Wherever virtue exists in an eminent degree it is persecuted. Few or none of the famous men that have lived escaped being calumniated by malice.
Miguel de Cervantes
The world loves to blacken the radiant and drag the sublime in the dust.
Friedrich Schiller
Unfortunately, “calumnies were (…) a recurring part of Schuon’s life, as is the case with almost all eminent persons whose opinions have an impact on the lives of others.” (…)
“An extreme example of (…) a personal attack on Schuon came in 1991, when a man tried to coerce him do give a supposed ‘esoteric benediction’ to an adulterous relationship. Schuon refused, and the man sought revenge by making false accusations against him to an assistant prosecutor. On the basis of these allegations, criminal charges were filed against the eighty-four year old philosopher. However, when the chief prosecutor looked at the evidence, he became aware of the accuser’s criminal record, (and) his court-ordered psychological counseling (…). The chief prosecutor thus immediately dismissed the charges and forced the resignation of the assistant responsible for the case. The police investigator was reassigned to another town. The local newspaper quoted the prosecutor as saying that other than the testimony of one individual ‘there is not one shred of evidence’ (…) against Schuon. (…) The accuser subsequently disseminated a document containing the same (…) allegations that had been discredited by the legal authorities.” [2]
Frithjof Schuon, Messenger of the Perennial Philosophy, by Michael Fitzgerald, World Wisdom, 2010, pp. 57, 194-195.
Curiously, in his day, Shri Râmana Maharshi — and he is far from being the only one [*] — was also faced with similar accusations on the part of a former disciple, and a similar course of events took place. The plaintiff against Schuon lost his case, but continued his campaign of defamation with the neurotic and obsessive hatred characteristic of certain tenebrous individuals. When one is unfamiliar with the atmosphere of ashrams, monasteries, or spiritual communities, one may be astonished by the presence of such people in the proximity of spiritual masters. In his memoirs, Vijayânanda, an elderly French disciple of Ma Ânanda Mayi, also recalls these bhuta (bad spirits), these ‘impossible people’, always critical, mediocre, psychopathic, or paranoid, for whom the light has an irresistible attraction, and of whom the entourage of this great Indian saint was also far from exempt.
[*] Padre Pio and, in a different context, but arising from similar causes, St. Theresa of Ávila, who was accused before a tribunal of the Inquisition by one of her former nuns for alleged maltreatment and suspect practices.
Frithjof Schuon, Life and Teachings, by Jean-Baptiste Aymard and Patrick Laude, State University of New York Press, 2004, p. 51.
“You are no doubt familiar with the Sufic rule, quoted by al-Qushaïrî, according to which the disciple must never regard the acts of his master with a bad eye, ‘even if he thinks he catches him in flagrant adultery’. One could therefore ask: how then does the disciple recognize the orthodoxy of the master? The answer is this: in all that concerns the disciple himself and not in that which concerns only the master. We adhere to a master by virtue of the divine Truths that we find in his teaching and in his method. It is by relying on this that we ‘oblige’ God towards us; God will not deceive us; He does not require us to analyze the personal acts of the master, that we do ‘psychology’, but if He wants to show us the falsity of the master, He will show it to us on the very plane of these divine Truths by virtue of which we adhered to the master.”
Extract from a letter by Titus Burckhardt, 1951.
It is necessary to accept ‘God’s Will’ whenever evil may enter into our destiny and cannot possibly be avoided; indeed the partially paradoxical nature of All-Possibility requires of man an attitude that is in conformity with the situation, namely the quality of serenity, of which the sky above is the visible symbol. Serenity, so to speak, is to place oneself above the clouds, in an ambience of coolness and void, and far from the dissonances of this low world.
Schuon, Roots of the Human Condition, p. 110.
