Alhassanain(p) Network for Heritage and Islamic Thought

Notes

1. It is remarkable how so many so-called radical theologians have sided with Nietzsche in talking about the “death of God” in order not to remain behind current fashions, whereas what one would expect from a theologian’s interpretation of current nihilism is the reassertion of the saying of Meister Eckhart, “the more you blaspheme the more you praise God,” and the Gospel saying, “Slander must needs come but woe unto him who bringeth it about.” As could be expected, many sociologists have predicted the continuation of the secularizing movement in the modern world as a natural confirmation of their own secular point of view. This tendency is to be expected more in sociology than in theology seeing the nature of the origins of the discipline called sociology. But even among sociologists there are those, like P. Berger, who assert that from a sociological point of view there is reason to believe that faith in the supernatural and quest for the sacred will continue to survive even in modern society. Berger adds, however, that “those to whom the supernatural is still, or again, a meaningful reality find themselves in the status of a minority, more precisely, a cognitive minority-a very important consequence with far-reaching implications.” P. Berger, A Rumor of Angels, p. 7.

2. See Faivre, L’Ésotérisme au XVIIIe siècle, p. 171.

3. Eliade explains the reason why this so-called “second Renaissance” did not take place: “But the ‘Renaissance’ did not come about for the simple reason that the study of Sanskrit and other oriental languages did not succeed in passing beyond the circle of philologians and historians, while, during the Italian Renaissance, Greek and classical Latin were studied not only by the grammarians and humanists but also by the poets, artists, philosophers, theologians, and men of science.” “Crisis and Renewal in History of Religions,” History of Religions 5/1 (Summer 1965): 3.

We would add that, first of all, Oriental traditions could not possibly have brought about a renaissance if by renaissance is meant that antitraditional revolt against the Christian tradition which is the source of most of what characterizes the modern world and which marks the point of departure of Western civilization from the rest of the world; and second, the European Renaissance was a fall, a discovery of a new earth at the expense of the loss of a heaven and therefore in conformity with the downward flow of the cosmic cycle, while a traditional “renaissance” would imply a restoration from on high against the downward pull of the stream of historic time. In any case, a traditional restoration, which would in fact have been a veritable renaissance, could not possibly take place through the translation of texts alone and in the absence of that authentic knowledge which would make the appropriate understanding of these texts possible.

4. The translation of the Upanishads by Anquetil Duperron into Latin from the Persian Sirr-i akbar was particularly important in introducing nineteenthcentury Europe to a sacred text of a purely metaphysical character. It is interesting to note that this basic work, presented by the translator to Napoleon in 1804, was from the Persian translation of the Mogul prince Dara Shukuh, the translation having been carried out in Benares in the eleventh/seventeenth century and being itself the result of one of the most remarkable encounters between the esoteric dimensions of Islam and Hinduism. See D. Shayegan, Hindouisme et Soufisme, les relations de l’Hindouisme et du Soufisme d’après le “Majma‘al-bahrayn” de Dârâ Shokûh, Paris, 1979.

5. The history of Orientalism and Western views toward various Oriental traditions has been dealt with in many works. See, as far as the Islamic world is concerned, for example, N. Daniel, Islam, Europe and Empire, London, 1968; Y. Moubarac, Recherches sur la pensée chrétienne et l’Islam dans les temps modernes et à l’époque contemporaine, Beirut, 1977; and J. Fück, Die arabischen Studien in Europa bis in den Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts, Leipzig, 1955.

6. See A. M. Schimmel (ed.), Orientalische Dichtung in den Übersetzung Friedrich Rückerts, Bremen, 1963. In her introduction the editor discusses the influence of the Orient onWestern and esp. German literature.

7. On Goethe and the East see Taha Hussein Bey, “Goethe and the East,” in Goethe: UNESCO’s Hommage on the Occasion of the Two Hundredth Anniversary of His Birth, Paris, 1949, pp. 167-79; F. Strich, Goethe und die Weltliteratur, Bern, 1957, esp. “Die Öffnende Macht des Orients,” pp. 154-70; H. H. Schaeder, “Goethes Erlebnis des Ostens,”

in Vierieljahrschrift des Goetheges. 2 (1937): 125-39; and H. Krüger,Weltend, Goethe und der Orient,Weimar, 1903.

