Absolute: Despite what detractors of certain philosophic persuasions—including the ostensibly "metaphysical"—have to say, an indispensable concept at a threshold stage of spiritual development. Properly understood, the misgivings many feel in the face of so formidable an idea, melt away; though, like many another term, "absolute" has been used (both as noun and verb) to reinforce perfectly political notions with an unimpeachable cant, understanding of the concept mustn't be allowed to stop at the doorstep of its flagrant abuses (it should be obvious such "argument" against the validity of a term may be brought against any whatsoever, since no term boasts a history free of abuse; the same objection has been sustained against the concept "god", simply because of the priestly distortions to which it has been subjected historically—yet for any reasoning soul it should be clear, that to scotch the entire theme due to the more belying interpretations found in the mouths of perfectly disingenuous perpetrators is to empower the latter with an efficacy that never should be granted, i.e. the power to deprive mankind of a key idea simply because they have wrongly employed it).

Understood in the Initiatory context, "absolute" is an irreducible/fundamental reality more than merely a theme, with which the authentic initiate must become familiar on a first person basis. Indeed the historical case in the initiatory context shows the inevitable requirement for coming to terms with the idea as reality rather than concept. The intelligence of the true, initiatory Gnosis proclaims the ultimate knowability of Absolute; it insists that absolute must be known and that its knowledge need not wait upon completion of the last step in an infinite series. Two important ideas flow immediately from this fact alone: first, the Gnostic "viewpoint" necessarily implies that, whatever "Absolute" should prove to be, It can't be separate from the subject who would "knowit. Far from such gnosis involving a conceptual confusion between "knower" and "known" as some commentators have suggested (as if all the "knower" could ever know would necessarily have to be self-estranging, objectified objects of knowledge), it embodies the primary wisdom-insight that, m order to qualify as Absolute such reality can't be other than the subject who would "know it".

Implied in this, is that Absolute is—minimally—all-inclusive. Should the "initiatory subject" prove to be other than or apart from the Absolute he determines to Be, such "absolute" necessarily fails the first test. Thus, whatever Absolute ultimately is, it must be more than "knowable" in the usual conceptual sense, since any concept no matter how definitionally inclusive can't—self-evidently—be considered equal to reality as a whole. Any conceptualization of the theme immediately belies its indispensable element of comprehensiveness, since the cognizing subject can never be delimited by or pinned down to a concept. Another necessary implication immediately springs forward; the "Knowing" required of an Absolute needn't depend on definition through the common organs of knowledge There is a fundamental sense in which the value of knowing ontologically precedes the specific "organs of knowledge" that may enforce its spirit categorically. To know something in this primary sense is inseparable from being, identical to and consistent with that which is to be known. There is a trick clause embedded in this (progressively self-evident) requirement.

First of all, we see the wisdom of this reasoning; all those things conventionally considered "known" as a matter of course, e.g. the objects of perception, the litany of familiar ideas circulating through the "interior monologue" etc., can't possibly be "known" in any but passing way. Indeed they fit the Tibetan metaphysical analysis as kunji namparshespa, "acquaintance knowledge, basis of everything"—that is, our knowledge of ideas and objects is a kind of chronic "passing acquaintance" rather than irreducible knowing since every such object of knowledge is necessarily conditional, externally and internally; externally, "idea" or "object" is conditional in the sense of pure contingent juxtaposition. Everything occurs along with everything else (the Buddha's "interdependent originations"), and in no "eternal order" at that! but as a pure function of contingency; contingency, in turn, is a function of perspective.

Some would insist "perspective" is a product of contingency, e.g. Sartrian phenomenology; astute analysis shows, however, that "contingency" is an observational hypothesis issuing from the irreducible immediacy clinging to the fact of perspective—on the other hand, the existence of "perspective" as product of contingency is the result of reasoning inference; it shares no symmetry with respect to the observational hypothesis of "contingency" as a function of perspective.

The latter is an irreducible datum belonging only to the simple immediacy of observation: shift the locus of perspective and the contingent juxtaposition of objects shifts; change the bracketing psychological or subjective "perspective" of the internal monologue, and the order of emphasis amongst ideas shifts and shuffles accordingly; it is not symmetrically simple to establish perspective as a product of contingency; complex hypothetical "reconstructions" have to be made with a number of underlying assumptions in support, in order to "conclude "upon the case for perspectival contingency (this is how "evolutionary" ideas of chance are derived, e.g. "your" existence at this contingent place and time is sum-product of a number of random "accidents" or incident impingements generating a unique series belonging to sheer circumstance, giving rise to the induplicable transiency of "you").

