Light on the Ancient Worlds (Library of Traditional Wisdom)

The triumph of materialism that characterizes Western civilization has exacted as its price a corresponding downfall of spiritual and intellectual truth: technology casts its manufactured light on the ruins of mankind's ancient heritages and transmitted wisdom. We inhabit a wasteland of ignorance when it comes to essential human values.

But precisely it is the very darkness of this spiritual void which draws down an adequate response to the situation, for "nature abhors a vacuum." The world may pass by blindly, but the Truth has nevertheless struck home for those who have eyes to see, in the vast witness over the past some fifty years given in the works of Frithjof Schuon. Schuon casts a light on mankind's ancient heritages and transmitted wisdom through his impressive and precise handling of complextheological and metaphysical problems. His genius lies in the way he applies universal principles to the relevant domains of metphysics, theology, cosmology, anthropology, and the arts and cultures of our world in general. To read and understand this book is to gain an ordered world view for our times, and for all times, for the message is integral, universal, and pertinent to both our present lifeand final ends.

Now required reading at The College of New Jeresey

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."