glossary of terms used by frithjof schuon - Sophia Perennis

should perceive without difficulty, and which any man perceives notably in love, or in
connection with such phenomena as provoke admiration. [THC, To Have a Center]
Reality: To quote an expression of Pascal’s we favor – Reality is “an infinite sphere
whose center is everywhere and its circumference nowhere”. [TB, Message and
Messenger]
“Realizationism”: A pernicious error that must be pointed out here – one which seems to
be axiomatic with the false gurus of East and West – is what could be designated by the
term “Realizationism”: it is claimed that only “realization” counts and that “theory” is
nothing, as if man were not a thinking being and as if he could undertake anything
whatsoever without knowing where he was going. False masters speak readily of
“developing latent energies”; now one can go to hell with all the developments and all the
energies one pleases; it is in any case better to die with a good theory than with a false
“realization.” What the pseudo-spiritualists lose sight of only too easily is that, according
to the maxim of the maharajahs of Benares, “there is no right superior to that of the
truth.” [PM, Prerogatives of the Human State]
Reason: Reason is the faculty of knowing indirectly in the absence of a direct vision and
with the help of points of reference. [LT, Evidence and Mystery]
Reason / Intellect: Reason is formal by its nature and formalistic in its operations; it
proceeds by coagulations, by alternatives and by exclusions – or, it can be said, by partial
truths. It is not, like pure intellect, formless and fluid light; true, it derives its
implacability, or its validity in general, from the intellect, but it touches on essences only
through drawing conclusions, not by direct vision; it is indispensable for verbal
formulation but it does not involve immediate knowledge. [UI, Islam]
Reason is not Intelligence in itself, it is only its instrument, and this on the express
condition that it be inspired by intellectual Intuition, or simply correct ideas or exact
facts; nothing is worse than the mind cut off from its root; corruptio optimi pessima.
The Intellect – aliquid increatum et increabile – dominates and ennobles our fundamental
faculties: it is by it that our Reason exists and that it is objective and total; and again it is
by it that our Will is free, hence capable of moral heroism, and that our Sentiment is
disinterested, hence capable of compassion and generosity. [TM, Faculties and
Modalities of Man]
Rebellion: Relativism engenders the spirit of rebellion and is at the same time its fruit.
The spirit of rebellion is not, like holy anger, a passing state and directed against some
worldly abuse; on the contrary, it is a chronic malady directed against Heaven and against
all that represents Heaven or is a reminder of it. When Lao-Tse said that “in the latter
times the man of virtue appears vile,” he had in mind this spirit of rebellion that
characterizes our century; yet, for psychological and existentialist relativism, which by
definition is always out to justify the crude ego, such a state of mind is normal, it is its
absence which is a sickness; hence the would-be abolition of the sense of sin. The sense
of sin is really the consciousness of an equilibrium that surpasses our personal will and
which, even while wounding us on occasion, operates in the long run for the good of our
119