8. On the significance of this work see K. Viëtor, Goethe the Poet, “West-Eastern Divan,” pp. 219-30.

9. Goethe’s Reineke Fox, West-Eastern Divan, and Achilleid, trans. in the original meters by A. Rogers, London, 1890, pp. 199-200.

10. Khid. r or the “Green prophet” represents an ever present initiatic function in the Islamic tradition similar to that of Elias in Judaism. Khid. r (or Khad. ir) is considered as the guardian of the fountain of life which from the sapiential point of view symbolizes the water of sacred knowledge. On Khid. r and his iconography in Islamic art see A. K. Coomaraswamy, “Khwaja Khad. ir and the Fountain of Life, in the Tradition of Persian and Mughal Art,” Ars Islamica I (1934): 173-82.

11. See G. M. Harper, The Neoplatonism ofWilliam Blake, Chapel Hill,N.C., 1961, p. 3.

12. On Platonism in England see E. Cassirer, The Platonic Renaissance in England, trans. J. P. Pettegrove, London, 1953, dealing with the earlier Cambridge Platonists up to the Age of Reason; and J. H. Muirhead, The Platonic Tradition in Anglo-Saxon Philosophy, London, 1931, which however neglects certain important figures including Taylor.

13. On Thomas Taylor and his writings see K. Raine and G. M. Harper (eds.), Thomas Taylor the Platonist: Selected Writings, Princteon, 1969.

14. On the bibliography of Taylor see W. E. Axon and J. J. Welsh, A Bibliography of the Works of Thomas Taylor, the Platonist,Westwood, N. J., 1975.

15. Kathleen Raine has composed several works on Blake but the most important as far as traditional teachings are concerned is Blake and Tradition, 2 vols., Princeton, 1968.

“. . for Blake himself, no less than Ellis and Yeats, seemed to have a knowledge whose sources were not divulged, as knowledge of the ancient Mysteries was kept secret among initiates. I began to understand that in those Mysteries was to be found the ordering principle-I know now that the key for which many have sought is traditional metaphysics with its accompanying language of symbolic discourse.” Ibid., pp. xxv-xxvi.

16. It is interesting that Blake has attracted Oriental scholars, esp. Muslims who have devoted several scholarly works to him. See, for example, A. A. Ansari, Arrows of Intellect; A Study in William Blake’s Gospel of the Imagination, Aligarh, 1965; and Gh. Sabri-Tabrizi, The “Heaven” and “Hell” of William Blake, London, 1973. A. K. Coomaraswamy also admired Blake whom he called “the most Indian of modern Western minds,” and some of his early essays such as “The Religious Foundations of Life and Art,” in Coomaraswamy and A. J. Penry (eds.), Essays in Post-Industrialism: A Symposium in Prophecy, London, 1914, pp. 33ff. are deeply “Blakean.” Coomaraswamy also continued to quote Blake profusely throughout his later works. See R. Lipsey, Coomaraswamy 3: His Life and Work, Princeton, 1977, pp. 105ff.

On Blake and the traditional doctrine of art as expounded by Coomaraswamy, Schuon, and Burckhardt see B. Keeble, “Conversing with Paradise: William Blake and the Traditional Doctrine of Art,” Sophia Perennis l/l(Spring 1975): 72-96.

17. F. I. Carpenter, Emerson and Asia, Cambridge, Mass., 1930, p. 27; see also A. Christy, The Orient in American Transcendentalism; a Study of Emerson, Thoreau and Alcott, New York, 1932; and W. Staebler, Ralph Waldo Emerson, New York, 1973. See also E. Zolla, “Naturphilosophie and Transcendentalism Revisited,” Sophia Perennis 3/2(Autumn 1977): 65-94.

18. See Swami Paramananda, Emerson and Vedanta, Boston, 1918; and Carpenter, op. cit.

19. On Emerson and Persian poetry see J. D. Yohannan, “Emerson’s Translations of Persian Poetry from German Sources,” American Literature 14 (Jan. 1943): 407-20. See also M. A. Ekhtiar, From Linguistics to Literature, Tehran, 1962, pt. 2.

