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Eyes of Flesh and Eyes of Fire: Science and Gnosis

by Henry Corbin
Opening address, June 1978
l'Université Saint Jean de Jérusalem

Translated from
Les Yeux de chair et les yeux de feu: la science et la gnose :
colloque tenu à Paris les 2,3 et 4 juin 1978.
Cahiers de l'Université Saint Jean de Jérusalem, 5.
Paris: Berg international, 1979.

From Material for Thought, Number 8, 1980.
Published by Far West Institute, San Francisco, CA


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 cen¬tury.

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 cosmog¬ony 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 over-looked 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 Universite 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 Newton. People have made of him one of the great founders of the mechanistic conception of the universe, of the science with eyes of flesh, while three-fourths of his work, mystical and alchemical, springs from the knowledge with eyes of fire.

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 Princeton gnosis truly tends toward a gnosis with "eyes of fire" or whether on the contrary it is attempting to the fatal com¬promise with a gnosis with "eyes of flesh." On the other hand, a man like Nicholas Berdyaev could rightly be considered a "modern gnos-tic."

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."

A Pompous Man

Wizard Prang almost leapt out of his skin.

Naturally enough, he asked himself why. He had been thinking for a few hours, and suddenly - this. Something must have happened, he reasoned, to disturb him.

There was a thunderous knocking on the door of his cottage.

"Funny," Wizard Prang said to himself, "this knocking has come after my fright. It ought to have come before it."

Before he had time to work this out, which he easily could have done, the knocking came for a third time.

Gingerly, the wizard opened the door. Outside stood a pompous man.

"Good Evening," he said. "Wizard Prang? May I come in for a moment?"

The wizard did not feel like denying who he was, although he had all the arguments lined up to prove that he wasn't.

"Who are you?" he asked the pompous man boldly.

Indeed, it took him a lot of courage to ask this question. So often the result was embarrassing. Last time the answer had been: "A policeman, Sir!" It was true. The caller was wearing a blue uniform and a helmet and was carrying a truncheon. Why the note of heavy sarcasm was not explained, and it had left the wizard uncomfortable. The time before that the reply had been: "I'm your brother, you old fool!" Undeniably, it was he.

"I am a Pompous Man," replied the pompous man with an air of great satisfaction.

"Come in by all means," said Wizard Prang amiably. "What can I do for you?"

The pompous man lowered himself into the visitor's armchair.

"I have the honour to be the Chairman of the Education Committee in our little town," he said. "As you know, education is the hope for mankind."

Wizard Prang raised an eyebrow, but waited politely for his visitor to continue.

"It has come to my attention," the pompous man said, "that you are the possessor of some very advanced knowledge. Our Committee has therefore passed a resolution Inviting you to give the School Prizes away on Speech Day this year and to give us a little address telling us all about it."

Even as he spoke, the pompous man was wondering uneasily whether the wizard had any proper clothes. He tried to imagine him in an ordinary suit, and couldn't. Come to think of it, what was this advanced knowledge? He looked round the room, which was littered with messed up spells of one kind or another, and shuddered. The wizard cleared his throat.

"In a hundred years or so, everyone now alive in the whole earth will be dead - is this not so?"

The pompous man was relieved. He could follow that. He nodded sagely.

"It would therefore be possible for the human race to run its affairs quite differently, in a wise and benevolent fashion, in a relatively short time."

This way of looking at things appealed to the Chairman of the Education Committee. It had an optimistic ring, so different from the doom-laden pronouncements of most so-called clever people.

He leaned forward. "And so?" he asked encouragingly.

"The purpose of education," said Wizard Prang, "is to make sure this doesn't happen."

The pompous man was thunderstruck.

"Look here, Sir," he said, "please remember who I am. Not only do I have civic responsibilities - I am also a Pompous Man. You can't say things like that, you know."

The wizard was under the Impression that he just had said it, and looked around anxiously to see If anything was wrong. But things looked much as usual.

"Young people today are lazy and good-for-nothing," declared the pompous man. He resounded. He was on familiar ground. "They sit around listening to pop music and taking drugs. What they have to do is learn more things, apply themselves."

"No, that's not correct," the wizard explained, "they have to unlearn things."

"How can that possibly be?" The pompous man was lost.

"Well," said Wizard Prang, "we can teach only what we know. Now what we know is how to devastate the planet, kill its inhabitants, and starve two thirds of the rest. Seems a bit silly to teach people to do all that."

"Ridiculous!" shouted the pompous man. "That is not the intention at all, and you know it."

The wizard looked reflective. "The purpose of a system is what it does."

He got up, and retrieved a bottle of white wine from a side table. It had been holding up part of an experiment, which promptly collapsed into a heap of tubes, wires and so forth.

No matter: the wizard had been trying to remember for weeks what the experiment was for, so that was one worry less.

"Please have a drink," said the courteous host.

The visitor accepted less than graciously, and took the glass. Wizard Prang collected a bottle of mineral water from the other side of the room. Nothing fell down. The wizard stood still for a time wondering if anything was wrong. He mixed water with his wine - a trick he had learned from the ancient Greeks.

