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The Eye of the Heart: Metaphysics, Cosmology, Spiritual Life (Library of Traditional Wisdom)

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Schuon is often a wonderfully complex author, and much is translated from French or German. If you have the patience, his work will never fail to amaze you with the new light refracted from a jewel you had convinced yourself you'd seen from all conceivable angles. He deals in foundations, and any modernist or self-proclaimed secular skeptic or atheist must grapple with his presentations of the Primordial Tradition. This book is a diverse and gripping introduction to his work and incredible mind.

The image of seeing with the heart is a powerful symbolism found in many spiritual traditions. It combines a lofty and "abstract" element with one that is profound and "concrete," encompassing the highest as well as the deepest faculties of man. But Schuon is above all a realist, and thus the horizontal plane of what is human-and even all too human-necessarily finds an important place in his writings.

This book brings together some of his earliest articles with the last of those belonging to his metaphysical prose works. Among the latter, "Between East and West" is a particularly interesting description of the flaws as well as the positive characteristics of the "average mentality" found among modern Orientals and Occidentals and their spiritual consequences. In a general way, Easterners are more sensitive to the symbolism or the spiritual intention of things than to the "objective facts" which are more convincing for Westerners. Schuon sets forth with precision and finesse how this contrast or oscillation between "faith" and "reason" shows itself not only among different groups of humanity but also within our individual souls.

One of the singular features of Schuon's perspective-and of a jnanic viewpoint in general-is the absence of a denominational zeal that wishes to convert or a moralizing approach that tends to elevate a particular human style to the level of a goal in itself. Whether one experiences this as a shock or as a relief, Schuon unwaveringly looks at the essential nature of things in all their degrees and modalities. And the immutable reference point is always the sense of the sacred. Reality is sacred, therefore man is a theophany or he lives below himself-in his thoughts, in his actions, in his sentiments and imagination: "...What is `true' is what opens the door towards the Truth at once transcendent and immanent... There is the symbol and there is the `fact': now the understood symbol is worth infinitely more than the misunderstood fact."

It is striking to find the same "faith-reason" or "symbol-fact" polarity in the chapter "Intellectuality and Civilization," written in the 1940's, at the beginning of the Schuon opus. Everyone can agree that intelligence is preferable to stupidity, just as truth is superior to error and illusion. The difficulty is that the modern definition of intelligence tends to limit it, either by specializing it into a kind of cerebral virtuosity or by flattening it into mere reason or, worse yet, the infra-reason of existentialism. Thus, as Schuon points out, to its great harm, today's culture ignores the cosmic laws that have always governed humanity. It replaces them with either an "idealism" or a "realism," both misconceived. "The first will always be above collective human possibilities, and the second altogether below them."

Modern man suffers both individually and collectively from the pervasive illness of relativism. Then, precisely because of his malady, he bitterly rails against centuries of saints, sages and pious men before him. The rejection of the religious traditions goes hand in hand with the loss of what Schuon terms "integral intelligence," one that is proportioned to total Truth, which is necessarily eternal and spiritual. To read Schuon is to be reminded that this total Truth is always at hand, for those who seek it with the eye of the heart.

_Without a doubt Schuon Knows what he is talking about. He obviously has the intellectual grasp of the eternal truths of the perennial philosophy. It is rather inaccessible to the outsider however. I am almost inclined to believe that you already have to have grasped inner Knowing yourself, before his explanations become clear. It is like he is writing to make himself understandable to the conventional rationalist philosopher or theologian. Why bother- they have failed.

_The core essay of this book expresses the perennial truth that the Eye of the Heart both sees all things and is how we truly know all things. To this end the brain is merely a secondary and not essential organ. It, and rational thought, may support our Knowing and Connection, but it will never be the cause of it. It is a lesser tool for a lesser world. The Eye of the Heart is that two-way lens by which we Know the Creator, and by which the Creator Knows us. It is our center by which we are joined by the vertical spiritual axis with our Source.

_Schuon mentions that we will probably never know whether there is a historical connection between the "Eye of the Heart" teachings of Plotinian Doctrine, Augustinian Doctrine, and Sufic Doctrine. He also points out that it is unimportant. This is part of the perennial philosophy, the golden chain that has always existed. Who received it first is irrelevant. It predated all three schools.

_In his perceptive introduction Huston Smith admits that at first he found Schuon to be somewhat difficult to penetrate- but he persisted. He also reminds us of that apt statement from _The Cloud of Unknowing_: "The point that I am making is correct, but if you cannot grasp it, then let it be, until God himself helps you to understand."

_If this book appeals to you, then you might like to attempt the more complete exposition in the author's _Survey of Metaphysics and Esoterism_.

Schuon is the most significant and valuable sage for these technological, polluted, hedonistic, perverse, arrogant and narcotic times. Of course reading Plato, Plotinus and other classic sages is very useful for spiritual growing, but Schuon is a sage that has experienced the ugliness and perversity of humanism and modern times. This means that he has had to suffer and overcome a darkness that those antique sages never had to face. I have never read a critique of the modern world as clear, just and precise as that of Schuon. Anyhow, the most valuable part of his oeuvre is his metaphysics and his guidance to spiritual growth under the awful pressures exerted by contemporary madness. I have read his books once, twice, thrice and, Deo juvante et volente, I will read them more and more times. I think that his living along the despicable twentieth century is but a manifestation of the reality of the divine law of compensation.