20. Some had received knowledge from Taoist and other Far Eastern sources, such as A. de Pourvourville, known as Matgioi, the author of the well-known La Voie rationnelle, Paris, 1941, and La Voie métaphysique, Paris, 1936; and others from Islamic esoteric circles, such as ‘Abd al-Hadı, who was to translate into French the celebrated Risalat al-ahadiyyah (Treatise on Unity) attributed to Ibn ‘Arabı. See Le Traité de l’Unité dit d’Ibn Arabî, Paris, 1977, pp. 19-48.

21. Numerous works and studies have appeared on Guénon, mostly in his mother tongue, French. See, for example, J. Marcireau, René Guénon et son oeuvre, Paris, 1946; P. Chacornac, La Vie simple de René Guénon, Paris, 1958; P. Serant, René Guénon, Paris, 1953; L. Meroz, René Guénon ou la sagesse initiatique, Paris, 1962; and J. Tourniac, Propos sur René Guénon, Paris, 1973, and Planète plus (L’homme et son message-René Guénon), Paris, 1970. Some of these works, like that of P. Chacornac, for example, are reliable and of a traditional character, and others of a problematic nature.

22. His two major works in this domain are Le Théosophisme-histoire d’une pseudoreligion, Paris, 1921; and L’Erreur spirite, Paris, 1923. There are also studies devoted to these subjects in his Aperçus sur l’initiation, Paris, 1980; and Initiation et réalisation spirituelle, Paris, 1952.

23. Many of the works of Guénon were translated into English but a large number remain available only in the original French. Those translated into English include: Introduction to the Study of the Hindu Doctrines, Man and His Becoming according to the Vedanta, trans. R. Nicholson, London, 1945; Crisis of the Modern World, trans. M. Pallis and R. Nicholson, London, 1962; Symbolism of the Cross, trans. A. Macnab, London, 1958; East and West, trans. W. Massey, London, 1941; The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times, trans. Lord Northboume, London, 1953; and Oriental Metaphysics inNeedleman (ed.), The Sword of Gnosis. A number of his articles have also been translated and published mostly in Studies in Comparative Religion.

24. See, for example, “Sacred and Profane Science,” in his Crisis of the Modern World, pp. 37-50 (also trans. A. K. Coomaraswamy, Vi´sva-Bharati Quarterly 1 [1935] : 11-24).

25. He achieved this task in the field of infinitesimal calculus whose principles he related to more universal principles of a metaphysical order. See his Les Principes du calcul infinitésimal, Paris, 1946.

26. See, for example, The Symbolism of the Cross, dealing with the metaphysical symbolism of space and geometric patterns and La Grande triade, Paris, 1980, much of which deals with alchemical symbolism along with metaphysics.

27. An example of this type of orientalism is the works of L. Massignon, the great French Islamicist, whose works are not only important from a purely scholarly point of view but also expound in an authentic fashion certain important aspects of the Islamic tradition.

28. He paid much less attention to certain aspects of Christianity and also Buddhism and in fact corrected his earlier appraisal of Buddhism, which was from the exclusively Brahmanic point of view, as a result of his contacts with Coomaraswamy and Marco Pallis. This is one of the rare instances of change of view in the writings of Guénon where one can detect a revision concerning a particular subject.

29. Marco Pallis, himself a distinguished traditional author, writes concerning Coomaraswamy:

“An intellectual genius well describes this man in whose person East andWest came together, since his father belonged to an ancient Tamil family established in Sri Lanka while his mother came of an English aristocratic stock. An immensely retentive memory coupled with command of many languages both classical and current constituted the equipment of this prince among scholars. In the matter of checking his references Coomaraswamy was meticulously scrupulous where Guénon was the reverse.” M. Pallis, “A Fateful Meeting of Minds; A. K. Coomaraswamy and R. Guénon,” p. 179.

30. On his writings see R. Ettinghausen, “TheWritings of Ananda K. Coomaraswamy,”

Ars Islamica 9 (1942): 125-42; and R. Lipsey, Coomaraswamy, pp. 293-304. A working bibliography of Coomaraswamy is being prepared by R. P. Coomaraswamy, while J. Crouch has completed an exhaustive bibliography to be published soon.

