Guénon’s early and abiding interest in mathematics, like that of Plato, Pascal, Leibnitz, and many other metaphysicians of note, runs like a scarlet thread throughout his doctrinal studies. In this late text published just five years before his death, Guénon devotes an entire volume to questions regarding the nature of limits and the infinite with respect to the calculus both as a mathematical discipline and as symbolism for the initiatic path. This book therefore extends and complements the geometrical symbolism he employs in other works, especially The Symbolism of the Cross, The Multiple States of the Being, and Symbols of Sacred Science. According to Guénon, the concept ‘infinite number’ is a contradiction in terms. Infinity is a metaphysical concept at a higher level of reality than that of quantity, where all that can be expressed is the indefinite, not the infinite. But although quantity is the only level recognized by modern science, the numbers that express it also possess qualities, their quantitative aspect being merely their outer husk. Our reliance today on a mathematics of approximation and probability only further conceals the ‘qualitative mathematics’ of the ancient world, which comes to us most directly through the Pythagorean-Platonic tradition.
Archive for the ‘Authors’ Category
The Metaphysical Principles of the Infinitesimal Calculus, By René Guénon
Posted in Generic Perennial Philosophy, René Guénon, Science, tagged rene on March 28, 2014|
Response to Stephen Hawking’s Physics-as-Philosophy, by Wolfgang Smith
Posted in Generic Perennial Philosophy, Wolfgang Smith on February 26, 2012|
Response to Stephen Hawking’s Physics-as-Philosophy
by Wolfgang Smith
The Crisis of the Modern World, By René Guénon
Posted in Fundamental Works, Generic Perennial Philosophy, René Guénon on June 28, 2011|
Description
It is no longer news that the Western world is in a crisis, a crisis that has spread far beyond its point of origin and become global in nature. In 1927, Reni Guinon responded to this crisis with the closest thing he ever wrote to a manifesto and ‘call-to-action’. The Crisis of the Modern World was his most direct and complete application of traditional metaphysical principles-particularly that of the ‘age of darkness’ preceding the end of the present world-to social criticism, surpassed only by The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times, his magnum opus. In the present work Guinon ruthlessly exposes the ‘Western deviation’: its loss of tradition, its exaltation of action over knowledge, its rampant individualism and general social chaos. His response to these conditions was not ‘activist’, however, but purely intellectual, envisioning the coming together of Western intellectual leaders capable under favorable circumstances of returning the West to its traditional roots, most likely via the Catholic Church, or, under less favorable ones, of at least preserving the ‘seeds’ of Tradition for the time to come.
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Light on the Ancient Worlds, By Frithjof Schuon
Posted in Frithjof Schuon on June 28, 2011|
Description
These essays examines the spiritual patrimony of humanity.
Light on Ancient Worlds is described in this way by Seyyed Hossein Nasr: “In a sense an appraisal of the history of man seen from the traditional point of view, the work casts metaphysical light upon ancient civilizations and their significance and traces the gradual fall of man to the modern period and the revolt of European man against the Christian tradition. It also deals with the crucial debate between Hellenists and Christians, the Shamanic character of North American Indian religions and the significance of monasticism. It concludes with the essay ‘Religio Perennis’, which summarizes what lies at the heart of all religions and which may be considered to be the essence of religion as such.” This new edition (a new translation) is fully revised and contains an index and a valuable glossary which clarifies many key ideas expressed in Sanskrit, Latin, Greek, and Arabic, as well as foreign phrases. It also includes a selection of previously unpublished correspondence, which provides striking insights into Schuon’s function as one of the great spiritual masters of our time.
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Sufism: Veil and Quintessence, By Frithjof Schuon
Posted in Frithjof Schuon, Islam on June 28, 2011|
Description
This new edition of perennial philosopher Frithjof Schuon’s Sufism: Veil and Quintessence is a fully revised translation from the French original and contains an extensive Appendix with previously unpublished selections from Schuon’s letters and other private writings. In seven articles Schuon makes the critical distinction between an “absolute” Islam and a “contingent” Islam, thus distinguishing between the message of Islam in itself, and the pious Arab expressions of that message, which by their style of rhetoric have a tendency to veil it.
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Gnosis: Divine Wisdom, By Frithjof Schuon
Posted in Frithjof Schuon, Mysticism/Esoterism on June 28, 2011|
Description
In this new edition of the classic work Gnosis: Divine Wisdom, Frithjof Schuon, the foremost representative of the perennialist school of comparative religious thought, writes on seminal aspects of religion and the spiritual life, dealing with themes such as the diversity of revelations, gnosis, the love of God, and “seeing God everywhere,” while a remarkable final section treats of the Christian tradition in depth
The breadth of Schuon’s erudition can be somewhat daunting, especially for those not accustomed to reading philosophical and religious works. The pages of his books contain numerous allusions to traditional theological doctrines, important philosophers or spiritual authorities, and the sacred Scriptures of the world’s religions, but a citation or other reference is not often provided. A series of editor’s notes, organized by chapter and tagged to the relevant page numbers, has therefore been added to this new edition. Dates are provided for historical figures together with brief explanations regarding the significance of their teachings for Schuon, and citations are given for his frequent quotations from the Bible, Koran, and other sacred texts. The Authorized Version of the Bible has been used throughout; since the author made his own translations from the Koran, we have chosen to render his French for these passages directly into English, though the Pickthall interpretation of the Arabic has been given a certain preference when Koranic quotations appear in our editorial notes.
