The mantra that resounds through every doctrine
Yogin, lamas, adepts, natural philosophers, kabbalists, alchemists, and mystics of every land share this conviction: that it is impossible to speak of their experiences and their knowledge in a complete way.
Heraclitus says that men are like cattle in a herd: “in their knowledge of what is manifest, they are deceived…”; “men are unaware of all that they do when awake, just as they forget what they do in sleep”, and so forth. Parmenides, for his part, writes that men go astray because they fail to perceive Being itself, and that they give names to things only because they are “at once deaf and blind”.
Philosophers and historians of philosophy have largely ignored these rebukes from the two great natural philosophers, reducing their thought to mere logical or metaphysical notions. Yet Parmenides and Heraclitus make it plain, with extraordinary force in the few fragments of their poems that remain, that ordinary men grasp nothing of true reality, being so deceived by appearances as to mistake them for the only reality there is. Socrates said much the same, though in more measured terms; and so did Plato—although his thought too has been dulled by those so-called philosophers who insist on making of him a rationalist, even though Plato himself repeatedly declares that the senses are deceptive and that reason is a limited and fallible instrument, unfit to apprehend true reality. In relation to these natural philosophers, the ordinary thinkers of the Western tradition fall exactly under what Heraclitus said: “of this Logos, which is ever the same, men are incapable of understanding—neither before they have heard of it, nor even after hearing of it once”.
It was Aristotle who established reason as the sole and reliable instrument of knowledge, and the material and rational world as the full measure of reality itself. This view—applied even to the anthropo-logical-morphic God God of Christianity—gradually took hold until, in recent centuries, it came to reign supreme. Were then Parmenides, Heraclitus, Socrates, and Plato mere visionaries—incurable dreamers with open eyes and, by chance, gifted storytellers as well? The question arises naturally, and to most it may sound rhetorical, for to answer it in the negative would mean casting aside Western thought as a whole. In truth, Parmenides, Heraclitus, Socrates, and Plato were expressing, in essence, the very same understanding that in the East (in India and in Tibet above all), as well as in the esoteric traditions of every place and age, has always been regarded as the most basic and elementary grasp of reality. From the Ṛgveda through the Upaniṣad, Buddhism, Vedānta, the Tantra, and the various schools of Yoga, the East has always taken for granted what the first Greek philosophers declared, though in a form somewhat rough and undeveloped, since they lacked a well-founded tradition of knowledge behind them.
This premise leads us to the subject of the incommunicability of true knowledge. Today anyone may read the Upaniṣad. Yet few know that these texts were once held to be utterly secret: anyone who heard them without authorization, it was said, would have molten lead poured into his ears. In the same way, the six Yoga of Nāropa—the tantra forming the foundation of the Tibetan Buddhist schools of the second translation period—were transmitted orally to worthy disciples alone for thirteen generations. It was only after the Chinese occupation of Tibet that certain texts of the Diamond Vehicle became known in the West. Likewise, throughout the revealed Tantra of India, whether early or late, one often reads that the texts contain only a succinct outline of the practices, which must remain secret. And it is precisely this incommunicability of true knowledge that explains why the Buddha Śākyamuni, when a disciple asked him to speak of ultimate reality, replied that to speak of it would be meaningless, for it can be understood only by one who has attained it, while for one who has not experienced it, to hear of it is entirely useless. In the case of the Qabbalah, the writings of the Kabbalists disclose only the barest portion of the secret truths, speaking in general terms alone, for it is the adept himself who must advance along the path. As for alchemy, one need only glance at any text to grasp the absolute impenetrability of what is written there. Moreover, Jesus too makes a similar statement when he tells the apostles that he speaks to the people in parables, for otherwise they would not understand what he says; and he immediately adds that the secret teachings are revealed to the apostles themselves—yet in the Gospels, at least in the synoptic ones, there is no trace of these higher doctrines. And as the culmination of these examples, one cannot fail to mention the Ṛgveda, the unique and supreme text of which all the later traditions are but deepening and commentary on its various aspects. In Hymn III of the Fourth maṇḍala, the ṛṣi Vāmadeva declares: “Thus, O Agni, I, a ṛṣi, speak to you — arcane words, wisdoms of ṛṣis that reveal their hidden and real meaning only to the seer”.
To understand the reason for this secrecy, the Ṛgveda may again be cited: “Otherwise he sees, yet does not perceive; he listens, yet does not understand. But to the one who is ready, the goddess Vāc (Speech herself) reveals her fairest form, as a loving woman disrobes before her husband” (X.71.4). Esoteric knowledge cannot be grasped by one who lacks the fortune — or, as the texts say, the divine grace nurtured through absolute devotion — of direct and personal experience of that higher level of reality of which the esoteric traditions are the vehicle.
