From the journal Material For Thought, issue number 8
Eyes of Flesh and Eyes
of Fire
Science and Gnosis
by Henry Corbin
Opening address, June 1978, at the Université
Taking the words “Orient” and
“Occident” not in their geographic or ethnic sense, but in the spiritual and metaphysical
sense given them by tradition, we have
spoken before of the contrast between the “pilgrims of the Orient and the vagabonds of the Occident.” Now it is a question of knowing how to attempt the pilgrimage
toward the Orient and extricate ourselves from vagabondage. First of
all, the way must be discovered. With what
eyes must we look in order to discover this way and set out on it?
Let us begin by recalling that in the
biblical visions, Angels are recognized by their eyes of fire
(cf. Daniel 10:6, Apoc. 19:12, etc.). When we contrast the eyes of the soul with the eyes of
the flesh, it is these eyes of fire that are referred to.
The point of this year’s theme is to mark, by
the contrast between the look of the eyes of flesh and
the look of the eyes of fire, the contrast between the way present-day “science”
looks at beings and things and the way they
are looked at by what is traditionally designated as gnosis.
In order to justify our
extension of the concept of gnosis, let me remind you that
ever since the Congress of Messina (April 1966) scholars have
agreed to differentiate the use of the word “gnosticism”
from that
of the word “gnosis.” It is understood that the gnosticism of the
first centuries of our era only constitutes one chapter in the whole of gnosis
(there is a Jewish gnosis, a Christian gnosis, an Islamic gnosis, a Buddhist gnosis, etc.). Therefore, we do not
propose to take a position concerning
the problems raised about gnosticism
by historians of religion and
historians of dogma—and still less to take these discussions up again. It is one thing for a historian to
propose hypotheses on the origins of gnosis; it is another to ask
ourselves the theoretical and practical
significance of gnosis for us today, because gnosis is not a phenomenon
tied to the historical conditions of the second century, but a religious phenomenon perpetuating itself
from century to century.
It is essentially a question of
acknowledging the generally accepted definition of the word gnosis as
designating a certain type or mode of knowledge, correlated with the phenomenon of the world
to which this type of knowledge corresponds,
and of making use of this as a criterion
in order to bring judgment to bear on the concept of “science” in the form that dominates our epoch. In other
words, it is essentially a question of
determining with what eyes this “science” (in all its domains) looks at the world, and with what eyes
gnosis looks at it. The point is that
the phenomenon of the world, or rather the phenomenon of worlds, varies decisively according to the way
it is looked at. The phenomenon of
the world cannot be constituted in the same way when looked at with the eyes of flesh and the eyes of
fire.
Let it be understood that gnosis
is characterized as the salvational, redemptive, soteriological knowledge because
it has the virtue of bringing about the inner transformation of man. The world
which is the object of this knowledge implies
in its very plan the role and function
of this knowledge itself. The dramatic aspect of the cosmogony in which the
human soul is itself a protagonist is in fact the very drama of gnosis: the fall from the world of
Light, the exile and the struggle in
the world of blindness and ignorance, the triumphant final redemption.
That is why one is astounded
when present-day historians, or philosophers, reputedly serious
in other domains, adopt a conception of gnosis, perhaps from second- or
third-hand sources, which in fact is the exact opposite of gnosis. We have
heard the idea expressed that ideology is to modern science
what gnosis is to religious faith. This analogy of the relationship is
completely false, first of all because the result of the
secularization of religious faith is not modern science but rather ideology itself. This has nothing to do with gnosis, which has avoided just this secularization. Gnosis is not a matter of dogma but of
symbol. People have even gone so far as to turn a now
dead ideologist and political leader into something of a gnostic, under the pretext that if the believer knows
that he believes, the ideologist believes that he knows. More sophistry: the word “believe” is not used in the same way each time, and we can be sure that the ideologist
does not believe that he knows,
he knows that he knows.
It is these catastrophic confusions that lead
people to say, for example, that gnosis claims to give a “positive
knowledge” of the mysteries, and that this
knowledge contradicts faith. Far from it! Gnosis and its theosophy have nothing
in common with what is understood these days by “positive knowledge.” But an
irritating symptom of these
impertinent confusions is the use today, without rhyme or reason, of the word “Manichaeism” when it is simply a matter of duality and dualism, as if all dualism
was merely a secularization of
Manichaeism when in fact neither Manichaean religion nor gnosis has anything to do with it. It is all
taking place as if ignorance and an
anti-gnostic feeling, tacit and unexplained, were
striving to go beyond the limits of
absurdity.
Since we are going to speak of
gnosis in this period of study, these warnings are necessary at the
outset. It appears to me that all these pseudo-criticisms misinterpret, simply
and absolutely, the meaning of the word gnosis. They identify it
merely with knowing and they oppose it to believing.
