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Frithjof Schuon and Our Times

Source: Sophia, Vol. 4, No. 2, 1998.

Frithjof Schuon’s earthly life coincides almost exactly with the twentieth century during
which Western civilization has been witnessing the triumph of secularization through the largely
unchallenged assertion that man is the sovereign power here on earth.
Frithjof Schuon lived in the West, he spoke and wrote in Western languages, and thus he
delivered his universal message in the first place to the Western world. He lived in the midst of a
time of crisis, primarily characterized by a progressive disintegration of all traditional values and
beliefs, which is on the point of transforming human consciousness into an existentially
meaningless and aimless flow, as most notably expressed in the philosophy of Martin Heidegger.
This crisis is called “modernism”, and has been the subject of penetrating analysis by René
Guénon. It had its first important period of emergence during the late Middle Ages, with both
macrocosmic and microcosmic implications: macrocosmically, modernism implies that
nominalism is opposed to the idea that earthly things have heavenly prototypes, thus rejecting the
Platonic archetypes. Microcosmically, it involves a conceptualism, so successfully advocated by
William Ockham, which implies that the material world proclaimed by nominalism is only
experienced as real and true in the meeting between human sense organs and individual objects.
True knowledge of a higher spiritual reality is thus impossible, and must instead be the object of
faith. Consequently, there appears an incipient separation between heaven and earth, between
faith and knowledge. The world exists as a state of matter, a “multiverse” of “facts”, and man
can only obtain true knowledge about these “facts” by means of his own sense organs.
Man has thus exalted himself to be judge of what is real and unreal: man is “the measure of
all things”. The truth about the Real is no longer objective, but has become “subjective”, since it
is exclusively expressed via the mental faculties of an individual. The individual human, and thus
“subjective”, perception of the material world inevitably leads to a ruling “principle” for life:
everything is related to everything else: “everything is relative”.
The gates are now open for what was called via moderna, even during the late Middle Ages.
During the following centuries, the forces of secularization were indeed quick to exploit the
possibilities provided by continually new human “conquests”. There are essentially two main
avenues of approach, corresponding to man’s two nervous systems, the central and the
autonomic. Under the guiding star of rationalism, supported by logic, structural analysis, and
empiricism, and strongly connected to the conception of a causal nexus, positivistic profane
science carries out its crusade. In parallel with this rationalistic stream flows a river of
sensualism, striving for a good life, security without conflict, and “happiness”. Western
secularization and modernism develop primarily in these two powerful streams, constantly
conquering new domains, and constantly building castles in the air.
The time of triumph and final victory for the efforts of the “Kingdom of Man” seems to have
arrived in the middle of the twentieth century: the time of human supremacy and popular
sovereignty on earth. It is just now that the crisis, barely concealed beneath the antagonisms and
conquests of previous generations, becomes obvious and can no longer be hidden, in spite of
constant attempts to disguise it. The emptiness of life as an existential stream, its lack of purpose
as well as meaning, cannot be concealed, however many fires are lit on the altar of democracy. It
is in this epoch that Frithjof Schuon appears on the scene with his message and his writings.
The central element in Frithjof Schuon’s message can be expressed in one single word: the
Absolute. In opposition to the existential flow, in opposition to the increasing emptiness of the
material world, the world of phenomena, in opposition to the conception of existence as one-
dimensional, where “everything is relative”—in opposition to all of this, which has led to the
naked emergence of the spiritual crisis during the latter part of the twentieth century—in
opposition to all of this, Frithjof Schuon presents an unyielding alternative. The Absolute is the
Transcendent, beyond time and space in Its immutability and plenitude. We are not confronted
with a doctrine or with a theological construction: the Absolute Reality, understood as absolute,
immutable, total. A third aspect or dimension of the Absolute, is the Hierarchical. The Absolute
includes within Itself an order, a harmony, a structuralization, within Its own totality.
These three aspects of the Absolute—the totally immutable, the Real, and the Hierarchical—
are superficially contradictory, but in reality they open the way to a living Essence, from which
all life emanates. The Absolute as source of this Supreme Essence, the Divine Source from
which everything emanates, the Divine Sovereign Good, Plato’s agathon, is not a celestial
construction. The Absolute appears as God’s highest incomprehensible Essence, encompassing
everything in Its divine plenitude. This Essence expresses and encompasses Life, which becomes
an emanation.
