Fourfold voyage

~Henry Corbin

We find a testimony of this sense of the voyage in the vast work of a seventeenth-century Persian platonist, Mullah Sadra Shirazi. One of the greatest names in Iranian philosophy, he has remained the guiding thinker in Iranian spiritualiry for generation after generation. Since the idea of a fourfold voyage is a tradition among Islamic mystics, Mullah Sadra takes it as the pattern upon which he structures his great summary of theosophical philosophg entitled 'High Wisdom Concerning the Four Spiritual Voyages'.

The first voyage is from the world of creatures towards Divine Being. In this, the philosopher grapples with general problems of physics, matter and form, and of substance and accident. At its culmination, the philosopher-pilgrim experiences fulfillment at the supersensible level of divine realities.

The second voyage moves from God, towards God, by means of God: one travels with God and in God. Here, the pilgrim never leaves the metaphysical plane; he is initiated into the ilahiyat, or divine sciences (the divinalia), and into the questions of the Divine Essence and the divine names  and attributes.

The third voyage begins from God to a re-entry into the creaturely world, but by means of God and in God. In effect, this is an intellectual reversal of the first voyage, involving an initiation into the Hierarchy of Intelligences and the supersensible universes (the malakut and the jabarut).

The Star of Redemption [5]

 ~Franz Rosenzweig

So the old quarrel seems settled, heaven and earth reconciled. But that was only appearance, both for the solution given to the question of faith and for the self-completion of knowledge. A highly apparent appearance at any rate; for if the presupposition that was mentioned first is valid, and if all knowledge concerns the All, if it is enclosed in it while being all-powerful in it, then that appearance was certainly more than appearance, then it was truth. Whoever still wanted to raise an objection had to feel under his feet an Archimedean point outside of that knowable All. It is from such an Archimedean point that a Kierkegaard, and not only he, contested the Hegelian integration of Revelation into the All. 

The point in question is Søren Kierkegaard’s own consciousness, or the consciousness designated by some other first and last name, of personal sin and of personal Redemption, which neither aspired to nor gave access to a dissolution into the cosmos; it did not give access to it: for even if everything in it could be translated into the universal—there remained the fact of having a first and last name, the most personal thing in the strictest and narrowest sense of the word, and everything depended precisely on that personal reality, as the bearers of these experiences asserted. At any rate, one assertion here countered another assertion. 

Dzogchen / As it is [4]

~Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche

As you know, the nine gradual vehicles and the four schools of philosophy- Vaibhashika, Sautrantika, Mind Only, and Middle Wayare designed to suit the various mental capacities of different people. The term Great Perfection, on the other hand, implies that everything is included in Dzogchen; that everything is complete. Dzogchen is said to be unexcelled, meaning that there is nothing higher than it. Why is this? It is because of knowing what truly is to be as it is- the ultimate naked state of dharmakaya. Isn't that truly the ultimate? Please carefully understand this. 

The Great Perfection is totally beyond any kind of pigeon-holing anything in any way whatsoever. It is to be utterly open, beyond categories, limitations and the confines of assumptions and beliefs. All other ways of describing things are confined by categories and limitations. The ultimate destination to arrive at in Dzogchen is the view of the kayas and wisdoms. Listen to this quote: "Although everything is empty, the special quality of the Buddhadharma is to not be empty of the kayas and wisdom." All other systems expound that all things are empty, but truly, the intention of the Buddha is to use the word 'emptiness' rather than 'empty.' This is a very important point.