glossary of terms used by frithjof schuon - Sophia Perennis

illusory. The innovators, nihilists and “constructivists” alike, claim that they wish “to
start again from zero” in every field, as if it were possible for man to create himself over
again, to create the intelligence with which he thinks and the will with which he desires
and acts; in short, as if man’s existence came from nowhere else than from our own
opinions and desires. [LT, Abuse of the Ideas of the Concrete and the Abstract]
Piety: By piety is to be understood wholehearted attachment to God, the sense of the
hereafter, absolute sincerity, and thus a characteristic found quite generally in saints and
a fortiori in messengers of Heaven; we mention it because in the life of the Prophet it
appears with a particularly salient function, and because it prefigures in a sense the
spiritual climate of Islam . . . On the plane of piety, attention must be drawn to the love of
poverty, fasting and vigils . . .
It should be added that by piety we must understand the state of spiritual servitude
(‘ubudiyah) in the highest sense of the term, comprising perfect “poverty” (faqr, whence
the word faqir) and “extinction” (fana’) before God, and this is not unrelated to the
epithet “unlettered” (ummi) which is applied to the Prophet. Piety is what links us to God;
in Islam this something is, first of all an understanding, as deep as possible, of the evident
Divine Unity – for he who is “responsible” must grasp this evidentness and there is here
no sharp demarcation between believing and knowing – and next it is a realization of the
Unity beyond our provisional and unilateral understanding which is itself ignorance when
regarded in the light of plenary knowledge: there is no saint (wali, “representative,” thus
“participant”) who is not a “knower through God” (‘arif bi-Llah). This explains why in
Islam piety, and a fortiori the sanctity which is its flowering, has an air of serenity; it is a
piety whose essence opens into contemplation and gnosis. [UI, The Prophet]
Platonic recollection: Platonic recollection is none other than the participation of the
human Intellect in the ontological insights of the Divine Intellect; this is why the Sufi is
said to be ‘arif bi-Llah, “knower by Allah”, in keeping with the teaching of a famous
hadith according to which God is the “Eye wherewith he (the Sufi) seeth”; and this
explains the nature of the “Eye of Knowledge”, or of the “Eye of the Heart”. [EPW, The
Religion of the Heart]
Plenitude: Plenitude is that which brings together a maximum of homogeneous aspects,
or which introduces totality into form. [GDW, Seeing God Everywhere]
Pneumatic: The pneumatic is a man who identifies a priori with his spiritual substance
and thus always remains faithful to himself; he is not a mask unaware of his scope, as is
the man enclosed in accidentality. [PM, The Play of Masks]
In practice, it suffices to know that to say “yes” to God, while abstaining from what takes
one away from Him and accomplishing what brings one closer to Him, pertains to the
“pneumatic” nature and assures salvation, all question of “original sin” and
“predestination” aside; thus in practice there is no problem, save that which we conceive
and impose upon ourselves.
The “pneumatic” is the man who so to speak incarnates “faith which saves,” and thus
incarnates its content, . . . he cannot sin – except perhaps from the point of view of
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