The Writings of Frithjof Schuon
The writings of Frithjof Schuon form the foundation of our library because he is the pre-eminent exponent of the Perennial Philosophy. His work illuminates this perspective in both an essential and comprehensive manner like none other. The following slides are designed to give an overview of the titles included in this series.
What others have said about Frithjof Schuon
“M. Schuon’s thought does not demand that we agree or disagree but that we understand or do not understand. Such writing is of rare and lasting value.”
—Times Literary Supplement, on Schuon’s Stations of Wisdom
“Readers … will certainly find in the writings of Schuon … completely new perspectives in every aspect of religious thought—on the meaning of symbolism, for example, or the idea of sin, or the warfare between scientism and religion, or the idea of esotericism, and much, much else. Very probably, it will seem to the reader that until now he has ignored an entire dimension in his thinking …”
—Jacob Needleman, San Francisco State University
“It is a very good thing to see a book with Mr. Schuon’s writings about the American Indians. His words are important because he sees the Indian traditional religion with the eyes of a man who prays and who loves the Indians. He has studied all the religions in the world so he can compare our Indian ways to the ways of other religions.”
—Thomas Yellowtail, Crow Sun Dance Chief, on Schuon’s The Feathered Sun
During the last three years of his life Frithjof Schuon wrote approximately 3,500 short poems in his mother tongue German. These poems, which have been called “metaphysical music,” cover every possible aspect of spiritual doctrine, practice and virtue, as well as the role and function of beauty. They express every conceivable subtlety of spiritual and moral counsel – and this is not merely in general terms, but with uncanny intimacy, detail and precision. They express the same unerring sharpness of intellect, profundity, comprehensiveness and compassion which one finds in the range of Schuon’s better-known dialectical writings.
“..here we listen to the thinker who, far from the intricate and complex sentences of his learned prose works, sings the simple prayers of the longing soul: God is the center, the primordial ground which comprehends everything, manifesting Himself through the colorful play of His creations.”
—Annemarie Schimmel; author of Mystical Dimensions of Islam
Here for the first time in one volume are the most important of Schuon’s chapters on the Christian tradition. The book is edited by James Cutsinger, who also edited Paths to the Heart: Sufism and the Chrisitan East and Not of This World: Treasures of Christian Mysticism.
The Fullness of God has been organized in such a way as to guide the reader from matters of metaphysical principle, through various theological and hermeneutical issues, to “operative” questions of spiritual practice and method. Specific topics include the relationship between Christianity and non-Christian religions; the divergence within Christianity between its main branches, Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant; the place of reason and faith and their connection to spiritual knowledge or gnosis; the principles and applications of a mystical exegesis of Scripture; the central dogmas of the Trinity and Incarnation, as well as Eucharistic and Marian doctrine; and Christian initiation, contemplative practice, and “prayer of the heart”.
“Frithjof Schuon is undoubtedly one of the most penetrating exponents of the relationship between religion and metaphysics. Professor Cutsinger has done us a great service in bringing together Schuon’s widely scattered comments relative to Christianity. The insights of this wonderful book are essential for anyone who wishes to penetrate the depths of the Christian tradition.”
—Rama Coormaraswamy, author of The Destruction of the Christian Tradition
Roots of the Human Condition deals with the fundamental principles of universal and perennial metaphysics and their application on the level of spiritual and moral life. Simply put, this book reveals many answers to those seekers questing for knowledge of what lies behind the reality of our world and, more particularly, our own human souls. The book is divided into three sections: Principles and Roots, Fundamental Perspective, and Moral and Spiritual Dimensions.
Thus, the reader is provided with an intellectual method—in the truest sense—with which to view the profound questions of existence, then is shown how authentic esoterism approaches the spiritual realization of these truths, and finally is immersed in compelling considerations of human virtue, the almost alchemical result of realizing those truths.
Schuon writes that people often seek certitude through phenomena of the external world, while instead we should be seeking it in our very being. This is where his books have been leading readers for generations, to a strong certitude of the realities and purpose of the world and of our own existence. In this, and indeed in all his books, Schuon leads readers to insights on the roots of the human condition, precisely.
The current interest in Zen and the popularity of Buddhism in the West are an understandable reaction to the artificiality and ugliness prevalent in the world today, and also to various concepts nowadays judged rightly or wrongly as inoperative.
Those seeking an antidote to new-age materialism and the empty claims of pseudo-spirituality will find it in Schuon’s incisive discernment of the intrinsic orthodoxy of Buddhism. Far from discounting the providential “mythology” of the person of the Buddha, the author relates its historical—and sometimes contradictory—phenomena to their celestial roots in the Divine Qualities and to the human virtues that form the necessary framework for a spiritual life.
Notions crucial to Buddhism such as suffering and its cessation, void-form, nirvana-samsara are elucidated in the light of the Vedantic distinction Atma-Maya, providing an important key to understanding the differences between Western philosophical “individualism” and the serenity of Eastern metaphysics. Here is a perspective that stands above sectarian factionalism while at the same opening unique insights into the multi-faceted spiritual universe that is Buddhism.
Schuon is known as a philosopher in the literal sense of the word, a “lover of wisdom.” It is a wisdom that is inseparable from a sense of the sacred, which is the unique prerogative of humankind. The diverse subjects covered by these essays include a discussion on the symbolism of the human body, an outline of spiritual anthropology as well as a chapter on the structure and universality of the conditions of existence.
