glossary of terms used by frithjof schuon - Sophia Perennis

Path is effort; if as intelligence, then the Path is discernment, concentration,
contemplation. [UI, Islam]
Stupidity: Stupidity is the inability to discern the essential from the accidental: it consists
in attaching oneself to mere facts and in considering them simply in themselves, that is,
without the least induction. [EH, Transgression and Purification]
It is not without reason that popular opinion tends to associate pride with stupidity. One
can in fact be pretentious through stupidity just as one can be stupid through pretension;
the two things go together. Of course, lack of intelligence does not necessarily lead to
pretension, but pretension cannot avoid harming the intelligence. And if, as is commonly
admitted, stupidity is the incapacity to discern between the essential and the secondary, or
between cause and effect, it includes for that very reason a measure of pride; a stupidity
combined with a perfect humility and a perfect detachment would no longer be stupidity,
it would be a simplicity of mind which could trouble no intelligent and virtuous person.
[SME, Passion and Pride]
Let us specify that stupidity often manifests itself through confusion between a material
cause and a moral cause, or between a phenomenon due to circumstances and another
resulting from a fundamental quality, in short, between an “accident” and a “substance”;
for example, a government is taken for a people, or a collective psychosis for an ethnic
character. [THC, Intelligence and Character]
Subconscious: The subconscious covers all whereof we have no consciousness in an
actual fashion, be it a matter of higher realities or of psychic complexes; but in fact, what
people ordinarily understand by “subconscious” is merely the inferior psychism, as is
moreover consistent with its etymology whenever sub is opposed to super or supra. If the
word “infra-conscious” were a current term, it should serve to indicate, not that of which
we are only faintly conscious, but rather that which is little endowed with consciousness.
[TB, The Question of Illusion]
Subconscious (spiritual): The idea of the subconscious is susceptible, not only of a
psychological and lower interpretation, but also of a spiritual, higher, and consequently
purely qualitative interpretation. It is true that in this case one should speak of the “supraconscious”
but the fact is that the supra-conscious has also an aspect that is
“subterranean” in relation to our ordinary consciousness, just as the heart resembles a
submerged sanctuary which, symbolically speaking, reappears on the surface thanks to
unitive realization; it is this subterranean aspect that allows us to speak – in a provisional
way – of a “spiritual subconscious,” which must never at any time be taken to mean the
lower, vital psyche, the passive and chaotic dreaming of individuals and collectivities.
[UI, The Path]
Subject / Object: As for the categories “subject” and “object,” we shall begin by taking
note of the fact that the object is reality in itself, or reality envisaged in connection with
its perceptibility, whereas the subject is consciousness in itself, or consciousness
envisaged in relation to its faculty of perception. In both cases there is a relationship of
reciprocity and a relationship of divergence: with respect to the first, we would say that
the world insofar as it is a perception is part of the subject, which perceives it; inversely
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