Book Review: Fullness of God

 

    Having spent a lot of time reading Julius Evola's works, I've known about René Guénon and Frithjof Schuon for a while, yet only recently have I delved into these other two major perennialists of the 20th century.  This book, received as a Christmas gift (appropriately), is a compendium of miscellaneous writings by Schuon on the subject of Christianity.  The Wikipedia article will give a much better summary, but for now all the introduction I'll give Schuon is that he was originally interested in practicing Hindu advaita vedānta, however due to the caste-restriction there, he opted instead to practice Islamic sufism and Plains-Indian shamanism—nevertheless, he was essentially a perennialist along with Guénon.  It seems he has written books and essays on pretty much every religion out there.

    I suppose before I delve into the content of this book, I should comment on Schuon's style.  Unlike Evola and Huxley, the only perennialists I've read before, Schuon is a very technical writer who assumes a good deal of prior knowledge in his readership.  Jargon litters the pages of his writing—atmā, māyā, upāya, dhikr, faqr, gnosis, agape—which are all well-enough explained in a glossary by the editor, but one gets the impression that he is journaling rather than writing exposition for the reading public.  For that matter, he also uses common words in highly technical senses; for instance, he often uses the word "mathematical" to designate the math of Plato and Socrates (the science of relations), which may come across awkwardly to those who know it only as "arithmetic and algorithms".  Even Evola, who believed he wrote for "aristocrats of the soul", slowed down to explain the terms he employed, both in his books and shorter works.  Were it not for this barrage of jargon, I would say Schuon is a very engaging writer: indeed, what remains is beautifully yet precisely composed.  He is the antithesis of Hemingway, who mistakes barren-ness for clarity—Schuon may seem verbose (and as mentioned, his jargon certainly does not help here), but far from being flowery, every word he uses only strengthens each point he makes.  He is, in short, a very worthwhile writer, but perhaps only for those already roughly as well-read as he is.

    Now we may move on to the content of this book.  This is an anthology of short essays written on various aspects of Christianity (as a whole, so including Catholicism, Protestantism, and Orthodoxy) from the perspective of the perennial philosophy: more succinctly, it's about "mystical Christianity".  The reason I, a Theravāda Buddhist, decided to read this is that I had (and still have) a lot of misgivings about Christianity on the institutional level, which often lead me to hastily dismiss it on the spiritual level.  Schuon's perennialist perspective is probably the only way someone like me could be brought to sympathize with Christianity, and I would say that he succeeded, to the extent that I would recommend it to others of the same persuasion.

    I have discussed my primary complaint on this blog quite a bit: that Christianity proclaims a total monopoly on salvation, and condemns all its competition as leading to eternal damnation.  Schuon shares my judgment and devotes quite a few passages to it; here is the gestalt of his take, from the appendix:

To say that Christ was born of a Virgin, that he had both a divine and human nature, that he raised the dead, that he himself was resurrected, and that he ascended into heaven is clearly not exoterism; it is simply historical facts, just as are the conquests of Alexander, for example; a Buddhist who knows of them must accept them; but to say that these facts prove that only Jesus Christ saves is exoterism.  It is obvious that esoterism does not consist in denying the facts on which the exoteric religion is founded; it lies in their interpretation, which refers back to their universal prototypes and to the principles, from which they derive their saving power, or their connection with this power.  (p. 175)

This issue also occupies a majority of his chapter on the encounter between Hellenism and early Christianity.  In a previous post, I hailed Celsus' tract from this period as very definitively smashing Christianity to a pulp.  Nevertheless, I think Schuon's more sympathetic perspective is a reasonable approach, especially now that Christian theologians have absorbed quite a bit of the Hellenistic perspective anyway (something hardly underway in Celsus' time).  He condemns the Christians' hubris and offers this illustration to us:

If, to speak symbolically, all men are in danger of drowning as a consequence of the fall of Adam, the Christian saves himself by grasping the pole held out to him by Christ, which no one else can hold out, whereas the Platonist saves himself by swimming; but neither course weakens or neutralizes the effectiveness of the other.  On the one hand there are certainly men who do not know how to swim or who are prevented from doing so, but on the other hand swimming is undeniably among the possibilities open to a man; the whole thing is to know what counts most in a situation whether individual or collective.  (p. 72)

The same may be said of all devotional and non-devotional religions, respectively.  I would only make one qualification: one might object, why bother swimming when the pole's right there?  This is a matter of one's inner orientation, the same reason why some take jobs instead of going on welfare, or homeschool their kids instead of sending them to public school.  Those of lower caste (speaking metaphorically) lack the physical, mental, and/or spiritual strength to get on both in this life and the next, so they naturally need the aegis and support of their superiors.  Those of higher caste require less support, so they naturally look out more for themselves.  So a slave works for a master (or, today, collects a welfare check) and prays to a divine Lord, so a noble makes his own living and meditates by himself.  To use a Buddhist analogy: Zen for the samurai, Amidism for the peasants.