Underlying this diversity of topics, is a perspective that combines mathematical rigor with a kind of musical profundity. The entry of the Absolute into the world of time and space gives birth to the traditional worlds, the great Revelations that manifest in so many ways both Divine Unity and human immortality. As Schuon writes, “the man for whom each Message is providentially destined must recognize in it what is best in himself; he cannot escape the truth of his call any more than he can escape existentially the reality of his heart.”
The great 20th century metaphysician Frithjof Schuon was also a spiritual master familiar with the spiritual struggles of modern seekers. He once wrote, “To be a human being means to be connected with God; life has no meaning without this.” This “human vocation” means that until we find a personal connection with God we are not able to connect with the innermost being that lies locked up within the human heart. Schuon’s simplest solution to all people of all religious persuasions: “You must pray, always pray.”
James S. Cutsinger, author and editor, has collected into this volume some of the most memorable writings on prayer and the spiritual life by this great 20th century spiritual figure. Prayer Fashions Man includes an appendix of excerpts from letters and other writings which have not been published before. Thus, previous readers of Schuon will rejoice in this wonderful collection of many of his best writings on prayer and the human vocation, as well as seeing some materials they have never seen before. Readers new to Schuon will find, as countless others have, insights on spirituality that call to their innermost being in a universal language that all people of all times and all religions can, and indeed must, understand.
“In this finely selected anthology the editor takes us to the very heart and soul of Schuon’s message, bringing to light the ‘categorical imperative’ of prayer that underlies the whole corpus of Schuon’s works and without which those works would remain merely theoretical. To read this book is to feel the irresistible attraction of prayer, Schuon’s reflections on the spiritual life being suffused with an alchemical power that can arise only from a consciousness rooted in the Object of prayer. What Schuon has experienced he conveys, and in so doing galvanizes our own aspirations for ‘the one thing needful’.”
—Reza Shah-Kazemi, author of Paths to Transcendence: According to Shankara, Ibn ‘Arabi, and Meister Eckhart
“Islam is the meeting between God as such and man as such…. Islam confronts what is immutable in God with what is permanent in man.”
—From the foreword by Annemarie Schimmel
These are the opening words of what has become a classic work on Islam, perhaps the most misunderstood of the great Revelations. And yet the purpose of this book “is not so much to give a description of Islam as to explain . . . why Moslems believe in it.” Both Westerners unfamiliar with Islam and Moslems seeking a deeper understanding of the basis of faith will be struck by Schuon’s masterful elucidation of the spiritual world of Islam.
Schuon’s foundation is always the intrinsic nature of things rather than any confessional point of view. This perspective opens up new avenues of approach and surprising insights into the “five pillars” of faith, the Quran, the Sunna, the Prophet and the esoteric dimension which is the kernel of Moslem spirituality. A hallmark of the author’s perspective is an intellectual universality, which in examining a given religious framework readily draws upon parallels and concepts from other traditions, especially that of the Vedanta. For “what is needed in our time, and indeed in every age remote from the origins of Revelation, is . . . to rediscover the truths written in an eternal script in the very substance of man’s spirit.”
This long work is Schuon’s most important philosophical opus in the sense of containing long chapters devoted to specifically philosophical questions such as relativism, the notion of concrete and abstract, and rationalism. But the book also contains some of his most succinct theological discussions concerning both Christian and Islamic theology. The last part of the book turns again to diverse questions of the spiritual life, including a discussion of the function of the spiritual master and concludes with a study of man and certitude.
“The man is a living wonder; intellectually a propos religion, equally in depth and breadth, the paragon of our time. I know of no living thinker who beginsto rival him.”
—Huston Smith
“This work is a veritable hymn to the Intellect and of the Intellect. It penetrates in unparalleled fashion into the labyrinth of modern philosophical thought to unveil solutions to problems which would seem to be otherwiseinsoluble. In fact most often Schuon provides solutions for currently debated philosophical problems by demonstrating them to be the results of ill posed questions. He removes the opaqueness and ambiguity of modern rationalism and irrationalism like the morning sun whose very appearance dispels the fog. This work is one of Schuon’s metaphysical masterpieces, and one of the most important philosophical works of this century if philosophy be understood in its traditional sense as the love of wisdom.”
—Seyyed Hossein Nasr
Light on the Ancient Worlds is the first in a new series of Frithjof Schuon’s classical works which have been extensively revised and updated.
With adamantine clarity of expression and a vision which sees through the eye of the heart, these essays examine the spiritual patrimony of humanity. This wisdom transcends changing schools of thought, and may best be characterized by what has come to be known in the West as the Perennial Philosophy. Schuon casts a light on mankind’s ancient heritages and transmitted wisdom through his impressive and precise handling of complex theological and metaphysical problems.
“This remarkable and deeply moving book certainly keeps the promise implicit in its title and the author goes straight to the heart of his subject. ‘Each ancient civilization can be said to live on a remembrance of the lost Paradise,’ we are told on the first page. This world-wide feature of antiquity needed to be stressed because so many writers on comparative religion lose sight of it; and yet without this “key” what attempt to understand the far past can hope to succeed?”
—Martin Lings, author of Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources and What is Sufism?