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Cosmos and Transcendence: Breaking Through the Barrier of Scientistic Belief, By Wolfgang Smith
Posted in Fundamental Works, Generic Perennial Philosophy, Science, Wolfgang Smith on June 28, 2011|
Description
In the present work, Wolfgang Smith presents an insider’s critique of the scientific world-view based upon the sharp but often overlooked distinction between scientific truth and scientistic faith. With elegance and clarity he demonstrates that major tenets promulgated in the name of Science are not in fact scientific truths but rather scientistic speculations – for which there is no evidence at all. Step by step the reader is led to the astonishing realization that the specifically ‘modern’ world is based intellectually upon nothing more substantial than a syndrome of Promethean myths. But this is only half of what the book accomplishes. Its primary contribution is to recover and reaffirm the deep metaphysical and religious insights that have come down to us through the traditional wisdom. And herein lies the true worth of this remarkable treatise: having broken the grip of scientistic presuppositions, the author succeeds admirably in bringing to view great truths that had long been obscured.
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The Quantum Enigma: Finding the Hidden Key, By Wolfgang Smith
Posted in Science, Wolfgang Smith on June 28, 2011|
Description
Following the overthrow of the classical world picture by the findings of quantum mechanics, physicists have proposed a broad gamut of alternative world views. This book begins with the major recognition that each of these suffers from a certain ¿residual Cartesianism¿ that has been smuggled in unconsciously. It turns out that the moment one discards this hidden and problematic premise, quantum theory begins to ¿make sense¿ in a way that it never has before. As the author shows, it is now possible, for the first time, to integrate the findings of quantum physics into a world view that is neither forced nor ad hoc, but conforms to the permanent intuitions of mankind. Surprisingly, this treatise can be read not only by scientists, but also by readers unacquainted with the technical conceptions of physics or the quantum-reality literature.
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The Multiple States of the Being, By Rene Guenon
Posted in Generic Perennial Philosophy, René Guénon on June 28, 2011|
Description
This text, René Guénon’s most comprehensive work of ‘pure’ metaphysics, is written as if nothing at all is, but That which is in its own essence. And, in truth, what else is there? Being is multiple and comprises many states, both manifest and unmanifest; but the unmanifest has precedence, what is seen being effectively nothing in the face of what is not seen. To realize this is to realize the contingency of the human state and the set of its inherent possibilities; to realize the contingency of the human state is to be liberated from it; to be liberated from the human state is to assimilate the principle by which the being can be liberated from all states. This is the end of the spiritual life, and also of the human form: ‘end’ both as telos and as annihilation. And since all beings in manifestation exist equally and simultaneously in all the planes and states of the Unmanifest, to know Infinite Possibility is precisely to become what one is. Whatever else Guénon wrote, as mystagogue, hermeneut, critic of the modern world, emanated from and existed to support the realization of only This.
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The Philosophy of Seyyed Hossein Nasr , Edited By L. E. Hahn, R. E. Auxier, L. W. Stone, Jr. (Library of Living Philosophers, vol. 28)
Posted in Fundamental Works, Generic Perennial Philosophy, Seyyed Hossein Nasr on June 4, 2011|
Description
Seyyed Hossein Nasr, currently University Professor of Islamic Studies at George Washington University, is not only the first Muslim philosopher in our series, but also the first traditionalist since our volume on Martin Buber. Some mainstream philosophers are unaware that traditionalist philosophy still persists in the world, and still more would be hard pressed to say what exactly traditionalist philosophy is. This is regrettable, given the popularity and breadth of traditionalist views beyond the narrower world of Anglo-American and European academies. Professor Nasr, standing as he does at the head of a handsome group of traditionalists, boldly challenges the assumptions and values of the modem world, and of modem scientistic philosophy. Yet, this challenge has been issued forth not as a pure reaction against modernity, but as an informed engagement with modernity. Indeed, some of the most “modem” ideas, such as the movement towards religious dialogue in the discipline of religious studies, tum out on close examination to rest upon values and ideas that are traditional-ideas long understood by those who study and practice the major world traditions seriously.
Professor Nasr’s philosophical achievements are stunningly broad, spanning the globe and numerous languages. Readers unfamiliar with his writings will find this volume a serviceable introduction to his thought, and to the wider world of Islamic philosophy generally. Readers who are more familiar with Nasr and his views will find this volume a very stimulating engagement of those ideas at a high level.