The pompous man had by this time emptied his wineglass, which the wizard promptly refilled. Somewhat mollified by these gestures, he made an Utterance. This Utterance was all about the noble aims of education. He always made it when he felt in need of reassurance, and it took some time to Utter.

While this was going on, Wizard Prang sat down, placing his glass on the only vacant surface in the room: a small wooden table that he had made himself.

"... lifting civilized man above the status of the savage ... supporting the noblest aspirations," the pompous man declaimed, "to which man can, er, aspire to." He had forgotten the words, but hoped no-one would notice.

The wizard was ever so slightly mesmerized. He did not notice his glass was sliding across the table top, and it fell to the ground with a crash. It was a low table, and the glass did not break. He poured more wine and water for himself, and another glass for his guest.

The fact is that the wizard had been very pleased with his invention of the table. He had become fed up with having every surface in his room cluttered up with books and papers, experiments and messed up spells, old sandwiches, musical instruments, and so on. So he had invented this table. It had a slanting top. It worked. The surface was always clear.

Evidently, though, he would have to give it more attention: something was not quite right.

"What they have to do is learn more things," finished the pompous man, as usual.

This time Wizard Prang was ready for him. "The only things on offer are the ones leading to the world we already have - and that doesn't work," he said. "Until we unlearn, we cannot recognize the world that our education has concealed from us. Let me demonstrate something to you." He stood up.

Picking up his visitor's newspaper, he led the way outside.

The pompous man surveyed the see-saw that the wizard had built in the field before his cottage for the children who loved to visit him. He was wary. "Take a good look," he was instructed. He walked all round the see-saw. Two chunks of tree-trunk had been buried in the ground, and grooves had been cut in their tops. In the grooves was another piece of tree - a round piece of branch, held in place by two huge iron staples. The branch had been flattened in the middle, so that a long plank could be screwed to it. And that was it.

"Not a very - ah - sophisticated piece of equipment, I dare say," said the pompous man in a condescending way and wearing a smirk.

He moved the plank up and down; it just about worked.

The wizard spread the newspaper over one end, and held the plank steady at the other.

"Please get on," he asked.

Pomposity nearly overtook the pompous man. He looked around dubiously, but there was no-one around to observe him.

"Heaven knows what you are playing at," he said as he got on.

"Yes, without doubt," said the Wizard as he lowered the portly gentleman to the ground position.

Then he himself scrambled up to the other end of the plank. Nothing happened. The pompous man was portly. Moreover, he felt ridiculous squatting on the plank with his knees nearly under his chin. He expostulated.

"Please be quiet," said Wizard Prang.

And his face gradually assumed an expressionless expression. That's the only way to describe it, as some sort of benign contradiction. The portly gentleman was overawed, and said nothing more.

After a time, the plank gradually began to move.

Very, very slowly, the wizard's end came down, while the pompous man rose slowly into the air. He hung on for dear life.

The wizard's end touched the ground as gently as thistledown. His face did not change. There was silence. After nearly a minute, and with no movement made by either of them, the wizard's end slowly began to rise. Eventually, the pompous man was on the ground again.

He got off in a bustle, making harumphing noises, and causing the wizard to hit the ground on his end with a thump.

No-one was going to make a fool of him.

"Well, how's it done?" he demanded in controlled rage.

"You've seen everything for yourself," the wizard said mildly. "Have another look. Make a thorough inspection!"

He went off down the path and back into his little house.

The pompous man stormed in after him.

"You don't understand what happened," the wizard said from his chair, "because you have learnt too many things. Now you have to unlearn them!"

"Rubbish." The pompous man was not so much rude as completely rattled. "There is something new here and you must tell me what it is!"

"There's nothing new," said Wizard Prang, "in fact, it's extremely old. But you have to unlearn things to take it in."

"Try me," said a strained, belligerent voice opposite.

The wizard sighed gently. "Oh, all right," he said. "Making oneself light and making oneself heavy are two of the eight occult powers."

"Yes, yes, yes," said the pompous man tetchily. "Now give me a proper explanation!"

"I just did!"

"Oh, come now. I mean an explanation In terms of physics!"

The wizard stroked his beard thoughtfully.

"In terms of physics"; he repeated it from a distance.

"Of course!"

"Oh dear," the wizard spoke almost to himself, because his demonstration had not had the right effect.

He filled the two glasses again, and absent-mindedly set down his own on the slanting table top again. He sat down, noticed the glass traveling over the edge, deftly caught it, and hoped that the pompous man had not noticed. He had.

"Well, let's try," said Wizard Prang.

"Weight is related to the specific gravity of any given body," he said. "If the mass of that body Increases compared to the mass of the same volume of water, it gets heavier. And conversely," he added.

"Schoolboy stuff," said the pompous man. "What about it?"

"My body is mainly water, and water is mainly H20 - two atoms of hydrogen to one of oxygen," the wizard went on. "Also schoolboy stuff; as is the fact that water has other components, such as heavy water - which is ten percent denser than ordinary water. So what happens if there is a molecular transformation, and the proportion of heavy water goes up - I get heavier. And that's only an example!"

