Frithjof Schuon - The Eye of the Heart: 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 Perennisor Perennial Wisdomfinds its expression in the revealed Scriptures as well as the writings of the great sages and the artistic creations of the traditional worlds.

The Eye of the Heart 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)

Ren Gunon: 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

Letters of Frithjof Schuon: Reflections on the Perennial Philosophy,
ed. Michael Oren Fitzgerald (forthcoming)

The Eye of the Heart: Metaphysics, Cosmology, Spiritual Life

A New Translation with Selected Letters

2021 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 LOeil du Coeur,
Gallimard, 1950, Dervy-Livres, 1974,
LAge dHomme, 1995, LHarmattan, 2017

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Schuon, Frithjof, 1907-1998, author. | Oldmeadow, Harry, 1947- editor. | Smith, Huston, writer of foreword.. | Perry, Mark, 1951- translator. | Lafouge, Jean-Pierre, 1944- translator.

Title: The eye of the heart : a new translation with selected letters / by Frithjof Schuon ; edited by Harry Oldmeadow ; foreword by Huston Smith ; translated by Mark Perry and Jean-Pierre Lafouge.

Other titles: Oeil du coeur. English

Description: Bloomington, Indiana : World Wisdom, [2021] | Series: The library of perennial philosophy | Translation of: Loeil du coeur. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021001861 (print) | LCCN 2021001862 (ebook) | ISBN 9781936597703 (paperback ; acid-free paper) | ISBN 9781936597710 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Religion.

Classification: LCC BL48 .S3813 2021 (print) | LCC BL48 (ebook) | DDC 200--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021001861

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021001862

Cover:
Our Lady of the Great Panagia (Orante),
Yaroslavl, early 13th century, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

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

For information address World Wisdom, Inc.
P.O. Box 2682, Bloomington, Indiana 47402
www.worldwisdom.com

Frithjof Schuons writings are studded with passages of indescribable beauty, but no one has ever charged them with being easy reading; out of incomprehension, I myself almost gave up on the first of his books that I came upon. And so, as one who providentially got over the hump and has continued to read him for thirty years, I propose to use this foreword to say in the simplest possible way why I consider him to be the most important religious thinker of the twentieth century.

Human beings need two things. We need to be anchored vertically in the Absolute; to be redeemed from loneliness, confusion, and lassitude, the human heart must be pierced, centrally and solidly, by the axis mundi. Concomitantly and horizontally, we need to reach out with open arms towards our fellow men and bear one anothers burdens. The mission of the worlds religions is to meet these twin needs, but on the surface they seem to conflict. The revelations that launched them differ, and this seems to present their adherents with an impossible choice. They can either adhere to their religions absolutes and find themselves separated from people who live by different absolutes; or they can ignore the distinctive teachings of their revelations that give them their cutting edge, and thus reduce them to vague generalities that cover all religions. The latter choice eases religious friction, but at the cost of denaturing revelation, whose power requires concreteness. Facing this disjunction, religious conservatives take the right fork in the road, holding to their absolutes and risking dissension. Religious liberals choose the other fork and turn left. They cash in absolutes in the interests of presumptive social harmony.

Modern philosophy and theology have not been able to solve this problem. Frithjof Schuon, riding the wave of the timeless perennialist position which he has detailed with unprecedented completeness, solves it by stepping out of it. His step is an upward one which introduces a third dimension into the picture and solves the dilemma in the way a three-dimensional globe resolves the spatial distortions that two-dimensional map makers cannot escape. There is a type of person for whom formlessnessbeing free of boundaries that cabin, crib, and confinetokens greater concreteness and reality, not less. Saint Dionysius, Meister Eckhart, and Shankara are classic instances of such persons, but their type surfaces everywhere. For such people, the Absolute in its fullness exceeds all of its formal, historical instantiations, including the great, enduring revelations that are its expressions in history. These revelations are the clearest depictions of itself that the Absolute can effect in the world of forms.

Only two points need be added. First, perennialists do not, as is often charged, make end runs around the revealed religions to create a religion of their own. They are fully aware that, being as human as everyone else, their lives too must traffic mostly in forms, and that the configurations of forms that mortals slap together cannot match those that God has ordained. The second required addendum is that perennialists are not utopian. Their stance towards their co-religionists is that of the author of