The Cosmic Slacktuary

Without a doubt, Spiritual Perspectives & Human Facts (SPHF) is Frithjof Schuon's most dense and compact work. This is a new translation of his third major work, originally published in Paris in 1953. I've probably been working on it for a month or so, but I'm only up to page 48. This is not because the book is more difficult than his others -- in many ways, it's his most accessible work -- but because it's so rich. He writes with such gem-like precision over such an extraordinary range of philosophical, religious, and spiritual matters, and yet, does so in a remarkably unsaturated manner, so that your own thoughts are provoked rather than foreclosed. He puts you in a timeless frame of mind, and timelessness takes time.

And when I say "gem-like precision," that naturally sounds like a cliché. But I don't know any other way to express it, because I mean it literally. What in my opinion places Schuon head and shoulders above most theologians -- there are a few others -- is that just where they become vague, wobbly, or sentimental -- or the converse (which amounts to the same thing), rigid, jargony, and authoritarian -- he writes with the utmost clarity, rigor, and exactitude. And yet -- and this is the key -- the "certitude" he conveys in his writing has nothing in common with the oblivious certitude of those inappropriately confident "fundamentalists" (including some of his own prominent followers!) who also speak with precision, but in such a way that they simply superimpose dogma on reality, or (k) on O.

In this regard, it is possible to be right for all the wrong reasons. Where Schuon cranks out little handmade gems, these spiritual counterfaithers simply reproduce giant monuments -- like cheap facsimiles of Michelangelo's David. But I don't think that O can be gotten "on the cheap," which is what makes it so much more tricky and difficult than merely obtaining empirical scientific knowledge, which most anyone with an average IQ can acquire.

You might say that Schuon is "undogmatically dogmatic" in the same way that math is, which also combines the maximum of universality and abstraction. This is an ideal I am usually aiming for in my writing. Of course, in order to appreciate that fact, you have to read it in the proper spirit. It's not at all like normal reading, which for most people is simply for pleasure and distraction when it isn't for extracting information -- the bottom line -- as rapidly and efficiently as possible.

If you approach Schuon in this way, you're wasting your time, because you'll miss the essential personal experience (is there any other kind?) without which the writing is like a skeleton with no flesh or blood. With Schuon's writing, it's always BYOB, or bring your own blood. (Speaking of which, have you noticed the common trait shared by all of our bloody incomprehending trolls, which is to say, their bloodlessness? This is an example of a precise observation that will inevitably sound vague to the bloodless.)

SPHF is a collection of writings that differs from Schuon's other books, in that "instead of articles as such it consists of extracts from letters, notes from our reading, and reflections arising independently of outward circumstances and organized only later in the form of chapters." He concludes the preface by reminding the reader that truth "belongs to no one while belonging to everyone; it is an immanent gift as well as a transcendent one," which is another way of saying that transcendent truth can only be activated, assimilated, and internalized in an individual mind that somehow already possesses it -- which is why real vertical learning always involves equal parts remembrance and forgetting.

In whatever Schuon writes, he is equally mindful of the form as he is of the content. This is not just for purposes of aesthetics -- unless it is understood that aesthetics is, as he says, "nothing other than the science of forms." This is another thing that sets him apart from most theologians, in that the very form of his writing conveys the content of whatever it is he is discussing -- similar to the manner in which music is a form that is indistinguishable from its own content.

Not only is form "an important part of intellective speculation," but the rightness of proportions "is a criterion of truth or error in every domain into which formal elements enter." Which is why real truth must be beautiful -- although beauty is not necessarily true, being that it is possible to idolize beauty, which is what distinguishes aesthetics from mere aestheticism, or the "unintelligent cult of the beautiful."

Spiritual beauty is "limitlessness expressed by a limit," which is why perfect beauty cannot surpass itself. Elsewhere he writes that sacred art allows "spiritual influences to manifest themselves without encumbrance." At the same time, it allows man the possibility of "seeing what he should be" -- which implies the dangerous corollary of deviant art, which carries for humans the risk of being what we see.

Schuon writes of sacred art that it "is made to serve as a vehicle for spiritual presences," whereas wholly profane art "exists only for men and by that very fact betrays them." He points out that a true sanctuary for man is any place that "is constructed to facilitate resonances of the spirit, not oppose them." On the one hand, man has an inveterately searching, restless intelligence that seems never satisfied. And yet, there is also "something in our intelligence that wants to live in repose." Thus, a spiritual sanctuary is a "place" where our soul and intelligence are able to find comfort and rest (which is the true meaning of the sabbath).

I guess I like to think of One Cosmos in that way -- as a sort of virtual spiritual sanctuary where weary travelers can find active rest for their soul and restful slacktivity for their intelligence. Where you can relux and call it a deity.

... out from under the toilsome tablets of time, reverse worldward descent and cross the bridge of darkness to the father shore. Floating upstream alongside the ancient celestial trail, on your left is the dazzling abode of immortality, on your right is the shimmering gate of infinity.