We are thus faced with the great and incomprehensible mystery called the Creation. It is in
the Creation that we encounter the Infinite, primarily expressed in its modalities in time and
space, and in its creative radiations manifesting everything that lies encompassed within the
Creation itself, the All-Possible. This is why Frithjof Schuon connects the Absolute with the
Infinite. “Qui dit Absolu, dit Infini: l’Infinitude est un aspect intrinsèque de l’Absolu”. 1 It is

1
Frithjof Schuon, Du divin à l’humain, Paris: Le Courier du Livre, 1981, p. 41.
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precisely in His Infinity that God opens Himself, so to speak, for His creative acts, and His
Infinity in its turn opens a window onto the Possible.
The Infinite, immanent in the Absolute, an aspect of the Absolute, is indissolubly connected
with the Creation, and its mode of appearance is primarily in time and space, form and
multiplicity. Here again Frithjof Schuon makes a link to the Platonic Sovereign Good, agathon,
and this Good also has another aspect, originating in the Absolute: Perfection. Alternatively, as
Schuon expresses it in Du Divin a l’humain, Perfection is an “image”, “en image de l’Absolu
produite par le Rayonnement.” 2 We can say that the Creation is a Divine affirmation, which
Frithjof Schuon expresses as agathon, the Sovereign Good.
When Frithjof Schuon allows us meet the ultimate foundation of existence as the Absolute,
with all of its aspects, we are confronted with the Real, that simultaneously expresses the
Immutable, the all-encompassing totality. It is with the Absolute as the ultimate foundation of
existence that Schuon meets a world dominated by existentialism, atomism, relativism, and a
chaos of values. Like no one else in our time, Frithjof Schuon presents us with an alternative to
the growing consciousness in the twentieth century that we are in a deep crisis, in an existential
flow without foothold and without meaning, a state in which, ultimately, survival remains the
only motivation for human existence. He opens a dialogue of Truth, in which he confronts the
relative with the Absolute, the futile flow with the Immutable, and a subjective chaos of vision
and pragmatism with the Real.
The transcendent is in its essence a totality, and this totality expresses a unity, which at the
same time encompasses a multiplicity. The Creation as unity and multiplicity appears as a
duality, a world of order and harmony subordinate to the hierarchy of creation. Thus, God as the
Immutable and the totally Absolute comes to meet us in a creational process in which the
Absolute brings forth within Itself a duality: the Absolute and Its own relativity, the created,
encompassed by the divine transcendent unity, and simultaneously revealing Itself as
manifestation and multiplicity.
In the face of the overwhelming mystery called the Creation, in which the Absolute brings
forth Its own relativity, a duality encompassed by the transcendent unity, we encounter Being:
the Absolute, beyond definition, unqualified, appears as Its own “affirmation”. God cannot be
comprehended as “non-being”, as a negation, as a “nothingness”. It is thus that God’s “Self-
affirmation” becomes what we express conceptually as Being, and it is in this Being that
Creation has its foundation. God “ontologizes” Himself, if we may use this expression, and thus
Jehovah answers Moses from the burning bush: “I am that I am”. Creation, resting on the
foundation called Being, also has a beginning. Creation as an operative process must be brought
forth, and this is expressed in the opening words of the Gospel of St. John: In the beginning was
the Word, en arke en ho logos, and the Greek word arke is the Principle through which creation

2
Ibid., p. 42f.
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so to speak takes its first step into Being.
The ontology we encounter with Frithjof Schuon must however not be confused with the
corresponding concept in ancient Greek philosophy, the Aristotelian to on, as an abstract concept
on which profane existence rests, an ontology adopted in our times by Martin Heidegger. In
Schuon’s perspective, Being is encompassed by the Eternal as the Principle from which creation
emanates. Being is the uncreated and the non-manifested in the Logos, the divine order Itself. For
the ancient Greeks, Being was the abstract basis for the phenomenological existence which the
reflecting human being confronted with his conceptual faculties. For Heidegger, Being is the
pseudo-metaphysical “basis” for the flow of existence. Frithjof Schuon’s ontology is the living
spiritual alternative to the pseudo-metaphysical and pseudo-spiritual “thought products” we find
in the profane philosophical and theological so-called existential speculation of our time.
