glossary of terms used by frithjof schuon - Sophia Perennis

liberating. Love, which responds to Beauty, is the desire for union, or it is union itself;
according to Ibn ‘Arabi, the way towards God is Love because God is Beauty.
Goodness, for its part, is the generous radiation of Beauty: it is to Beauty what heat is to
light. Being Beauty, God is thereby Goodness or Mercy: we could also say that in
Beauty, God lends us something of Paradise; the beautiful is the messenger, not only of
Infinitude and Harmony, but also, like the rainbow, of reconciliation and pardon. From an
altogether different standpoint, Goodness and Beauty are the respectively “inward” and
“outward” aspects of Beatitude, whereas from the standpoint of our preceding distinction,
Beauty is intrinsic inasmuch as it pertains to the Essence, whereas Goodness is extrinsic
inasmuch as it is exercised in relation to accidents, namely towards creatures.
In this dimension, Rigor, which stems from the Absolute, could not be absent:
intrinsically, it is the adamantine purity of the divine and of the sacred; extrinsically, it is
the limitation of pardon, owing to the lack of receptivity of given creatures. The world is
woven of two major dimensions, mathematical rigor and musical gentleness; both are
united in a superior homogeneity that pertains to the very fathomlessness of the Divinity.
In such truths or mysteries, the exoteric and esoteric perspectives – religions and
wisdoms – participate in accordance with their capabilities and their vocations: esoterism
in considering strictly the nature of things, and exoterism in filtering and adapting it to
human opportunities, while conveying behind this veil the treasures of the one and
unanimous Sophia. In the very depths of certain men there always resides, intact, man as
such; and consequently also the plenary knowledge of God.
What defines man is that of which he alone is capable: namely total intelligence –
endowed with objectivity and transcendence – free will, and generous character; or quite
simply objectivity, hence adequation of the will and of sentiment as well as of
intelligence. The Sophia Perennis is, basically, objectivity freed from all shackles: it is
the capacity to “perceive” that which is, to the point of being able to “be” that which is; it
is the capacity to conform to necessary – not only possible – Being.
The animal cannot leave his state, whereas man can; strictly speaking, only he who is
fully man can leave the closed system of the individuality, through participation in the
one and universal Selfhood. There lies the mystery of the human vocation: what man
“can,” he “must”; on this plane, to be able to is to have to, given that the capacity pertains
to a positive substance. Or again, which fundamentally amounts to the same thing: to
know is to be; to know That which is, and That which alone is. [RHC, Pillars of Wisdom]
Strictly speaking, there is but one sole philosophy, the Sophia Perennis; it is also –
envisaged in its integrality – the only religion. Sophia has two possible origins, one
timeless and the other temporal: the first is “vertical” and discontinuous, and the second,
“horizontal” and continuous; in other words, the first is like the rain that at any moment
can descend from the sky; the second is like a stream that flows from a spring. Both
modes meet and combine: metaphysical Revelation actualizes the intellective faculty, and
once awakened, this gives rise to spontaneous and independent intellection. [TM,
Thought: Light and Perversion]
Sophia Perennis / Exoterism: All things considered, only the sophia perennis can be
considered a total good without reservations; exoterism, with its evident limitations
always comprises an aspect of “lesser evil” owing to its inevitable concessions to
collective human nature, hence to the intellectual, moral and spiritual possibilities of an
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