Knowledge and the Sacred

Consciousness is itself proof of the primacy of the Spirit of Divine Consciousness of which human consciousness is a reflection and echo. The very natural propensity of the human intelligence to regard the Spirit as having primacy over the material and of consciousness as being on a higher level of reality than even the largest material object in the universe is itself proof of the primacy of the substance of knowledge over that which it knows, for the faison d'être of intelligence is to know reality objectively, totally and adequately according to the famous principle of adequation of the medieval Scholastics.

Human consciousness or subjectivity wihch makes knowledge possible is itself proof that the Spirit is the Substance compared to which all material manifestation, even what apperas as the most substantial, is but an accident. It is in the nature and destiny fo man to know and ultimately to know the Absolute and the Infinite through an intelligence which is total and objective and which is inseparable from the Sacred that is at once its origin and end.

Man is, of course, from a certain point of view the rational being defined by the phiolsophers, but the rational faculty which is at once an extension and reflection of the Intellect can become a luciferian force and instrument if divorced from the Ingellect and revelation which alone bestow upon knowledge its numinous quality and sacred content. Therefore, rather than defining him only as a "rational animal", one can define man in a more principal manner as being endowed with a total intelligence centered upon the Absolute and created to know the Absolute. To be human is to know and also to transcend oneself.

340 pages

Hard bound

Seyyed Hossein Nasr