Approaches To Inner Life, Part Six

Lanza del Vasto

Translated from
LANZA DEL VASTO, APPROCHES DE LA VIE INTÉRIEURE
ÉDITIONS DENOËL, 1962

The Four Circles of Knowledge and the Point

There are four circles surrounding self-knowledge.

Each circle revolves around its center, and each leads to a central, unique, and elusive point, which is the Self.

The First Circle, the largest, encompasses the sciences of Man with their multiple branches: Anatomy, Medicine, Physiology, Psychology, Psychiatry, Philology, Archeology, Paleontology, Mythology, Sociology, Law, Political Economy, Technology, History, History of Religions, Art History, History of Philosophy, and the Philosophy of History...

No one can, in the span of his lifetime, complete the full circle. One human life is not enough to acquire all the knowledge accumulated in even a single one of these multiple sciences. Should we weep over this? No, for even one who is most advanced in all these sciences or in any one of them has not advanced a single step toward the subject, when the subject in question is truly subject and not object, while these sciences claim to study man “objectively.”

Having said that, the Sciences of Man are the least vain and least dangerous of sciences. They can influence our political and moral conduct. They should lead us to reflect, teach us how vain our enterprises and glories are, and how uncertain our knowledge. They do not lend themselves to mechanical applications and do not have sinister consequences. The spirit of profit finds no place here. The curiosities they satisfy are among the most noble. But they do not achieve their purpose if we want to know what we are.

Within the First Circle, we see emerging the Second: the study of man through the evolution of Arts and symbolic forms, but especially through the practice of Art itself, which is always a sensitive approach to intimate truth, a science of what science does not know: the particular, the unique, the living; a sensitive and living science of life, a subjective and qualitative knowledge, a measure of the imponderable, a capture of movement in its flight.

But this knowledge can be explicit or implicit. It is explicit in tragedy and comedy, in drama and novels, as well as in maxims and portraits. It then provides characteristics that allow us to decipher living beings and penetrate the source of human actions. But it is sometimes more profound when implicit, and it is implicit everywhere in all combinations of lines, colors, values, rhythms and sounds that represent the play of passions and thoughts.

Yet Art is not in itself a path that leads to essential and salutary knowledge, but rather another circle that revolves around it. It does not guide, but seduces the seeker and causes research to deviate. Certainly it can signify elevated states of soul, and this is the reason for the existence of religious art, the most important and beautiful in the world throughout time; but it is through religion, not through Art, that these states are achieved. And it can also signify base states with equal success. Art is an expression, and thus an outward movement that contradicts the return to self, reflection, concentration. It resolves into an illusory ecstasy that carries one away emotionally. It softens the will and excites the senses. It favors dreams and summons phantoms rather than lucid inner silence. But these opposites are there to be reconciled. This is possible — provided one wants to and knows how.

Art as well as Science have been cultivated by the great initiatory schools as means of edification. And great works bear witness to this.

But we have within arm’s reach the object to study, and we can study it ourselves every day. Isn’t this better than relying on the study that others have made, of which books are full? But what use will book-learning be to us if we have not at least entered the Third Circle, which is the Observation of ourselves and others? For we know nothing of others except in relation to what happens within us, and we only know ourselves in the mirror of others.

This is what is called “acquiring life experience.” It is the least futile of worldly amusements, it is the best profit from “business,” it is, in love and in friendship, the only lasting pleasure that never grows tiresome: recognizing oneself in others.

Life experience creates in us a stepping-back, raises within us a witness, teaches us the detachment necessary for knowledge, teaches us that there is something of us in others and something foreign in ourselves. But it is our person that observation puts before our eyes, not our true self: the one who always stands behind our eyes.

The Fourth Circle is called Moral Conscience. It tears us from the world and from comparison with others. It establishes in us something other than a more or less curious and perceptive observer: a judge.

Happy is he who carries within his inner sanctuary an incorruptible judge.

He in whose eyes the wrongs of others do not justify his own.

