glossary of terms used by frithjof schuon - Sophia Perennis

absoluteness; it seeks to destroy either the idea of truth, or that of intelligence, or both at
once. To lend a relative character to what functionally stands for the absolute is to
attribute absoluteness to the relative; to claim that knowledge as such can only be relative
amounts to saying that human ignorance is absolute; to throw doubt on certitude is,
logically, to avow that one knows “absolutely” nothing. [SW, Orthodoxy and
Intellectuality]
Relativity: Relativity has essentially two dimensions: distance and difference. It is by
virtue of the “vertical” dimension of distance that in divinis Being becomes crystallized,
so to speak, on this side of Beyond-Being and that, in consequence of this hypostatic
polarization, the world becomes separated from God; and it is again by virtue of this
dimension that the intellective Substance engenders the animic Substance, which in turn
engenders the material Substance. It is by virtue of the “horizontal” dimension of
difference that the All-Powerfulness is distinguished from the All-Goodness, or that on
earth a rose is distinguished from a water lily. The whole Universe is a tissue of these two
dimensions: all phenomena can be explained by their infinitely varied combinations;
what unites them is Existence and, in the last analysis, a Reality at once absolute and
infinite, the only Reality there is. [LT, Evidence and Mystery]
Religere / Tradere: The first of these terms has the advantage of expressing an intrinsic
reality (religere = “to bind” the earthly with the heavenly), and not simply an extrinsic
reality like the second (tradere = “to hand down” scriptural, ritual and legal elements).
[EPW, The Supreme Commandment]
Religio / Traditio: Religio is that which “binds” (religat) man to Heaven and engages his
whole being; as for the word “traditio”, it is related to a more outward and sometimes
fragmentary reality, besides suggesting a retrospective outlook. At its birth a religion
“binds” men to Heaven from the moment of its first revelation, but it does not become a
“tradition”, or admit more that one “tradition”, till two or three generations later. [LAW,
Religio Perennis]
Religio Perennis: The essential function of human intelligence is discernment between
the Real and the illusory, or between the Permanent and the impermanent, and the
essential function of the will is attachment to the Permanent or to the Real. This
discernment and this attachment are the quintessence of all spirituality. Carried to their
highest level or reduced to their purest substance they constitute, in every great spiritual
patrimony of humanity, the underlying universality or what may be called the religio
perennis. It is to this that the sages adhere, while basing themselves necessarily on
divinely instituted elements. [EchPW, 84]
The religio perennis is fundamentally this, to paraphrase the well-known saying of St.
Irenaeus: the Real entered into the illusory so that the illusory might be able to return into
the Real. It is this mystery, together with the metaphysical discernment and
contemplative concentration that are its complement, which alone is important in an
absolute sense from the point of view of gnosis. For the gnostic (in the etymological and
rightful sense of that word) there is in the last analysis no other religion. It is what Ibn
Arabi called the “religion of love”, putting the accent on the element of “realization”.
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