glossary of terms used by frithjof schuon - Sophia Perennis

material world. The answer to evolutionism is to be found in the doctrine of archetypes
and “ideas,” the latter pertaining to pure Being – or to the Divine Intellect – and the
former pertaining to the primordial substance in which the archetypes become
“incarnated,” as it were by reverberation. [LT, The Contradiction of Relativism]
Exegesis (modern): Modern exegesis is only a caricature of ancient hermeneutics, if
indeed there is still any relationship between them; it consists above all in giving doubts
and prejudices the status of dogmas: according to these prejudices, it is ‘impossible’ that
a book should be prior to a certain date, or that a scribe should have copied a book, even
a sacred one, without altering it; quite improper conclusions are drawn from the smallest
facts and the most disproportionate deductions and inductions are allowed, though all the
positive data are contrary to these false principles. [GDW, The Sense of the Absolute in
Religions]
Existence: Existence is a reality in some respects comparable to a living organism; it
cannot with impunity be reduced, in man’s consciousness and in his modes of action, to
proportions that do violence to its nature; pulsations of the “extra-rational” pass through
it from every quarter. Now religion and all forms of supra-rational wisdom belong to this
extra-rational order; the presence of which we observe everywhere around us, unless we
are blinded by a mathematician’s prejudice; to attempt to treat existence as a purely
arithmetical and physical reality is to falsify it in relation to ourselves and within
ourselves, and in the end it is to blow it to pieces. [UI, The Path]
The very fact of our existence is a prayer and compels us to prayer, so that it could be
said: “I am, therefore I pray; sum ergo oro.” Existence is by nature ambiguous and from
this it follows that it compels us to prayer in two ways: first by its quality of being a
divine expression, a coagulated and segmented mystery, and secondly by its inverse
aspect of being a bondage and perdition, so that we must indeed think of God not merely
because, being men, we cannot but take account of the divine basis of existence – insofar
as we are faithful to our nature – but also because we are by the same token forced to
recognize that we are fundamentally more than existence and that we live like exiles in a
house afire. On the one hand, existence is a surge of creative joy and every creature
praises God: to exist is to praise God whether we be waterfalls, trees, birds or men; but
on the other hand, existence means not to be God and so to be in a certain respect
ineluctably in opposition to Him; existence is something which grips us like a shirt of
Nessus. Someone who does not know that the house is on fire has no reason to call for
help, just as the man who does not know he is drowning will not grasp the rope that could
save him; but to know we are perishing means, either to despair or else to pray. Truly to
know that we are nothing because the whole world is nothing, means to remember “That
which Is” and through this remembrance to become free. If a man has a nightmare and,
while still dreaming, starts calling on God for aid, he infallibly awakens; this shows two
things: first, that the conscious intelligence of the Absolute subsists during sleep as a
distinct personality – our spirit thus remaining apart from our states of illusion – and
secondly, that when a man calls on God he will end by awakening also from that great
dream which is life, the world, the ego. If this call can breach the wall of common
dreams, why should it not also breach the wall of that vaster and more tenacious dream
that is existence? [UI, The Path]
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