“Our consciousness of the Absolute must become second nature to us, freeing us from the meanders, dead ends and abysses of contingency. »
A renowned metaphysician, Frithjof Schuon (1907-1998) is the author of many books that have made him one of the main representatives of the Sophia perennis, the timeless and universal Wisdom present at the heart of all the great heritages of humanity. The aphorisms or extracts gathered here offer a beautiful opening on his perspective and his spiritual teaching at the antipodes of sectarianism.
Composed of about forty keywords (Serenity, Measure, Happiness, Beauty, Pride, Grace, Liberty, Nobility, Ego, Reformation, God or World…) – like all the titles in the Fragments collection, inaugurated by Pierre Rabhi’s La puissance de la modération – and followed by a metaphysical Abstract offering several definitions that allow access to the author’s terminology, this work is a call to the intelligence of faith, to the interiority and to the sacred meaning.
“Intelligence is only beautiful when it does not destroy faith, and faith is only beautiful when it does not oppose intelligence. »
“Man prays, and prayer shapes man. The saint himself has become a prayer, a meeting place between earth and heaven; he thus contains the universe, and the universe prays with him. He is wherever nature prays, he prays with her and in her: in the peaks that touch emptiness and eternity, in a scattered flower, or in the lost song of a bird. Whoever lives in prayer has not lived in vain. »
Extract from the preface “By gathering these “fragments” of Frithjof Schuon, we wanted to offer the reader a message addressed to the heart and not only to reason; by “heart”, we do not mean the seat of feeling but that of spiritual intuition or intellection, in the sense of an immediate – and not only mental – knowledge of the object. Thus, we have renounced any doctrinal statement or the author’s most learned developments, which does not prevent the proposed set from reflecting all the richness and depth of his teaching.
In order to guide the future reader, we thought it would be useful to indicate in the subtitle that these were aphorisms and spiritual teachings, although the aphorisms were not written in this form; but by their conciseness and expressive power, these extracts – drawn both from books and unpublished documents – correspond well to the definition of the word. As for the spiritual character of the teaching, it is related to the degree of wisdom and function of the author: Schuon was indeed one of the most eminent spokespersons for the Sophia perennis, “perennial wisdom. “Thierry Béguelin
