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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.
About the Author(s)
Frithjof Schuon
Frithjof Schuon (1907-1998) is best known as the foremost spokesman of the “Traditionalist” or “Perennialist” school and as a philosopher in the metaphysical current of Shankara and Plato. He wrote more than two dozen books on metaphysical, spiritual, artistic, and ethnic themes and was 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. Besides his prose writings, Schuon was also a prolific poet and a gifted painter of images that always portrayed the beauty and power of the divine, and the nobility and virtue of primordial humanity.
World Wisdom features a series titled “The Writings of Frithjof Schuon”, which includes many new editions of classic books by Schuon in new translations and with additional materials. Our online Library contains many articles and poems written by Frithjof Schuon, allowing readers to see a representative sample of his remarkable body of work.
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Reviews
- Schuon offers metaphysical ideas as a practical instrument for leading men back to the traditions in their purity…. In Schuon’s writings…an idea that seems functional only within one particular religious system is stunningly linked to general metaphysical principles that apply not only to all the known traditions but to all of reality as we can conceive it.
Readers…will certainly find in the writings of Schuon…completely new perspectives in every aspect of religious thought.Jacob Needleman in the Foreword to The Sword of Gnosis
- No other work by F. Schuon is more conducive to our fathoming the Prophetic Message in its essence and the Mystery of the Avataric Nature. F. Schuon is miraculously attuned to the spiritual realities he describes. Of special interest is the light he sheds on Sayyidatnâ Maryam as the figure of Quintessencial Esotericism whose influence extends over to India and Tibet through Tara and Prajanparamita. [Form and Substance is as] effulgent as truth itself.…
Patricia Reynaud, Miami University in Ohio, and co-founder of Religioperennis.org