    So much for that issue.  The other critical takeaway I had from this book was Schuon's explanation of Christian love.  I shall once again quote him; while this whole passage is really quite good, those with less patience can simply read the last sentence:

The morality that offers the other cheek—so far as morality can here be spoken of—means, not an unwonted solicitude towards one's adversary, but complete indifference toward the fetters of this world, or more precisely a refusal to let oneself to be caught up in the vicious circle of terrestrial causations. The man who wants to be right at any price on the personal plane loses serenity and moves away from the "one thing needful"; the affairs of this world bring with them only disturbances, and disturbances take one further from God. […]

The "non-violence" advocated by the Gospels symbolizes—and renders effective—the virtue of the mind preoccupied with "what is" rather than with "what happens". As a rule, man loses much time and energy in questioning himself about the injustice of his fellows as well as about possible hardships of destiny; whether there is human injustice or divine punishment, the world—the "current of forms" or the "cosmic wheel"—is what it is: it simply follows its course; it is conformable to its own nature. Men cannot be unjust insofar as they form part of this current; to be detached from the current and to act contrary to the logic of facts and of the bondage that it engenders is bound to appear madness in the eyes of the world, but it is in reality to adopt here below the point of view of eternity. And to adopt this point of view is to see oneself from a great distance: it is to see that we ourselves form a part of this world of injustice, and this is one more reason for remaining indifferent amid the uproar of human quarreling. The saint is the man who acts as if he had died and returned to life; having already ceased to be "himself", in the earthly sense, he has absolutely no intention of returning to that dream, but maintains himself in a kind of wakefulness, which the world, with its narrowness and impurities, cannot understand.

Pure love is not of this world of oppositions; it is by origin celestial, and its end is God; it lives as if it were in itself by its own light and in the beam of God-Love[.] (pp. 52-53)

I think the beauty and strength of this passage stands for itself, so I shall continue with a personal note.  I took to Buddhism in the summer of 2020 (the exact story may become its own blog post), but I had a hard time with the concept of mettā, variously translated as love, kindness, friendliness, etc. but which, it seems, connotes the same attitude Schuon expresses in the foregoing passage.  I originally found mettā in a series of meditations called the brahmā-vihāra (the Abodes of Brahmā, the Hindu creator-god) alongside the virtues of joy, compassion, and equanimity.  The trouble is that I was given the impression that this series of meditations was a mere alternative to the jhāna, which involve no emotions nor concern for others, but rather deepening contemplations that penetrate further and further towards nibbāna.  With that, I focused quite narrow-mindedly on severing attachments, discarding both love and hate, friendship and animosity, as obstacles to enlightenment (the usual caricature that Mahāyana polemics assign to original Buddhism).  This passage, however, gave me great pause on the matter, and forced me to re-evaluate the place of love in my spiritual practice; I have even discovered that the Buddha, far from calling it just an alternative, deemed the cultivation of mettā as karāṇiyaṃ: "that which must be done".  I have discussed my practice more in this Twitter thread, but I suppose here I should more directly praise Schuon for having opened my mind on this matter with an argument at once captivating and persuasive.

    These are the two takeaways I had from this book.  The remainder, while certainly interesting—the symbology of the Cross and the Immaculate Conception, the mysteries of the Incarnation and the Trinity,  etc—have no immediate concern to me.  I would emphasize again that Schuon is a sharp and dazzling writer, and that those seeking answers on such matters would do well to read this book, but those matters are for Christians.  Nonetheless, the fact that I, a non-Christian, found such value between those doctrine-specific points, speaks for the book's worth to everyone.  I think those who enjoy (or would enjoy, if anyone read it) this blog would find the most enjoyment in the aforementioned chapter on the confrontation with the Hellenists, since the attitudes of Plato, Plotinus, Celsus, etc. are in the same category as Buddhism and Hinduism ("Aryan" as Schuon says).