As for works on Coomaraswamy himself there are the full-fledged biographies by R. Lipsey, Coomaraswamy, and P. S. Sastri, Ananda K. Coomaraswamy,New Delhi, 1974, and several works dedicated to him and containing sketches, testimonials, etc. Among these the several works of S. Durai Raja Singham contain a wealth of biographical information as well as testimonials. For example, his A New Planet in Thy Ken: Introduction to Kala-Yogi Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, Kuantan, Malaya, 1951; also Hommage to Ananda K. Coomaraswamy: A Garland of Tributes, Kuala Lumpur, 1948; Hommage to Ananda K. Coomaraswamy (A Memorial Volume), Kuala Lumpur, 1952; and Remembering and

Remembering Again and Again, Kuala Lumpur, 1974. See also K. Bharata Iyer (ed.), Life and Thought, London, 1947; and R. Livingston, The Traditional Theory of Literature, Minneapolis, 1962. See also Sophia Perennis 3/2 (1977), dedicated to Coomaraswamy and devoted to “Tradition and the Arts” including the article of W. N. Perry on Coomaraswamy and Guénon and a section of poems by contemporary poets inspired by traditional doctrines, poets such as Kathleen Raine, Peter Wilson, Peter Russell, Cristina Campo, and Philip Sherard. Finally, see the more recent work of M. Bagchee, Ananda Coomaraswamy, A Study, Varanasi, 1977.

31. Originally published in Motive, May 1944, and which appeared later as chap. 3 of his Bugbear of Literacy.

32. H. Smith, statement made on the occasion of the publication of the English translation of Schuon’s Logic and Transcendence and printed on the back of the 1975 paperback edition of the work.

33. The books of Schuon include De l’unité transcendante des religions, Paris, 1979; L’Oeil du coeur, Paris, 1974; Perspectives spirituelles et faits humains, Paris, 1953; Sentiers de gnose, Paris, 1957; Castes et races, Paris, 1979; Les Stations de la sagesse, Paris, 1958; Images de l’esprit, Paris, 1961; Comprendre l’Islam, Paris, 1961; Regards sur les mondes anciens, Paris, 1965; Logique et transcendance, Paris, 1970; Forme et substance dans les religions, Paris, 1975; L’Esotérisme comme principe et comme voie, Paris, 1978; Le Soufisme, voile et quintessence; Du Divin à l’humain; Christianisme/Islam-Visions d’oecuménisme ésotérique; and Sur les traces de la Religion pérenne; Leitgedanken zur Urbesinnung, Zurich and Leipzig, 1935; and the two volumes of poetry, Tage-und Nachtebuch, Bern, 1947, and Sulamith, Bern, 1947.

Schuon’s books translated into English are: The Transcendent Unity of Religions; Spiritual Perspectives and Human Facts; Language of the Self, trans. M. Pallis and D. M. Matheson, Madras, 1959; Gnosis: DivineWisdom, trans. G. E. H. Palmer, London, 1977; Stations of Wisdom, trans. G. E. H. Palmer, London, 1978; Understanding Islam; Light on the Ancient Worlds; In the Tracks of Buddhism, trans. M. Pallis, London, 1968; Dimensions of Islam, trans. P. Townsend, London, 1970; Logic and Transcendence; Islam and the Perennial Philosophy, trans. P. Hobson, London, 1976; and Esoterism as Principle and as Way, trans. W. Stoddart, London, 1981.

For an evaluation of the writings of Schuon see L. Benoist, “L’Oeuvre de Frithjof Schuon,” Etudes Traditionelles 79/459 (1978): 97-101.

We are now preparing an anthology of his writings to appear soon care of the Crossroad Publishing Company in New York.

