The Transfiguration of Man - Softcover

Frithjof Schuon

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0941532194 ISBN 13: 9780941532198

Publisher: World Wisdom, 2003

Synopsis

Schuon proposes a view of man contradictory to the image of modern psychology; he views human nature in relationship to God.

About this title

About the Author:

Frithjof Schuon is best known as the foremost spokesman of the religio perennis and as a philosopher in the metaphysical current of Shankara and Plato. Over the past 50 years, he has written more than 20 books on metaphysical, spiritual and ethnic themes as well as having been a regular contributor to journals on comparative religion in both Europe and America. Schuon's writings have been consistently featured and reviewed in a wide range of scholarly and philosophical publications around the world, respected by both scholars and spiritual authorities.

Schuon was born in 1907 in Basle, Switzerland, of German parents. As a youth, he went to Paris, where he studied for a few years before undertaking a number of trips to North Africa, the Near East and India in order to contact spiritual authorities and witness traditional cultures. Following World War II, he accepted an invitation to travel to the American West, where he lived for several months among the Plains Indians, in whom he has always had a deep interest. Having received his education in France, Schuon has written all his major works in French, which began to appear in English translation in 1953. Of his first book, The Transcendent Unity of Religions (London, Faber & Faber) T.S. Eliot wrote: "I have met with no more impressive work in the comparative study of Oriental and Occidental religion."

The traditionalist or "perennialist" perspective began to be enunciated in the West at the beginning of the twentieth century by the French philosopher Rene Guenon and by the Orientalist and Harvard professor Ananda Coomaraswamy. Fundamentally, this doctrine is the Sanatana Dharma--the "eternal religion"--of Hindu Vedantists. It was formulated in the West, in particular, by Plato, by Meister Eckhart in the Christian world, and is also to be found in Islam with Sufism. Every religion has, besides its literal meaning, an esoteric dimension, which is essential, primordial and universal. This intellectual universality is one of the hallmarks of Schuon's works, and it gives rise to many fascinating insights into not only the various spiritual traditions, but also history, science and art.

The dominant theme or principle of Schuon's writings was foreshadowed in his early encounter with a Black marabout who had accompanied some members of his Senegalese village to Switzerland in order to demonstrate their culture. When the young Schuon talked with him, the venerable old man drew a circle with radii on the ground and explained: "God is in the center, all paths lead to Him."

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Foreword

The image of man presented to us by modern psychology is not only fragmentary, it is pitiable. In reality, man is as if suspended between animality and divinity; now modern thought - be it philosophical or scientific - admits only animality, practically speaking.

We wish, on the contrary, to correct and perfect the image of man by insisting on his divinity; not that we wish to make a god of man, quod absit; we intend simply to take account of his true nature, which transcends the earthly, and lacking which he would have no reason for being.

It is this that we believe we can call--in a symbolist language--the "transfiguration of man."

The Garden

An Excerpt from The Transfiguration of Man

A man sees a beautiful garden, but he knows: he will not always see these flowers and bushes, because one day he will die; and he also knows: the garden will not always be there, because this world will disappear in its turn. And he knows also: this relationship with the beautiful garden is the gift of destiny, because if a man were to find himself in the middle of a desert, he would not see the garden; he sees it only because destiny has put him, man, here and not elsewhere.

But in the innermost region of our soul dwells the Spirit, and in it is contained the garden, as it were, like a seed; and if we love this garden--and how could we not love it since it is of a heavenly beauty?--we would do well to look for it where it has always been and always will be, that is to say in the Spirit; maintain yourself in the Spirit, in your own center, and you will have the garden and in addition all possible gardens. Similarly: in the Spirit there is no death, because here you are immortal; and in the Spirit the relationship between the contemplator and the contemplated is not only a fragile possibility; on the contrary, it is part of the very nature of the Spirit and, like it, it is eternal.

The Spirit is Consciousness and Will: Consciousness of oneself and Will towards oneself. Maintain yourself in the Spirit through Consciousness, and approach the Spirit through the Will or through Love; then neither death nor the end of the world can take away the garden from you nor destroy your vision. Whatever you are in the Spirit now, you will remain so after death; and whatever is yours in the Spirit now, will be yours after death. Before God there is neither being nor ownership except in the Spirit; whatever was outward must become inward and whatever was inward will become outward: look for the garden within yourself, in your indestructible divine Substance, which then will give you a new and imperishable garden.

About this edition

• Publisher: World Wisdom
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0941532194
• ISBN 13: 9780941532198
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 124