Knowledge of the various traditional worlds, thus of the relativity of doctrinal formulations and formal perspectives, reinforces the need for essentiality on the one hand and universality on the other; and the essential and the universal are all the more imperative because we live in a world of philosophical supersaturation and spiritual disintegration.
Swiss philosopher, poet and painter (1907-1998)
Frithjof Schuon ( ; ; 18 June 1907 – 5 May 1998) was a Swiss philosopher and spiritual leader, belonging to the Traditionalist School of Perennialism. He was the author of more than twenty works in French on metaphysics, spirituality, religion, anthropology and art. He was also a painter and a poet. With René Guénon and Ananda Coomaraswamy, Schuon was one of the major 20th-century representatives of the philosophia perennis. Like them, he affirmed the reality of an absolute Principle – God – from which the universe emanates, and maintained that all divine revelations, despite their differences, possess a common essence: one and the same Truth. He also shared with them the certitude that man is potentially capable of supra-rational knowledge, and undertook a sustained critique of the modern mentality severed, according to him, from its traditional roots. Following Plato, Plotinus, Adi Shankara, Meister Eckhart, Ibn Arabī and other metaphysicians, Schuon sought to affirm the metaphysical unity between the Principle and its manifestation. Initiated by Sheikh Ahmad al-Alawī into the Sufi Shādhilī order, he founded the Tarīqa Maryamiyya. His writings emphasize the universality of metaphysical doctrine, along with the necessity of practicing a religion; he also insists on the importance of the virtues and of beauty. Schuon cultivated close relationships with a large number of personages of diverse religious and spiritual horizons. He had a particular interest in the traditions of the North American Plains Indians, maintaining firm friendships with a number of their leaders and being adopted into both a Lakota Sioux tribe and the Crow tribe. Having spent a large part of his life in France and Switzerland, at the age of 73 moved to Bloomington, Indiana, where he had a community of disciples.
From: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Alternative Names:
Isâ Nûr ad-Dîn
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Isa Nur ad-Din
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Fritjof Schuon
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Sheikh Issa Nureddin Ahmad al-Shadhili al-Darqawi al-Alawi al-Maryami
From Wikidata (CC0)
Esoterism as such is metaphysics, to which is necessarily joined an appropriate method of realization. But the esoterism of a particular religion − of a particular exoterism precisely − tends to adapt itself to this religion and thereby enter into theological, psychological and legalistic meanders foreign to its nature, while preserving in its secret center its authentic and plenary nature, but for which it would not be what it is.
Among the qualities indispensable for spirituality in general, we shall first mention a mental attitude that for want of a better term could be designated by the word "objectivity": this is a perfectly disinterested attitude of the intelligence, hence one that is free from ambition and bias and thereby accompanied by serenity. Secondly, we would mention a quality concerning the psychic life of the individual: this is nobility, or the capacity of the soul to rise above all things that are petty and mean; basically this is a discernment, in psychic mode, between the essential and the accidental, or between the real and the unreal. Finally, there is the virtue of simplicity: man is freed from all unconscious tenseness stemming from self‑love; towards creatures and things he has a perfectly original and spontaneous attitude, in other words, he is without artifice; he is free from all pretension, ostentation, or dissimulation; in a word, he is without pride. Every spiritual method demands above all an attitude of poverty, humility, and simplicity or effacement, an attitude that is like an anticipation of Extinction in God.
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The essential function of human intelligence is discernment between the Real and the illusory or between the Permanent and the impermanent, and the essential function of the will is attachment to the Permanent or the Real. This discernment and this attachment are the quintessence of all spirituality; carried to their highest level or reduced to their purest substance, they constitute the underlying universality in every great spiritual patrimony of humanity, or what may be called the religio perennis; this is the religion to which the sages adhere, one which is always and necessarily founded upon formal elements of divine institution.
In fact, if metaphysical knowledge remains purely mental, it is worth practically nothing; knowledge is of value only on condition that it be prolonged in both love and will. Consequently, the goal of the way is first of all to mend this hereditary break, and then − on that foundation − to bring about an ascension towards the Sovereign Good, which, in virtue of the mystery of immanence, is our own true Being.
To transcend oneself: this is the great imperative of the human condition; and there is another that anticipates it and at the same time prolongs it: to dominate oneself. The noble man is one who dominates himself; the holy man is one who transcends himself. Nobility and holiness are the imperatives of the human state.
The intelligence may well affirm metaphysical and eschatological truths; the imagination − or the subconscious − continues to believe firmly in the world, neither in God nor in the hereafter; every man is a priori hypocritical. The path is precisely the passage from natural hypocrisy to spiritual sincerity.
In fact, what separates man from divine Reality is but a thin partition: God is infinitely close to man, but man is infinitely far from God. This partition, for man, is a mountain; man stands before a mountain which he must remove with his own hands. He digs away the earth, but in vain, the mountain remains; man however goes on digging, in the name of God. And the mountain vanishes. It was never there.
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No art in itself is a human creation; however, what distinguishes sacred art is that its essential content is a revelation, that it manifests a properly sacramental form of heavenly reality, such as the icon of the Virgin and Child, painted by an angel, or by St Luke inspired by an angel, and the icon of the Holy Face, which dates back to the Holy Shroud and St Veronica; or such as the statue of Shiva dancing, or the painted or carved images of the Buddhas, Bodhisattvas and Taras.
Apart from its purely didactic role, the essential function of sacred art is to bring Substance − at once single and inexhaustible − into the world of accident and to bring accidental consciousness back to Substance. We could also say that sacred art brings Being into the world of existence, action, or becoming, or that in a certain fashion it brings the Infinite into the finite world, or Essence into the world of forms; thus it suggests a continuity proceeding from the one to the other, a path starting from appearance or accident and issuing into Substance or its celestial reverberations.
One of the first conditions of happiness is the renunciation of the superficial and habitual need to feel happy. But this renunciation cannot spring from the void; it must have a meaning, and this meaning cannot but come from above, from what constitutes our raison d'être. In fact, for too many men, the criterion of the value of life is a passive feeling of happiness which is determined a priori by the outer world; when this feeling does not occur or when it fades − which may have subjective as well as objective causes − they become alarmed, and are as if possessed by the question: "Why am I not happy as I was before?" and by the awaiting of something that could restore their feeling of being happy. All this, it is unnecessary to stress, is a perfectly worldly attitude, hence incompatible with the least of spiritual perspectives. To become enclosed in an earthly happiness is to create a barrier between man and Heaven.