34. R. C. Zaehner, who changed his perspective several times during his writing career, at one point opposed the theses of Schuon completely and wrote, “Mr. Frithjof Schuon, in his Transcendent Unity of Religions, has tried to show that there is a fundamental unity underlying all the great religions. The attempt was worth making if only to show that no such unity can, in fact, be discovered.” The Comparison of Religions, Boston, 1958, p. 169. To this assertion of Zaehner we would only add the phrase “by those who have no intellectual intuition of the supra-formal essence and who therefore should not be legitimately concerned with trying to understand or discern the supra-formal unity of which Schuon speaks.” In his preface to the American edition of the Transcendent Unity of Religions another eminent scholar of religion, H. Smith, has presented extensive arguments to show why the method of Schuon and other traditional authors is in fact the only possible way of realizing the inner truth of religions and bringing about harmony among them without sacrificing a single form, doctrine, or rite of a divine origin.

35. B. Kelly, “Notes on the Light of the Eastern Religions with Special Reference to theWorks of Ananda Coomaraswamy, René Guénon and Frithjof Schuon,” Dominican Studies 7 (1954): 265.

36. Burckhardt has also written several basic works on the traditional sciences. His major writings include: An Introduction to Sufi Doctrine, trans. D. M. Matheson, London, 1976; Sacred Art East andWest, trans. Lord Northbourne, London, 1967; The Wisdom of the Prophets of Ibn ‘Arabi, trans. A. Culme- Seymour, Gloucestershire, 1975; Alchemy: Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul, trans. W. Stoddart, Baltimore, 1971; The Art of Islam, trans. J. P. Hobson, London, 1976; and Moorish Culture in Spain, trans. A. Jaffa, London, 1972.

37. See Schaya, TheUniversal Meaning of the Kabbala, trans. N. Pearson, London, 1971. He has also published many articles in the Etudes Traditionnelles of which he is now editor.

38. Pallis who is both an accomplished musician and mountain climber has also written on both nature and music from the traditional point of view and been instrumental, along with M. Lings, P. Townsend, R. C. Nicholson, W. Stoddart, G. Palmer, the late D. M. Matheson, P. Hobson, LordNorthbourne-himself the author of works on tradition-and several other selfless scholars, in making much of the work of Guénon and Schuon available in English. See Pallis, The Way and the Mountain, London, 1960; Peaks and Lamas, London, 1974; and A Buddhist Spectrum, London, 1980.

39. See his Shakespeare in the Light of Sacred Art, London, 1966; also his A Sufi Saint of the Twentieth Century, London and Berkeley, 1971; What is Sufism?, London, 1981; and Ancient Beliefs and Modern Superstitions, London, 1979.

40. This journal in a sense complements the older Etudes Traditionnelles but has a larger audience and also a more extended field of concern. For a collection of some of the articles in the journal see Needleman (ed.), The Sword of Gnosis. During recent years other journals with a traditional point of view have seen the light of day of which the most notable perhaps was the Sophia Perennis that was published by the Iranian Academy of Philosophy from 1975 through 1978. Other journals such as Conoscenza religiosa (Italy), Religious Studies (Australia), and Temenos (England) also possess a traditional perspective with different kinds of emphasis. As for the Studi tradizionali published also in Italy, it is more than anything else of a “Guénonian” character.

41. There are many other notable traditional authors whose names cannot all be mentioned here. Some like Gai Eaton have gained fairly wide recognition as writers while others like Lord Northbourne have remained known to a more exclusive audience. W. Stoddart is preparing a full bibliography of traditional works written during this century.

42. See esp. his well-known work The Sacred Pipe, Baltimore, 1972.

43. There are a number of scholars mostly in the field of comparative religion and Islamic studies who have carried out important scholarly studies and translations from Oriental languages from the traditional point of view. This group includes H. Smith, W. N. Perry, V. Danner, R. W. J. Austin, J. L. Michon and W. Chittick whose works in Islamic studies and comparative religion are well known in scholarly circles.

44. Such figures include not only scholars like J. Needleman but also important religious thinkers like Thomas Merton.

45. His posthumous work Guide for the Perplexed is one of the most easily approachable introductions to traditional doctrines available today.

46. Such Oriental scholars and thinkers as the late Shaykh ‘Abd al-H. alım Mah.mud, the former rector of al-Azhar University, H. Askari, M. Ajmal, A. K. Brohi, and Y. Ibish in the Islamic world; A. K. Saran and Keshavram Iyengar in India; R. Fernando in Sri Lanka; and Sh. Bando in Japan may be mentioned among figures directly influenced in a major way by those who have revived tradition in theWest.