At this point we may return to Plato. In his Seventh Letter, where he reflects upon his political life and his search for knowledge, Plato, speaking of the fundamental and original core of his philosophy, writes: “The knowledge of such truths cannot be communicated as other forms of knowledge can. Only after many discussions on these matters, and through a sharing of life itself, does it suddenly arise—like light kindled by the strike of a spark—within the soul, and from that moment it nourishes itself.” He then adds: “This much I know: if such things were ever to be written or spoken, they would be expressed in the best possible way by me. Yet I do not believe that what passes for a written exposition of these subjects would be of benefit to mankind, save for those few who, with only slight guidance, are able to find the truth by themselves; while the others would fill themselves, some with unjust and unseemly contempt, others with a proud and empty presumption, persuaded that they have learned great things.”
This passage from Plato is of great importance, for it offers a synthesis of the relation between esoteric knowledge and the knowledge of ordinary men. First of all, Plato states explicitly that the knowledge of the fundamental truths cannot be communicated as other forms of knowledge can: it cannot be conveyed dialogically to another, nor can it be set down in writing, for whoever listens or reads would not be able to understand—and this holds true even if the listener or reader were Aristotle or Einstein. Why can the listener not understand? Simply because esoteric truths belong to realms of experience that lie beyond the ordinary. One who has never entered those realms will either take what he hears for madness, or else reduce it to the measure of his own limited experience and knowledge. The human mind works in this way—and this, as Socrates says, is precisely “the belief that one knows.”
Plato goes on to explain that this kind of knowledge flashes forth, if it does at all, like a light kindled in the mind, just as all the yogin, lamas, and alchemists speak of a light that opens within the mind. What Plato means is that true knowledge is an experience, not the apprehension of concepts as Western thought has understood it for the past twenty-five centuries. For the adepts, concepts are but phantoms, word games, creations of the narrow rational mind that, groping in the dark, believes it knows because it invents notions in its own image. Plato then adds that no one could write of these things better than he himself could, if he ever chose to do so (and anyone who has read his Dialogues knows he is not one to boast). Yet he refrains, precisely because, as he says, most people would either despise such truths or reduce them to banality, which would only profane the sacredness of the truths. Plato further explains that there are only a few who can find the truth by themselves, and for them a few hints are enough. This means that even for such men the full revelation of the secrets would be harmful, for it would deprive them of the inner experiences that constitute Sacred Science. As has been said, Sacred Science does not consist in notions grasped intellectually, but rather in direct knowledge.
Another of Plato’s terse and luminous remarks must be read in the same light. In the Phaedrus he writes that whoever sets down or utters everything he knows or thinks is nothing but a babbler, whereas the true philosopher is one who possesses things of far greater worth than those he communicates. These things of greater worth are to be understood not merely as a reserve of notions, but as those very realities that cannot be communicated. In other words, what Plato is saying is that only those who possess higher knowledge should be allowed to teach (and this is precisely what he himself did in his Dialogues), whereas the so-called masters who lack it are nothing but blind guides. All the reasons Plato gives for withholding the highest knowledge are the very same as those affirmed by the adepts of every tradition. Sacred Science cannot be conveyed through discursive speech, for those who have not experienced the sacred realities cannot truly understand what is being said. Hence it is often declared that language is unfit to communicate anything of truth, and this is also why Kuṇḍalinī is called by all the goddess of speech. The indiscriminate spreading of sacred notions would only bring discredit upon the subject itself and hinder those destined for spiritual growth from attaining realization.
And yet the yogin and the lamas, the alchemists and the Kabbalists, and not least Plato himself, all speak of things that are sacred and secret, more or less openly according to the context. For, as they themselves say, it is the duty of the awakened to preserve the continuity of knowledge, to keep alive the flame of true wisdom for the benefit of all sentient beings, as the Tibetans put it. It is precisely the coexistence of these two seemingly opposite motives—the impossibility of conveying what is sacred and thus the prohibition against speaking idly, and at the same time the duty to speak within the limits of what may rightly be said—that makes it clear why the adepts, as they themselves affirm, never seek to convince or persuade. The ordinary rational faculty cannot grasp spiritual realities; to argue about them in the manner of dialecticians would be folly, and persuasion itself is useless, for only those who are inwardly prepared can attain direct knowledge.
To the Western mind, all this sounds like folly. Indeed, only a few Western thinkers have ever truly grasped what Plato meant, beyond the elementary teachings he offered to guide men toward a life not merely animal. Yet it may rather be the case that Western man lives, to borrow Śāntideva’s image, like the sick man who believes he can be cured simply by reading treatises on medicine.