Frithjof Schuon and René Guénon
by
Martin Lings
The following is the text of a talk
given
at the Temenos Academy on July 14,
1999 to
an audience by no means altogether
familiar
with the writings of these two men.
In the title of this talk the name
Schuon
is put before that of Guénon because
it will
be mainly about Schuon, as a sequel
to the
talk I gave two years ago on Guénon
alone.
1 But in principle their message is
one and
the same. The main theme of both is
esoterism,
that is, the inner aspect of religion
summed
up by Christ in his affirmation that
"The
Kingdom of Heaven is within you"
and
also "Seek and ye shall find;
knock
and it shall be opened unto you."
Inevitably they wrote about exoterism
also
because although some rites are purely
esoteric,
the main obligatory rites of a religion
which
are exoteric as performed by the vast
majority
become esoteric when performed by the
minority
of esoterists. In other words, subjectively
speaking, the aspirations of the majority
stop short at salvation, whereas the
aspirations
of the minority stop short at nothing
less
than sanctification. It is true that
there
are many degrees of sanctification,
and in
consequence esoterism consists of circles
within circles, for "many are
called
but few are chosen". But this
fact does
not figure largely in our present context,
since Guénon and Schuon never allow
their
readers to forget that spiritual aspiration
in the full sense will be satisfied
with
nothing less than the Supreme Identity,
that
is the actual realization that one's
true
self is none other than that One, Absolute,
Infinite Perfection which we name God.
Both writers are in agreement about
essentials,
but very different in their manner
of expression.
Guénon of course was the pioneer, and
already
as a young man he saw clearly that
in the
West human intelligence, generally
speaking,
had come to be left out of religion.
It no
longer participated in the things of
the
spirit, and he was acutely conscious
of the
need to express spiritual truths in
such
a way as to win back the intelligences
of
virtually intelligent men and women
for the
only object that could truly satisfy
them,
namely Divine Reality, the Object for
which
intelligence exists. To do this, in
a world
increasingly rife with heresy and pseudo-religion,
he had to remind twentieth century
man of
the need for orthodoxy, which presupposes
firstly a Divine Revelation and secondly
a Tradition that has handed down with
fidelity
what Heaven has revealed. He thus restores
to orthodoxy its true meaning, rectitude
of opinion which compels the intelligent
man not only to reject heresy but also
to
recognize the validity of faiths other
than
his own if they also are based on the
same
two principles, Revelation and Tradition.
Guénon's function as pioneer went,
no doubt
providentially, with a style of writing
wherein
he could be likened to an archer. His
teachings
came forth like arrow after arrow,
shot from
a basis of unwavering certitude and
hitting,
in the vast majority of cases, the
very center
of the target. The undeniable attraction
that lies in such spontaneity explains
the
immense attraction that Guénon's writings
continue to have for his readers. It
is true
that there is a danger of simplification
in such a style, and also, inevitably,
one
or two arrows went wide of the mark.
But
Schuon has shown himself to be a providential
complement to Guénon.
An aspect of the difference between
the two
writers was bought home to me in connection
with one of Guénon's masterpieces,
The Reign
of Quantity. I had the privilege of
being
the first person to read this book
which
the author gave me chapter by chapter.
When
it was finished he said: "Now
I will
write a fair copy of it." But
the fair
copy proved to be almost identical
with the
so-called "rough copy", whereas
when Schuon wrote a fair copy many
changes
were made in the process, nor was there
any
guarantee, to say the least, that the
fair
copy would not become itself a rough
copy
for a still fairer copy. Not that he
had
any difficulty writing, and he himself
also
'shot arrows' in his own particular
way.
But he never simplified, and he was
exceedingly
conscious of the extreme complexity
of the
truth on certain planes, nor was he
easily
satisfied that he had done justice
to that
complexity.
It is typical of him to go as far as
is legitimately
possible to meet, on their own ground,
the
holders of an opinion against which
he is
arguing. In other words, his theses
are worked
out in detail with all possible objections
foreseen, given their due, and outweighed.