47. This is a theme which cannot be dealt with here but which we have treated extensively in many of our Persian writings including our introduction to the Persian translation of Guénon’s Crisis of the Modern World (Buhran-i dunya-yi mutajaddid), trans. D. Dihshırı, Tehran, 1971; see also our Islam and the Plight of Modern Man.

48. On the enigma of Vivekananda in relation to Ramakrishna see F. Schuon, Spiritual Perspectives and Human Facts, pp. 113-22.

49. The nowextensive amount of literature on traditional harmonics and Pythagorean musical theory are based on the pioneering work of A. von Thimus, Die harmonikale Symbolik des Altertums, Berlin, 1868-76, as resuscitated and extended by H. Kayser in such works as Der hörende Mensch, Berlin, 1932; Akrösis: The Theory of World Harmonics, Boston, 1970; Orphikon. Eine harmonikale Symbolik, Basel-Stuttgart, 1973; and numerous other studies. On his life and works see R. Haase, Ein Leben für die Harmonik der Welt, Basel-Stuttgart, 1968.

These teachings were brought to America mostly by the Swiss pianist and musicologist E. Levy who also wrote about them and taught them to many students. See his “The Pythagorean Table,” with S. Levarie, Main Currents in Modern Thought, March-April 1974, pp. 117-29; and their Tone: A Study in Musical Acoustics, Kent, Kans., 1968. In

recent years a number of more accessible works have spread the knowledge of traditional musical theories as they apply to various disciplines further afield. See E. McClain, The Pythagorean Plato: Prelude to the Song Itself, Stony Brook, N. Y., 1978; idem, The Myth of Invariance, Boulder, Colo., and London, 1978; idem, “The Ka‘ba as Archetypal Ark,” Sophia Perennis 4/1 (Spring 1978): 59-74; R. Brumbugh, Plato’s Mathematical Imagination, New York, 1968; and A. T. de Nicolàs, Meditation through theR. g Veda: Four Dimensional Man, New York, 1976.

50. Once when we were in Cairo discussing Schwaller de Lubicz’s study of things Egyptian with the celebrated Egyptian architect Hasan Fathy who knew him well, the aged architect, who is far from being a gullible person, told us that the French scholar seemed to have known the principles of Egyptian art and archaelogy a priori, before even arriving in Egypt, and terminated his studies, finished the cycle of his work, and left Egypt before the revolution with a clear premonition of what was to occur. Fathy is convinced that Schwaller de Lubicz’s knowledge of the Egyptian tradition had come from an esoteric source which his archaeological studies only confirmed and that his knowledge was not the fruit of ordinary archaeological and art historical studies.

51. See, for example, S. Kramrish, The Hindu Temple, 2 vols., New York, 1980; B. Rowland, Art in East and West, Boston, 1966; idem, The Art and Architecture of India: Buddhist, Hindu, Jain, Baltimore, 1971; and H. Zimmer, The Art of Indian Asia; Its Mythology and Transformations, ed. J. Campbell, 2 vols., New York, 1955.

52. See, for example, K. Critchlow, Islamic Patterns, London, 1975; idem, Time Stands Still, London, 1980; R. Alleau, Aspects de l’alchimie traditionnelle, Paris, 1970; M. Ghyka, Philosophie et mystique du nombre, Paris, 1952; and E. Zolla, Meraviglie della natura: l’alchimia, Milan, 1975.

53. On different types of movement against reductionism such as consciousness research, frontier physics, morphic science, and the like see Roszak, Person/Planet, pp. 50-54 and pp. 327-28 for references to works in such fields.

54. We have in mind such completely unscientific extrapolations carried out in popularized descriptions of the scientific universe by men like C. Sagan and the evolutionist theology of Teilhard de Chardin with whichwe shall deal more extensively later.

55. We shall deal with this issue and the traditional criticism of modern science in chap. 6.

56. This would correspond to the materia prima of traditional cosmology. See his “Cosmology and Modern Science.”

57. “Our inability to describe our consciousness adequately, to give a satisfactory picture of it, is the greatest obstacle to our acquiring a rounded picture of the world.” E. Wigner, quoted by Sir J. Eccles, The Brain and the Person, Sydney, 1965, p. 3; see also E. Wigner, Symmetries and Reflections, Cambridge, Mass., 1970.