All of this belongs to the order of external conditionality; the contingency of objects and ideas, as function of perspective, applies to the "exteriorized" ordering of cognizable events; yet the modes through which the given, perspectival locus necessarily discerns conditional/interdependent items and ideas, themselves belong to the order of internal conditionality. Note here as well, that we may not leap to any hypothesis of random conditionality (or sheer contingency) for the perspectival locus itself, but may only state the obvious case for all "externalizing" phenomena appearing through conditional instruments. As far as the cogency of our original conclusions is concerned, such instruments are themselves only self-evident functions of perspective, like their corresponding objects—not the other way around. In the cases of both external and internal conditionality, the perspectival limit makes all cognized products descriptively conformant to "acquaintance knowledge" only, which consigns them to a partializing "group" unsuitable for qualifying as that kind of knowing commensurate with absolute. The conditionality of all such polarizing instruments and corresponding, complementary objects makes the whole format obtained through such means unequal to the totality of the subject-self moderating the given perspectival locus. Thus all such "knowledge" discloses itself as approximation (and instrumental representation) of a fundamental value informing its operations and underwriting its operations, but for which the products of its operations are ultimately-unsuitable substitutes.

We've already seen how any "Absolute" must be knowable, since it can't be other than the subject-self or cognizing consciousness (i.e. Absolute must be non-exclusive). At the same time, we understand how the objects of cognition and perception are only provisionally "knowable" since by the rule of contingency they can never correspond to the transcendent totality of the cognizing subject. The perspectival locus, moderated by the subject-self, is curiously without limitation in itself except secondarily by reflection of contingent (and therefore changing) contents. It becomes progressively clear: the only thing that can be known in the ultimate sense is Absolute, since the conditional objects of knowledge can never correspond to the whole-being reality of the subject (which, remember, cannot be other than or apart from Absolute, since Absolute is necessarily inclusive; at the same time, Absolute cannot ultimately be known by anything which is other than It, since to Know something implies identity—even the conditional objects-of-knowledge are expressions of identification, i.e. contingent forms of Identity).

We're perfectly aware that the above description exactly reverses the classic Shankara definition: "everything can be known, but the Knower can never be known". However, honoring the sage's understanding we nonetheless insistently detect a flaw in the description; and here it is: obviously Shankara means that "everything which can be known is expression of some conditional instrument that—comparatively—allows it to be known, whereas the Knower, being equivalent to the inexpressible totality can never be accounted-for or subsumed through the delimiting focus of the knowledge-instruments (ever reducing-down the whole to a representative/synthetic part)".

However, we must then ask of this description, from whence comes the value of knowing, which takes such operative delight in the conditional instruments? If the "knower can never be known", then "knowing" and "knowledge" arise mysteriously through Being as obviously futile and superfluous modes! Where's the call for them in the first place? In order to keep up consistency with the classic definition we must credit Maya with a power of illusion, ultimately, that borrows nothing from the very Absolute out of which it contrastively springs! Thus inferentially we grant to Maya an independent creative power, one capable of endowing the whole realm of creation (constitutionally "without denouement" in itself) with qualities and properties not to be found in the Creator-source.

This introduces an unwanted magnitude, and indeed imbues "reality" with an irreducible dualism; Maya, or the creative power of "illusion", is inferentially granted equivalency-status with Absolute since She now seems capable of independent/antithetical productions owing nothing whatever to the original Source! "Knowledge" now appears as Her own whimsical and extraneous idea; and, deprived of the dignity of innate connection to some Quality native to the Source, it takes on the inferential stature of a demonic endowment proliferating the manifest field for its own sake, like a cancer. We may even see how this isn't just a little descriptive weakness of the traditional (Hindu) viewpoint; it has shipped enormous cargoes of functional implication over the centuries, elaborated straight from the ideative defects, so that indeed as a yogic orientation the World and all its attributes has tended to be viewed as dysfunctional, strictly superfluous and refractorily "competitive" with divinity to the degree of being regarded as...a cancer (see the works of Guru Bawa Muhaiyadeen for explicit exposition of this viewpoint). In order to avoid the infinite regress embedded in this implicit philosophical dualism, it's necessary to see that the Shankara and Southern Crown definitions are not just "basically two different ways of expressing the same thing". They are fundamentally different, and have two divergent Worlds of implication branching off from them.

We've seen the World implied in the Shankara definition. It leads to such doctrinal absurdities and crippling self-contradictory edicts as those modernly issued by the "Siddha Da Free John", e.g. regarding the ultimate Divine Agnosticism of Reality (which ranges, illogically, from "we can't know a single thing" to "we can't know Absolute, the Divine etc." as if the two types of "knowing" ranged on an unbroken continuum...an "interesting" proclamation, perhaps, until or unless one were to question the unimpeachability of "Master D? 's " Spiritual Realization, at which point of course one is inevitably assailed with an Indubitability cosmic in its Certitude and instantly belying all pretensions to a "Divine Agnosticism"...).

