To Have a Center: A New Translation with Selected Letters

World Wisdom

The Library of Perennial Philosophy

The Library of Perennial Philosophy is dedicated to the exposition of the timeless Truth underlying the diverse religions. This Truth, often referred to as the Sophia Perennis—or Perennial Wisdom—finds its expression in the revealed Scriptures as well as the writings of the great sages and the artistic creations of the traditional worlds.

To Have a Center appears as one of our selections in the Writings of Frithjof Schuon series.

The Writings of Frithjof Schuon

The Writings of Frithjof Schuon form the foundation of our library because he is the pre-eminent exponent of the Perennial Philosophy. His work illuminates this perspective in both an essential and comprehensive manner like none other.

English Language Writings of Frithjof Schuon

Original Books

The Transcendent Unity of Religions

Spiritual Perspectives and Human Facts

Gnosis: Divine Wisdom

Language of the Self

Stations of Wisdom

Understanding Islam

Light on the Ancient Worlds

Treasures of Buddhism (In the Tracks of Buddhism)

Logic and Transcendence

Esoterism as Principle and as Way

Castes and Races

Sufism: Veil and Quintessence

From the Divine to the Human

Christianity/Islam: Essays on Esoteric Ecumenicism

Survey of Metaphysics and Esoterism

In the Face of the Absolute

The Feathered Sun: Plains Indians in Art and Philosophy

To Have a Center

Roots of the Human Condition

Images of Primordial and Mystic Beauty: Paintings by Frithjof Schuon

Echoes of Perennial Wisdom

The Play of Masks

Road to the Heart: Poems

The Transfiguration of Man

The Eye of the Heart

Form and Substance in the Religions

Adastra & Stella Maris: Poems by Frithjof Schuon (bilingual edition)

Autumn Leaves & The Ring: Poems by Frithjof Schuon (bilingual edition)

Songs without Names, Volumes I-VI: Poems by Frithjof Schuon

Songs without Names, Volumes VII-XII: Poems by Frithjof Schuon

World Wheel, Volumes I-III: Poems by Frithjof Schuon

World Wheel, Volumes IV-VII: Poems by Frithjof Schuon

Primordial Meditation: Contemplating the Real

Edited Writings

The Essential Frithjof Schuon, ed. Seyyed Hossein Nasr

Songs for a Spiritual Traveler: Selected Poems (bilingual edition)

René Guénon: Some Observations, ed. William Stoddart

The Fullness of God: Frithjof Schuon on Christianity,

ed. James S. Cutsinger

Prayer Fashions Man: Frithjof Schuon on the Spiritual Life,

ed. James S. Cutsinger

Art from the Sacred to the Profane: East and West,

ed. Catherine Schuon

Splendor of the True: A Frithjof Schuon Reader,

ed. James S. Cutsinger

To Have a Center

A New Translation with Selected Letters

by

Frithjof Schuon

Includes Other Previously

Unpublished Writings

Edited by

Harry Oldmeadow

To Have a Center:

A New Translation with Selected Letters

© 2015 World Wisdom, Inc.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission, except in critical articles and reviews.

Translated by Mark Perry and Jean-Pierre Lafouge

Published in French as

Avoir un Centre,

Éditions Maisonneuve & Larose, 1988,

L’Harmattan, 2010

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Schuon, Frithjof, 1907-1998.

[Avoir un centre. English]

To have a center : a new translation with selected letters / by Frithjof Schuon ; edited by Harry Oldmeadow.

pages cm. -- (The writings of Frithjof Schuon) (World Wisdom : the library of perennial philosophy)

Includes other previously unpublished writings.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-936597-44-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Metaphysics. 2. Human beings. 3. Religion--Philosophy. I. Oldmeadow, Harry, 1947- editor. II. Title.

BD112.S22 2015

110--dc23

2015007471

Cover:

The Medieval Universe,

after a French manuscript of the fourteenth century.

Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale.

Printed on acid-free paper in the United States of America

For information address World Wisdom, Inc.

