smith-bush - transcendent unity pro

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JAARM/4 (1976)721-724

Frithjof Schuon's The Transcendent Unityof Religions: Pro

H U S T O N S M I T H

I

HAVE not seen Richard Bush's review, but he has informed me of the points

he intends to make. I welcome the invitation of the Editor of the JA AR to

respond to these points, and for a specific reason. Schuon's positionpolarizes. Part of me regrets this, for I enjoy togetherness as much as the next man.

But if the togetherness is not going to be on my side — which is to say, if it isn't

going to happen — polarization can be useful in throwing differences into sharp

relief. In the almost diametrically opposite responses of Bush and myself to

Schuon's book I see a window onto the central theological divide, not of our time

only, but of all times.

The divide is between spiritual constitutions; spiritual types or dispositions, if

you will. And because it is fundamental to the book in question, I shall summarize

it before remarking on Professor Bush's critique. In Schuon's vocabulary, thetypes are esoteric and exoteric.

Esoterics are persons whose key meanings are more abstract than are those of

exoterics. "Abstract" here is not, however, opposed to concrete if the latter means

that which is fully real. Or to be precise, for esoterics it is not thus opposed, this

being precisely the divide. For esoterics, universals with their generality and

"abstractness" are more real than are the particulars that embody them. For

exoterics they are less real.

The distinction arises in Christianity — to cite the case closest to

home — because theologically it can stabilize at a number of points along the

concrete-to-"abstract" continuum. Where in fact it does "dig in" depends on thespiritual type (exoteric or esoteric) of the Christian in question. For the Disciples

the focus was originally Jesus of Nazareth; later it became the Risen Christ. Still

later Christ was identified as the Logos, while for certain mystics the Logos itself

derives from the Godhead which exceeds it categorically. The meanings in these

several specifications flow into and to some extent condition one another, but this

does not alter the fact that minds differ in the point on the continuum where they

find reality centering and from which, consequently, meaning ultimately derives.

As theology works its way from particulars toward universals, from the specific

toward the general, exoterics arrive earlier than esoterics at a point where they feelthat meaning is becoming attenuated. Why attenuated? Because the longer the

ladder of abstraction the shakier its grip on the ground from which meaning for

exoterics rises: the terra firma of concrete particularity. In Christendom this terra

fir ma is the historical Jesus.

From this fundamental distinction a number of corollaries follow:

1. Exoterism, planted firmly in the spatio-temporal world which is at once (a)

H U S TO N S M I T H IS Professor of Religion at Syracuse University He has authored the textbook,

Religions of Man, and a recently published book entitled Forgotten Truth.

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7 2 2 H U S T O N S M I T H

the world we are in most obvious touch with and (b) the one most riven bydistinctions, inclines toward dualism. By contrast, esotensm's appetite forgenerality and the universal — boundlessness — points it toward the complete

Universal, the Infinite or Absolute which, because it includes everything, annulsdistinctions and is non -dua l. Dvaita \s.advaita. The test case is whether the soul isdistinct from God. Buddhism's anatta (no-soul) doctrine (precisely duplicated bySpinoza); Hinduism's "Atman is Brahman"; and Sufism's ana'l-Haqq ("lam theAbsolute Tru th," Hallaj) are esoteric For exoterics such assertions "comm itshirk." They constitute the ultimate sin of ascribing to God a rival.

2 Affirming as it does the permanent reality of the individual soul, exoterismtends to be individualistic. It views things more from the standpoint of theseparate and separating self. Does God love me?, e. g., is an urgent if not the

urgent religious question.3. Exoterism tends to be sentimental in the non-pejorative sense of taking its

last-ditch stand in feelings (sentiments). For esoterics, on the other hand, it isTru th that holds the final key. Sentimen t vs. intellection; bhakti\s.jnana. All menpossess both; the question is which, in a given personality makeup, is stronger.

4. Closely allied to the preceding point, exoterism inclines toward moralism,esotensm toward contem plation. The way of M artha vs the way of M ary; Tillich's"prophetic faith," which extols the holiness of the ought, vs. his "ontolog ical faith"which stresses the holiness of the is .

