This book, according to Seyyed Hossein Nasr, “is the second work of Schuon (following The Transcendent Unity) which is devoted primarily to comparative religion. Beginning with two essays on the distinction between truth and presence and form and substance in religions, the author then turns to major metaphysical studies of the most subtle nature concerning the distinction between Atma and maya and subject and object. He devotes several studies to specifically Islamic themes including Islamic understanding of Christ and Mary and two essays on Buddhism. The work concludes with another set of chapters which treat some of the most difficult theological and religious problem such as the question of theodicy, difficulties in sacred texts, paradoxes of spiritual expression, the effect of the human margin in revelation, and certain eschatological issues.”

At the level of ideas, Schuon is an unsurpassable expositor of first principles. Included here are seminal chapters such as Atma-Maya and Truth and Presence. Schuon's fluency in so many "languages" of the spirit is widely acclaimed. There are gems here from the traditional worlds of Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam. These essays definitively establish that the Sacred has not only the first but also the final word.

• Preface
• Introduction
• Truth and Presence
• Form and Substance in the Religions
• Atmâ-Mâyâ
• Substance, Subject, and Object
• The Five Divine Presences
• The Intersection of Time and Space in Koranic Onomatology
• Insights into the Mohammedian Phenomenon
• The Koranic Message of Seyyidnâ Aïssâ
• The Virginal Doctrine
• Synthesis of the Pâramitâs
• A Note on the Feminine Element in Mahâyanâ
• The Mystery of the Two Natures
• The Question of Theodicies
• Some Difficulties of Sacred Texts
• Paradoxes of Spiritual Expression
• The Human Margin
• Remarks on a Problem of Eschatology
• The Two Paradises
• Index

          A priori or exoterically, the element Truth in Christianity is, as we have said, the axiom that Christ is God, and that Christ alone is God; but a posteriori or esoterically, the Christic Truth means, on the one hand, that every manifestation of the Absolute is identical with the Absolute and, on the other, that this manifestation is at once transcendent and immanent. Transcendent, it is Christ above us; immanent, it is Christ within us; it is the Heart, which is both Intellect and Love. To enter the Heart is to enter into Christ, and conversely; Christ is the Heart of the macrocosm as the Intellect is the Christ of the microcosm. “God became man that man might become God”: the Self became Heart that the Heart might become the Self; and this is why “the kingdom of God is within you”.
         It is in this gnosis that Islam and Christianity meet, for the Heart is the immanent Koran or the immanent Prophet, if the emphasis is placed on the active and inspiring function of the Intellect. This amounts to saying that in Islam the element Presence is represented by the Koran on the one hand and by the Prophet on the other; to give full value to this element Presence—with respect to the element Truth, which is the point of departure in Islam—is to become identified sacramentally and eucharistically with the Koran,(3) and it is also to be identified with the Prophet by entering the Muhammadan mold, which is none other than the “primordial norm”, the Fitrah. One enters into this mold by enclosing oneself in the Sunnah, the body of rules of conduct prescribed by the Prophet, and personified by him; now these rules are “horizontal” as well as “vertical”: they concern material and social as well as spiritual life.
         The Koran itself, too, is both Truth and Presence: it is Truth by its doctrine, which teaches that there is but one Absolute, and it is Presence owing to its theophanic or sacramental quality, which is the origin of Dhikr, the quintessential prayer.