13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An indispensable key to "spiritual geometry", March 18, 2002
By A Customer
This review is from: Stations of Wisdom (The Library of Traditional Wisdom) (Paperback)
This compact volume consists of only six essays, yet taken together they encompass a remarkably thorough description of what metaphysical truth is and why people need it, especially people of the modern era. Schuon uses words with great precision, which is apparent beginning with the preface. He observes that in our times, "...an extreme mental dexterity goes hand in hand with a no less excessive intellectual superficiality; it has become habitual to treat concepts as if they were playthings of the mind, committing one to nothing; in other words, everything is touched on and nothing is assimilated..."
One has to conclude that with Schuon it is just the opposite: that the reality of things is a coherent totality which can be described, so that to touch on one aspect of its nature with insight is virtually, in a way, to assimilate or understand the whole. There is a kind of "spiritual geometry" in Schuon's perspective, a hierarchical framework of degrees and dimensions that is applied to an astonishingly wide range of topics. While it is can be found in each of his articles, this book presents it in a particularly balanced and ample way, so that it is like a key to opening the richness of the author's opus. Schuon looks at the essential nature of things, and in doing so the "cultural accretions" that obscure words and the realities they articulate fall aside. One is left face to face, as it were, with naked Truth. As one reviewer has said,
"Schuon's thought does not demand that we agree or disagree, but that we understand or do not understand. Such writing is of rare and lasting value." (London Times Literary Supplement)
Schuon begins in the first chapter with restoring the original meaning of the words "orthodoxy" and "intellectuality." Orthodoxy, far from its modern connotations of a kind of superficial conformity, of prejudice or "mental laziness," is "the principle of formal homogeneity proper to any authentically spiritual perspective... To be orthodox means to participate by way of a doctrine that can properly be called 'traditional,' in the immutability of the principles which govern the Universe and fashion our intelligence." Then there is intellectuality, which has for many Westerners become synonymous with a predilection for dealing with very abstract notions or with "creative thinking," whereas Schuon insists that human intellect "is a receptive faculty and not a productive power.... It is a mirror reflecting reality in a manner that is adequate and therefore effective." Such a foundation does not, however, lead to any kind of rarified atmosphere in which one is obliged to walk on sublime "intellectual stilts." In fact, one of the most refreshing aspects of Schuon is his ability to see the value-even necessity-of the entire range of human faculties, which he summarizes as intelligence, free will and beauty of soul.
"'Objectivity' is often discussed in our times, but it is readily reduced to a purely volitional or moral attitude.... Now intelligence is intelligence and passion is passion; the difference exists, or the two terms would not exist." In saying this, Schuon is not simply retreating into tautologies. Rather, such statements are indicative of a kind of implacability when it comes to pointing out, however inconvenient this may be, that the reigning "emperor"-modernity and all its trappings-really has no clothes, and Schuon gives false idols nowhere to hide.
Are people of our times compelled to choose between a belief in God that seems ridiculously naïve or acceptance of a modern outlook that has shown itself to be inhuman and ruinously destructive of the earth itself? These essays argue cogently that this is not the case. "At a time when the forms of the spirit are threatened as much by man's thoughtlessness as by a preconceived hostility, what is essential is to place in a sapiential setting the truths by which man has always lived and by which he should go on living; if there is an 'exact science' embracing all that is, it resides above all in consciousness of the realities underlying both the traditional symbols and the fundamental virtues, which are the 'splendor of the true.'"
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
4 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Heavy going but..., May 2, 2002
This review is from: Stations of Wisdom (The Library of Traditional Wisdom) (Paperback)
well worth the effort. No other book had as much impact on my thinking as this one. Embrace the challenge and reap the reward..
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