5. Because definitions for the most part delimit — the defined pulls against

the ///finite — esoteric m etaphysics tends to proceed apop hatically (in terms ofwhat God is not: neti, neti and the via negativa generally). But this route landsexoterics precisely nowhere. Leaving them with nothing they can get their mindsaround, it leaves them with noth ing, period — the whole deba te over whetherNirvana is a positive or negative concept comes in here. Balancing the apophatictheology of the esoterics, exoteric theology is couched in positive assertions and iskataphatic.

With this summary of the esoteric/exoteric distinction in place, I proceed toProfessor Bush's criticisms of Schuon's book as he has alerted me to these in

advance of actually writing his review. I do not know enough a bou t his theology tosay flatly that it is exoteric, but searching for an explanation for our oppositeresponses, the hypothesis of an esoteric/exoteric difference looks like it mightserve. If Bush is of exoteric disposition and I of esote ric, I can be at peace with ourdifferences, otherwise I must track his points to showdown or leave the issuesunresolved.

Bush noted four concrete points he intends to make.A. The transcendent is more closely related to th e world in which we live than

Schuon allows. My reply:For the exoteric, the Cloud of Unknowing so veils the Infinite that it seems

alien, remote, and discontinuous with our daily experience. For the esoteric it isotherwise. Logically the Infinite could not be such if anyth ing — our worldincluded — lay outside it, experientially this fact "o ut s" in the way Schuonrecounts in his latest book.

The first spiritual phase is isolation, [but] the summit is to "see Godeverywhere," for the world is God. In other words, there is one spiritual perfectionin which the contemplative sees God only inwardly, in the silence of the heart, andthere is another that is superior to this and derives from it . . . in which thecontemplative perceives God equally in the outward, in phenomena (Islam and thePerennial Philosophy, p 205).



SCHUON'S THE TRANSCENDENT UNITY OF RELIGIONS PRO 723

B It is difficult to engage in the discussion of a thesis claimed to becomprehended only by a limited spiritual elite My reply.

Esoterics do not constitute a moral or even a religious elite. As a group they are

not more righteous or holy in the sense of maximizing the spiritual potential th at istheirs. Only with respect to truth can it be claimed — by them; exoterics willnaturally resist the claim — that they see more.

Following this clarification of the phrase "spiritual elite," two observations arein order. (1) In the absence of direct intuitive discernment of the Infinite, it isindeed difficult to discuss it,1 and the difference between esoterics and exotericslies precisely in the relative strength of such discernment. (2) If the reader were tointrospect for a mom ent and ask himself how he responded to B ush's word "e lite,"this might provide a clue to ascertaining his own spiritua l type If his instinctive

response took a moral turn — "the notion is undemocratic and is sure to lead toabuses" — the chances are tha t he is an exoteric, for to exoterics moral andinterpersonal considerations tend to be primary. For esoterics, thoseconsiderations, important as they are, run second to issues of reality: the waythings are. The first question an esoteric raises abo ut a notion, the notion of "elite"included, is, Is it true? Questions relating to its implications or consequences comelater

This leads directly to Bush's next pointC. Schuon underplays the ethical, he seems to consider it an earlier level to be

transcended. My reply:

"U nderp lay" is a relative term It is certainly not the case tha t esotericsconsider the ethical u nim portan t. They will be the first to join exoterics in insistingthat if one thinks tha t he is grow ing in his love of God but is not in fact growing inhis love of man, he is deceiving himself; as for their behavior, it would be difficultto fault the Spinozas and Dogens of the world on charges of misco nduct. But hereagain there is something in Bush's perception that is accura te and revealing, he ison to something. It is true tha t for the esoteric the ethical is not a//-im portant, forhe is privy to a respect in which everything that happens is in keeping with God'swill and everything that is , is perfect precisely as it is — as the Buddhists would

say, it is the Buddha-nature. This respect is less evident to the exoteric, andbecause it is less evident he fails to perceive the way in which it presupposesmorality With this last perception missing, it seems to the exoteric as if the visionof Total Perfection annu ls m orality — "cuts the nerve of moral actio n" is thestandard phrase. This adds u p to m aking the ethical all-im portant, or nearly so , in

