glossary of terms used by frithjof schuon - Sophia Perennis

comportment, whereas the latter’s entire reason for being lies in the former; rather as,
according to the Shaykh al-‘Alawi, the sufficient reason of the rites is the remembrance
of God, which contains all rites in an undifferentiated synthesis.
(* “And verily thou art of a supereminent nature” (la ‘ala khuluqin ‘azim): that is, of a
most lofty character (Sura “The Pen,” 4).) [IFA, The Mystery of the Prophetic Substance]
In fact, the term “Sufism” includes the most shallow fanaticism as well as the most
profound speculation; now neither one nor the other constitutes total Tasawwuf, which
goes without saying in the case of the first attitude, whereas the second is integral
esoterism only on condition that it be accompanied by an appropriate method and not
merely by pious observances, whose emotional accentuation moreover is scarcely
compatible with the perspective of gnosis. Authentic esoterism – let us say it again – is
the way it is founded on total or essential truth, and not merely on partial or formal truth,
and which makes an operative use of the intelligence, and not only of the will and the
feelings. The totality of truth demands the totality of man. [SVQ, Human Premises of a
Religious Dilemma]
Sufism is “sincerity of faith” and this sincerity – which has absolutely nothing in
common with the modern cult of sincerity – is, on the level of doctrine, nothing other
than an intellectual vision that does not halt halfway but on the contrary draws from the
idea of Unity its most rigorous consequences. The final term of this is not only the idea of
the nothingness of the world but also that of the Supreme Identity and the corresponding
realization: “the unity of Reality” (wahdat al-Wujud). [UI, The Path]
In defining Sufism as an ascesis, it is implicitly defined as a succession of realizatory and
liberating Stations; and this corresponds perfectly to the specific nature of esoterism,
which “transforms” man instead of simply saving him; or rather, which saves him in
transforming him, and transforms him in saving him. [SME, Enigma and Message of
Islamic Esoterism]
Supernatural: It is necessary . . . to be clear as to the meaning of the word
“supernatural”: the supernatural can be what is contrary to the laws of nature, but it
cannot be contrary to the very principles of the Universe; if we term “natural” that which
simply obeys the logic of things, with no other restriction, the supernatural is also natural,
but it is so on a scale far vaster than that of physical causality, that of this lower world.
The supernatural is the “divinely natural” which, irrupting into an eminently contingent
and limited plane of the natural, contradicts the laws of this plane, not by virtue of the
causality proper to the latter, of course, but by virtue of a far less contingent and limited
causality. [FDH, The Sense of the Sacred]
Superstition: However restricted the experience of modern man may be in things
belonging to the psychic or subtle order, there are still phenomena of that kind which are
in no way inaccessible to him in principle, but he treats them from the start as
“superstitions” and hands them over to the occultists.
Acceptance of the psychic dimension is in any case part of religion: one cannot deny
magic without straying from faith; so far as miracles are concerned, their cause surpasses
the psychic plane, though their effects come by way of it. In theological language the
term “superstition” tends to be confusing because it expresses two entirely different
ideas, namely, on the one hand a wrong application of religious sentiment, and on the
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