58. See D. Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order, London, 1980, esp. chap. 7, “The Enfolding-Unfolding Universe and Consciousness,” pp. 172ff., where he summarizes his views speaking of the life of the universe as an unfolding rather than evolution. Of course from the traditional point of view as far as consciousness is concerned the unfolded reality was already at the beginning and nothing can be added to its pure unconditional state by any process whatsoever of change and becoming.

59. One author calls the discovery of the fundamental impermanence of things, the discontinuity of matter and the absence of substance in modern physics as “une confirmation éclatante des principes essentiels du Bouddhisme.” R. Linssen, “Le Bouddhisme et la science moderne,” Prance-Ask, no. 46-47 (Jan.-Feb. 1950), p. 658.

60. See the well-known works of F. Capra, The Tao of Physics, New York, 1977; R. G. Siu, The Tao of Science: An Essay onWestern Knowledge and EasternWisdom, Cambridge, Mass., 1958. Such types of writing have proliferated during the past few years. C. F. vonWeizsäcker has even established a research foundation for the study of Eastern wisdom and Western science. See W. I. Thompson, Passage About Earth, New York, 1974, chap. 5, where the activities of this foundation are described.

61. It is amazing to note that even with the help of computers it is not possible to solve all the different aspects of a three body problem. How strange it is that people still think

about reducing the whole of the visible universe to the activity of physical particles whose reality is exhausted by a mathematical treatment of their physical properties!

62. We have dealt with the question of the encounter of man and nature, its historical background in the Occident, and metaphysical principle pertaining to nature, in Man and Nature, London, 1976.

63. After carrying out scientific research on the interdependence of various elements and forces on the surface of the earth, Lovelock and Epton, who first proposed the Gaia hypothesis, write, “This led us to the formulation of the proposition that living matter, the air, the oceans, the land surface were parts of a giant system which was able to control temperature, the composition of the air and sea, the pH of the soil and so on so as to be optimum for survival of the biosphere. The system seemed to exhibit the behaviour of a single organism, even a living creature. One having such formidable powers deserved a name to match it; William Golding, the novelist, suggested Gaia, the name given by the ancient Greeks to their Earth goddess.” J. Lovelock and S. Epton, “The Quest for Gaia,” New Scientist, Feb. 6, 1975, p. 304.

64. This statement was made to us by John Todd during the ceremony of his receiving the Threshold Award at the New Alchemy Institute in 1980. On his ecological ideas see Nancy Todd (ed.), Book of the New Alchemists, New York, 1980; John Todd and Nancy Todd, Tomorrow is Our Permanent Address, New York, 1980.

65. For example, the Lindesfarne experiment conveys the same concern with the rediscovery of the sacred through the study of both ecological and traditional sciences. See W. J. Thompson, Passages About Earth, and his other later works which are all concerned in one way or another with the Lindesfarne experiment. See also the Lindesfarne Letters which appears periodically.

66. “I want to discredit such dogmatic statements [about man being simply a complicated machine] and bring you to realize how tremendous is the mystery of each one of us.” Eccles, op. cit., p. 1. Also, “Contrary to this physicalist creed, I believe that the prime reality of my experiencing self cannot with propriety be identified with some aspects of  its experiences and its imaginings-such as brains and nervous and nerve impulses and even complex spatio-temporal patterns of impulses. The evidence presented in these talks show that these events, in the material world are necessary but not sufficient causes for conscious experiences and formy consciouslyexperiencing self.” Ibid., p. 43.

67. This does not mean that this concern with the human body has succeeded in actually discovering the sacred significance of the body. On the contrary, it has often led to the worst kinds of perversions from both the moral and spiritual points of view.

68. In this as in other cases the lack of a traditional world view and the actual practice of a traditional way prevents such concerns from being anything more than partial and fragmentary, never able to transform the being of the person who has become attracted to the “natural” way of eating or natural methods of being treated medically usually for deeper spiritual reasons of which he is often not totally aware.