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Roots of the Human Condition, By Frithjof Schuon
Posted in Frithjof Schuon, Generic Perennial Philosophy on June 4, 2011|
Description
Roots of the Human Condition: this title suggests a perspective concerned with essentiality, hence conscious of principles, archetypes, reasons for being; conscious by virtue of intellection and not ratiocination. No doubt it is worth recalling here that in metaphysics there is no empiricism: principia} knowledge cannot stem from any experience, even though experiences- scientific or other- can be the
occasional causes of the intellect’s intuitions. The sources of our transcendent intuitions are innate data, consubstantial with pure intelligence, but de facto “forgotten” since the “loss of Paradise”; thus principia} knowledge, according to Plato, is nothing other than a “recollection,” and this is a gift, most often actualized by intellectual and spiritual disciplines, Deo juvante.
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Forgotten Truth: The Common Vision of the World’s Religions, By Huston Smith
Posted in Fundamental Works, Generic Perennial Philosophy, Huston Smith on June 4, 2011|
Description
People have a profound need to believe that the truth they perceive is rooted in the unchanging depths of the universe; for were it not, could the truth be really important? Yet how can we so believe when others see truth differently? Archaic peoples, wrapped like cocoons in their tribal beliefs, did not face this dilemma. Even civilizations on the whole have been spared it, for until recently they were largely self-contained. It is wewe moderns, we worldly wise-who experience the problem acutely.
This book addresses that problem. Twenty years before it was published in 1976, I wrote The Worlds Religions (originally titled The Religions of Man), which presented the major traditions in their individuality and variety. It took me two decades to see how they converge. The outlooks of individual men and women (the militant atheist, the pious believer, the cagey skepticY”are too varied to classify, but when they gather in collectivities-the outlooks of tribes, societies, civilizations, and at deepest level the world’s enduring religions-a pattern emerges. One finds a remarkable unity underlying the surface differences. When we look at human bodies we normally notice their external features, which differ markedly. Meanwhile the spines that support this variety are structurally much alike. It is the same with collective outlooks. Outwardly they too differ, but inwardly it is as if an “invisible geometry” has everywhere been working to shape them to a single truth.
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Islamic Science: An Illustrated Study, By Seyyed Hossein Nasr
Posted in Islam, Seyyed Hossein Nasr on June 4, 2011|
Description
This is the first illustrated study of the whole of Islamic science ever undertaken. Basing himself on the traditional Islamic concept of science and its transmission and classification, the author discusses various branches of the Islamic sciences. The author then turns to the application of the Islamic sciences to such domains as medicine, pharmacology, alchemy, agriculture, and various forms of technology. In the fina section of the work, the author discusses the role of the human being in the universe. The book combines an account of the morphology and brief history of the various sciences with illustrations drawn from sources spread throughout the Islmaic world. Contains over 160 color photographs.
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- Download Link (If you didn’t figure out how to read the djvu file, please consult the FAQ)
The Essential Frithjof Schuon, Edited By Seyyed Hossein Nasr
Posted in Frithjof Schuon on June 1, 2011|
Description
Frithjof Schuon had a unique ability to penetrate to the heart if the world’s great spiritual traditions, revealing new dimensions that astounded general readers and scholars alike. Schuon’s insights on religion, prayer, the spiritual life, aesthetics and philosophy shine throughout this book.
THE WRITINGS OF FRITHJOF ScHuoN are characterized by essentiality, universality and comprehensiveness. They have the quality of essentiality in the sense that they always go to the heart and are concerned with the essence of whatever they deal with. Schuon possesses the gift of reaching the very core of the subject he is treating, of going beyond forms to the essential formless Center of forms whether they be religious, artistic or related to certain features and traits of cosmic or human orders. To read his works is to be transplanted from the shell to the kernel, to be carried on a journey that is at once intellectual and spiritual from the circumference to the Center.
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Introduction to Sufi Doctrine, By Titus Burckhardt
Posted in Islam, Mysticism/Esoterism, Titus Burckhardt on May 28, 2011|
Description
This book forms an introduction to the study of the doctrines of Sufism. It is, however, necessary first of all to define the point of view from which the subject is approached. The point of view is not that of pure scholarship, whatever may happen to be the scientific interest of the doctrinal summaries which figure in this book; the chief purpose is to contribute to the efforts of those who in the world of today seek to understand the permanent and universal truths of which every sacred doctrine is an expression.
Let it be said at the outset that academic knowledge is only a quite secondary and very indirect aid in assimilating the intellectual con tent of oriental doctrines—indeed the scientific method which of necessity approaches things from the outside, and thus from their purely historical and contingent aspects, does not set out to promote such an assimilation. There are doctrines which can be understood only from the “inside” through a work of assimilation or penetration that is essentially intellectual1 and, for that very reason, goes beyond the limitations of discursive thought.
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Art from the Sacred to the Profane: East and West, By Frithjof Schuon
Posted in Art, Frithjof Schuon on May 28, 2011|
Description
This book will delight, intrigue, and nourish the soul of the fortunate reader. Frithjof Schuon, on the basis of the fact that man is himself “made in the image of God,” proceeds to unfold the three-fold blessings of what it means to be human: “We can think, speak, and produce works of art,” and these unique qualities enable us to “contemplate and realize the Infinite.” The author is, without doubt, one of the most penetrating philosophical minds of the twentieth century, if not well beyond. His references take us up through the hierarchies of the earthly states to the angelic sources of inspiration. Frithjof Schuon immediately introduces us to an objective view of the arts, and leaves opinion behind, reminding us of a story told about Plato. One of Plato’s students, it is said, asked him towards the end of his life, “What is it that you have attempted to achieve in your life’s work?” and Plato replied, after due consideration, “to have raised human debate above the level of opinion.” There is no doubt in this writer’s mind that Schuon has offered us a similar ideal in the words contained in this book.
