MUCH like his Perennialist counterpart, René Guénon (1886—1951), Schuon’s writing style is considered and deliberative. It is for this reason that the opening chapter of his work, ‘Conceptual Dimensions,’ attempts to set out the preliminary terms upon which the rest of his metaphysics will depend.

Schuon readily accepts that one’s initial encounter with an idea or concept, even if the intellect is able to obtain a modicum of apprehension right away, does not ensure that it is understood in any deeper or more penetrating fashion. This is why truth is disseminated – not to mention received – at the various levels we have already discussed, allowing those with particular attributes or limitations to acquire it in a manner that is best suited to them:

This way of regarding ideas accordingly leads to the question of spiritual realisation, the doctrinal expressions of which clearly illustrate the dimensional indefinitude of theoretical conceptions. (p.1)

This subtle intimation towards vagueness, or incompletion, suggests that religions provide just a glimpse of the totality and that truth is only accessible to a certain degree.

Modern philosophers, in particular, completely fail to appreciate these limitations on account of their frenetic tendency to establish a universally infallible system in which all questions appear to have been solved once and for all. Operating purely at the base level of rationality, this arrogant disposition invariably leads to the wholesale rejection of those concepts which do not fit into its more general scheme. After all, for philosophy to accept metaphysics (or even theology) would result in its own negation.

Like philosophy, theology is frequently guilty of committing the same error and its own theoretical pronouncements – authoritatively codified to the extent of being ‘irrefutable’ – appear as dogma. Once again, theology can only present its followers with a very partial insight into the more fundamental nature of truth. On the other hand, religious dogma comes to an end once it is perceived as being part of a wider phenomenon that operates at the esoteric level. As Schuon demonstrates, a

religious dogma is not a dogma in itself but solely by the fact of being considered as such and through a sort of confusion of the idea with the form in which it is clothed; on the other hand, the outward dogmatisation of universal truths is perfectly justified in view of the fact that these truths or ideas, in having to provide the foundation of a religion, must be capable of being assimilated in some degree by all men. (p.3)

Less an ‘error,’ therefore, than a convenient means for people from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds to familiarise themselves with one particular aspect of Tradition. By far the worst form of dogma, for Schuon, is that which denies the primordial basis of spirituality and presents the theological trappings of its religious apparatus as an absolute system in itself:

Dogmatism reveals itself not only by its inability to conceive the inward or implicit illimitability of the symbol, the universality that resolves all outward oppositions, but also by its inability to recognise, when faced with two apparently contradictory truths, the inward connection that they implicitly affirm, a connection that makes of them complementary aspects of one and the same truth. (p.3)

Schuon asks us to imagine two points situated along a circumference which, although outwardly disparate, would be denying the wider existence of the circle were they to merely focus upon each other’s respective beliefs. Meanwhile, an approach he terms “speculative formulation” at least has the fortitude to take the circle into account and is therefore fully cognisant of the ultimate reality. The following examples, whilst taken from different religious traditions that remain externally inconsistent, serve to reveal how it is possible to arrive at a single point of agreement using the methodology that Schuon has advanced:

The outward and intentional contradictoriness of speculative formulations may show itself, it goes without saying, not only in a single, logically paradoxical formula such as the Vedic Aham Brahmasmi (“l am Brahma”)—the Vedantic definition of the yogi—or the Ana ‘l-Haqq (“I am the Truth”) of Al-Hallāj, or Christ’s words concerning His Divinity, but also, and for even stronger reasons, as between different formulations each of which may be logically homogeneous in itself. Examples of the latter may be found in all sacred Scriptures, notably in the Koran: we need only recall the apparent contradiction between the affirmations regarding predestination and those regarding free will, affirmations that are contradictory only in the sense that they express opposite aspects of a single reality. (p.4)

These prophetic statements, it is claimed, were not delivered in an arbitrary fashion, as though accidental, but appeared spontaneously through “intellectual originality”. It is rather similar to the way in which the Swiss psychiatrist, Carl Gustav Jung (1875—1961), portrayed synchronicity as a “meaningful coincidence”.

Schuon – comparing the purely theoretical approach to the limited way in one views an object – detects an interesting contrast between error and dogmatism, suggesting that the former

corresponds to an inadequate view of the object whereas a dogmatic conception is comparable to the exclusive view of one aspect of the object, a view that supposes the immobility of the seeing subject. (p.5)

The capacity to view an object from all angles, therefore, relies on one’s ability to exploit the possibilities of space. Only the “intellectual knowledge” offered by metaphysics can allow an individual to actively participate in the world that lies beyond the physical. This engagement, usually reserved for the mystic and the visionary, is the only way of approaching what Schuon calls “integral Truth”. Indeed, in

speculative doctrines it is the point of view on the one hand and the aspect on the other hand that determine the form of the affirmation, whereas in dogmatism the affirmation is confused with a determinate point of view and aspect, thus excluding all others. (p.6)

If the outward contradictions between one religion and another can be overcome by one’s ability to see the wider picture, the transcendent veracity of the Absolute may be experienced in all its splendour.