glossary of terms used by frithjof schuon - Sophia Perennis

Exoterism transmits aspects or fragments of metaphysical truth – which is nothing other
than the whole truth – whether about God, about the universe or about man. In man it
chiefly envisages the passional and social individual; in the universe it discerns only what
affects that individual; in God it hardly sees anything more than what has to do with the
world, creation, man and his salvation. Consequently – and at the risk of repetition, this
must be emphasized – exoterism takes no account either of the pure Intellect, which
transcends the human plane and opens out onto the divine, or of pre-human and posthuman
cycles, or of Beyond-Being which is beyond all relativity and thus also beyond all
distinctions. Such a perspective is comparable to a skylight, which gives the sky a certain
form, round or square perhaps; through this the view of the sky is fragmentary, though it
certainly does not prevent the sky from filling the room with light and life. [UI, The Path]
Every exoteric perspective claims, by definition, to be the only true and legitimate one.
This is because the exoteric point of view, being concerned only with an individual
interest, namely, salvation, has no advantage to gain from knowledge of the truth of other
religious forms. Being uninterested as to its own deepest truth, it is even less interested in
the truth of other religions, or rather it denies this truth, since the idea of a plurality of
religious forms might be prejudicial to the exclusive pursuit of individual salvation.
[TUR, The Limitations of Exoterism]
The exoteric point of view is fundamentally the point of view of individual interest
considered in its highest sense, that is to say, extended to cover the whole cycle of
existence of the individual and not limited solely to terrestrial life. [TUR, The Limitations
of Exoterism]
The exoteric claim to the exclusive possession of the truth comes up against the
axiomatic objection that there is no such thing in existence as a unique fact, for the
simple reason that it is strictly impossible that such a fact should exist, unicity alone
being unique and no fact being unicity; it is this that is ignored by the ideology of the
“believers,” which is fundamentally nothing but an intentional and interested confusion
between the formal and the universal. The ideas that are affirmed in one religious form
(as, for example, the idea of the Word or of the Divine Unity) cannot fail to be affirmed,
in one way of another, in all other religious forms; similarly the means of grace or of
spiritual realization at the disposal of one priestly order cannot but possess their
equivalent elsewhere; and indeed, the more important and indispensable any particular
means of grace may be, the more certain is it that it will be found in all the orthodox
forms in a mode appropriate to the environment in question.
The foregoing can be summed up in the following formula: pure and absolute Truth can
only be found beyond all its possible expressions; these expressions, as such, cannot
claim the attributes of this Truth; their relative remoteness from it is expressed by their
differentiation and multiplicity, by which they are strictly limited. [TUR, The Limitations
of Exoterism]
In a certain respect, each religion is in the right versus the others, failing which any
exoterism would be nothing but a snare; but precisely, exoterism is by definition unable
of being conscious of the relationship which, at one and the same time, justifies it and yet
limits it. [TB, Cosmological and Eschatological Viewpoints]
Exoterism / Esoterism: To speak of exoterism is to speak also of esoterism, and this
means that the statements of the former are the symbols of the latter. [UI, The Path]
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