glossary of terms used by frithjof schuon - Sophia Perennis

or this Divine Face turned towards man “want” or “desire”? The most concise answer
seems to us to be the following: if the Divine Essence, being infinite, tends to manifest
itself by projecting its innumerable potentialities into the finite, the Divine Face, for its
part, operates this projection and then – at a more relative level – projects within this first
projection a principle of coordination, among other things a Law intended to regulate the
human world and above all to regulate this miniature world that is the individual. This
Face is thus like a sheaf of rays with diverse functions; a Face which, although it issues
from the same Divine Order, does not amount to a single subjectivity with a moral
intention; thus it is vain to seek behind the infinitely diverse combinations of the veil of
Maya an anthropomorphic and humanly graspable personality. [IFA, The Decisive
Intuition]
God is the Absolute, and being the Absolute, He is equally the Infinite; being both the
Absolute and the Infinite, intrinsically and without duality, He is also the Perfect.
Absoluteness is reflected in space by the point or the center; in time, by the movement or
the present; in matter, by ether, which vehicles energy; in form, by the sphere; in number,
by unity.
Infinitude, for its part, determines space by extension; time, by duration; matter, by
substantial indefiniteness; form, by the limitless diversity of formal possibilities; number,
by quantitative limitlessness.
As for the divine Perfection – from which all manifested perfections derive – it is
reflected in space by the contents of matter inasmuch as they express either simple
existence, or the divine Qualities which space vehicles. [FDH, Structure and Universality
of the Conditions of Existence]
Indeed, God is ineffable, nothing can describe Him or enclose Him in words; but on the
other hand, truth exists, that is to say that there are conceptual points of reference which
sufficiently convey the nature of God; otherwise our intelligence would not be human,
which amounts to saying that it would not exist, or simply that it would be inoperative
with respect to what constitutes the reason for man’s intelligence.
God is both unknowable and knowable, a paradox which implies – on pain of absurdity –
that the relationships are different, first of all on the plane of mere thought and then in
virtue of everything that separates mental knowledge from that of the heart; the first is a
“perceiving,” and the second a “being.” “The soul is all that it knows,” said Aristotle; it is
necessary to add that the soul is able to know all that it is; and that in its essence it is none
other than That which is, and That which alone is. [FDH, Structure and Universality of
the Conditions of Existence]
It is important never to lose sight of the fact that the term “God” designates the Divinity,
either in all its possible aspects – hence also beyond every aspect – or in some particular
aspect, notably that of the Creator. It is necessarily thus because this term cannot contain
in itself a privative nuance. [FDH, Structure and Universality of the Conditions of
Existence]
It should be noted here that the word “God” does not and cannot admit of any restriction
for the simple reason that God is “all that is purely principial” and that He is thus also –
and a fortiori – Beyond-Being; this one may not know or may deny, but one cannot deny
that God is “That which is supreme” and therefore also That which nothing can surpass.
[LS, The Vedanta]
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