glossary of terms used by frithjof schuon - Sophia Perennis

contents of the book, and not the inverse. The Bible can speak of a multitude of things
other than God without being the less sacred for it, whereas other books can deal with
God and exalted matters and still not be the divine word. [SG, Keys to the Bible]
Self: The Self has no complementary opposite; it is pure Subject, that is to say It is Its
own Object at once unique and infinite, and innumerable on the plane of a certain
diversifying relativity . . . The Self radiates even into nothingness and lends it, if one may
provisionally express oneself in a more or less paradoxical manner, Its own Reality made
of Being, Consciousness, and Life or Beatitude . . . This is the Vedantic ternary Sat, Chit,
Ananda. [LT, The Servant and Union]
Self-Knowledge: It is to discern the ambiguity, pettiness and fragility of the ego. And it
is also, and essentially, to “love the neighbor as oneself”; that is, to see in the “other” a
“myself” and in the “myself” an “other.” [THC, Intelligence and Character]
Self-Power / Other-Power: “Power of Oneself” and the “power of the Other” (in
Japanese jiriki and tariki). The first power is that of intelligence and of will seen from the
point of view of the salvific capacity which they possess in principle and which
consequently can operate in fact once the required conditions are met; in the first case,
man is freed thanks to his intelligence and by his own efforts, at least according to human
appearances, for metaphysically the enlightening and liberating power lies outside the
grasp of an individual, who is simply its instrument. The second power does not belong
to us in any way; it belongs to the “Other” as its name indicates and as its reason for
being demands; in this context, man is saved by Grace, which does not however mean
that he need not collaborate with this salvation by his receptivity and according to the
modes that human nature allows or imposes on him.
. . . It is certain that man can, in principle, save himself “by his own means”, but it is
necessary that such an effort be blessed by a celestial Power, hence a “power of the
Other”; and it is likewise certain that man can, in principle, be saved by simply
abandoning himself to Mercy, but such an abandonment must contain an element of
initiative, for the absence of any “power of Oneself” is contrary to the nature of man . . .
All told, there are three possible paths: predominance of the “power of Oneself”;
predominance of the “power of the Other”; and a balance between the two. [FSR, Truth
and Presence]
Semite / Aryan: For the Semite, everything begins with Revelation, and consequently
with faith and submission; man is a priori a believer and consequently a servant:
intelligence itself takes on the color of obedience. For the Aryan on the contrary – and we
are not thinking of the Semiticized Aryan – it is intellection that comes first, even if it be
kindled thanks to a Revelation; Revelation here is not a commandment which seems to
create intelligence ex nihilo while at the same time enslaving it, but appears rather as the
objectivation of the one Intellect, which is both transcendent and immanent. Intellectual
certainty has here priority over obediential faith; the Veda does not give orders to the
intelligence, it awakens it and reminds it of what it is.
Grosso modo, the Aryans – except in cases of intellectual obscuration in which they have
only retained their mythology and ritualism – are above all metaphysicians and therefore
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