The Vision of the Heart

We will shortly resume with my original writing, reflecting on the Christian Mystery of Feeling - and the nonchalant quality I now see in a great many holistic approaches, so-called.

But first, I want to amplify, by drawing more today from a profound soul, whose genius of the Heart - steeped in the Christian Mystery of the Fall and the Redemption - has healed me more than I can ever tell you.

Here he compares the vision of pure feeling (the Heart) with that of pure thought and pure will:

"Leibnitz, the philosopher of optimism, said that the given world is the most perfect of possible worlds.

Schopenhauer, the philosopher of pessimism, said that in the given world the sum of suffering outweighs that of joy, and that the world of our experience is therefore not only imperfect but also, in the last analysis, evil.

Both Leibnitz and Schopenhauer looked at the totality of experience of the world, as we are now seeking to, and what a difference in what they saw!

From the point of view of **pure thought**, which is that of Leibnitz, the totality of the world shows up without any doubt a perfect arrangement of equilibrium, a harmonious functioning of its essential parts and - despite what may take place in its more obscure nooks and crannies - the totality of the world taken in its great outlines, in its **essential** outlines, is harmony itself.

From the point of view of **pure will**, which is that of Schopenhauer, the experience of each individual being in the world confirms the diagnosis of the world given by Gautama Buddha, which diagnosis is therefore to be accepted as true.

And from the point of view of the **heart**, which is that of Hermeticism and the Judaeo-Christian tradition, what can one say about the world?

The heart says to us: the cosmos, this marvel of wisdom, beauty and goodness, suffers. It is ailing.

This great organism which cannot have been born out of sickness, whose birth must have been due to perfect health, i.e. to perfect wisdom, beauty and goodness, the totality of which was its cradle - this great organism is ailing.

The continents - and the planets - grow ever-more hard, petrifying: this is the "sclerosis" of the cosmos. And on the surface of its land-masses in the process of petrification, and in the deeps of the seas, and in the air, there reigns the struggle for existence - this is the fever of inflammation in the world.

But sick as it is, the world still retains - everywhere and always - characteristics of its primordial health, and shows the working of forces of its new health, its convalescence.

Because alongside the struggle for existence there is cooperation in order to live, and alongside the mineral petrification, there is the succulent and breathing cover of the plant kingdom.

The world can therefore be lauded and wept for at the same time.

This is the origin of the problem of the Fall: that the world is worthy of being sung for and wept for at the same time.

The world is not what it should be.

There is a contradiction between the totality and the details. For whilst the starry heavens represent a harmony of equilibrium and perfect cooperation, animals and insects devour one another and innumerable legions of infectious microbes bear sickness and death to men, animals and plants.

It is this contradiction which the term 'the Fall' alludes to."