In Schuon’s ontology we thus encounter two principles, the Infinite and the Hierarchical,
which exist as aspects of the Absolute Itself. Here Frithjof Schuon allows us to encounter the
most basic elements of his metaphysics. Above everything is the divine, absolute Essence, but
due to one of the aspects included in the Absolute, namely the Infinite, the Absolute so to speak
descends to the level on which the divine is “ontologized”: the Divine appears as Being. Here we
encounter, as Schuon states in Approches du phénomène religieux, 3 Being as the “lesser”
Absolute, preserving Its divine immortality, but simultaneously opening Itself to a creation that
progressively deepens itself in the phenomenological, material world. Thus, two aspects of the
Absolute are revealed, one of which is Infinity, opening itself to the Possible, and with God’s
Omnipotence as the transcendent foundation. The other is the Hierarchical, shaping the ruling
structure of creation.
At this point we can see the basic features of Schuon’s, cosmology, the “pure” Absolute or
transcendent Beyond-Being, and the “lesser” Absolute, Being. 4 When Being, as pure spirituality,
divine and uncreated, appears as manifestation, as Logos, the creation has entered the stage at
which the boundary between the created and the uncreated is passed. This is symbolized, for
example, in the two faces of the Roman god Janus.
Here Schuon confronts us with the relative. The creation rests upon Being as its foundation,
which is uncreated, divine. The creational process proceeds to become more and more embedded
in phenomena and matter. A relationship arises between the divine source and its product, the
created. The source that produces the created is “above” its creation, i.e. the Divine is superior to
the created, the world. The Absolute is superior to the relative. There is an apparently obvious
connection to an intrinsic aspect of the Absolute, namely the Hierarchical. But here Schuon
confronts us with an example of an apparently obvious relationship which leads to questions that

3
Frithjof Schuon, Approches du phénomène religieux, Paris: Le Courier du Livre, 1982, pp.42f and 45.
4
Ibid., p. 45.
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must be answered.
The ongoing secularization is mainly characterized by the conviction that knowledge of
reality can only be obtained by man’s observations of the phenomenal world with his senses. The
endless diversity of material things and their mutual relationships are claimed to be reality.
Existence is experienced as a “multiverse” of relationships, and for the secularized man,
“everything is relative” appears more and more as an existential postulate. For the profane
twentieth century, this way of thinking provides a one-dimensional view of existence.
One of Frithjof Schuon’s contributions to meet and refute profane existentiality is his
examination of the concept “relative”. First of all there is the false conception which holds that
man is capable of comprehending reality by using only his physical senses, eventually aided by
instrumentation. This is however impossible because the senses are only part of the total
creation, and a part is not capable of comprehending the whole. Then there is another false
conception about reality associated with the first one, i.e. that presumes that these relationships
can be measured, and that this can be done only in quantitative terms, by means of measurements
in time and space. Furthermore, it is precisely such quantitative verifications which are the
cornerstone of modern science. But this mode of thinking is only concerned with the outside of
creation, so to speak, and the creation will remain incomprehensible as long as we do not
consider its inner, qualitative significance.
In stark contrast, Frithjof Schuon’s message declares that what we call the relative must
include a qualitative aspect, which in the final analysis is the Absolute Itself. Indeed, this is of
constitutive significance for the whole of creation. We cannot emphasize this strongly enough,
he writes, and it is here that he formulates what he calls the “relative Absolute”, the qualitative
Presence in everything created, which gives creation its hierarchical structure, and thus gives the
world its homogeneity. Schuon refutes the exclusive claims of modern science to provide a
verifiable explanation of the structure of the material world. At the same time, he dismisses
secularized one-dimensionality, and re-establishes the hierarchical nature of creation. 5
For the profane man in the twentieth century, existence, the world, is an undivided sensory
entity, with no transcendent connections, and modern theology provides increasingly unclear
answers. Frithjof Schuon’s work enters our century with a message of unparalleled clarity. In
opposition to the one-dimensional profane view of the world, he presents a creational order with
a hierarchical structure comprising the transcendent Beyond-Being and an ontology, Being, the
spiritual foundation for everything and the operative prerequisite for creation. “Heaven and
earth” are not two separate concepts. The Real is absolute Spirituality, the transcendent,
incomprehensible divine Essence, which brings forth everything that “is” and everything that
“becomes”. The creation, “the world”, is an outpouring, at the same time that it remains at rest in

5
Frithjof Schuon, Les stations de la sagesse, Paris: Buget/Chastel, 1958, pp. 40f and 57f; Avoir un centre,
Paris: Maisonneuve Larose, 1988, p. 127.
