Key Insights on Metaphysical Infinity and Creation Ex-Nihilo

The doctrine of creation ex-nihilo of the world is associated, indeed, with the birth of time at a precise initial instant, as well as with the finiteness of the Universe, in any of the many ways one might choose to understand or use the notion of finiteness. Such doctrine is a determination of a metaphysical doctrine of much broader scope, comprehensible only if one has at least intuited what the notion of Metaphysical Infinity indicates. Descartes knew perfectly well how to see the root of the problem and rightly sought to base the Christian doctrine on the notion of the indefinite; his youthful expectations of an encounter with the Rosicrucians directed him in the direction made explicit, in the West, by René Guénon, in the first chapter of the work entitled: The Multiple States of Being. We wish to clarify immediately that the mathematical notion of the indefinite, which we will expound, and whose doctrinal foundations are also masterfully exposed in chapter I of the work The Principles of Infinitesimal Calculus by René Guénon represents the optimal symbolic basis for realizing in ourselves the distinction, proper to every esotericism, between what is perennial and what is eternal. In particular, through the notion of the indefinite it is possible to conceive, for example, the Universe as emerging from a vortex or from an indefinity of vortices at variable distance from each other but asymptotically tending to finite values and each vortex asymptotically tending to a respective extension, well determined and perfectly predictable. Moreover it is conceivable that, in some cases, such vortices can be exhausted only with a rewinding upon themselves and this for an indefinity of times. The notion of the indefinite permits conceiving the Universe also as a succession of instantaneous and continuous generations of an arbitrary indefinity of distinct worlds. Such visions are well foundable on traditional symbolism. Infinite, indefinite, finite. The tripartition between what is Infinite, indefinite and finite, which corresponds perfectly to that between Spirit Soul and Body, is well symbolized in the metaphysical distinction between what is absolutely unlimited, asymptotically limited and limited, or between what is eternal, what is perennial, and what is temporally finite. In this work we will not concentrate directly on the notion of finiteness, which, although it appears of elementary nature, necessitates an absolutely primordial symbolism to be truly seen in its truth: every single manifestation emerges as from a background, which founds and sustains its luminous epiphany. The Metaphysical Infinite is to be conceived as absolutely unconditioned, indeterminate and unlimited. The Principle has in itself nothing that can be denied, and this vision is completely spontaneous, assimilable to the splendor that one perceives in a theorem of mathematics or in a work of art from which no part can be removed without destroying the internal harmony manifested by it and in it. It is in that sense of interior, full, complete satisfaction experienced in the uncomplacent instantaneous vision of a beauty not only physical, that we find the analogue to which we can point, with the eye of the heart, to indicate the way toward the notion of the Infinite. It is well known that no category, not even that of quantity, is suitable for realizing in ourselves the notion of Metaphysical Infinity; if we take up again from the Aristotelian text the categories placed as foundation of our reflection about what is commonly understood as real: substance, quality, quantity, relation, place, time, lying, having, acting, suffering, it is immediately quite evident that each of them is configured, like a profile in backlight, extracting from a whole, a situation, a part, however general, like what the word substance can evoke. A little different is the discourse relatively to the 12 Kantian categories which concern more the types of our judgment and our way of measuring the world. Reconsidering unity, plurality, totality, for quantity, reality, negation, limitation, for quality, substance-accident, cause-effect, reciprocal action for relation and, finally, reality, necessity possibility for modality, we see immediately that none of them can truly help us understand the idea of the Infinite. However it is not to be completely neglected the fact that, with the aspect of unification and synthesis that the category of totality envelops around the intuition of quantity, if united to that of unity, opens a first possible transmission of the existence of the true notion of Infinity, even in environments that have, in fact, removed such idea from their intellectual horizon. A formulation certainly more suitable for those who pursue their path along the initiatic way is however that expressed in the work...