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Foundations of Oriental Art & Symbolism, By Titus Burckhardt
Posted in Art, Titus Burckhardt on May 28, 2011|
Description
The epigraph to this book by Titus Burckhardt (1908-1984), the late Swiss art historian and philosopher of religion, expresses for us the key importance of understanding the authentic traditional art forms of each of the world’s major cultures. Burckhardt was one of the twentieth century’s foremost experts on the sacred forms of the traditional civilizations that surround each of the world’s great religions. Three of his illustrated works focus on Christian art and culture1 while another three illustrated works center on Islamic art and culture.2 These books demonstrate Burckhardt’s unique ability to communicate the spiritual essence of the traditional Christian and Islamic worlds as if we had actually lived during those times. But Burckhardt was also an acknowledged expert on the sacred art of the Orient, particularly in its Hindu, Buddhist, and Taoist forms. As Martin Lings has said of Sacred Art in East and West, Burckhardt’s peerless work on the subject: “… again and again one has the impression that the author has ‘said the last word’ on this or that particular aspect. … It is seldom that one has the privilege of reading a work by an author who has such mastery of his subject.” Foundations of Oriental Art & Symbolism is an edited collection of Burckhardt’s most important articles on Oriental art and symbolism, with page after page of illustrations from the traditional Oriental civilizations. Th ese illustrations illuminate Burckhardt’s insightful descriptions and explanations, providing the reader with a small taste of the beauty that permeated the traditional Hindu, Buddhist, and Taoist worlds—a beauty that has in large part been overwhelmed and swallowed by our modern era. Part I, “Oriental Art”, begins with Burckhardt’s introduction to traditional Oriental art. In the following three chapters he then explores the artistic foundations of each of the three great Oriental religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism, focusing particularly on the Hindu temple, the Buddha image, and Chinese landscape painting.
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Art of Islam, Language and Meaning, By Titus Burckhardt
Posted in Art, Islam, Titus Burckhardt on May 28, 2011|
Description
Known as an expert on Islam, Sufism, and Islamic arts & crafts, Burckhardt presents in-depth analyses of seminal examples of Islamic architecture, from Spain and Morocco to Persia and India. He examines Koranic calligraphy and illumination, arabesque, carpets and rugs, Persian miniatures, and much more while making illuminating comparisons with Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist art. Beautifully illustrated in color, this masterpiece is presented in a revised, commemorative edition containing 285 new illustrations and a new Introduction
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The Garden of Truth: The Vision and Promise of Sufism, Islam’s Mystical Tradition, By Seyyed Hossein Nasr
Posted in Islam, Mysticism/Esoterism, Seyyed Hossein Nasr on May 28, 2011|
Description
The headlines are filled with the politics of Islam, but there is another side to the world’s fastest-growing religion. Sufism is the poetry and mysticism of Islam. This mystical movement from the early ninth century rejects worship motivated by the desire for heavenly reward or the fear of punishment, insisting rather on the love of God as the only valid form of adoration. Sufism has made significant contributions to Islamic civilization in music and philosophy, dance and literature. The Sufi poet Rumi is the bestselling poet in America. But in recent centuries Sufism has been a target for some extremist Islamic movements as well as many modernists. The Garden of Truth presents the beliefs and vision of the mystical heart of Islam, along with a history of Sufi saints and schools of thought. In a world threatened by religious wars, depleting natural resources, a crumbling ecosystem, and alienation and isolation, what has happened to our humanity? Who are we and what are we doing here? The Sufi path offers a journey toward truth, to a knowledge that transcends our mundane concerns, selfish desires, and fears. In Sufism we find a wisdom that brings peace and a relationship with God that nurtures the best in us and in others. Noted scholar Seyyed Hossein Nasr helps you learn the secret wisdom tradition of Islam and enter what the ancient mystics call the “garden of truth.” Here, liberate your mind, experience peace, discover your purpose, fall in love with the Divine, and find your true, best self.
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The Reign of Quantity & the Signs of the Times, By Rene Guenon
Posted in Fundamental Works, Generic Perennial Philosophy, René Guénon on May 28, 2011|
Description
The Reign of Quantity gives a concise but comprehensive view of the present state of affairs in the world, as it appears from the point of view of the ‘ancient wisdom’, formerly common both to the East and to the West, but now almost entirely lost sight of. The author indicates with his fabled clarity and directness the precise nature of the modern deviation, and devotes special attention to the development of modern philosophy and science, and to the part played by them, with their accompanying notions of progress and evolution, in the formation of the industrial and democratic society which we now regard as ‘normal’. Guénon sees history as a descent from Form (or Quality) toward Matter (or Quantity); but after the Reign of Quantity-modern materialism and the ‘rise of the masses’-Guénon predicts a reign of ‘inverted quality’ just before the end of the age: the triumph of the ‘counter-initiation’, the kingdom of Antichrist. This text is considered the magnum opus among Guénon’s texts of civilizational criticism, as is Symbols of Sacred Science among his studies on symbols and cosmology, and Man and His Becoming according to the Vedanta among his more purely metaphysical works.