By way of example, in The Transcendent
Unity
of Religions, he broaches the question
of
missionaries -- in particular Christian
missionaries,
since the book is primarily for the
modern
West. He does justice to the life of
sacrifice
led by most missionaries and admits
that
in some cases it has subjectively even
a
mystical value. He allows that there
are
relatively rare cases where an individual
is more suited to a religion other
than that
of the world where he or she was born
and
brought up. But he reminds us also
-- I quote his words: "It is possible
to pass from one religious form to
another
without being converted." He adds
that
this may happen -- again to use his
actual
words "for reasons of esoteric
and therefore
spiritual expediency". He gives
no example,
and then passes on. But we will stop
here
for a moment because the first examples
that
spring to mind are those of the two
men who
are the theme of this talk. Both Guénon
and
Schuon were brought up as Christians
and
both, at a certain stage of their lives,
made the change from Christianity to
Islam.
At first thought the "spiritual
expediency"
in question might seem to be, in both
cases,
the presence of a great spiritual Master
in the religion to which the change
was made
and the absence of his counterpart
in the
other, and this is certainly the true
explanation
of the subsequent changes which took
place
along the same lines, for although
Schuon
had many disciples who had been brought
up
as Muslims, the majority were of Christian
or Jewish origin. But on second thoughts,
as regards Guénon and Schuon themselves,
the above explanation is not convincing.
It is true that Guénon received a Sufi
initiation
from one of the representatives of
an eminent
Egyptian Sufi Shaykh whom he never
met, but
to whom, later in life, he dedicated
his
book The Symbolism of the Cross; and
it is
also true that Schuon became the disciple
of the great Algerian Sufi Shaykh Ahmed
al-`Alawî
whose successor he undoubtedly was.
But in
his article 'A Note on René Guénon'2
Schuon
makes it clear that in his opinion
Guénon
was altogether exceptional, a man who
did
not need a path and who did not need
guidance,
but who had a message for mankind which
was
of universal import, and he needed
a setting
for himself which was in harmonious
correspondence
with that message. Moreover when we
read
this article we are conscious that
in certain
respects Schuon is also writing about
himself;
and for his part he had not only a
message
similar to that of Guénon, but he was
also
a born spiritual master, and to exercise
that function he would need to become
a link
in the chain of spiritual succession
of some
truly esoteric order. More precisely,
the
way on which he was so eminently qualified
to give guidance was a way of knowledge
rather
than a way of love. In other words,
it was
just such a way as the way towards
which
Guénon's message pointed, a way which,
to
say the least, is most untypical of
the Christian
mysticism of our times. To sum up,
we have
here two men, conscious from their
earliest
years of being strangers here below
and in
urgent need of the least uncongenial
setting
possible which the alien territory
of this
world could offer them. I am not presuming
to trace out here, in this last sentence
and what precedes it, an exact train
of thought
for either man, but anything that they
themselves
did not foresee would have been foreseen
by Providence; and as for the ordained
setting,
let us allow ourselves to be wise after
the
event and to see, as regards the three
world
religions which are more open to receiving
adherents from outside themselves than
Hinduism
and Judaism are, that Heaven appears
to have
given, generally speaking, the East
to Buddhism
and the West to Christianity, whereas
the
Quran reminds Muslims that they are
"a
middle people". It is in fact
clear
that Islam is something of a bridge
between
the East and the West, and this favors
the
universality of the message in question.
Moreover Sufism, the inner aspect of
Islam,
is predominantly a way of knowledge;
and
the Quran itself is implacably universalist,
with a vastness which goes far beyond
the
capacity of the average Muslim. These
two
changes of religious form and those
of Schuon's
disciples cannot possibly be called
"conversions"
in the ordinary sense of the word,
because
the former religion is still loved
and revered
at the same level as the newly adopted
religion.
Such possibilities far transcend the
domain
of the missionaries which was our starting
point, and to which we now return.
Our ready
acceptance of the truth expressed in
the
title of Schuon's book The Transcendent
Unity
of Religions leads us to hope for some
arguments
that spring directly from that truth,
nor
does Schuon disappoint us. In connection
with attempts to convert Hindus to
Christianity
he writes:
Brahmins are invited to abandon completely
a religion that has lasted for several
thousands
of years, one that has provided the
spiritual
support of innumerable generations
and has
produced flowers of wisdom and holiness
down
to our times. The arguments brought
forward
to justify this extraordinary demand
are
in no wise logically conclusive nor
do they
bear any proportion to the magnitude
of the
demand: the reasons that the Brahmins
have
for remaining faithful to their spiritual
patrimony are therefore infinitely
stronger
than the reasons by which it is sought
to
persuade them to cease being what they
are.