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its manifested totality in absolute Spirituality. “The world is naught, Atma is all” is what the
Vedanta says about the highest Reality, and this statement ultimately makes all of creation an
illusory reflection of this Reality.
In his own lifetime, Frithjof Schuon encounters secularization and godlessness in all its
confused and confusing final stages. He confronts our era with existence as an inner spiritual
reality, an inner order, whose outer, sensibly perceived state is full of existential contradictions.
The “outer and the inner” is a duality, simultaneously symbolical and real, to which Schuon
constantly returns. With this dialectical outer-inner, and with the hierarchy of the Divine Order,
Frithjof Schuon demolishes the false conception of the secularized world about itself as an
uncontradictory one-dimensionality.
When Schuon rejects the profane conception of the universal relativity of things, he instead
puts forward the inner and the outer as an intrinsic dialectical duality in the Creation: the relative
is ultimately not a quantitative relationship, but the bearer of an inner quality. The qualitative
thus becomes the manifested expression of the Creation as the bearer of an inner spirituality,
down to the very core of sensory phenomena. This microcosmic testimony expresses the
essential contents of Frithjof Schuon’s teachings on the unity of God and His work. God is
present in His Creation; He encompasses it, upholds it, and gives it life. “The world is naught,
Atma is all.”
Man is the center of Creation. Like no other creature, man has been endowed with spiritual
faculties as a result of which man, “the image of God”, has been given vicegerency in this
earthly existence, and consequently a responsibility for his life and his actions. In Schuon’s
work, man’s spiritual faculties, which give him this special place in Creation, are summed up in
the term “intelligence”. This term occupies an important position in Schuon’s teachings and
writings. Rational, logically discursive thinking; the faculties of emotion, memory and
imagination with its creativity, are all valuable gifts we have received. In addition to this “mortal
spirituality”, the Creator has given us a Spirit, an immortal Intellect, increatus et increabile, as
Meister Eckhart expressed it. Man is thus part of eternity, joined to the Divine Itself, and in
possession of the ability to conceive of and connect himself to the Absolute.
Secularized man, as we meet him in the twentieth century, relies entirely upon his mortal
sensory organs. His understanding of reality is that which he receives and acts upon with his
sense organs. By means of empirical data, structural analyses, model building, and postulated
“forces” and “laws” of nature, from whatever outer manifestations, the Creation may provide, he
attempts to form an “idea of the world”, an idea of a “reality” that he can control and dominate.
Contemporary secularized man lives in this illusory world, and refuses to realize that everything
is based on two fundamental mistakes: in the first place that his mental faculties are themselves
part of the totality he believes he can understand, that his thinking is only “un outil pour faire
des outils”, a tool for making other tools, as Henri Bergson so strikingly expressed it. Secondly,
he refuses to see that a created thing is related to its creator, and consequently limited by form,
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imperfection, and contradictions. Since secularized man sees only the outer manifestations of the
Creation, like Sisyphus he faces a hope-less task. In addition, the rational is analytical and
separative in its very nature, and is thus incapable of providing a unified coherent “theory of the
world”.
Secularized man believes he can obtain an objective, i.e. true, conception of reality by
means of his own thought processes. In fact, it is exactly the opposite: he enters his own
subjectivity, and his evidence is only what the sense organs can observe about how the outer
manifested forms of the Creation appear and how they are understood. The secularized world
claims to possess great authority because of the belief that it has evidence for the true and the
real in a pure and unadulterated form of objectivity. At the same time, this authority is presented
as a moral asset of the impartial scientific method, and it becomes part of the illusory conceptual
world in which secularized man lives. In his subjectivism, he winds up in a cul-de-sac, incapable
of obtaining a true picture of objectivity.
In dealing with the concepts associated with subjectivity-objectivity, Frithjof Schuon’s
message is also of very profound significance. For secularized man, experiencing his existence
as a one-dimensional sensory phenomenon, any concept of objectivity will be limited to such
phenomena, in a world of matter where empiricism, measurements in time and space, structural
analyses, and ideas about causal connections have unquestioned validity. This implies that man
experiences himself as the obvious subject, and the world of the senses as the equivalent object.
The hierarchical order proclaimed in Frithjof Schuon’s writings is sustained by the sovereignty
we express as the Absolute. The Subjective rests in this Divine Order, and that which called
“object” is thus the creational order whose source is the Absolute and whose manifested reality is
“the world”, and hence man himself.