The World implied in the Southern Crown characterization, on the other hand, does the classically Satanic thing of standing the traditional masters on their heads, at which point their polka dot underwear shows and we notice that "Maya" or the creative power of manifestation necessarily borrows everything She has in Her expressive wardrobe from Absolute, or Creator-source. Thus the impulse to "knowledge" through the inexhaustibility of conditional instruments takes its point of departure from the value of Knowing, eternally resident in Absolute—and resident by virtue of the very "requirements" for an "Absolute", i.e. the uninterrupted Self-continuity with Itself even through, with, above and beyond all "conditions" (themselves eternally "permitted" by the All-potential and non-exclusivity of Absolute), a Self-congruence and perfect homogeneity necessarily sealed by a seamless Self-coming to Itself which renders Its inherent Quality as a Knowing.

Thus we may only truly know what truly Is. That which alone may truly be known, can never be separate from or different than the Knower. This indicates a value of Knowing which is immediate, apodictic, Intuitively whole and self-subsistent without the need of enabling instruments or augmenting appendages but which may enhance and inform such instruments and such appendages, under conditions of their proper alignment and deferential orientation toward Its informing Presence. That value of Knowing takes its sufficient warrant from the immediacy of Whole-being alone; it is an innate value of Consciousness so that, in mock Mass of the messy Shankara mockup of Spiritual Realization we may contrarily assert that "Nothing may ever be known, except the Knower"—("Yet she shall be known and I never": Liber Al vel Legis, 2:4. Note that MT never quotes in reliance from any Source, other than Himself and AAA; therefore see The Great Instauration, Finis, part III, Liber Al Recurso in The Mother Book). Moreover this Absolute, being inseparable from the Knowing of one's total Being, is never necessarily the ultimate rarefied disclosure of an infinitely receding "last step" in an initiatory series, as if Absolute could only reside in Sach Kand or Brahm Lok or whatever exclusivist heaven-of-heavens might be posited by the hierarchist in question. Past a certain initiatory threshold of mind/body integration-alignment minimally congruent with whole-being value, the Spirit of Absolute may be known, tasted, touched, experienced, drawn upon and progressively identified as one's own Being to the degree of indelibility. So surely is this a key feature of all real spiritual practice, and so uniformly is its presence to be found and confessed at every historical juncture of the Mysteries, that we would really have to question any ostensibly "celestial" or supramundane source such as "Bashar", the Marciniak "Pleiadeans" etc. who question the propriety of a posited Absolute. We are here in the position of, say, an experienced airforce pilot listening to someone proclaiming before a rapt audience of enlistees how he has logged in over a thousand hours of flighttime in the ionosphere, how he's test piloted landing craft for Mars, how he's flown shotgun for reentry modules over the Pacific—yet who, when asked an elementary question on aerodynamics, bluffly proclaims upon the inauthenticity of any such thing as "airflow" or "wind-resistance" and further questions the integrity of anyone who doesn't believe you can just flap your arms and fly!

For those who yet need an "answer" to the sophistries of the aforesaid sources, let's just note that the complete "relativity" of everything is an idea which collapses on itself as self-evidently lame. If everything we may experience as "reality" is eternally resigned to the "relative", how may we know that? What's our reference point for determining the relativity of everything? If everything were "relative" with no contrastive or comparative Reference we would not experience relativity at all, but on the contrary we'd have to experience the "absoluteness" of everything equally since everything whatsoever would be equivalent without distinction. The "relativity" of any one thing to anything else with no other factor subliminally embedded in the equation, could never serve to modulate the presentational impact of either; for each would ever be offset by an exactly equivalent amount so that a proportional relativity could never be determined. We'd be stuck in a universe where everything was, necessarily, an absolute along with everything else no matter how contradictory such a condition would seem, since the peremptory "relativity" between each and all without appeal to a higher court allows them no means of contrast and comparison (how do you "compare" two things that are equally relative, and therefore exactly equivalent?) Absolutization of "the relative" gives no solution but a sophistical one to the terms of existence. And make no mistake about it; by demeaning the idea of Absolute (i.e. Divine Reality) and exalting the idea of pure relativity, the pseudo-philosophus has only succeeded in absolutizing the relative, which is no "success" at all. Yet the very identification of a "relativity" amongst the compound things, should alert the wise as to the self-evident existence of a comparative and contrastive Standard (through which such relativity would possess a proportional magnitude, permitting a kind of weighing upon a Scales whereby values may receive diminution or increase according to their proximal correspondence to the Universal whole-being yardstick).

The comparative and contrastive Standard against which the compound things may legitimately be weighed, then, is none other than one's own Whole-being value, ordinarily recessed into quietly-subtending invisibility, in unobtrusive support of those very "measuring" processes informing even the relative instruments whereby we may intuitively assess the real tightness of any given idea or action. (Unerring assessment awaits degrees of integration corresponding to a real threshold congruence with whole-being value; otherwise, 3rd-stage psychology seizes upon the vague/unfocused existence of such a Standard but immediately conscripts it to its service and applies it on behalf of contingent formations composing the operative psychic structure already built on repressions, sublimations, projections etc. This is the source of our "fear" regarding certitudes that seem to collect around the very intimation of any such value as "absolute". Now it should be evident this is a fear founded in the 3rd stage dilemma, without any basis on ontological grounds.)