Quotes from Frithjof Schuon

Ungrateful are those on this earthly road, Who do complain that life is made of tears, That happiness on earth one cannot find, That we are made of sorrows and of fears.

Spiritual realization is theoretically the easiest thing and in practice the most difficult thing there is. It is the easiest because it is enough to think of God. It is the most difficult because human nature is forgetfulness of God.

When people want to be rid of Heaven it is logical to start by creating an atmosphere in which spiritual things appear out of place; in order to be able to declare successfully that God is unreal they have to construct around man a false reality, a reality that is inevitably inhuman because only the inhuman can exclude God. What is involved is a falsification of the imagination and so its destruction.

Beauty attached to God is sacrament, cut off from God it becomes an idol.

It is impossible to describe a landscape so validly as to exclude all other descriptions, for no one can see the landscape in all its aspects at the same time, and no single view can prevent the existence and validity of other equally possible views.

In relation to Monotheism considered as such, Judaism stabilized but "confiscated" the Message; Christianity universalized but "altered" it; Islam in turn restored it by stabilizing and universalizing it.

The esoteric finds the Absolute within the traditions, as poets find poetry within the poems.

O Thou whose Name is sweetest remedy And whose remembrance heals our soul's disease With Thee each moment is Eternity A drop from Heaven that consoles and frees.

Trials there must be upon this earth. We are made of a stuff that easily corrupts when nothing calls to order, when a sign from the Lord does not reach us soon enough. Do not complain that destiny has rent your soul; For God knows best what will help us.

Essentially all religions include decisive truths and mediators and miracles, but the disposition of these elements, the play of their proportions, can vary according to the conditions of the revelation and of the human receptacles of the revelation.

The existentialist will not ask, "What is this thing?" but "What does this thing signify for me?" Thus he will put the altogether subjective "significance" in place of the objective nature, which is not only the height of absurdity but also of pride and insolence. As true greatness " signifies" nothing for the little man, he will see in it only a kind of infirmity the better to be able to enjoy his own "significant" inflatedness.

The real gnostic does not attribute any "state" to himself, for he is without ambition and without ostentation; he has a tendency rather--through an "instinct for holding back"--to disguise his nature inasmuch as he has, in any case, awareness of "cosmic play" (lila) and it is hard for him to take secular and worldly persons seriously, that is to say, "horizontal" beings who are full of self-confidence and who remain, "humanists" that they are, below the vocation of man

Ceux qui reprochent à nos ancêtres d'avoir été sottement crédules oublient, d'abord qu'on peut également être sottement incrédule, et ensuite qu'en fait de crédulité, il n'y a rien de tel que les illusions dont vivent les soi-disant destructeurs d'illusions ; car on peut remplacer une crédulité simple par une crédulité compliquée [...]

Si l'humanité a été stupide pendant des millénaires, on ne s'explique pas comment elle a pu cesser de l'être, d'autant que ce fut dans un laps de temps relativement très court : et on se l'explique d'autant moins quand on observe avec quelle intelligence et quel héroisme elle a été stupide pendant si longtemps et avec quelle myopie philosophique et quelle décadence morale elle est devenue enfin "lucide" et "adulte".

Hinduism — a spiritual world That contains everything, and shimmers in all colors; It offers us Vedanta, the doctrine of the great Shankara: And also gods without number, In whose cult our heart has no interest. Islam wants first and foremost to be Unity, And life-wisdom. It also knows the wine Of the heart, that turns the soul inwards. Islam is revelation's last sanctuary. In whichever language one honors truth: God is reality — the world is appearance.

Religion has accepted and almost "Christianized" the machine, and it is dying from this, whether through absurdity and hypocrisy, as in the past, or through capitulation and suicide, as today. It is as if there were only two sins, unbelief and unchastity; the machine is neither an unbeliever nor is it unchaste; therefore one may sprinkle it with holy water in good conscience.

In order to discredit faith and seduce believers, Kant does not hesitate to appeal to pride or vanity: whoever does not rely on reason alone is a "minor" who refuses to "grow up"; if men allow themselves to be led by "authorities" instead of "thinking for themselves," it is solely through laziness and cowardice, neither more nor less. A thinker who needs to make use of such means — which on the whole are demagogic — must indeed be short of serious arguments.

Promethean minds believe themselves to be creatures of chance, moving freely in a vacuum and capable of "self creation",all within the framework of an existence devoid of meaning;it seems to them that the world is absurd, but no one notices—and this is typical—the absurdity of admitting the appearance within an absurd world of a being regarded as capable of noticing the absurdity.

Le rationalisme d'une grenouille au fond d'un puits, c'est de nier l'existence des montagnes, ce qui peut être «logique», mais n'a rien à voir avec la réalité. [The rationalism of a frog living at the bottom of a well is to deny the existence of mountains: perhaps this is "logic", but it has nothing to do with reality]

Geometrically speaking, the Intellect is a ray rather than a circle, it emanates from God rather than reflecting Him. "Allah is known to Himself alone" say the Sufis; this saying, while it apparently excludes man from a direct and total knowledge, in reality enunciates the essential and mysterious divinity of pure Intellect; formulae of this kind are only fully understandable in the light of the often quoted hadith: "He who knows his soul knows his Lord.

Another point that moderns do not grasp is that there is no reason for necessarily seeking the cause of a phenomenon on the plane where it is produced, and that on the contrary one has to consider the possibility of a non-material cause, above all when it is a question of a phenomenon whose beginning is unknown a priori, and unknowable materially, as is the origin of living beings.

Derrière l'humble croyance à un Paradis situé dans les nuages, il y a au moins un fond de vérité inaliénable, et surtout - et cela est sans prix - une réalité miséricordieuse qui ne déçoit jamais

C'est là que pèchent les protagonistes de tel ou tel yoga qui croient devoir offrir aux gens les moins aptes et les moins avertis, une « voie purement scientifique » et « non-sectaire », « découverte » par d'anciens sages et « dégagée de toute superstition » et de toute « scolastique », c'est-à-dire, en somme, de toute garantie traditionnelle et même de toute raison suffisante

Il vaut peut-être la peine de mentionner dans ce contexte un phénomène aussi déplacé qu'irritant, à savoir le philosophe ou soi-disant tel qui croit pouvoir étayer ses thèses aberrantes au moyen de romans et de pièces de théâtre, ce qui revient à inventer des histoires de fous pour prouver que deux et deux font cinq