glossary of terms used by frithjof schuon - Sophia Perennis

worldly and mercantile outlook, and this explains its hostility to virgin nature as well as
to religion. According to the criteria of “civilization”, the contemplative hermit – who
represents human spirituality and at the same time the sanctity of virgin nature – can be
no better than a sort of “savage”, whereas in reality he is the earthly witness of Heaven.
[LAW, The Ancient Worlds in Perspective]
“Civilizationism”: The debasement of religion by means of the ideology of total and
indefinite progress. [IFA, Christian Divergences]
Concentration: Strictly speaking, pure concentration is less a fixing of the mind upon an
idea or an object than the elimination of every distraction; the divine presence, or grace if
one so prefers, or the intellect, according to the point of view, must be allowed to act
without hindrance, like a leaven; but concentration as such could not draw these out of
nothing. [LS, A View of Yoga]
Concretism: Concretism coincides with what may be described as “factualism,” or the
superstition of the fact, a fact being regarded as the opposite of a principle, the opposite
therefore of what current prejudice regards as an abstraction. [LT, Abuse of the Ideas of
the Concrete and the Abstract]
Philosophical concretism, actually an inverted realism, has always been a temptation for
the human spirit, forgetful of its own true nature and its primordial vocation. The
perverse concretism of the philosophers results from the naïve concretism of sensory
experience; but whereas the latter remains neutral with regard to the suprasensible and
the supernatural, the former sets itself up as a universal and totalitarian doctrine. Sensory
concretism does not result so much from the fact of sensation in itself as from our
separation (consequent upon man’s original fall) from invisible realities, which then
become mythological notions and objects of faith differing widely in degree, since
account has to be taken of wisdom as well as of childhood. Fallen man can be reduced to
sensory experience, and to the reason which registers and coordinates this experience,
and he is able to extract the whole of his fallacious wisdom out of this situation; a natural
situation in a certain sense, but abnormal none the less, since even fallen man possesses
other resources of knowledge besides sensation and the faculty of reason. [LT, Abuse of
the Ideas of the Concrete and the Abstract]
Consciousness (pure): To say consciousness is “pure” means that it is situated beyond
the polarity “subject-object,” that it is “thusness”. [TB, Treasures of Buddhism]
Contingency / Relativity: Contingency is always relative, but relativity is not always
contingent; that is relative which is either “more” or “less” in relation to another reality;*
that is contingent which may or may not be, hence which is merely possible.
(*Thus the Creator – Being – is “more” than creation and creatures, but “less” than the
pure Absolute – Beyond-Being – which has no interlocutor.) [PM, In the Face of
Contingency]
Cosmos: A cosmos or a cycle is essentially something that becomes and that ceases to
be; for man, there are three cosmos or cycles to consider, namely first the soul, then the
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