That which today is called the Christian religion existed among the Ancients, and has never ceased to exist from the origin of the human race, until the time when Christ himself came, and men began to call Christian the true religion which already existed beforehand.

St. Augustine, Retractions, 1, XIII, 3

I am neither Christian, nor Jew, nor Parsi, nor Muslim. I am not of the East, nor of the West, nor of the land, nor of the sea. I have put duality away, I have seen that the two worlds are one. One I seek, One I know, One I see, One I call. He is the First, He is the Last, He is the Outward, He is the Inward.

Rûmî

There is but one sole philosophy, the Sophia Perennis

Strictly speaking, there is but one sole philosophy, the Sophia Perennis; it is also — envisaged in its integrality — the only religion. Sophia has two possible origins, one timeless and the other temporal; the first is “vertical” and discontinuous, and the second, “horizontal” and continuous; in other words, the first is like the rain that at any moment can descend from the sky; the second is like a stream that flows from a spring. Both modes meet and combine: metaphysical Revelation actualizes the intellective faculty, and once awakened, this gives rise to spontaneous and independent intellection.

The dialectic of the Sophia Perennis is “descriptive”, not “syllogistic,” which is to say that the affirmations are not the product of a real or imaginary “proof”, even though they may make use of proofs — real in this case — by way of “illustration” and out of concern for clarity and intelligibility. But the language of Sophia is above all symbolism in all its forms: thus the openness to the message of symbols is a gift proper to primordial man and his heirs in every age; Spiritus autem ubi vult spirat.

One of the paradoxes of our times is that esoterism, discreet by the force of things, finds itself obliged to assert itself publicly for the simple reason that there is no other remedy for the confusion of our time. For, as the Kabbalists say, “it is better to divulge Wisdom than to forget it.”

Schuon, The Transfiguration of Man, World Wisdom, 2003,
“Thought: Light and Perversion”, p. 9-10.

There are truths innate in the human Spirit…

“Philosophia Perennis” is generally understood as referring to that metaphysical truth which has no beginning, and which remains the same in all expressions of wisdom. Perhaps it would here be better or more prudent to speak of a “Sophia Perennis”, since it is not a question of artificial mental constructions, as is all too often the case in philosophy; or again, the primordial wisdom that always remains true to itself could be called “Religio Perennis”, given that by its nature it in a sense involves worship and spiritual realization. Fundamentally we have nothing against the word “philosophy”, for the ancients understood by it all manner of wisdom; in fact, however, rationalism, which has absolutely nothing to do with true spiritual contemplation, has given the word “philosophy” a limitative colouring, so that with this word one can never know what is really being referred to. If Kant is a “philosopher”, then Plotinus is not, and vice versa.

With Sophia Perennis, it is a question of the following: there are truths innate in the human Spirit, which nevertheless in a sense lie buried in the depth of the “Heart” — in the pure Intellect — and are accessible only to the one who is spiritually contemplative; and these are the fundamental metaphysical truths. Access to them is possessed by the “gnostic”, “pneumatic” or “theosopher” — in the original and not the sectarian meaning of these terms — and access to them was also possessed by the “philosophers” in the real and still innocent sense of the word: for example, Pythagoras, Plato and to a large extent also Aristotle.

If there were no Intellect, no contemplative and directly knowing Spirit, no “Heart-Knowledge”, there would also be no reason capable of logic; animals have no reason, for they are incapable of knowledge of God; in other words, man possesses reason or understanding — and also language — only because he is fundamentally capable of suprarational vision, and thus of certain metaphysical truth.

Schuon, “Sophia Perennis“, Studies in Comparative Religion,
Vol. 13, Nos. 3 & 4 (Summer-Autumn, 1979).

The True, the Good and the Beautiful

The Sophia Perennis is to know the total Truth and, consequently, to will the Good and love Beauty; and this in conformity to this Truth, hence with full awareness of the reasons for doing so.