The disproportion, from the Hindu point
of
view, between the immense reality of
the
Brahmanic tradition and the insufficiency
of the Christian counter-arguments
is such
as to prove quite sufficiently that
had God
wished to submit the world to one religion
only, the arguments put forward on
behalf
of this religion would not be so feeble,
nor those of certain so-called 'infidels'
so powerful. 3
Equally unanswerable is Schuon's refutation
of the claim that Islam is a pseudo-religion:
That God should have allowed a religion
that
was merely the invention of a man to
conquer
a part of humanity and to maintain
itself
for more than a thousand years in a
quarter
of the inhabited world, thus betraying
the
love, faith and hope of a multitude
of sincere
and fervent souls -- this again is
contrary
to the laws of the Divine Mercy, or,
in other
words, to those of Universal Possibility.
4
The book from which the last two quotations
come, The Transcendent Unity of Religions,
published in French just over two years
before
Guénon's death, was the only book of
Schuon's
that Guénon read, and he had the highest
praise for it, especially for a chapter
entitled
'The Universality and Particular Nature
of
the Christian Religion' which might
be said
to fill in some gaps left by Guénon
himself.
The title of another of Schuon's books,
Esoterism
as Principle and as Way, may be said
to sum
up his writings as a whole. But to
sum up
Guénon's writings it would have to
be changed
to 'Esoterism as Principle with a view
to
the Way'. Guénon never lost sight of
the
Way, and indeed it might be said that
one
ofhis chief themes was 'the way to
the Way',
but he did not write about the spiritual
path directly whereas Schuon did, being
himself
a spiritual master with many souls
under
his care, and in consequence his writings
are rich in psychological observations
of
the utmost importance. Jung once remarked,
not without sagacity: "The soul
is the
object of modern psychology. Unfortunately
it is also the subject." But it
may
be doubted whether Jung realized how
fully
this amounts to a condemnation of the
modern
science in question. In traditional
civilizations
it was taken for granted that the soul
can
only be examined from a level higher
than
itself, that is, from a spiritual level.
The priests were the recognized authorities.
And when Schuon speaks about the soul
we
spontaneously accept what he says in
the
certitude that he is speaking from
a level
which transcends the psychic domain.
Let
me say in passing that Schuon was remarkably
aquiline in appearance, so much so
that the
Sioux Indians who adopted him into
their
tribe would refer to his followers
as "the
eagle people".
After he had come to live in Indiana,
he
was visited every year by a Crow medicine
man, Thomas Yellowtail. And Schuon
once remarked
to me that some people might find these
regular
visits surprising but that the explanation
was very simple. In his own words:
"Yellowtail
is profoundly conscious of being a
priest
by his very nature and he senses the
same
consciousness in me, despite the many
outward
differences between us".
I must mention here, without having
time
to dwell on it, that a remarkable aspect
of Schuon's psychological penetration
is
to be seen in his fascinating book
Castes
and Races. It is in a sense doubly
fascinating,
because of the infectious quality of
Schuon's
own fascination, fascinated as he was
by
the differences and the relationships
between
the castes and by the wealth of variety
to
be seen in the races. There is a third
chapter,
equally enthralling, on art, a subject
which,
when it is not in the foreground is
often
in the background of his writings,
for he
himself was an artist, in the double
capacity
of painter and poet
For the first half of this century
it is
not on Guénon but on Coomaraswamy that
we
have to rely as regards the artistic
dimension.
But though this dimension is somewhat
strangely,
absent from Guénon's writings, we must
remember
with immense gratitude all that he
bas written
about symbols, and symbolism is the
language
of sacred art. Schuon once said to
me: "On
symbolism Guénon is unbeatable."
In
actual fact we always spoke French
together,
and when he said: "Sur le symbolisme
Guénon est imbattable," he banged
his
fist on the table three times, once
for each
syllable of "imbattable".