This hierarchy characterizes the relationship between subject and object. God is the Subject
and His creation is the object. This is Schuon’s answer to the illusory view of existence, but it is
an elliptical way of expressing a more complicated reality which Schuon describes in many of
his works. The Subjective rests in the Absolute, but the Absolute “knows Itself”, and thus brings
forth the consciousness that reveals itself as gnosis. This mystical revelation of Immanence
makes man himself the bearer of his own God-affirming subjectivity. 6
God, the transcendent Absolute, is the source of subjectivity and of the consciousness that
reveals itself in the object, man as a receptacle for the Immanent. This means that man
participates in the subjectivity of consciousness, which in turn means that the subjective
objectifies itself. Secularized man believes that he encounters reality in the external multiplicity
and flow of material things. According to Frithjof Schuon, the objective is reality in itself; the
complementarity “subject-object” implies a meeting with the ultimate foundation of reality,

6
Avoir un centre, p.77.
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Being. We must see things as they are, and not as illusory representations. 7 Man, with his
intelligence and thus with his consciousness, is capable of comprehending the ultimate objective
foundation of existence, Being. This is what Schuon calls an expression of the human
prerogative. In his subordination under the Absolute, man has the status of “object”, a “mirror of
the Absolute”, and at the same time he is a prolongation of the divine Subjectivity. The object
and the subject meet and unite in the intellective Light that is a gift from God. 8
Reality is not a “multiverse”, an aimless and meaningless existential stream, reality is the
simultaneously transcendent and immanent foundation, Being, from which everything emanates
and through which everything comes into existence. The twentieth century increasingly reveals
the spiritual catastrophe brought about by secularization. All norms, standards, and principles of
order are threatened when all human activity finally results in heedless transgression beyond all
bounds. In Heidegger’s thinking we encounter a tragic insight into and consciousness of this
catastrophic situation, and when he tries to revive the to on (ontology) of antiquity, this pseudo-
metaphysical fantasy becomes as it were the coda of a great deal of speculation with no basis in
reality. Heidegger’s ideas issue forth as the “swan song” of profane western philosophy.
In this time of spiritual crisis, Frithjof Schuon appears with his declaration of the highest
Divine Reality, which as Beyond-Being is the source from which everything emanates, and as
Being and in Its immanent presence in creation gives existence life and meaning, gives man his
raison d’être and dignity. The ongoing secularization has led to a situation where not only
doubters and deniers, but also those who devote themselves to the Highest, are faced with
“problems” with no obvious solutions. Modernism has even affected theology, resulting in
confusion and uncertainties. This is especially true with respect to the concept of Omnipotence,
i.e. that everything in existence is totally dependent upon God.
Omnipotence is above all associated with two questions: what is the meaning of
predestination, and how can one explain that God, Who is said to be good, permits evil to exist in
the world? It is primarily in his book Comprendre l’Islam (p. 89ff) that Schuon deals with these
questions, by expounding the concept of a transcendent Reality and a closely connected,
subordinate existential order, Being, from which creation emanates. This is a divine hierarchical
order, which dialectically links the Absolute to the relative. Predestination assumes that God
must have knowledge “in advance” about events that will occur “in the future”. Since
contemporary man is bound up in his existentiality, this must seem to be an absurd assumption
right from the beginning. Furthermore, since Omnipotence implies that these events are included
in God’s immutable plan, the answer given by modern secularized man is that the future is

7
Ibid., pp. 73 and 76f.
8
Frithjof Schuon, L’Esotérisme comme principe et comme voie, Paris: Dervy Livres, 1975, pp. 16, 34 and
41.

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determined by positivism, that the “destiny” of the future lies in mankind’s hands, in our own
positive efforts. In the gradually increasing theological confusion, the believer, more and more
influenced by positivism, finds no answers either.
Schuon’s answer is that the Divine Order Itself is sovereign. The hierarchical order of
creation, understood as a principal basis, emanates from the transcendent Absolute. God, in His
absolute transcendence, is absolutely free, exalted above anything that is bound by time and
space, but in the Divine Being there is what we call the hierarchical order of creation, as an
intrinsic existential order. The creational process originates and develops according to this order.
In the creation, dominated by time and space, a concept such as predestination becomes
incomprehensible, and it is also inaccessible to earthly human consciousness. Predestination
belongs to the transcendent Absolute, the Divine Being, where timelessness prevails, where there
is neither “before” nor “after”.
