glossary of terms used by frithjof schuon - Sophia Perennis

positions or even purely logical ones. Those who look back longingly at some past age
because it embodied certain vital values are reproached for adhering to these values
because they are found in the past, or because one would like to situate them there
“irreversibly”; one might as well say that the acceptance of an arithmetical proof is the
sign, not of the unimpaired functioning of the intelligence, but of a morbid obsession with
numbers. If to recognize what is true and just is “nostalgia for the past,” it is quite clearly
a crime or a disgrace not to feel this nostalgia.
The same goes for other accusations prompted by the idea of tradition, such as those of
“romanticism,” “aestheticism,” or “folklore”; far from disclaiming any affinity with these
things, we adopt them in the precise measure that they have a relationship either with
tradition or with virgin nature, restoring to them in consequence their legitimate and, at
the very least, innocent meanings. For “beauty is the splendor of the true”; and since it is
possible to be capable of perceiving this without lacking “seriousness,” to say the least,
we do not feel obliged to offer excuses for being particularly sensitive to this aspect of
the Real. [LT, Introduction]
Transcendence / Immanence: God is one, and as a result the Transcendent comprises a
dimension of immanence, just as for its part the Immanent comprises a dimension of
transcendence: for on the one hand, the divine Presence in the depths of the sanctified
heart, or in the pure Intellect, does not lose its transcendence by the fact of its
immanence, since the ego is not identified tale quale with the Self; and on the other hand,
the transcendence of the creative Principle does not preclude the objective and
existentiating immanence of the same Principle in creation. In other words to say
transcendence is to say, first of all macrocosm, and to say immanence, is to say a priori
microcosm; however, each pole always includes the other, as is shown graphically by the
Far Eastern symbol of the Yin-Yang, whose testimony we never tire of invoking in our
doctrinal expositions.
On the one hand, there is no transcendence without immanence; for the very perception
of transcendence implies immanence in the sense that the knowing subject is situated at
the level of the object known; one can know divine truth only “by the Holy Spirit” which
is immanent in the Intellect, otherwise man would not be “made in the image of God.”
On the other hand, there is no immanence without transcendence: that is to say, the
ontological, and in principle mystical, continuity between the immanent Divinity and the
individual consciousness in no way excludes the discontinuity between these two poles
which in truth are incommensurable. [THC, “Our Father Who Art in Heaven”]
To say transcendence is to say both metaphysical Truth and saving Divinity; and to say
immanence is to say transpersonal Intellect and divine Selfhood. [PM, Delineations of
Original Sin]
Transcendence means discontinuity between the Principle and its manifestation, hence
separation, and Immanence means continuity, hence union. [PM, The Liberating Passage]
Immanence is not only the presence of the divine in our soul, it is also this presence
around us, in the world, just as inversely, transcendence is the inaccessibility of God, not
only above us, in the Heavens, but also within us, in the depths of the heart. [THC,
Degrees and Scope of Theism]
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