Schuon demands total commitment to
the way:
"Knowledge saves only on condition
that
it enlists all that we are. Metaphysical
knowledge is sacred. It is the right
of sacred
things to demand of man all that he
is."5
What is that all? The answer to this
question
is the theme of a chapter in Esoterism
entitled
'The Triple Nature of Man' and much
of his
other writings are concerned with this
threefold
totality. To sum up, it is a question
of
knowing, willing, and loving the Divine
Reality;
and since the Way demands perpetual
consciousness
of this triad, for easy remembrance
Schuon
often words it Comprehension, Concentration,
Conformation. The faculties in question
are
intelligence, will and soul or character
and they correspond respectively to
the Truth,
the Way and Virtue, that is to doctrine,
method and morals. It might be objected
that
both the intelligence and the will
are faculties
of the soul. But in man as he was created
and as he seeks to become they infinitely
transcend the human plane: only at
its lowest
extremity does the intelligence enter
into
the psychic substance, and only the
most
superficial extremity of the will is
human
in the limited sense of the word. The
intelligence
is a ray of light proceeding from the
Divine
Truth, and the will is rooted in the
Divine
Self. One of the first problems of
the Way
is that for profane man intelligence
and
the will have been reduced to becoming
the
soul's means of satisfying its desires.
They
are the servants and it is the master.
The
Way begins on the understanding that
henceforth
the so-called master must follow the
directives
of its one time servants. That is not
easy,
and to begin with the psychic elements
are
divided amongst themselves, the majority
submitting readily enough to the change
--
otherwise there could be no question
of the
Way -- but the remainder in varying
degrees
of being unreconciled or undecided.
Comprehension, Concentration, Conformation:
the soul must conform by virtue. But
it retains
a certain power because without its
conformity,
without its love, without its assimilation
of the qualities of the Beloved by
participating
in them through the virtues, no spiritual
progress can be made. A whole section
of
Esoterism as Principle and as Way is
entitled
'The Virtues in the Way.'
Guénon avoids the moral issue, possibly
because
he was conscious of a widespread reaction,
in his own generation, against unintelligent
moralism. But Schuon dwells on this
dimension
in his own unmoralistic way, with considerable
stress on the importance of outward
beauty,
whether it be of nature or of art,
as a prolongation
of the inward beauty of virtue. Of
his disciples
he demanded beauty of soul as an altogether
obligatory basis without which the
intelligence
and the will cannot operate as they
should.
He continually quoted in writing and
in speech,
the Platonic dictum "Beauty is
the splendor
of the True", in the sense that
inversely,
if that splendor is lacking, it means
that
the Truth is not fully present.
I would like now to draw attention
to a particular
characteristic of Schuon which might
be termed
"spiritual common sense".
I think
I have heard him use on occasion this
very
term. The following passage is a typical
example:
One cannot subject oneself to a constraining
idea -- or seek to transcend oneself
for
the sake of God -- without bearing
in one's
soul what psychoanalysts call 'complexes';
this means in fact that there are complexes
which are normal for a spiritual man
or simply
for a decent man and that, conversely,
the
absence of 'complexes' is not necessarily
a virtue, to say the least. 6
Another example is in the following
passage,
which also serves to express an aspect
of
what Schuon aims at doing through his
books.
It serves the same purpose as regards
Guénon
also, who would have totally agreed
with
it; and it illustrates a difference,
for
it very clearly comes from Schuon's
pen and
not from his.
