perennial-philosophy

Beauty always represents an inward and inexhaustible equilibrium of forces; and this overwhelms our soul, since it can neither be calculated nor mechanically produced. A sense of beauty can therefore permit us the direct experience of relationships before we can perceive them, in a differentiated manner, with our discursive reason; in this, incidentally, there is a defence for our own physical and psychic well-being, something that we cannot neglect with impunity.

The man who wishes to know the "that" which is "thou" may set to work in any one of three ways. He may begin by looking inwards into his own particular thou and, by a process of "dying to self" --- self in reasoning, self in willing, self in feeling --- come at last to knowledge of the self, the kingdom of the self, the kingdom of God that is within. Or else he may begin with the thous existing outside himself, and may try to realize their essential unity with God and, through God, with one another and with his own being. Or, finally (and this is doubtless the best way), he may seek to approach the ultimate That both from within and from without, so that he comes to realize God experimentally as at once the principle of his own thou and of all other thous, animate and inanimate.

Spiritual realization is theoretically the easiest thing and in practice the most difficult thing there is. It is the easiest because it is enough to think of God. It is the most difficult because human nature is forgetfulness of God.

Unborn, never died, ever alive - thus is the Ultimate Reality. Of God. And of the Universal Self. As too, your own.

The esoteric finds the Absolute within the traditions, as poets find poetry within the poems.

The differences between religions are reflected very clearly in the different forms of sacred art: compared with Gothic art, above all in its __lamboyant_ style, Islamic art is contemplative rather than volitive: it is __ntellectual_ and not __ramatic_, and it opposes the cold beauty of geometrical design to the mystical heroism of cathedrals. Islam is the perspective of __mnipresence_ (__od is everywhere_), which coincides with that of __imultaneity_ (__ruth has always been_); it aims at avoiding any __articularization_ or __ondensation_, any __nique fact_ in time and space, although as a religion it necessarily includes an aspect of __nique fact_, without which it would be ineffective or even absurd. In other words Islam aims at what is __verywhere center_, and this is why, symbolically speaking, it replaces the cross with the cube or the woven fabric: it __ecentralizes_ and __niversalizes_ to the greatest possible extent, in the realm of art as in that of doctrine; it is opposed to any individualist mode and hence to any __ersonalist_ mysticism. To express ourselves in geometrical terms, we could say that a point which seeks to be unique, and which thus becomes an absolute center, appears to Islam__n art as in theology__s a usurpation of the divine absoluteness and therefore as an __ssociation_ (shirk); there is only one single center, God, whence the prohibition against __entralizing_ images, especially statues; even the Prophet, the human center of the tradition, has no right to a __hristic uniqueness_ and is __ecentralized_ by the series of other Prophets; the same is true of Islam__r the Koran__hich is similarly integrated in a universal __abric_ and a cosmic __hythm_, having been preceded by other religions__r other __ooks___hich it merely restores. The Kaaba, center of the Muslim world, becomes space as soon as one is inside the building: the ritual direction of prayer is then projected toward the four cardinal points.If Christianity is like a central fire, Islam on the contrary resembles a blanket of snow, at once unifying and leveling and having its center everywhere.