For the man of the golden age to climb a mountain was in truth to approach the Principle; to watch a stream was to see universal Possibility at the same time as the flow of forms.
In our day to climb a mountain—and there is no longer a mountain that is the “center of the world”—is to “conquer” its summit; the ascent is no longer a spiritual act but a profanation. Man, in his aspect of human animal, makes himself God. The gates of Heaven, mysteriously present in nature, close before him.
Schuon, Spiritual Perspectives and Human Facts, World Wisdom, 2007, p. 45.