It must be admitted that the progressists
are not entirely wrong in thinking
that there
is something in religion which no longer
works; in fact the individualistic
and sentimental
argumentation with which traditional
piety
operates has lost almost all its power
to
pierce consciences, and the reason
for this
is not merely that modern man is irreligious
but also that the usual religious arguments,
through not probing sufficiently to
the depth
of things and not having had previously
any
need to do so, are psychologically
somewhat
outworn and fail to satisfy certain
needs
of causality. If human societies degenerate
on the one hand with the passage of
time,
they accumulate on the other hand experiences
in virtue of old age, however intermingled
with errors their experience may be;
this
paradox is something that any pastoral
teaching
should take into account, not by drawing
new directives from the general error
but
on the contrary by using arguments
of a higher
order, intellectual rather than sentimental;
as a result some at least would be
saved
-- a greater number than one might
be tempted
to suppose -- whereas the demagogic
scientistic
pastoralist saves no one. 7
Another different example of Schuon's
down-to-earth
common sense is in the following passage,
though here it would be better to say
up-to-Heaven
common sense, and not only here but
elsewhere,
for the point of view is always celestial:
Imagine a radiant summer sky and imagine
simple folk who gaze at it, projecting
into
it their dream of the hereafter; now
suppose
that it were possible to transport
these
simple folk into the dark and freezing
abyss
of the galaxies and nebulae with its
overwhelming
silence. In this abyss all too many
of them
would lose their faith, and this is
precisely
what happens as a result of modern
science,
both to the learned and to the victims
of
popularization. What most men do not
know
-- and if they could know it, why should
we have to ask them to believe it?
-- is
that this blue sky, though illusory
as an
optical error and belied by the vision
of
interplanetary space, is nonetheless
an adequate
reflection of the Heaven of Angels
and the
Blessed and that therefore, despite
everything,
it is this blue mirage, flecked with
silver
clouds, which is right and will have
the
final say; to be astonished at this
amounts
to admitting that it is by chance that
we
are here on earth and see the sky as
we do.
8
It might seem unexpected that Schuon,
who,
unlike Guénon had an esoteric function,
should
have written much more than Guénon
did about
each religion as a whole, its outer
as well
as its inner aspect. But he did this
partly
for the enlightenment of his disciples,
for
a way of knowledge in the full sense
calls
for a certain understanding of the
Divine
economy of things. I say partly because
he
did it also for his own satisfaction.
He
once said to me: "If there was
a religion
which I did not love, I would not rest
until
I loved it." For him the religions
were
among the great signs of God, each
one to
be marveled at, and he demanded this
attitude
from his disciples insofar as they
were capable
of it.
What is not generally known however
is that
he wrote some texts exclusively for
them
and not for publication, though certain
passages
have been incorporated into some of
his later
books. These texts, about 1200 in number,
most of them consisting of only one
page,
may be said to belong to the innermost
center
of Sufism, and by extension to all
other
innermost spiritual centers; and since
every
true center has its radiations, we
will give
here two examples.
The first, of which we will only give
the
central part, is entitled 'The Chain
of Quintessences'.
The quintessence of the world is man.
The
quintessence of man is religion. The
quintessence
of religion is prayer. The quintessence
of
prayer is invocation. Here lies the
meaning
of the Quranic verse: The invocation
of God
is greater [than anything else]. If
man had
no more than a few instants to live,
he would
no longer be able to do anything but
invoke
God. He would thereby fulfill all the
demands
of prayer, of religion, of the human
state.
The second of these texts is entitled
'The
Two Great Moments', and with it I will
close
my talk.
There are two moments in life which
are everything,
and these are the present moment, when
we
are free to choose what we would be,
and
the moment of death when we no longer
have
any choice and the decision belongs
to God.
Now, if the present moment is good,
death
will be good; if we are now with God
-- in
this present which is ceaselessly being
renewed
but which remains always this one and
only
moment of actuality -- God will be
with us
at the moment of death. The remembrance
of
God is a death in life; it will be
a life
in death. 9
Notes
1. Sophia, Vol. I, No. 1, Summer 1995,
pp.
21-37.
2. Studies in Comparative Religion.
Vol.
17, no. 1.
3. The Transcendent Unity of Religions,
Wheaton
(Illinois): Theosophical Publishing
House,
1984, pp. 30-31.
4. Ibid., p. 37.
5. Spiritual Perspectives and Human
Facts,
London: Perennial Books, 1970, p. 138.
6. Esoterism as Principle and as Way,
p.
125.
7. In the Face of the Absolute, Bloomington
(Indiana): World Wisdom Books, 1989,
pp.
89-90.
8. Understandinglslam, Bloomington
(Indiana):
World Wisdom Books, 1994, p. 137.
9. Echoes of Perennial Wisdom, p. 39. |
Evans Experientialism 
