Self And Spirit by Robert Bolton

Author:Robert Bolton [Bolton, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: INgrooves
Published: 2005-10-19T04:00:00+00:00

DENIAL OF INDIVIDUALITY

Both the giving and the seeking of esoteric wisdom are often associated with intellectual pride, to which a chapter is devoted here. Guénon objects to this expression that it is self-contradictory, since intellectuality is supra-individual, while pride is solely a condition of the individual as such. This argument involves the assumption already observed, that the individual person is essentially one-dimensional, and cannot comprise any other nature, any more than can an individual stone. The traditional idea that each individual soul has its own system of all the supra-individual Forms or archetypes is inconvenient for the initiatic idea of tradition, and so is ignored. If it were taken into account, it would allow the idea that an individual could become proud because of powers which were supra-formal, just as easily as of powers which were purely individual.

Once it is allowed that the personality remains a unity, however diverse its powers, this self-unity ensures that our lower nature is free to react in any way it likes to the higher nature, unless it is disciplined. On this basis, ‘intellectual pride’ is a realistic expression. Not only is there such a condition, it is by no means confined to those who have developed their intellect beyond the average, since it also occurs in those who want to deny an intellectuality they do not share. In this inverted, and equally widespread form, one makes one’s own intellect a standard for others, whether it deserves to be or not. Here is precisely where pride intervenes, with its inevitable preference-for-self, even though it is as much at home with unintelligence as with intelligence. In its inverted form, it is a means used by the majority, not quite unconsciously, to prevent people from moving out of the herd, when they might otherwise find the courage to rise above its level. Guénon has shown elsewhere that the prevailing cosmic condition functions as though designed to retain those who once enter it.

From the above, he proceeds to another argument which is not effective, because it betrays an ignorance of psychology. It is claimed that there cannot be any such thing as intellectual pride, because intellectuality reveals the individuality to be ‘strictly null’ in relation to the Principle. Whether the latter point is true or not, the belief that one is nothing very often has a perverse appeal for the egoistic, and makes them feel more important than ever. Human irrationality is endless, and it allows intellectual pride in this case because some people will identify with the Principle in relation to which they are supposedly nothing. If this attitude is not entirely foolish, it is precisely because the soul with its intellectual faculty is the cause of one’s individuation, though this cannot be seen by those who see no connection between their intellect and their own persons. There are no boundaries between the soul of the individual and the truths he or she knows, and this means that the way in which we know non-empirical truths, like

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