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Understanding Islam, By Frithjof Schuon
Posted in Frithjof Schuon, Islam on May 28, 2011|
Description
As may be inferred from its title the purpose of this book is not so much to give a description of Islam as to explain why Moslems believe in it, if we may express it thus; in what follows, therefore, the reader is presumed already to have certain elementary notions about the religion of Islam such as can be found without difficulty in other books.
What we really have in mind in this as in previous works is the scientia sacra or philosophia perennis, that universal gnosis which always has existed and always will exist. Few topics are so unrewarding as conventional laments about the “researches of the human mind” never being satisfied; in fact everything has been said already, though it is far from being the case that everyone has always understood it. There can therefore be no question of presenting “new truths”; what is needed in our time, and indeed in every age remote from the origins of Revelation, is to provide some people with keys fashioned afresh- keys no better than the old ones but merely more elaborated – in order to help them rediscover the truths written in an eternal script in the very substance of man’s spirit.
This book is no more restricted to an exclusive program than were our earlier writings. A number of digressions will be found which, though they appear to go beyond the limits indicated by the title, have nonetheless been deemed indispensable in their context. The justification for expressions and forms lies in the truth~and not conversely. Truth is at the same time single and infinite; hence the perfectly homogeneous diversity of its language.
This book is intended primarily for Western readers given the language in which it is written and the nature of its dialectic, but there are doubtless some Orientals, of Western formation – men who have perhaps lost sight of the solid grounds for faith in God and Tradition -who equally may be able to profit from it and in any case to understand that Tradition is not a childish and outmoded mythology but a science that is terribly real.
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The Essential René Guénon: Metaphysics, Tradition, and the Crisis of Modernity, Edited By John Herlihy
Posted in René Guénon on May 28, 2011|
Description
A prolific writer and author of over 24 books, Rene Guenon was the founder of the Perennialist/Traditionalist school of comparative religious thought. Known for his discourses on the intellectual and spiritual bankruptcy of the modern world, symbolism, tradition, and the inner or spiritual dimension of religion, this book is a compilation of his most important writings. A key component of his thought was the assertion that universal truths manifest themselves in various forms in the world’s religions and his writings on Hinduism, Taoism, and Sufism are particularly illuminating in this regard.
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The Essential Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, Edited By Rama Coomaraswamy
Posted in Ananda Coomaraswamy on May 28, 2011|
Description
The name of Ananda K. Coomaraswamy has become synonymous with an entire approach to art and of the civilization of which it is an expression. Coomaraswamy’s genius lay not only in presenting
it to the modern Western world but also in demonstrating that this civilizational art and artistic civilization was contrapuntal and not necessarily antithetical to the modern West, as ears less gifted
than his to hearing celestial harmonies might have proposed. His multi-splendored genius expressed itself in over a thousand published items. One might say that Coomaraswamy wrote more than
many people read in the course of one life.
The publication of his seminal contributions in the form of the compendium of his essential writings that you hold in your hands is therefore to be greatly welcomed. It conveys to us the flavor of his
thought, as water collected in a small shell on the shore conveys the flavor of the entire ocean. Of course it cannot convey a sense of the ocean’s magnitude, but it earns our gratitude in conveying a sense of its taste; of how the divine dialectic of the transformation of religion into art and art into religion might hold the key to the rejuvenation of both life and art in the modern world.
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Traditional Islam In The Modern World, By Seyyed Hossein Nasr
Posted in Islam, Seyyed Hossein Nasr on May 28, 2011|
Description
In some of our earlier books, especially Islam and the Plight of Modern Man and Islamic Life and Thought, we have already provided studies of a number of traditional Islamic views that are in
confrontation with the modern world. In the present volume, we continue this task by concentrating at the same time more fully upon the contrast between traditional Islam and its revivalist and
‘fundamentalist’ manifestations, and dealing with issues of particular significance to the Islamic world and to the Western understanding of Islam, beginning with a study of the nature of traditional Islam itself in the Prologue.
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Science and Civilization in Islam, By Seyyed Hossein Nasr
Posted in Islam, Science, Seyyed Hossein Nasr on May 28, 2011|
Description
This is the first one-volume work in English to deal with every branch of Islamic science and to approach it not from the Western viewpoint but as it is understood by the Muslims themselves. Islamic science, known to the West principally for its influence on the development of European scientific thought, occupied a central position within the Muslim culture. Through historical and morphological analysis, as well as through excerpts from actual text, Dr. Nasr graphically conveys to Western readers the content and spirit of Islamic science. His introduction surveys the religious, metaphysical, and philosophical concepts of Islam. In succeeding Chapters, the author covers the entire scientific spectrum from cosmography, mathematics and medicine to alchemy and theology, as well as how these fields interact with related schools of thought. Although his primary objective is to examine Islamic science within the context of Islamic civilization, Dr. Nasr also emphasizs the far reaching historical significance of those discoveries and writing which most directly affected the West. On alchemy the author says: “…alchemy in its highest meaning was a spiritual technique for liberating the soul from its material bonds by making it realize that the world is not a series of images and dreams of the individual psyche, but the dream of the Universal or World Soul, in which the human soul must participate. Alchemy was thus a way of awakening man from that illusion which he calls the ‘world’ by means of the contemplation of the primordial beauty of nature and participation in the dream of the World Soul through the removal of the limitative barrirs of the individual psyche.”
