Theos-Talk Archives (October 2006 Message tt00169)

"The greatness of a true and living philosophy of life is not that it 
answers the problems of life, but that it does /not/ answer them; did it 
answer them it would but show that it was born of illusion even as they 
are.  Its greatness lies in the fact that it is able to /transcend /the 
problems and questions, which are rooted in illusion, and, in the 
experience of living reality, forget these futile playthings.

The man who has experienced truth returns from his experience in awe and 
reverence; he is filled with the greatness of the mystery he has beheld, 
which is now part of his very being.  When confronted by the unreal 
questions which have haunted philosophy and religion for so many 
centuries he does not descend to their level and fulfill their unsound 
demand by an equally unsound and empty satisfaction; rather does he 
speak words of reality in the power of which the questions fade away and 
are destroyed.  To the intellect, bound in illusion, it will ever seem 
that he evades the questions which it has asked; it demands an answer 
corresponding point for point to these questions, made up though they 
are of the fabric of illusion.  And when the true philosopher fails, or 
even refuses, to answer illusion by illusion, but waves aside the 
products of the unreal and speaks with the voice of reality, then the 
intellect in its blindness shrugs the shoulders and with a contemptuous 
smile turns away towards its own empty speculations." 
-- J. J. Van der Leeuw, THE CONQUEST OF ILLUSION, 1928, pp89-90