To Have a Center (Library of Traditional Wisdom) - Softcover

Frithjof Schuon

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0941532097 ISBN 13: 9780941532099

Publisher: World Wisdom, 2003

Synopsis

A collection of essays on a remarkable variety of subjects, from the order of first principles to a wide range of their applications.

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

Quite paradoxically, it is sometimes more difficult to find a title than to write a book; one always knows what one wishes to say, but one does not always know what to call it. It is true that the difficulty does not result from the nature of things, for one could follow the example of Rumi and entitle a work A Book Which Contains What It Contains (Kitab fihi ma fihi); but we live in a world which is little inclined to accept such a defiance of usage and which obliges us to remain within a relative intelligibility. Thus we will choose the title of the first chapter: "To Have a Center," which introduces in its way the subsequent chapters, treating of anthropology at all its levels and also, further on, of metaphysics and spiritual life.

There is the order of principles, which is immutable, and the order of information--traditional or otherwise--of which one can say that it is inexhaustible: on the one hand, not everything in this book will be new for our usual readers and, on the other hand, they will nonetheless find here precisions and illustrations which may have their usefulness. One never has too many keys in view of the "one thing needful," even if these points of reference be indirect and modest.

We acknowledge that this volume contains subjects which are very unequal: one will find a chapter on the art of translating, another on vestimentary art and another still on a question of astronomy. But in spirituality every thing is related: one always has the right to project the light of principles onto subjects of lesser importance, and it is a matter of course that one often is obliged to do so. As the Duke of Orleans said: "All that is national is ours" which we paraphrase in recalling that all that is normally human, hence virtually spiritual, enters ipso facto into our perspective; and "it takes all kinds to make a world."

After what we have just said, the question may be asked whether the sophia perennis is a "humanism", the answer would in principle be "yes," but in fact it must be "no" since humanism in the conventional sense of the term de facto exalts fallen man and not man as such. The humanism of the moderns is practically a utilitarianism aimed at fragmentary man; it is the will to make oneself as useful as possible to a humanity as useless as possible. As to integral anthropology, we intend, precisely, to give an account of it in the present book.

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Excerpts from To Have a Center

"Man possesses a soul, and to have a soul means to pray.... The great lesson of prayer is that our relationship with the world depends essentially on our relationship with Heaven." --from "Fundamental Keys"

"What we wish to suggest in most of our considerations on modern genius is that humanistic culture, insofar as it functions as an ideology and therefore as a religion, consists essentially in being unaware of three things: firstly, of what God is, because it does not grant primacy to Him; secondly, of what man is, because it puts him in the place of God; thirdly, of what the meaning of life is, because this culture limits itself to playing with evanescent things and to plunging into them with criminal unconsciousness." -- from "To Have a Center"

"When God is removed from the universe, it becomes a desert of rocks or ice; it is deprived of life and warmth, and every man who still has a sense of the integrally real refuses to admit that this should be reality; for if reality were made of rocks, there would be no place in it for flowers or any beauty or sweetness whatsoever." --from "Primacy of Intellection"

"Every human being must, through love of God, strive to 'be what he is' to disengage himself from the artificial superstructures that disfigure him and which are none other than the traces of the Fall, in order to become once again a tree whose root is liberating certitude and whose crown is beatific serenity. Human nature is predisposed towards the unitive knowledge of its Divine Model." --from "Fundamental Keys"

About this edition

• Publisher: World Wisdom
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0941532097
• ISBN 13: 9780941532099
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 184