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The Essential Titus Burckhardt: Reflections on Sacred Art, Faiths, and Civilizations, Edited By William Stoddart
Posted in Titus Burckhardt on May 28, 2011|
Description
The Swiss art historian and cultural anthropologist, Titus Burckhardt, wrote more than a dozen books in either German or French. Most of them are now available in English translation and, as a
result, his writings have, over the past few years, become familiar to certain sectors of the English-speaking public.
In order to bring Burckhardt’s work to the attention of a wider readership, it was felt that an anthology of some of his more important pieces was now desirable.
Making such a selection has been both easy and difficult. Easy, because almost any passage from Burckhardt’s writings conveys interesting information and enlightening interpretation, and does
so in his characteristic and unique style. In this sense, one can hardly go wrong. On the other hand, the task has been difficult, because picking and choosing amongst good things is always difficult.
Faced with this problem, one wants, with St. Theresa of Lisieux, to say: “I choose all!”—a very good policy, no doubt, but not for an anthology.
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An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines, By Seyyed Hossein Nasr
Posted in Islam, Science, Seyyed Hossein Nasr on May 28, 2011|
Description:
Most of the studies made currently by Western orientalists as well as by contemporary modem M_uslim scholars of the c~smologic~l and natural sciences in the Islamic world have been earned out With the aim of establishing a relation between these sciences and those cultivated in the modern world. Only rarely has attention been turned to the general world view of the Muslims themselves, a view in whose matrix they studied the particular sciences of Nature. Our aim in this book, which is a revised and elaborated version of a thesis presented to the Department of the History of Science and Learning at Harvard University in 1958, is to clarify some of the cosmological principles and to bring into focus the contours of the cosmos in which the Muslims lived and thought, and which to a certain extent still provides the framework in which they envisage the world. Of course we do not in any way deny the validity and significance of the historical studies which on the one hand relate the Muslim sciences to their BabyJonian, Egyptian, Greek, Indian, Chinese, and Persian origins, and on the other clarify the role which these sciences had to play in the formation of Latin scholasticism and the study of the natural sciences in the Western world from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries.
But our aim in this book is primarily to study the Muslim cosmological sciences in themselves, and to try to envisage the world in its totality in the manner seen by those who cultivated thes~ sciences, and not as viewed by one who stands on the outside and seeks to dissect the Muslim world view into its constituent elements according to the historical sources from which they were adopted.
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Frithjof Schuon: Messenger of the Perennial Philosophy, By Michael Fitzgerald
Posted in Frithjof Schuon, Generic Perennial Philosophy on May 28, 2011|
Description
Offering the most comprehensive biography of Frithjof Schuon (1907-1998) yet published, Fitzgerald’s work features quotations from Schuon’s articles, books, memoirs, and correspondence, combined with a wealth of reliable information from people who knew Schuon well. With over 75 color and black-and-white photos and illustrations, readers will gain valuable insights into the life and work of the foremost representative of the Perennialist or ?Traditionalist? school of comparative religious thought.
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The Essential Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Edited By William C. Chittick, Huston Smith
Posted in Generic Perennial Philosophy, Seyyed Hossein Nasr on May 28, 2011|
Description
“This valuable book distills the essence of the thought of one of the most important thinkers of our times.
For me, personally, that understates the case. No other thinker that is still alive—the qualification is important, for Seyyed Hossein Nasr would reprimand me if I ranked him with Socrates, Plato, and other historical benchmark thinkers—has influenced my thought as much as he has. And it is easy to say why. It was he who led me to the perennialists—René Guénon, A.K. Coomaraswamy, Frithjof Schuon and others—who with a single stroke settled the dilemma that could have plagued me (by mudding my thinking) for the rest of my life. That single stroke sliced the esoteric from the exoteric—the kernels of walnuts from their shells, so to speak. Esoterically, or in their kernels, the great philosophies and religions of history are one: mystics all speak the same language. Exoterically, they differ importantly. As I am an esoteric by nature this “slice” enabled me to believe wholeheartedly in authentic religions while honoring their differences. I was at peace with the world.” —Huston Smith
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Spiritual Perspectives and Human Facts, By Frithjof Schuon
Posted in Frithjof Schuon, Generic Perennial Philosophy on May 28, 2011|
Description
This collection of writings, written around the middle of the century—hence before most of our other books—differs from them in that instead of articles as such it consists of extracts from letters, notes
from our reading, and reflections arising independently of outward circumstances and organized only later in the form of chapters. Be that as it may, Spiritual Perspectives and Human Facts contains issues we did not address in our later books, notably on the subject of Christianity, the Vedānta, spiritual psychology, and the symbolism of colors; with regard to this psychology, it goes without saying that intrinsic morality, considered in depth, constitutes a message that can never grow old and that therefore remains urgent for man as such, the man of all times.
