Frithjof Schuon
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Frithjof Schuon (June 18, 1907 – May 5, 1998) was a metaphysician, poet, painter, Sufi, and a leading figure of traditional metaphysics. Along with René Guénon and Ananda Coomaraswamy, Schuon is regarded as one of the three founders of the Traditionalist School.
Frithjof Schuon is best known as the foremost spokesman of the religio perennis and as a philosopher in the metaphysical current of Shankara and Plato. Over the past 50 years, he has written more than 20 books on metaphysical, spiritual and ethnic themes as well as having been a regular contributor to journals on comparative religion in both Europe and America. Schuon's writings have been consistently featured and reviewed in a wide range of scholarly and philosophical publications around the world, respected by both scholars and spiritual authorities. A considerable number of scholars of religion today who work with religious pluralism and esoteric mysticism regard Schuon as one of their most influential teachers.
| Frithjof Schuon | |
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| Born | June 18, 1907 Basle, Switzerland |
| Died | May 5, 1998 Bloomington, Indiana, USA. |
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[edit] Biography
Schuon was born in 1907 in Basel, Switzerland, of German parents. As a youth, he went to Paris, where he studied for a few years before undertaking a number of trips to North Africa, the Near East and India in order to contact spiritual authorities and witness traditional cultures. Following World War II, he accepted an invitation to travel to the American West, where he lived for several months among the Plains Indians, in whom he had always had a deep interest. Having received his education in France, Schuon has written all his major works in French, which began to appear in English translation in 1953. Of his first book, The Transcendent Unity of Religions (London, Faber & Faber) T.S. Eliot wrote: "I have met with no more impressive work in the comparative study of Oriental and Occidental religion."
[edit] The Transcendent Unity of Religions
The traditionalist or "perennialist" perspective began to be enunciated in the 1920s by the French philosopher Rene Guenon and, in the 1930s, by the German philosopher Frithjof Schuon. The Harvard orientalist Ananda Coomaraswamy and the Swiss art historian Titus Burckhardt also became prominent advocates of this point of view. Fundamentally, this doctrine is the Sanatana Dharma--the "eternal religion"--of Hindu Vedantists. It was formulated in ancient Greece, in particular, by Plato and later Neoplatonists, and in Christendom by Meister Eckhart (in the West) and Gregory Palamas (in the East), and is also to be found in Islam in the form of Sufism. Every religion has, besides its literal meaning, an esoteric dimension, which is essential, primordial and universal. This intellectual universality is one of the hallmarks of Schuon's works, and it gives rise to many fascinating insights into not only the various spiritual traditions, but also history, science and art. The dominant theme or principle of Schuon's writings was foreshadowed in his early encounter with a Black marabout who had accompanied some members of his Senegalese village to Switzerland in order to demonstrate their culture. When the young Schuon talked with him, the venerable old man drew a circle with radii on the ground and explained: "God is in the center, all paths lead to Him."
[edit] Metaphysics
For Schuon, the quintessence of pure metaphysics can be summarized by the following vedantic statement, although the Advaita Vedanta's perspective finds its equivalent in the teachings of Ibn Arabi, Meister Eckhart or Plotinus : Brahma satyam jagan mithya jivo brahmaiva na'parah (Brahman is real, the world is illusory, the self is not different from Brahman).
The metaphysics exposited by Schuon is based on the doctrine of the non-dual Absolute (Beyond-Being) and the degrees of reality. The distinction between the Absolute and the relative corresponds for Schuon to the couple Atma/Maya. Maya is not only the cosmic illusion. From a higher standpoint, Maya is also the Infinite, the Divine Relativity or else the feminine aspect (mahashakti) of the Supreme Principle.
Said differently, being the Absolute, Beyond-Being is also the Sovereign Good (Agathon), that by its nature "desires" to communicate itself through the projection of Maya. The whole manifestation from the first Being (Ishvara) to matter (Prakriti), the lower degree of reality, is indeed the projection of the Supreme Principle (Brahman). The personal God, considered as the creative cause of the world, is only "relatively Absolute," a first determination of Beyond-Being, at the summit of Maya. The Supreme Principle is not only Beyond-Being. It is also the Supreme Self (Atman) and in its innermost essence, the Intellect (buddhi) that is the ray of Consciousness shining down, the axial refraction of Atma within Maya.
[edit] The Religio Perennis
After Guénon’s death in 1951, Schuon, in more than twenty books, has developed his own metaphysical perspective, developing the concept of religio perennis, he considers less ambiguous than Guénon’s Primordial Tradition. Schuon’s Religio Perennis cannot be called a new religion with its own dogma and practices. For Schuon, the Religio Perennis is the “underlying Religion,” the “Religion of the Heart” or the Religio Cordis. He claims that Esoterists in every orthodox tradition have a more or less direct access to it but, according to his perspective, it cannot be a question of practicing the Religio Perennis independently. Religious forms can be more or less transparent but religious diversity is not denied for its raison d’être is metaphysically explained. On the one hand, for Schuon, formal religions are upaya (“celestial strategy”), superimpositions on the core-essence of the Religio Perennis. On the other hand, religious forms correspond to as many archetypes in the divine Word itself. Religious forms are “willed by God” and each religion corresponds to a particular and homogenous cosmos, characterized by its own perspective on the Absolute. The Perennialist perspective itself, as it has been expressed in its definitive form by Schuon, can thus been characterized as essentially metaphysical, esoteric, primordial but also traditional. For Schuon, there is no spiritual path outside of a revealed religion, which provides spiritual seekers with a metaphysical doctrine and a spiritual method, but also with a spiritual environment of beauty and sacredness.