It should be strongly emphasized that the hierarchical order of creation occupies an
important place in Frithjof Schuon’s teaching. This order is pre-existential, it is the principal
order upon which the creation-to-be rests, and it is immutable. When theological aberrations
culminate in the idea that God’s omnipotence encompasses a Will, which would mean that any
event can be abolished or reversed by an act of divine Will, the hierarchical order of creation
constitutes an immutable hindrance to such speculations. God cannot make done undone, He
cannot change justice to injustice, truth to falsehood. This is why Schuon does not give the Fall
of Man a dominant place in the Judeo-Christian story of creation: it is not the Tree of the
knowledge of good and evil, it is the Tree in the midst of Eden that becomes the center of
Paradise, because the Tree of Life is a symbol for the hierarchical order of creation.
This order is in Being, the Logos, but Being has a divine, uncreated aspect, which becomes
manifested in creation as an ongoing process. It is in uncreated Being that we encounter the
hierarchical order of creation, which is thus understood as pre-existent. Creation means duality
and relativity, a relationship between something superior ,and something subordinate. In view of
this relationship, the concept of power becomes meaningful. God is Omnipotent in His creation,
but the immutable hierarchical order of creation is encompassed within this power. Here Frithjof
Schuon gives an answer to the second question that arises when man ponders over God’s
Omnipotence: why does evil exist, if God is declared to be Good?
When we encounter the hierarchical order of creation on the existential level, we are
continually faced with limitations and contradictions. Creation is form, and form is limitation,
contradiction, and thus all ideological belief systems are powerless to realize their dreams of a
conflict-free existence, “a Heaven on earth”. The work of creation is related to, and subordinate
to, the Creator, and thus, due to its confinement in form, it is also subordinate to the conditions of
the hierarchical order, however much we may strive to avoid its effects. We fight against
illnesses, and we manage to cure many of them, but illness as such cannot be abolished. We
strive and pray for peace on earth, but we must live with existential contradictions, as we meet
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them in fraternal conflicts. We meet suffering, we meet evil, and in our helplessness we tend to
give all of this a principial significance: evil as such. In Frithjof Schuon’s writings, even this
question is answered.
The entire creation is a radiation of the Sovereign Good, an expression of God’s outpouring
love. This positive radiation carries within itself its own negation, which is manifested in
existential contradictions. As Schuon expresses it, in the prolongation of the creation, negation
and denial finally appear. To the plus sign must be added the minus sign, so to speak. It is in
negation and denial that we encounter evil, but evil is and must remain a negation, subordinate to
the power of destruction expressed by God’s Omnipotence.
The unique position of Frithjof Schuon’s message is especially characterized by the fact that
he provides an answer to the spiritual misery of our times. His message is an alternative to the
spiritual crisis of the twentieth century, which contemporary secularized man cannot resolve.
Frithjof Schuon was not a reformer, who would reestablish “lost values” and make “promises”
for the future. The deepest significance of Frithjof Schuon’s message is an unveiling of the Real,
formulated as a Truth expressing this Reality as sophia perennis. When we say that this is an
alternative to the plight of our times, we mean that this is a message that bears within it the
attributes of eternity and plentitude.
In the long chain of esoteric tradition there are many links to which Frithjof Schuon often
chooses to make reference. René Guénon was a thinker of great importance as an interpreter of
oriental wisdom and as an interpreter of fundamental symbols in a world of materialistic idolatry.
His interpretations, together with his penetrating criticism of modernism, comprise spiritual
works of pioneering significance in a world sinking into spiritual darkness.
However, Frithjof Schuon’s work is connected in a special way with two historical figures.
Plato rejected the secularized world of the ancient Greeks by means of his speculative
philosophizing, his ontology, and his dualism. Plato’s profound work was that he reestablished
transcendent reality, i.e. the position of the Spirit as predominant, uncontradictory unity, and the
presence of the Spirit as a guiding light for the human soul. Plato’s spiritual work has been a
source of guidance for two and a half millennia. It is Shankara who formulated the eternal truths
of the Vedanta for posterity in an understandable way. From the Vedantic Plana, the knowledge
of the Real, Shankara extracts the pure Subject, the pure Self. Shankara proclaims an
objectification of the Real as a totality, and hence he becomes, as Frithjof Schuon writes, the
paver of the great path to gnosis.
Looking back in time, we like to pause before historical figures who have produced a legacy
of spiritual work that is characterized by timelessness, the Eternal. We pause before three names:
Plato, Shankara, Frithjof Schuon.

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