Thus even if our subsequent works contain a complete doctrine—the sophia perennis or, if one prefers, integral traditionalism—it seems to us that the present collection deserves to be preserved from loss for the reasons just mentioned.
Perhaps it would be worth adding that truth can never be a matter of merit, given that it belongs to no one while belonging to everyone; it is an immanent gift as well as a transcendent one. And let us also
recall—from a somewhat different point of view—that according to an ancient saying from India, “There is no right superior to that of truth.”
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The Need for a Sacred Science, By Seyyed Hossein Nasr
Posted in Fundamental Works, Generic Perennial Philosophy, Science, Seyyed Hossein Nasr on May 28, 2011|
Description:
This book deals with the meaning of a science rooted in the sacred, the metaphysical foundation of such science, its contrast to modern science and its pertinence to some of the major issues facing humanity today. In the first part, the author turns to the fundamental question of the multiplicity of sacred forms. He discusses why it is necessary in the contemporary world to treat sacred science in the context of diverse religions. He also deals with the importance of sacred science in providing a meaningful study that would remain religiously significant of religions themselves.
“This book brings together in a focused and comprehensive treatment Nasr’s ideas that have been scattered. It provides an integrated overview of the breadth and depth of Nasr’s thought.” — Yvonne Haddad, University of Massachusetts
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Religion and the Order of Nature, By Seyyed Hossein Nasr
Posted in Fundamental Works, Generic Perennial Philosophy, Seyyed Hossein Nasr on May 27, 2011|
Description:
The current ecological crisis is a matter of urgent global concern, with solutions being sought on many fronts. In this book, Seyyed Hossein Nasr argues that the devastation of our world has been exacerbated, if not actually caused, by the reductionist view of nature that has been advanced by modern secular science. What is needed, he believes, is the recovery of the truth to which the great, enduring religions all attest; namely that nature is sacred. Nasr traces the historical process through which Western civilization moved away from the idea of nature as sacred and embraced a world view which sees humans as alienated from nature and nature itself as a machine to be dominated and manipulated by humans. His goal is to negate the totalitarian claims of modern science and to re-open the way to the religious view of the order of nature, developed over centuries in the cosmologies and sacred sciences of the great traditions. Each tradition, Nasr shows, has a wealth of knowledge and experience concerning the order of nature. The resuscitation of this knowledge, he argues, would allow religions all over the globe to enrich each other and cooperate to heal the wounds inflicted upon the Earth.
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Man and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis of Modern Man, By Seyyed Hossein Nasr
Posted in Fundamental Works, Generic Perennial Philosophy, Seyyed Hossein Nasr on May 27, 2011|
Description:
It is a sign of the present state of humanity that only such blatant acts
of aggression against nature as major oil spills, the burning of tropical
forests and the consequences of man’s rape of nature and his destructive technology in the form of the warming of the climate and the depleting of the ozone layer should turn the attention of modern man to the environmental crisis. It has taken the innocent eyes of dying seals to finally move hardened hearts and force human beings to think about the consequences of living on the earth as if no other creature mattered.
This work from one of the world’s leading Islamic thinkers is a spiritual tour de force which explores the relationship between the human being and nature as found in many religious traditions, particularly its Sufi dimension. The author stresses the importance of a greater awareness of the origins of both the human being and nature as a means of righting the imbalance that exists in our deepest selves and in our environment.
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Time and eternity, By Ananda Coomaraswamy
Posted in Ananda Coomaraswamy, Fundamental Works, Generic Perennial Philosophy on May 27, 2011|
Description:
The metaphysical doctrine simply contrasts time as a continuum with the ,eternity that is not in time and so cannot properly be called everlasting, but coincides with the real present or now of which temporal experience
is impossible. Here confusion only arises because for any consiousness functioning in terms of time and space, “now” succeeds “now” without interruption, and there seems to be an endless series of nows, collectively
adding up to “time”. This confusion can be eliminated if we realise that none of these nows has any duration and that, as measures, all alike are zeros,
of which a “sum” is unthinkable. It is a matter of relativity; it is “we” who move, while the Now is unmoved, and only seems to move,-much as the sun onlv seems to rise and set because the earth revolves.
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Form and Substance in the Religions, By Frithjof Schuon
Posted in Frithjof Schuon, Generic Perennial Philosophy on May 27, 2011|
Description:
The modern world is characterized by its fascination with relativity and individualism. Into this morass, the writings of Frithjof Schuon enter like a bolt of lightning that both clears the air and brings serenity in its wake. As the pre-eminent exponent of the Perennial Philosophy, Schuon restores a true sense of proportion in affirming the transcendent Real, and then draws all the consequences, spiritually and humanly, as well as aesthetically on the plane of forms. At the level of ideas, Schuon is an unsurpassable expositor of first principles. One of the reasons he is so widely acclaimed is his fluency in so many “languages of the Spirit.” Seminal chapters such as “Atma-Maya,” plus gems from the traditional worlds of Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam, lay to rest any doubt that the Sacred has not only the first but the final word.