P.O. Box 2682, Bloomington, Indiana 47402-2682

www.worldwisdom.com

CONTENTS

Editor’s Preface

Foreword

I. Integral Anthropology

1. To Have a Center

2. Overview of Anthropology

3. Intelligence and Character

4. The Primacy of Intellection

5. Gnosis Is Not Just Anything

II. Ontology and Cosmology

1. Universal Categories

2. Concerning an Onto-Cosmological Ambiguity

III. Spiritual Perspectives

1. Degrees and Dimensions of Theism

2. Our Father Who Art in Heaven

3. David, Shankara, Honen

4. Fundamental Keys

IV. Various Subjects

1. On the Art of Translating

2. Message of a Vestimentary Art

3. Concerning a Question of Astronomy

Appendix

Selections from Letters and Other Previously Unpublished Writings

Editor’s Notes

Glossary of Foreign Terms and Phrases

Biographical Notes

EDITOR’S PREFACE

As the essay To Have a Center opens the present work and deals directly with the ambiguous possibility that is genius (p. 10), let us state unequivocally that Frithjof Schuon was himself a man of genius. His exalted intellectual powers were made manifest primarily in his masterly metaphysical writings, but also in his poetry and painting—a genius that was at the same time analytic, speculative, synthetic, and creative. Schuon himself remarks that

we live in a world which on the one hand tends to deprive men of their center, and on the other hand offers them—in place of the saint and the hero—the cult of the genius; now a genius is all too often a man without a center, in whom this lack is replaced by a creative hypertrophy. Certainly, there is a genius proper to normal, hence balanced and virtuous, man; but the world of culture and art for art’s sake accepts with the same enthusiasm normal and abnormal men, the latter being particularly numerous . . . in that world of dreams or nightmares that was the nineteenth century (p. 7).

In contrast to most of the geniuses heralded by the modern world, Schuon stands almost alone in exemplifying a genius proper to normal, hence balanced and virtuous, man—such as we find in earlier times in a Virgil, a Dante, or a Fra Angelico. It is a sure sign of the times that Schuon’s genius remains largely unrecognized today.

Schuon’s writings are concerned with the elucidation of timeless metaphysical and cosmological principles and, in their light, the explication of the various and manifold forms—doctrinal, ritual, ethical, artistic—in which these principles find concrete expression in traditional civilizations. In the main our author does not concern himself with the particularities of either the vagaries of history or the cultural aberrations of modernity. He is not captive to that historicist frame of mind which imagines that everything is to be explained in terms of its temporal development. However, as he observes, the subject of the opening essay obliges him to depart from his normal practice; after a brief overview of the normative spiritual anthropology of India, he focuses on the humanistic culture that characterizes modernity, particularly its nineteenth century expressions. It is, fundamentally, a culture of negation:

Humanistic culture, insofar as it functions as an ideology and therefore as a religion, consists essentially in ignoring three things: firstly, what God is, because it does not accord primacy to Him; secondly, what man is, because it puts him in place of God; thirdly, what the meaning of life is, because this culture limits itself to playing with evanescent things and to plunging into them with criminal unconsciousness (p. 29).

These denials and betrayals are on full display in the culture of post-medieval Europe. Now, Schuon elsewhere readily concedes that profane genius can, in any human climate, be the medium of a cosmic quality, of an archetype of beauty or greatness, in which case we can respect at least some of its fruits even though they lie outside tradition:

Modern art—starting from the Renaissance—does include some more or less isolated works which, though they fit into the style of their period, are in a deeper sense opposed to it and neutralize its errors by their own qualities.¹

However, what we witness so often is a useless profusion of talents and geniuses driven by a humanistic narcissism with its mania for individualistic and unlimited production (p. 8). Schuon goes on to illustrate his theme with reference to the lives and creations of a whole gallery of nineteenth century artists, among them Beethoven, Wagner, Rodin, Nietzsche, Wilde, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Ibsen, Bizet, Balzac, Dickens, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky—all figures whose prodigious talents were turned astray by an impoverished environment, which is not to deny the traces of beauty and grandeur which can be found in many of their works. That many of these geniuses led unhappy and desperate lives only adds to their prestige and strengthens the seduction, indeed the fascination, which emanates from their siren songs and tragic destinies (p. 7). The unbridled subjectivism and the split and heteroclitic psychism (p. 7) of many of the century’s geniuses often induced melancholy and despair, sometimes psychopathology and insanity—all deriving ultimately from that loss of a center which is the very hallmark of modern humanism and which can only be restored by a proper understanding of God, of man, and of the human vocation.

