to destroy the other. And this is the foundation of love, isn’t it?

I argued that Huxley’s interpretation of faith whether scientific or religious is fallacious.  He rejects religious faith and tries to make it “verifiable”.  We can’t make all the followers of religions pure at heart to experience unity with God indiscriminately, as faith gets stronger in degrees through practice and rituals, but there is no guarantee that everyone experiences unity with God to its optimal point as it is depicted in the Perennial Philosophy.  As well, I tried to show that Huxley’s taxonomy of variations of faith is not accurate.  He confounds the fruit of faith with verifiability of faith.  Scientific metaphysical faith in reason and evidence is the root from which the fruit of verifiability has been grown.  This means the grounding faith brings about the facts, and success or failure of a scientific theory does not put in question its metaphysical roots.  So, the idea of verifiable faith is an oxymoron.  And when it comes to major religious faiths, whose kernel is the perennial philosophy, we can’t suspend belief and ask believers not to bring faith in the rituals and scriptures, which have some paradoxical verses, until they experience God for themselves.  I argued that so many components of perennial Philosophy explained by Huxley, such as karma, the possibility of reincarnation, his theory of eternity and temporality, theory of idolatry, and negative theology are not verifiable.  By definition the experience of God is ineffable. 

To conclude, I think Huxley has a valid point in that religions should show the path to their adherent through moral and spiritual purification in self-naught to experience God for themselves. Rumi (Mawlana) is one of the major sources of Huxley about mystical experience.  Ahmed Aflaki in Manaqib al-'Arifin wrote:

“One day, as he [Shams] was seated at the gate of an inn, Rumi came by, riding on a mule, in the midst of a crowd of students and disciples on foot. Shams arose, advanced and took hold of the mule’s bridle, addressing Rumi in these words, 'Exchanger of the current coins of deep meaning, who knows the Names of God! Tell me, was Muhammad the greater servant of God, or Bayazid Bistami?'

Rumi answered him, 'Muhammad was incomparably the greater – the greatest of all prophets and saints.'

'Then,' rejoined Shams, 'how is it that Muhammad said, "We have not known Thee, O God, as Thou ought to be known," whereas Bayazid said, “Glory unto me! How great is my glory."?’

On hearing this question, Rumi fainted. On regaining his senses, he took the questioner to his home.

An exchange ensued between the two men, with Mawlana Rumi finally saying that Hazrat Bayazid’s spiritual thirst was quenched after one drink, he spoke of being full and so he stopped seeking. However, the Prophet’s thirst was never quenched and he went on seeking, aspiring to be drawn closer to the Divine. It was for this reason that he said, 'We have not known Thee as Thou ought to be known.' Hearing this, it was Hazrat Shams that fainted.” (http://sufiwiki.com/Shams_Tabrizi)

This exchange turned Mawlana Rumi to a mystic.  The mysticism is a thirst for experiencing God for oneself.  All religions and mystics along with Huxley declare that only through a moral-spiritual overcoming of the self, one can attain such a union. 

However, and here are where Huxley falls, 1) the experience of union affirms faith in some of unverifiable verses of scriptures such as the Day of Judgment and life after death.  2) In the exchange above, one can see that how the point of mystical experience is not the fallacious state of declaration of identity with God, as if a drop or wave can become the ocean in union, but one never can or should be quenched after one drink.

Moreover, I tried to reflect on metaphysic of science through Clifford’s Ethics of Belief and Pierce’s Fixation of Belief, by applying Heidegger critique of subject-object dichotomy and showing that Pierce’s description of and faith in representational thinking in science is grounded in the metaphysical partition of the sensible and nonsensible.  This metaphysical ground has nothing to do with verifiability.  So, Huxley is basically confused about the metaphysical foundation of faith when he compares scientific faith with religion.  I ended this reflection with William James’s The Will to Believe in which he clearly compares scientific belief with religious belief and shows that religious faith can’t wait for verifiability and indeed to ask for religious verifiable faith is to confuse trivial with momentous and forced with avoidable options.

  

---

[1] “The more God is in all things, the more He is outside them. The more He is within, the more without.”

Eckhart

“Only the transcendent, the completely other, can be immanent without being modified by the becoming of that in which itdwells. The Perennial Philosophy teaches that it is desirable

and indeed necessary to know the spiritual Ground of things, not only within the soul, but also outside in the world and, beyond world and soul, in its transcendent otherness 'in heaven.'” (p.8)

[2] The simple, absolute and immutable mysteries of divine Truth are hidden in the super-luminous darkness of that silence which reveals in secret. For this darkness, though of deepest obscurity, is yet radiantly clear; and, though beyond touch and sight, it more than fills our unseeing minds with splendors of transcendent beauty. . . . We long exceedingly to dwell in this translucent darkness and, through not seeing and not knowing, to see Him who is beyond both vision and knowledge by the very fact of neither seeing Him nor knowing Him. For this is truly to see and to know and, through the abandonment of all things, to praise Him who is beyond and above all things. For this is not unlike the art of those who carve a life-like image from stone : removing from around it all that impedes clear vision of the latent form, revealing its hidden beauty solely by taking away. For it is, as I believe, more fitting to praise Him by taking away than by ascription; for we ascribe attributes to Him, when we start from universals and come down through the intermediate to the particulars. But here we take away all things from Him going up from particulars to universals, that we may know openly the unknowable, which is hidden in and under all things that may be known. And we behold that darkness beyond being, concealed under all natural light. (Dionysius the Areopagite)

All that the imagination can imagine and the reason conceive and understand in this life is not, and cannot be, a proximate means of union with God. (St. John of the Cross)

Jejune and barren speculations may unfold the pictures of Truth's garment, but they cannot discover her lovely face. (John Smith, the Platonist)

In all faces is shown the Face of faces, veiled and in a riddle. Howbeit, unveiled it is not seen, until, above all faces, a man enters into a certain secret and mystic silence, where there is no knowing or concept of a face. This mist, cloud, darkness or ignorance, into which he that seeketh thy Face entereth, when he

goeth beyond all knowledge or concept, is the state below which thy Face cannot be found, except veiled; but that very darkness revealeth thy Face to be there beyond all veils. Hence I observe how needful it is for me to enter into the darkness and to admit the coincidence of opposites, beyond all the grasp of reason, and there to seek the Truth, where impossibility meeteth us. (Nicholas of Cusa)

As the Godhead is nameless, and all naming is alien to Him, so also the soul is nameless; for it is here the same as God. (Eckhart)

God being, as He is, inaccessible, do not rest in the consideration of objects perceptible to the senses and comprehended by the understanding. This is to be content with what is less than God; so doing, you will destroy the energy of the soul, which is necessary for walking with Him. (St. John of the Cross)

To find or know God in reality by any outward proofs, or by anything but by God Himself made manifest and self-evident in you, will never be your case either here or hereafter. For neither God, nor heaven, nor hell, nor the devil, nor the flesh, can be any otherwise knowable in you or by you but by their own existence and manifestation in you. And all pretended knowledge of any of these things, beyond and without this self-evident sensibility of their birth within you, is only such knowledge of them as the blind man hath of the light that hath never entered into him. (William Law)