He who does not judge his own acts by comparing them to the examples of others, but judges them in relation to the immutable scale of values, under the eye of God.

Happy is he who judges himself with the same severity with which he judges others.

Even happier is he who shows severity toward himself and indulgence toward others.

Better still, he who judges himself, and completely refrains from judging others, for judgment is given to him for this: so that he may correct and guide himself; for he has full powers to investigate his own case, knowing his act and the motives of his act, whereas in judging others, he knows only the act and presumes the intention, and thus in judging he sins through presumption, through lack of humility, charity, and justice.

This fourth circle is the enclosure of the Interior Castle. One must pass through the gates of this enclosure and remain within these walls to reach Initiation.

Initiation signifies both introduction and beginning. It is the Introduction to the Within and the beginning of the new Life.

Initiation does not take place at the gates of the enclosure, but at the center; not in the fourth circle, but in a free fifth, which is no longer Circle, but central point.

One can spend one’s whole life standing guard at the battlements of the enclosure and bravely manning the towers, yet never be introduced to the central point: it even happens to the bravest to remain forever ignorant that there is a central point and that there lies the treasure, the secret, the salvation and the goal.

The fourth circle brings consciousness through judgment, and judgment is a knowledge of division, of opposition (this is why it is well represented by a rampart); it opposes judge and condemned (even when it concerns oneself), opposes self to others, good to evil, exterior to interior. It cuts, divides, forces, mutilates, sometimes decapitates — while the knowledge of the central point is a knowledge through union, it is the knowledge of the Self in oneself, the knowledge of intimate unity in the light of God who is the One-in-self.

Everyone knows that one can be a perfectly honest man without any mystical touch and without any notion of saintliness. But one must guard against reversing the proposition and claiming that one can be a saint without notion or discrimination of what is honest.

It is true that there exists a beyond of Good and Evil, but this beyond is not Found Outside or Beside. It is found Within and in the Middle and finally Above, but above the central Point.

It is actually the objective reference point of the fourth circle that creates the distance between authentic spirituality and imposture or illusion, between the true saint and the phenomenal magician or the false prophet.

One should not first consider whether a man is visited by visions, inspirations, divinations, if he performs healings or prodigies, but one must first consider if he is equipped on all sides with solid virtues; only then should one consider his ecstasies and miracles without fear of being deceived.

The only thing that is indispensable is passing through the fourth circle and maintaining it after this passage.

It may be useful to pass through the other three, but it is not necessary. It is always dangerous to attempt it because one risks remaining suspended there — especially in base times like ours which accord supreme value to these stages, going so far as to make them ends in themselves and thereby creating insurmountable barriers.

A culture like ours made of Science, Art and Introspection constitutes a systematic barrier to spiritual accomplishment.

But the supreme art of grasping and possessing oneself, of becoming and being oneself, the science of sciences, rare and precious among all, is a simple thing.

For nothing is more accessible than I to myself.

And I am one and must be known as one, as indivisible and pure interior unity.

Therefore any artificial and complicated operation is ineffective; philosophical systems and the mental and instrumental apparatus of science are of no help in the essential quest.

But it is simplicity; simplification of conduct; humility; renunciation of ambitions, intrigues, artifices, and lies; piety; uprightness; frequent recollection; constant gathering of oneself; mental prayer; and concentration that lead us directly to grasp the self which is the first step in the luminous night of Mystery.

A COMPANION: What is the place of Religion in this scale? Wouldn’t there be a properly religious fifth circle?

ANSWER: By right Religion covers the Central Point and the four circles, covers all of life and links all degrees starting from the central point. In fact this is what happens in high epochs where there is no science that is not religious doctrine, no art that is not connected to worship and divine symbols; no life experience, no morality that is not observation and execution of God’s commandments. But in base epochs like ours, the exterior circles have become detached one by one. Science has become profane, not to say diabolic. Art has become profane and pagan. Morality itself has become rational and conventional and therefore profane. Religion in the strict sense of the word begins at the internal face of the fourth circle.