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The Perennial Philosophy, By Aldous Huxley
Posted in Aldous Huxley, Fundamental Works, Generic Perennial Philosophy on May 27, 2011|
Description:
According to Huxley, the perennial philosophy is: “the metaphysic that recognizes a divine Reality substantial to the world of things and lives and minds; the psychology that finds in the soul something similar to, or even identical with, divine Reality; the ethic that places man’s final end in the knowledge of the immanent and transcendent Ground of all being; the thing is immemorial and universal. Rudiments of the perennial philosophy may be found among the traditional lore of primitive peoples in every region of the world, and in its fully developed forms it has a place in every one of the higher religions” (The Perennial Philosophy, p. vii).
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Logic and Transcendence, By Frithjof Schuon
Posted in Frithjof Schuon, Fundamental Works, Generic Perennial Philosophy on May 27, 2011|
Description:
In this new edition of his most important philosophical work, Frithjof Schuon confronts the pitfalls of rationalism and relativism within modern philosophy. This new edition comprises a fully revised translation from the French original and contains an extensive Appendix with previously unpublished letters and other private writings.
“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 otherwise insoluble. In fact most often Schuon provides solutions for currently debated philosophical problems by demonstrating them to be the result 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 [the twentieth] century if philosophy be understood in its traditional sense as the love of wisdom.”
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The underlying religion: an introduction to the perennial philosophy, Edited by Martin Lings, Clinton Minnaar
Posted in Fundamental Works, Generic Perennial Philosophy, Martin Lings on May 27, 2011|
Description:
This is 
an anthology of 25 essays by the leading exponents of the perennialist school of comparative religious thought. It aims to be the most accessible introduction yet to the perspective of the Perennial Philosophy.
The essays compiled in this anthology are intended to provide an
accessible introduction to the “traditionalist” or “perennialist” school
of comparative religious thought. This current of thought, which saw the light of day in the early twentieth century in the pioneering writings of the French metaphysician and symbologist René Guénon (1886-1951), and which was amplified by the prodigious scholarship of the Anglo-Ceylonese orientalist and art historian Ananda K. Coomaraswamy (1877-1947), received its fullest exposition in the writings of the German-Swiss metaphysician, painter, and poet, Frithjof Schuon (1907-1998).1 In the pages that follow, the reader will encounter the penetrating writings of these major authors, as well as many other prominent “perennialist” writers such as Titus Burckhardt,2 Lord Northbourne, Marco Pallis, Martin Lings (co-editor of this volume), Whitall Perry, William Stoddart, and Seyyed Hossein Nasr. What we intend to offer now is a broad outline of the essential features of the perennial philosophy in the hope of providing the reader with a clear compass and sure orientation in approaching both the arrangement and the content of the essays here included.
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The Transcendent Unity of Religions, By Frithjof Schuon
Posted in Frithjof Schuon, Fundamental Works, Generic Perennial Philosophy on May 27, 2011|
Description:
Schuon asserts that to transcend religious differences, we must explore the esoteric nature of the spiritual path back to the Divine Oneness at the heart of all religions.
This book is founded on a doctrine that is metaphysical in the most precise meaning of the word and cannot by any means be described as philosophical. Such a distinction may appear unwarrantable to those who are accustomed to
regard metaphysic as a branch of philosophy. but the practice of linking the two together in this manner. although it can be traced back to Aristotle and the Scholastic writers who followed him. merely shows that all philosophy suffers
from certain limitations that. even in the most favorable instances such as those just quoted exclude a completely adequate appreciation of metaphysic. In reality. the transcendent character of metaphysic makes it independent of any purely human mode of thought In order to define clearly the difference between the two modes in question. it may be said that philosophy proceeds from reason (which is a purely individual faculty). whereas metaphysic proceeds exclusively from the Intellect
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Knowledge and the Sacred, by Seyyed Hossein Nasr
Posted in Fundamental Works, Generic Perennial Philosophy, Seyyed Hossein Nasr on May 27, 2011|
Description:
In the present study our aim has been in a sense the reverse of this process. It has
been to aid in the resuscitation of the sacred quality of knowledge and the revival of
the veritable intellectual tradition of theWest with the aid of the still living traditions
of the Orient where knowledge has never become divorced from the sacred. Our aim
has been to deal first of all with an aspect of the truth as such which resides in the very nature of intelligence and secondarily with the revival of the sapiential perspective in the West, without which no civilization worthy of the name can survive. If in the process we have been severely critical of many aspects of things Western, our view has not been based on disdain and hatred or a kind of ¸SoccidentalismˇT which would simply reverse the role of a certain type of orientalism that has studied the Orient with the hope of transforming its sacred patterns of life, if not totally destroying all that has characterized the Orient as such over the ages. In criticizing what from the traditional point of view is pure and simple error, we have also tried to defend the millennial tradition of the West itself and to bring to light once again that perennial wisdom, or sophia perennis, which is both perennial and universal and which is neither exclusively Eastern nor Western.
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Perennial Philosophy Library 