[edit] The Spiritual Path
According to Schuon, spiritual path is essentially based on the discernment between the Real and the unreal (Atma/Maya), the concentration on the Real and the practice of virtues. Man must know the Truth. Knowing the Truth, he must will the Good and concentrate on it. These two aspects correspond to the metaphysical doctrine and the spiritual method. Knowing the Truth and willing the Good, he must finally love Beauty in his own soul through virtues, but also in Nature. In this respect, Schuon has insisted on the importance for the authentic spiritual seeker to be aware of what he called "the metaphysical transparency of phenomena."
Schuon's own spiritual discipline was centered on the Invocation of the divine Name (dhikr, Japa-Yoga, prayer of the Heart), considered by him as the best and providential mean of realization at the end of the Kali Yuga. For him, like for the Hindu Saint Ramakrishna, the secret of the invocatory path is that God and his Name are one.
[edit] Quintessential Esoterism
For Schuon, esoterism displays two aspects, one being an extension of exoterism and the other alien to it to the point of occasionally opposing it; for if it be true that the form “is” in a certain way the essence, the essence on the contrary is by no means the form; the drop is water, but water is not the drop. This second aspect is called by Schuon, Quintessential Esoterism, for it is not limited in its perspective by a particular framework of theology and, above all, by a particular religious upaya. Schuon himself considered that his teachings, although located in the frame of Islam and Sufism, were in a certain sense at the confluent of the great religious traditions of the world (Islam, Christianity, Hinduism primarily but also Mahayana Buddhism, Neoplatonism and the Native American Traditions).
According to Schuon, this “quintessential esoterism” and the Religio Perennis itself are personified by the Virgin Mary. He called her, following the Persian Sufi Ruzbehan Baqli, “the Mother of all the Prophets and the Prophecy and the Substance of the original Sainthood”. It is also particularly interesting to note that despite Schuon's brilliant analyses of both esoteric and exoteric religion and the fact that this immense contribution has placed him in a unique position viz. the study of both Religion and Philosophy in the twentieth century, serious academic understanding and approval have been at times somewhat controversial. In this respect, Schuon's emphasis on integral spiritual practice and quintessential esoterism mirrors the often misunderstood function of the Malamatiyya Sufis, Saints whose substantive spiritual legacy lies 'hidden' from the world.
[edit] "Beauty is the Splendor of the Truth"
Schuon was also an artist, and more precisely, a gifted painter and a poet. The subject of Schuon’s art is on the one hand the Plains Indian world, and on the other hand the mystery of cosmic and human femininity. During the last three years of his life, he wrote approximately 3,500 short didactic poems in his mother tongue German. Throughout his life, Schuon has also written extensively on sacred art and the traditional doctrine of Beauty. For him, like for Plato, "Beauty is the Splendor of the Truth."
[edit] Published works
Some of Schuon's major publications are The Transcendent Unity of Religions, Esoterism as Principle and as Way, In the Tracks of Buddhism, Stations of Wisdom, Logic and Transcendence, Spiritual Perspectives and Human Facts, Light on the Ancient Worlds, Survey of Metaphysics and Esoterism (1986), The Feathered Sun: Plains Indians in Art and Philosophy (1990) and Understanding Islam (1994).
[edit] References
[edit] The Books of Frithjof Schuon
- The Transcendent Unity of Religions, 1953
Revised Edition, 1975, 1984, The Theosophical Publishing House, 1993
- Spiritual Perspectives and Human Facts, 1954, 1969
New Translation, Perennial Books, 1987
- Gnosis: Divine Wisdom, 1959, 1978, Perennial Books 1990
- Language of the Self, 1959
Revised Edition, World Wisdom Books, 1999
- Stations of Wisdom, 1961, 1980
Revised Translation, World Wisdom Books, 1995
- Understanding Islam, 1963, 1965, 1972, 1976, 1979, 1981, 1986, 1989
Revised Translation, World Wisdom Books, 1994, 1998
- Light on the Ancient Worlds, 1966, World Wisdom Books, 1984
- In the Tracks of Buddhism, 1968, 1989
New Translation, Treasures of Buddhism, World Wisdom Books, 1993
- Logic and Transcendence, 1975, Perennial Books, 1984
- Esoterism as Principle and as Way, Perennial Books, 1981, 1990
- Castes and Races, Perennial Books, 1959, 1982
- Sufism: Veil and Quintessence, World Wisdom Books, 1981
- From the Divine to the Human, World Wisdom Books, 1982
- Christianity/Islam, World Wisdom Books, 1985
- The Essential Writings of Frithjof Schuon (S.H. Nasr, Ed.) , 1986, Element, 1991
- Survey of Metaphysics and Esoterism, World Wisdom Books, 1986, 2000
- In the Face of the Absolute, World Wisdom Books, 1989, 1994
- The Feathered Sun: Plain Indians in Art & Philosophy, World Wisdom Books, 1990
- To Have a Center, World Wisdom Books, 1990
- Roots of the Human Condition, World Wisdom Books, 1991
- Images of Primordial & Mystic Beauty: Paintings by Frithjof Schuon, Abodes, 1992
- Echoes of Perennial Wisdom, World Wisdom Books, 1992
- The Play of Masks, World Wisdom Books, 1992
- Road to the Heart, World Wisdom Books, 1995
- The Transfiguration of Man, World Wisdom Books, 1995
- The Eye of the Heart, World Wisdom Books, 1997
The following collections of Schuon’s works have been published posthumously:
- Songs for a Spiritual Traveler: Selected Poems, World Wisdom, 2002
- Form and Substance in the Religions, World Wisdom, 2002
- Adastra & Stella Maris: Poems by Frithjof Schuon, World Wisdom, 2003
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- A web site on the Perennialist/Traditionalist School
- The official web site on Frithjof Schuon
- Frithjof Schuon biography at worldwisdom.com