The enclosure of conscience has two facades, an exterior which is moral, an interior which is religious.

Religion occupies — in and of itself — the central point, the place of deepening and elevation of the soul. From this stronghold it cannot be evicted.

AN ARTIST: For me, who belong to this epoch that you call “base,” art is always religious. My art is my religion and I know no other.

RESPONSE: What you advance proves that you indeed “belong” to this epoch and that the errors of the century hold you prisoner. By attributing religious value to your art, which is necessarily profane since you say you know no other religion than art itself, you are not making it sacred art, but rather pagan art. For it is characteristic of paganism to worship as God that which is natural.

ANOTHER COMPANION: You speak of religion and you speak of initiation; what difference should be made between these terms?

RESPONSE: Initiation means beginning. Beginning of what? Of the interior life and thus of religion. In principle, entry into religious life, the second birth, the return upstream starting from conversion; Baptism, finally, is a properly initiatic rite. We know, moreover, that the majority of the faithful practice religion as a set of doctrinal formulas that they repeat with confidence without understanding them, and of rites to which they submit through obedience and habit. One cannot say that these people, when they are sincere and devoted, are strangers to religion, nor can one say that they are uninitiated into the truths of faith, nor that they fail to adhere to spiritual realities. They remain at the internal facade of the fourth circle. But God, it is written, wants to be worshipped in spirit and in truth; all those who worship God in spirit and in truth are introduced to the initial truth, that which touches the Self. All saints are initiates.

A VISITOR: But are all initiates saints? We know of secret sects and esoteric schools that claim to give the keys to interior life outside of religions and sometimes in strong opposition to them.

RESPONSE: We know of them too, for they abound in times of religious disarray like ours. Those who turn to them are mistaken about the door. They approach religious matters by turning their backs on religion from the start. Religion brings the demand for sacrifice, adoration, and giving. But they seek treasures, secrets, powers in order to grow, to strengthen themselves, to acquire prestige and domination. Thus they become the ordinary prey of false prophets, magicians in pink turbans, prestidigitating pontiffs, to end up most often in the hands of psychiatrists.

ANOTHER VISITOR: If I’m not mistaken, you place at the central point of religion the Truth touching the Self. I have learned that the Truth which is at the Center of religious Life is not the self which must, on the contrary, be annihilated, but God.

RESPONSE: What we believe to be self must indeed be annihilated; that is annihilated as soon as we recognize that it is false, and that the self that says Self is not the true self. But the true Self must subsist eternally to be joined with God. The conjunction takes place at the Central Point.

THE VISITOR: So you identify the true Self with God?

RESPONSE: I did not say that. Do you realize that you are raising here a formidable question? The Hindus affirm that the Atman or Self, and Brahma or God, are one and the same thing. Christians, in agreement on this with Israel and Islam, affirm with force and clarity that this is not so: that the Self of the creature is by nature distinct from the Self of the Creator and that the abyss of this difference subsists even in beatific union. Shall we settle the debate between humanity’s two greatest religious currents? Or shall we say with Buddha that neither creature nor Creator has a self, but that in place of this concrete nucleus there is only the Void, and that it is in this void that the union which is deliverance and beatitude takes place?

Is it not the wisest course for a Christian, while keeping the doctrinal givens of his tradition, to seek what these two, these three contrary affirmations have in common? This: that I am an interior unity just as God is an interior unity. This is how I bear the image and likeness of my Creator. This image is the image of the One. The One is an image without image, an image that resembles nothing except itself. In this I may well call it “void” according to Buddhist language, adding that it is “a Void which is absolutely distinct from nothingness.” Yes, and even a Void which identifies with Being, a limitless place where Yes and No will join together.

Whatever the case may be, it is in unifying myself that I assimilate myself to the One who is God, it is in returning into myself that I introduce myself into divine knowledge and love, bringing my center into its orbit, and into its hearth as far as it is given to my nature to do so.

Let us then take the step, let us return into ourselves; and there we will perhaps know for ourselves what all this means. Interior silence will be proven right.