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The spiritual anthropology of authentic esoterism starts from the idea that man is defined by a total and "deiform" intelligence, whereas the common … - Frithjof Schuon
" "The spiritual anthropology of authentic esoterism starts from the idea that man is defined by a total and "deiform" intelligence, whereas the common religion readily defines man as "sinner," "slave," even "nothing"; hence in accordance with the "fall" or with creaturely limitation alone, rather than with his inalienable substance or, consequently, with the "divine content".
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About Frithjof Schuon
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.
Also Known As
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
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Additional quotes by Frithjof Schuon
Direct and supra-mental intellection is in reality a "remembering" and not an "acquisition": intelligence in this realm does not take cognizance of something located in principle outside itself, but all possible knowledge is on the contrary contained in the luminous substance of the Intellect − which is identified with the Logos by "filiation of essence" − so that the "remembering" is nothing other than an actualization, thanks to an occasional external cause or an internal inspiration, of a given eternal potentiality of the intellective substance.
The passage from distinctive or mental knowledge to unitive or cardiac knowledge follows from the very content of thought: either we understand imperfectly what the notions of Absolute, Infinite, Essence, Substance, Unity mean, in which case we content ourselves with concepts − and this is what is done by philosophers in the conventional sense of the word; or else we understand these notions perfectly, in which case they oblige us, by virtue of their very content, to transcend conceptual separativity in order to find the Real in the depths of the Heart, not as adventurers, but by availing ourselves of the traditional means without which we can do nothing and are entitled to nothing. Transcendent and exclusive Substance then reveals Itself as immanent and inclusive. It could also be said that since God is All that is, it behooves us to know Him with all that we are; and to know What is infinitely lovable − since but for Him nothing would be lovable − is to love Him infinitely.
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Certainly, God is ineffable, nothing can describe Him or enclose Him in words; but on the other hand, truth exists, that is to say that there are conceptual points of reference which provide a sufficient expression of the nature of God; otherwise our intelligence would not be human, which amounts to saying that it would not exist, or simply that it would be inoperative with respect to what constitutes the reason for man’s existence. God is both unknowable and knowable, a paradox which implies − on pain of absurdity − that the relationships are different, first of all on the plane of mere thought and then in virtue of everything that separates mental knowledge from that of the heart; the first is a "perceiving", and the second a "being". "The soul is all that which it knows", said Aristotle; one must add that the soul is able to know all that which it is; and that in its essence it is none other than That which is, and That which alone is.
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