"But you haven't any equipment to make 'molecular transformations' in that way," the pompous man said flatly.

"Oh haven't I?" said the wizard gently.

"Well, what could it be? - in terms of physics," the visitor added hastily.

"Think some more schoolboy thoughts about the combining power of atoms in terms of hydrogen atoms," Wizard Prang said sourly. "The word is valency."

The pompous man tried to look profound.

"Ultimately, we're only talking about charged particles," said the wizard, "that makeup the atoms in the first place. And those particles are only little flecks in space/time. They just need ... adjusting a bit."

The wizard thought of adding that space/time itself is an illusion, but thought better of it. That isn't schoolboy stuff. You have to go back to being a baby to perceive it. After that, education makes sure you get space/time systematically wrong. Knowledge is systematic ignorance.

Before Wizard Prang had time to say 'Knowledge is systematic ignorance,' which would have annoyed the Chairman of the Education Committee to the point of apoplexy, the pompous man delivered his judgement.

"Ridiculous," he declared. "Absolute nonsense!"

He fixed the wizard with his eye.

"It couldn't happen," he said, although it just had.

"Oh, I see," said the wizard.

There was a long pause after that. The wizard could hardly throw the pompous man out on his ear, and the pompous man could hardly storm out.

Tactfully, Wizard Prang refilled the glasses.

The pompous man coughed.

"There was something else on my mind," he said.

"Oh, yes?" Wizard Prang spoke in the lowest possible key.

"Yes," said the pompous man. "My oldest daughter has become involved in some kind of cult. They preach something called Metafarcism. I wonder if you could explain to me what it is!"

"Yes, I could," said the wizard.

The pause this time was even longer.

Eventually, the pompous man asked: "Well then, would you?"

"No," the wizard replied.

He was wearing what his friends called his computing face.

"It's not worth it," he said. "I would do the explaining, and you would have to listen. The combined effort would be considerable. Metafarcism, isn't worth the combined effort!"

"Oh" - the questioner was flummoxed.

The wizard went into computational mode a second time.

"Got it," he suddenly said, brightening noticeably. "We can get out of the combined effort," he explained. "I shall give the explanation after you have gone home."

"Oh, I see," said the pompous man.

They got someone else for Speech Day. He told the boys and girls and their parents that it was no use sitting around listening to pop music - they had to work harder and learn more things because education is the hope of the world. The parents applauded loudly.

Searcher08 wrote:I think it would be useful to examine and discuss these inter-related subjects.
As I am originating it, my only request is.. keep it free of shite cartoons. Ta!

Stephen Morgan wrote:

Searcher08 wrote:I think it would be useful to examine and discuss these inter-related subjects.
As I am originating it, my only request is.. keep it free of shite cartoons. Ta!

How does one assess the level of shiteness of a cartoon?

Stephen Morgan wrote:

Searcher08 wrote:I think it would be useful to examine and discuss these inter-related subjects.
As I am originating it, my only request is.. keep it free of shite cartoons. Ta!

How does one assess the level of shiteness of a cartoon?

Searcher08 wrote:

Stephen Morgan wrote:

Searcher08 wrote:I think it would be useful to examine and discuss these inter-related subjects.
As I am originating it, my only request is.. keep it free of shite cartoons. Ta!

How does one assess the level of shiteness of a cartoon?

I'll have to get back to you on that, Sir

Canadian_watcher wrote:JD that was TERRIFIC!

hard for me to slog through (many references to the dictionary were required) but.. wow. terrific piece to start off the thread for sure.

vanlose kid wrote:corbin should've written that down on a piece of foolscap in invisible ink. and given the lecture to an empty auditorium in the middle of a full moon night. the effect would've been greater.

he seems to have attempted what wizard prang refused to.

vanlose kid wrote:corbin should've written that down on a piece of foolscap in invisible ink. and given the lecture to an empty auditorium in the middle of a full moon night. the effect would've been greater.

he seems to have attempted what wizard prang refused to.

i'm definitely with the wizard on this. the combined effort of the thread that spawned this one eh?

cheers Searcher08. good start.
Mac, Cw, et al., live and learn.

*

justdrew wrote:

vanlose kid wrote:corbin should've written that down on a piece of foolscap in invisible ink. and given the lecture to an empty auditorium in the middle of a full moon night. the effect would've been greater.

he seems to have attempted what wizard prang refused to.

that was 1978, his final presentation. things have come a LONG way since 1978, through a difficult terrain, and that speech was a big part of the start (a start of the next phase of the continuation anyway )

vanlose kid wrote:

justdrew wrote:

vanlose kid wrote:corbin should've written that down on a piece of foolscap in invisible ink. and given the lecture to an empty auditorium in the middle of a full moon night. the effect would've been greater.

he seems to have attempted what wizard prang refused to.

that was 1978, his final presentation. things have come a LONG way since 1978, through a difficult terrain, and that speech was a big part of the start (a start of the next phase of the continuation anyway )

just kiddin' around drew. no offense.