This term possesses certain unfortunate connotations because...

This term possesses certain unfortunate connotations because, first of all, the prefix meta does imply transcendence but not immanence and also it connotes a form of knowledge or science that comes after physics whereas metaphysics is the primary and fundamental science or wisdom which comes before and contains the principles of all the sciences.4 Second, the habit of considering metaphysics in the West as a branch of philosophy, even in those philosophical schools which have a metaphysical dimension, has been instrumental in reducing the significance of metaphysics to just mental activity rather than seeing it as a sacred science concerned with the nature of Reality and wed to methods for the realization of this knowledge, a science which embraces the whole of man's being.5 In Oriental languages such terms as prajnîa, jnîāna, ma‘rifah, or ḥiktnah connote the ultimate science of the Real without their being reduced to a branch of another form of knowledge known as philosophy or its equivalent.

And it is in this traditional sense of jnîāna or ma‘rifah that metaphysics, or the “science of the Real,” can be considered as identical with scientia sacra. If scientia sacra lies at the heart of each tradition and is not a purely human knowledge lying outside of the sacred precinct of the various traditions, then how can one speak of it without remaining bound within a single religious universe?

The response to this question has led certain scholars and philosophers engaged in “comparative philosophy” in the context of East and West to speak of “meta-philosophy” and a meta-language which stands above and beyond the language of a particular tradition.6 From the traditional point of view, however, the language of metaphysics is inseparable from the content and meaning it expresses and bears the imprint of the message, this language having been developed by the metaphysicians and sages of various traditions over the ages.

Each tradition possesses one or several “languages of discourse” suitable for metaphysical doctrines and there is no need whatsoever to create a meta-language or invent a new vocabulary today to deal with such matters, since the English language is heir to the Western tradition and the several perfectly suitable metaphysical languages of the West such as those of Platonism, Thomism, and the school of Palamite theology.