The opening essay commands attention precisely because of its distinctive place in the Schuonian corpus. In the rest of Section I (Integral Anthropology), and in Sections II (Ontology and Cosmology) and III (Spiritual Perspectives) the author returns to more universal themes and concerns. Mention should perhaps be made of the essay David, Shankara, Honen, most obviously because Schuon himself belongs in a lineage of metaphysicians which includes the great Indian sage. In a letter written late in his life Schuon remarks, "Being a priori a metaphysician, I have had since my youth a particular interest in Advaita Vedānta, but also in the spiritual method of realization of which the Advaita Vedānta approves".² In another letter Schuon writes, Three spiritual beacons for me are Shankara, Honen, and David: Shankara for metaphysics; Honen for the invocation; and David for prayer (p. 152). This stands as a salutary reminder that Schuon’s metaphysical and philosophical concerns are never divorced from the imperatives of the spiritual life itself. Section IV (Various Subjects) comprises three fascinating excursions into apparently localized subjects whose relationship to metaphysical principles might at first seem tenuous, even remote: the art of translation, the vestimentary art of the American Plains Indians (with whom the author felt a profound affinity), and the astronomical systems of Ptolemy and Copernicus; but, as the author remarks, in spirituality everything is related (p. ix).

These essays first appeared in French in 1988 as Avoir un Centre (Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose);³ the first English translation by Gustavo Polit was published in 1990 (Bloomington: World Wisdom). The present fully revised translation by Mark Perry and Jean-Pierre Lafouge is the latest in the World Wisdom series of fresh translations of Schuon’s works, each including extensive editorial annotations and a full glossary of foreign words and phrases. Like the other volumes in the series, it incorporates excerpts from the author’s letters and other hitherto unpublished sources; these more intimate and informal writings deepen and enrich the cardinal themes of To Have a Center.

Harry Oldmeadow

Footnotes

¹ Frithjof Schuon, Art from the Sacred to the Profane: East and West, edited by Catherine Schuon (Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom, 2007), p. 15.

² From a letter of January 1996, quoted in the editor’s Introduction to Prayer Fashions Man: Frithjof Schuon on the Spiritual Life, selected and edited by James S. Cutsinger (Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom, 2005), p. xviii.

³ A more recent French edition (Paris: L’Harmattan) was published in 2010.

FOREWORD

Quite paradoxically, it is sometimes more difficult to find a title than to write a book; one always knows what one wishes to say, but one does not always know what to call it. It is true that the difficulty does not result from the nature of things, for one could follow the example of Rumi and entitle a work A Book Which Contains What It Contains (Kitāb fīhi mā fīhi); but we live in a world which is little inclined to accept such a defiance of convention and which obliges us to be a bit more intelligibly specific. Thus we shall choose the title of the first chapter: To Have a Center, which introduces in its way the subsequent chapters, dealing with anthropology at all its levels and also, further on, metaphysics and spiritual life.

There is the order of principles, which is immutable, and the order of information—traditional or otherwise—of which one can say that it is inexhaustible: on the one hand, not everything in this book will be new for our usual readers and, on the other hand, they will nonetheless find here precisions and illustrations which may have their usefulness. One never has too many keys in view of the one thing needful, however indirect and simple these points of reference may be.

We acknowledge that this volume contains subjects which are very uneven in scope: one will find a chapter on the art of translating, another on vestimentary art, and another still on a question of astronomy. But in spirituality everything is related: one always has the right to project the light of principles onto subjects of minor importance, and it goes without saying that one often is obliged to do so. As the Duke of Orléans said: All that is national is ours; which we shall paraphrase by recalling that all that is normally human, hence virtually spiritual, enters ipso facto into our perspective; and it takes all kinds to make a world.

After what we have just said, the question may be asked whether the sophia perennis is a humanism; the answer could in principle be yes, but in fact it must be no since humanism in the conventional sense of the term de facto exalts fallen man and not man as such. The humanism of the modernists is, practically speaking, a utilitarianism focused on fragmentary man; it is the intention to make oneself as useful as possible to a humanity as useless as possible. As for integral anthropology, we intend, precisely, to give an account of it in the present book.

Frithjof Schuon in 1974

I.

INTEGRAL ANTHROPOLOGY

1. To Have a Center

To be normal is to be homogeneous, and to be homogeneous is to have a center. A normal man is one whose tendencies are, if not altogether uniform, at least concordant—that is to say, sufficiently concordant to convey that decisive center which we may call the sense of the Absolute or the love of God. The tendency towards the Absolute, for which we are made, is difficult to realize in a heterogeneous soul—a soul lacking a center, precisely, and by that fact contrary to its reason for being. Such a soul is a priori a house divided against itself, thus destined to collapse, eschatologically speaking.