The doctrinal Sophia treats of the Divine Principle on the one hand and of its universal Manifestation on the other: hence of God, the world and the soul, while distinguishing within Manifestation between the macrocosm and the microcosm; this implies that God comprises in Himself – extrinsically at least – degrees and modes, that is to say that He tends to limit Himself in view of His Manifestation. Therein lies all the mystery of the Divine Mâyâ (…)

As for the Good, it is a priori the supreme Principle as quintessence and cause of every possible good; and it is a posteriori on the one hand that which in the Universe manifests the Principle, and on the other hand that which leads back to the Principle; in a word, the Good is first of all God Himself, then the “projection” of God into existence, and finally the “reintegration” of the existentiated into God (…)

As for Beauty, it stems from Infinitude, which coincides with the divine Bliss; seen in this connection, God is Beauty, Love, Goodness and Peace, and He penetrates the whole Universe with these qualities. Beauty, in the Universe, is that reveals the divine Infinitude: every created beauty communicates to us something infinite, beatific, liberating. Love, which responds to Beauty, is the desire for union, or it is union itself (…)

Goodness, for its part, is the generous radiation of Beauty: it is to Beauty what heat is to light. Being Beauty, God is thereby Goodness or Mercy: we could also say that in Beauty, God lends us something of Paradise; the beautiful is the messenger, not only of Infinitude and Harmony, but also, like the rainbow, of reconciliation and pardon. From an altogether different standpoint, Goodness and Beauty are the respectively “inward” and “outward” aspects of Beatitude, whereas from the standpoint of our preceding distinction, Beauty is intrinsic inasmuch as it pertains to the Essence, whereas Goodness is extrinsic inasmuch as it is exercised in relation to accidents, namely towards creatures.

In this dimension, Rigor, which stems from the Absolute, could not be absent: intrinsically, it is the adamantine purity of the divine and of the sacred; extrinsically, it is the limitations of pardon, owing to the lack of receptivity of given creatures. The world is woven of two majors dimensions, mathematical rigor and musical gentleness; both are united in a superior homogeneity that pertains to the very fathomlessness of the Divinity.

Schuon, Roots of the Human Condition, p. 93-95.

The Religio Perennis is the underlying universality

The essential function of human intelligence is discernment between the Real and the illusory or between the Permanent and the impermanent, and the essential function of the will is attachment to the Permanent or the Real. This discernment and this attachment are the quintessence of all spirituality; carried to their highest level or reduced to their purest substance, they constitute the underlying universality in every great spiritual patrimony of humanity, or what may be called the Religio Perennis; [1] this is the religion to which sages adhere, one which is always and necessarily founded upon formal elements of divine institution. [2]

[1] These words recall the philosophia perennis of Steuchus Eugubin (sixteenth century) and the neo-scholastics; but the word philosophia suggests rightly or wrongly a mental elaboration rather than wisdom and therefore does not convey exactly the sense we intend. Religio is what “binds” man to Heaven and engages his whole being; as for the word traditio, it is related to a more outward and sometimes fragmentary reality, besides suggesting a retrospective outlook; a new-born religion “binds” men to Heaven from the moment of its first revelation, but it does not become a “tradition”— or have “traditions” — until two or three generations later.

[2] This is true even in the case of the pre-Islamic Arab sages, who lived spiritually on the heritage of Abraham and Ishmael.

Schuon, Light on the Ancient Worlds, 2006,
“Religio Perennis“, pp. 119-120.

The Sophia Perennis is not a “humanism”…

(…) the question may be asked whether the Sophia Perennis is a “humanism”; the answer would in principle be “yes”, but in fact it must be “no” since humanism in the conventional sense of the term de facto exalts fallen man and not man as such. The humanism of the moderns is practically an utilitarianism aimed at fragmentary man; it is the will to make oneself as useful as possible to a humanity as useless as possible.

Schuon, To Have a Center, 1990,
“Foreword”, p. viii.