Now, in point of fact, as we
have just said, in contrast to all other learning or knowledge, gnosis is salvational knowledge. To speak of gnosis as theoretical
knowledge is a contradiction in terms. It must therefore be
admitted that in contrast to all other theoretical learning or knowledge, gnosis is knowledge that changes and transforms the knowing subject. This, I know, is just what cannot be admitted by an agnostic science, let alone a philosophy or
a theology which can only, in some sense, speak of gnosis in
the third person. But when one speaks of it in that way, one is no longer
speaking of gnosis, and all the criticism misses the mark.
It is therefore necessary, before continuing,
to expose these confusions and their sources.
A first source of confusion
stems from the fact that critics of gnosis have at their
disposal only two categories, believing and knowing, and they identify
gnosis with knowing alone. It is thus completely overlooked that between believing and knowing there is a third mediating term, everything connoted by the term inner vision,
itself corresponding to this intermediary
and mediatory world forgotten by the official
philosophy and theology of our times: the mundus
imaginalis, the imaginal world. Islamic
gnosis offers here the necessary triadic scheme: there is intellective
knowledge (’agl) ,
there is knowledge of traditional ideas
which are objects of faith (nagl) , and there
is knowledge as inner vision, intuitive revelation (kashf). Gnosis is inner vision. Its mode of exposition
is narrative; it is a recital. Inasmuch as it sees, it knows. But inasmuch as what it sees does not arise from “positive” empirical, historical data, it believes.
It is Wisdom and it is faith. It is Pistis
Sophia.
Another source of confusion is the lack of
discrimination between the gnostic
schools of the second century, between a Valentinus
and a Marcion. Valentinus never professed the metaphysical antisemitism of Marcion as regards the God of the Old
Testament. Quite the contrary. Moreover, there is an original Jewish gnosis found in the Judaeo-Christian literature called
pseudo-Clementine, in a book such as the Hebrew Third Enoch, the main
document of the mystical theology of the Merkabah.
Some scholars even tend to give gnosis a Judaic origin.
Finally, let us expose another confusion: the cosmology of gnosis is in no way a nihilism, a sort of “decreation”
of the creative act. How could it be, since the aim of
gnosis is cosmic salvation, the restoration of things to the state which
preceded the cosmic drama? The gnostic is a stranger, a
prisoner in this world, to be sure, but as such his mission is to aid in the
liberation of other prisoners. And this mission will not be done without a great many efforts.
Now that these warnings have been formulated,
we are free to put into perspective a present-day
phenomenon that strongly undercuts the impertinent criticisms of gnosis. It is
significant that a certain number of scholars, observing in
good faith that rationalism is powerless to provide a rational
explanation of the world and of man, tend to turn back to a vision of
the world that draws from traditional cosmologies. They speak of a
“cosmic consciousness” because an Intelligence must be at work in order to explain the phenomenon,
and they invoke the words gnosis and new
gnosis.
At this point, we at the Université Saint Jean de Jerusalem must consider
a serious question or, more exactly, a twofold hypothesis. Will there really be a renewal of gnosis, bearing witness to the fact
that gnosis cannot remain indefinitely absent and that its
banishment was a catastrophe? If so, we are ready to bring reinforcements. But has this renewal sufficient backbone for
the word “gnosis” not to be usurped nor the authenticity of the concept imperiled? If this were unfortunately to occur, our task would be to speak out
against the peril.
As a first step, we must begin
by putting to profitable use the schema common to all forms of gnosis, in
order to rigorously define on the one hand the situs
of agnostic science and on the other the situs
of a science aspiring to a new gnosis.
We can illustrate this status quaestionis from many different perspectives.
For example, we still have to
restore the true face of the science of
Considering Jacob Boehme and like figures, it
is a question of determining what alchemy would signify as
spiritual science if it had at its disposal the resources of modern laboratories
and observatories.
We have still to explicate the gnostic view of the world of visionaries with “eyes
of fire,” such as William Blake, Wordsworth, Goethe, etc.
By the same token, we have still to judge if
what we have heard of a so-called
We have finally, or rather most
of all, in order to stay within the line of our fundamental calling, to
uncover for the first time the convergence of cosmogonical
and soteriological visions in the type of gnosis common to the three Abrahamic
branches.
Of course, it is impossible to
examine all these aspects at one time. Our program this year proposes a few of
them to lay the groundwork for future developments.
Finally, it should be clearly apparent to
everyone why we have associated the concept
of gnosis with the look of eyes of fire. Inasmuch as the look of gnosis is a visionary look and not
the look of theoretical knowledge, it is wedded to the look of the prophets,
spokesmen of the Invisible. To open
“the eyes of fire” is to go beyond all false and vain opposition between believing and knowing, between
thinking and being, between
knowledge and love, between the God of the prophets and the God of the
philosophers.
The gnostics
of Islam, in agreement
with the Jewish Kabbalists,
have particularly insisted on the idea
of a “prophetic
philosophy.” It is a prophetic philosophy that our world needs. It is to this above all that we must be
called. Such was the meaning of the
passage written by the philosopher Theodore Roszak that I have quoted elsewhere. It has the force of
a program: “Perhaps I am implying,” he
wrote, “that the resurrection (of gnosis) figures among the most urgent projects of our epoch.”