The anthropology of India—which is spiritual as well as social—distinguishes on the one hand between homogeneous men whose centers are situated at three different levels,¹ and on the other hand between these men taken as a totality and those who, having no center, are not homogeneous;² it attributes this lack either to a degeneration or to a mixture of castes—especially those castes that are furthest removed from each other. But it is of the natural castes, not the social ones, that we wish to speak here: the former do not always coincide with the castes representing them socially, for the institutional caste allows for exceptions, inasmuch as it becomes numerically very large and thereby includes all human possibilities. Thus, without wanting to concern ourselves with the castes of India, we shall describe as succinctly as possible the fundamental tendencies which they are meant to transmit, tendencies which are found wherever there are men, with various predominant traits according to the nature of the group.

There is first of all the intellective, speculative, contemplative, sacerdotal type, which tends towards wisdom or holiness—holiness referring more particularly to contemplation, and wisdom to discernment. Next there is the warlike and royal type, which tends towards glory and heroism; even in spirituality—since holiness is for everyone—this type will readily be active and heroic, whence the ideal of the heroicalness of virtues. The third type is the honorably average man: he is essentially a hard worker, well-balanced, persevering; his center is love for work that is useful and well done, and carried out with God in mind; he aspires neither to transcendence nor to glory—although he desires to be both pious and respectable—yet he nonetheless shares with the sacerdotal type a love of peace and finds little appeal in adventures; and this predisposes him to a contemplativeness in keeping with his occupations.³ Lastly there is the type that has no ideal other than more or less gross pleasure; this is lustful man who, not knowing how to control himself, has to be controlled by others, so that his great virtue will be submission and fidelity.

No doubt, the man who finds his center only outside himself—in pleasures, without which he feels like a void—is not really normal; but he is nonetheless redeemable through his submission to someone better than he, and who will serve as his center. This in fact is exactly what happens—but on a higher plane which may concern any man—in the relation between disciple and spiritual master.

But there is still another human possibility, namely the man who lacks a center, not because lust deprives him of it, but because he has two or even three centers at once: this is the type known as the pariah,⁴ arising from a mixture of castes, and who bears in himself the double or triple heredity of divergent types: that of the sacerdotal type, for example, combined with the materialistic and hedonistic type of which we have just spoken. This new type—who is unhinged—is capable of everything and nothing: he is a mimic and a born comedian, always looking for a makeshift center, hence for a psychic homogeneity which can only elude him. The pariah has neither center nor continuity; he is a void eager for sensations; his life is a disconnected series of arbitrary experiences. The danger this type represents for society is evident since one never knows whom one is dealing with; no one is willing to trust a leader who is at bottom a circus showman and one who by his nature is predisposed to crime. This is what explains the ostracism of the Hindu system towards those who, born from too heterogeneous a breeding, are outcastes. We say that this explains the ostracism, and not that this excuses the abuses, or that the assessment made of individuals is always fair—something which is impossible to do in practice.⁵

Generally speaking, a man’s psychological type is a matter, not of the exclusive presence of a given tendency, but of its predominance; and in this sense—or with this reservation—we may say that the first of the types enumerated is spiritual; the second, noble; the third, upright; the fourth, lustful; and the fifth, vain and transgressing. Spirituality, nobility, uprightness: these are the fundamental tendencies of men who, according to the Hindu doctrine, are qualified for initiation or twice born; lust and vanity: these are the tendencies of those who a priori are not concretely qualified for a spiritual path but who, being men, nevertheless have no choice; which amounts to saying that every man can save himself in principle. As Ghazzali said, men have to be driven into Paradise with whips.

Thus there is hope for the man who has no center, whatever the cause of his privation or infirmity may be; for there is a supra-human Center that is always available to us, and whose trace we bear within ourselves, given that we are made in the image of the Creator. That is why Christ could say that what is impossible for man is always possible for God; however decentralized man may be, as soon as he sincerely turns to Heaven his relationship with God bestows a center on him; we are always at the center of the world when we address the Eternal. That is the point of view of the three monotheistic religions of Semitic origin, and also that of human distress and of Divine Mercy.⁶

It is crucial not to confuse the absence of a center—which is abnormal—in the hylic and somatic type, with the same absence—but normal in this case and situated on an altogether different plane—in the feminine sex; for it is only too evident that if as a sexual being woman seeks her center in man, she is nonetheless in full possession of her center in precisely the respect in which hylics or pariahs do not possess it. In other words: if woman as such aspires to a center situated outside herself, namely, in the complementary sex—just as the latter in the same respect seeks his vital space in his sexual complement—as a human being she nonetheless benefits from an integral personality, on condition that she be humanly in conformity with the norm, which implies the capacity to think objectively, especially in cases where virtue requires it. Too often it is thought that woman is capable of objectivity and thus of disinterested logic only at the expense of her femininity,⁷ which is radically false; woman has