Description
Those who need extrinsic proofs of what Frithjof Schuon called the ‘transcendent unity of religions’ have been rightly dissatisfied with chrestomathies of short quotations from the sacred texts and
spiritual authorities of the great traditions. Hence the irreplaceable value of Paths to Transcendence, a meticulous and far-reaching study of three of history’s most important sages, each fi rmly rooted in the doctrines and practices of his own religion … and each in turn rising to join with his counterparts at the Divine summit of apophatic unanimity.”
—James S. Cutsinger
Paths to Transcendence is an important book in the school of
Sophia Perennis.” —Martin Lings,
Links
This fully revised edition of the critically acclaimed book contains a series of essays that explain the misconceptions that lie at the heart of Western attitudes towards Islam. Including a new essay on the role of women in Islam, an updated chapter containing insights into the concept of Jihad, and three fully revised chapters that bring the discussion up-to-date with the current global situation, this book is a must read for anyone interested in Islam and its relation to the West.
Concentrating on the post-Vatican II revisions of its teachings, this book tells the story of the destruction of the Roman Catholic tradition, a defining event of the twentieth century.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
More than ever, there is an urgent need to rediscover timeless and objective principles in order to confront the issues of our times. In this collection of thirty remarkable essays, Lakhani summons us to rediscover the sacred worldview of Tradition, governed by truth, virtue, and beauty, as he addresses some of the most pressing issues today, including fundamentalism, gender and sexuality, religious diversity and pluralism, faith and science, and the problem of evil.
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
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
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.”
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
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.
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.
“This valuable book distills the essence of the thought of one of the most important thinkers of our times.
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
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.
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.
A collection of essays by scholars, philosophers, and scientists offering penetrating answers to some of the most important questions of the day.
It is a sign of the present state of humanity that only such blatant acts
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
Perennial Philosophy Library 