ABSTRACT
THE traditional schools of Shintô mystics have precise and systematic metaphysical concepts about the world and life on higher planes; this knowledge is solemnly transmitted to the disciples according to the latter’s stage of development. It is, however, kept secret from the uninitiated, whether laymen or scholars and priests, who have not submitted to the appropriate discipline. Chikafusa Kitabatake wrote: ‘It is true that the way of the Gods should not be revealed without circumspection.’ Some of the greatest theologians, including the lay physician Motoöri and his disciples, had no access to those secret teachings, and therefore flatly denied their existence, and this had a fatal influence on the development of the modern ‘science of Shintô’, Koku-gaku. This is also the reason why, with the exception of the few initiated-who themselves decline to discuss the subject-Shintôïsts view with a considerable amount of disfavour all intellectual cogitation on religious matters, and are content with a metaphysics which is both fragmentary and vague.(122) Some indications may, however, be given on a few points: (a) the nature of man and the concept of tama, which is something akin to what we call soul; (b) the various ‘worlds’ which compose the universe; (c) after-life; (d) the concept of growth, musubi.
