The Perennial Philosophy, the Sophia
Perennis, is the knowledge of the world in its essence, as it really
is; it is the truth that makes possible clarity and serenity, awareness of
things as they are, so that we can live meaningful lives. It is both the
immediate truth—the
relative reality in which we struggle to live, and the transcendent Truth
and Divine Reality reflected in our finite and relative worlds. When we
see the Truth through intellectual intuition, through the eye of the heart
that sees beyond reason and the senses, we find our home, the "one
thing needful" that pulls us toward the Self, toward our center. The
Sophia Perennis connects us to the Divine, to the sacred in the world, and
to an awareness of the Goodness, Beauty, and Love that is everywhere in
creation.
"Strictly
speaking, there is but one sole philosophy, the Sophia Perennis;
it is also—envisaged in its integrality—the only religion. Sophia
has two possible origins, one timeless and the other temporal; the first
is "vertical" and discontinuous, and the second,
"horizontal" and continuous; in other words, the first is like
the rain that at any moment can descend from the sky; the second is like
a stream that flows from a spring. Both modes meet and combine:
metaphysical Revelation actualizes the intellective faculty, and once
awakened, this gives rise to spontaneous and independent intellection." -Frithjof
Schuon, The
Transfiguration of Man
"Everything
has already been said, and even well said; but it is always necessary to
recall it anew, and in so doing, do what has always been done: to
actualize in thought the certitudes contained, not in the thinking ego,
but in the transpersonal substance of the human intelligence. Inasmuch
as it is human, intelligence is total, hence essentially capable of the
sense of the Absolute and correspondingly, of the sense of the relative;
to conceive the Absolute is also to conceive the relative as such, and
consequently to perceive in the Absolute the roots of the relative and,
within the relative, the reflections of the Absolute." - Frithjof
Schuon, Echoes
of Perennial Wisdom
Listen to
Martin Lings on line: Metaphysics
and the Perennial Philosophy