'The reasons the Absolute must be approached largely apophatically are(a) It cannot be assumed that persons who understand the common sense meanings ofwords will

unde rstand the meanings they intend w hen "gestalted " to symbolize the Abs olute wh ich is a

categorically different kind of existent (b) Because this is so — l e , because in this case no on e-

to-one relation between form and content, symbol and meaning, obtains — no depiction of theAbs olute can be perm anen tly or inter-subjectively satisfactory in every respect, (c) Ac coun ts of

the Absolute m ust be parad oxical — that the Absolute contains everything but is without

distinction s, is but one examp le In this third respect the languag e of the Abso lute is like that of

quantum physics

These difficulties in discussing the Ab solute d o not deter esoterics from reason ing abou t (and

explicating) it as best they can T hat his O ne could n ot be confined within form ulae did not affect

Plo tinus ' passion for concep tual precision One of the cou nts on which he faulted the G nostics

was "their refusal to put forth their . views by reasoned argu me nts instead of m yth s" (R .

T Walhs, Neoplaionism, [New York Ch arles Scnbner"s, So ns, 1972], p 12)



7 2 4 H U S T O N S M I T H

the exoteric's purview, and compared to this positioning, the esoteric doesunderplay it.

2

To put this point in more familiar terms, Bush's charge of ethical neglect is the

familiar cry of the prophet against the mystic, prophet/mystic being roughlysynonymous with exoteric/esoteric. The mystic regularly answers with acountercharge: the prophet forgets that time and evil are absorbed in God'sinfinity.31 am not concerned here with who is right; the question is why good andreasonable men perpetually disagree on the point, and again I find in Schuon'snotion of spiritual personality-types the most helpful answer. Some persons livepredom inantly in the concrete w hile others have their heads in the clouds, as thesaying goes. As history and social problems are more down to earth than are beingand eternity, it must be expected that prophets will find preoccupation with thelatter unhelpful if not escapist. More unrelievedly immersed in the world than theprophets, are persons who cannot see that philosophers are talking aboutanything — their mouthings "bake no b read," as the saying goes — but amon gphilosophers themselves the difference emerges in high-octave. "Ideas" were morereal (self-existing) for Pla to than they were for A ristotle, and for P lato the infinitewas actual whereas for Aristotle it was potential only. It is a matter of degree; asliding scale, a continuum.

D. Schuon shows little sympathy for other po ints of view My reply.This opens onto the general question: Assuming that truth matters and one is

not a total relativist, what should be one's stance toward what one sees to be error?

It's the age-old problem of the balance between tolerance and conviction, andwhat new can be said abo ut that in a paragrap h? Possibly som ething; namely, thatesoteric and e xoten cs incline toward opposite ends of the seesaw. Fo r onething: jnana or bhakti, intellect or affect, truth or love — we have already notedthat, though both are indispensable, proportionally speaking the esoteric is moreseized by the first term in the pairs. To this must be added that the exoteric tends tosee things in more immediate context wherein the feelings (hurts, sensibilities,abrasions) of the parties involved loom larger than they do in the cosmic andtrans-cosmic contexts the esoteric's eye is on. It has been said th at a Saracen wouldhave had greater respect for a Crusader who was bent on killing him out ofconviction than he would have had for a Christian ("Christian"?) who camepreaching a togetherness that came easy to him because he had only opinions, notconvictions, to be compromised.

!For more on the difference in the way ethics figures in the esoteric and exoteric perspectives,

see T age Lindbom's essay, "Virtue and M orality" in Studies in Comparative Religion, a journal I

consider the most underrated theological forum on the current English-speaking scene.3H ere is one of S chuon's formulations of the mystic's answer: "Exotencism . . in man

chiefly envisages the . . . social individual, in the universe it discerns only what affects that

individual, in God it hardly sees anything more than what has to do with the world — creation,man and his salvation Consequen tly . . exo ten cism takes no account either of [what] extends

beyond the human plane and opens out on to the divine, or of pre-human and post-human cycles

or of Beyond-Being, which is beyond all relativity and thus also beyond all distinctions; such a

perspective is comparable to a skylight, which gives the sky a certain form, round or square

maybe; through this the view of the sky is fragmentary, thou gh certainly that does not prevent the

sky from filling the room w ith light and life T he danger of a religious outlook based on the will

[exotensm in Judeo-Chnstian guise] is that it comes very close to insisting that faith should

include a maximum of will and a mimmum of [contemplative] intelligence" (Understanding

Islam, [Baltimore- Penguin Books, 1972], p. 110)

smith-bush - transcendent unity pro

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