69. It might appear on the surface that Jung is dealing with traditional psychology whereas his treatment of traditional doctrines and symbols is a perversion of them so that he is, in a sense, more misleading than Freud who is openly against all that tradition stands for. See T. Burckhardt, “Cosmology in Modern Science,” in Needleman (ed.), The Sword of Gnosis, pp. 153-78; idem, Alchemy, esp. chaps. 9-11; W. N. Perry, “The Revolt against Moses,” Studies in Comparative Religion, Spring 1961, pp. 103-19; and F. Schuon, “The Psychological Imposture,” Studies in Comparative Religion, Spring 1961, pp. 98-102. On traditional psychology see H. Jacobs, Western Psychoth erapy and Hindu Sadhana: A Contribution to Comparative Studies in Psychology and Metaphysics, London, 1961; and A. K. Coomaraswamy, “On the Indian and Traditional Psychology, or Rather Pneumatology,” in Lipsey (ed.), Coomaraswamy 2: Selected Papers-Metaphysics, Princeton, 1977, pp. 333-78. The two volumes of Coomaraswamy edited by R. Lipsey include both essays not published previously, such as the one on psychology, and some which had appeared in earlier collections, such as Figures of Speech and Figures of Thought and Why Exhibit Works of Art?, as well as articles from various learned journals.

J. Sinha in his classical work Indian Psychology: Perception, London, 1934, states, “There is no empirical psychology in India. Indian psychology is based on metaphysics” (p.

16). This statement holds true for all traditional psychology, which is a science of the soul in the light of the scientia sacra.

70. “There is no science of the soul without a metaphysical basis to it and without spiritual remedies at its disposal.” Schuon, Logic and Transcendence, p. 14.

On the current search for the discovery of traditional science of the soul see J. Needleman (ed.), On the Way to Self Knowledge, New York, 1976; also E. Fromm, D. T. Suzuki, and R. DeMartino, Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis, New York, 1960, one of numerous works seeking to draw from Buddhist sources for the recreation of a viable science of the soul.

71. The classical proofs such as the moral, experiential, teleological, cosmological, and ontological have been resuscitated of late in one form or another by such contemporary philosophers and theologians as R. Green, A. Plantinga, H. Malcolm, M. Adler, B. J. F. Lonergan, and R. Swinburne. This does not mean that the nexus between reason and the Intellect has been reestablished among such thinkers. But it does mean that a step has been taken in the other direction and away from the debasing of reason and its severance from the certitude of intellection, a step which was to lead with Hume and esp. the post-Hegelian critics of reason to an irrationalism which did not go beyond reason but fell below it.

Islamic theological and philosophical proofs for the existence of God which are in fact similar to those of St. Thomas and other Christian theologians have been discussed and analyzed in terms of modern philosophical ideas by W. L. Craig in his The Kalam Cosmological Argument, London, 1979; the author considers the kalam argument based on the impossibility of an infinite temporal regress as being defendable in contemporary philosophical terms. This is just one example of the renewal of interest in traditional philosophical proofs for the existence of God. Of course the proofs are not themselves affected by whether a particular generation of Western philosophers appreciates them or not.

72. The discernment of the true from the false in this bewilderingworld, and even a study of the present day scene, is beyond the confines of this study but certainly there is a need to survey the whole situation once again from the traditional point of view. For a description of the so-called “new religions” in America see J. Needleman, The New Religions, New York, 1977; and Needleman and G. Baker (eds.), Understanding the New Religions, New York, 1978.

73. Such authors as A. Graham, B. Griffiths, and T. Merton have written extensively on the positive role that living spirituality can play on the revival of the contemplative disciplines within Christianity and have even put certain Oriental forms of meditation into practice. There are, however, others whose approach is, to put it mildly, much less serious.

74. See J. Needleman, Lost Christianity, New York, 1980, which deals with the significance of this question in the religious life of many seekers today without exhausting the different facets of the problem.

75. On the countertradition see R. Guénon, The Reign of Quantity.

76. “La tradition est ce qui rattache toute chose humaine à la Verité Divine.” F. Schuon, “L’esprit d’une oeuvre,” Planète plus (L’homme et son message-René Guénon), April 1970, p. 36.