The Play of Masks

The central gesture

The title is deliberately strange: the play of masks. Schuon borrows the word from Hindu philosophy, where līlā designates the divine play by which the Absolute manifests the relative. But he adds to it the notion of mask (persona in the Latin sense): each man is a mask that the divine Substance assumes in order to manifest itself in time. This is not an offhand metaphor — it is, for Schuon, an exact ontological description.

Beyond the apparent simplicity of this image, the book — one of Schuon's last great works before The Transfiguration of Man (1995) — treats the gravest questions: original sin, contingency, intention, charity, the consciousness of the Real, and the liberating passage that closes the volume. One hears in it the voice of a man at the end of his work, who no longer seeks to convince but to transmit.

The key concepts (made plain)

• The prerogatives of the human state — Schuon opens with a decisive clarification: to be human is not to be a rational animal. It is to be endowed with a cosmic centrality — man is the creature in which the universe is reflected, by which God is named, and which can know the Absolute. This ontological dignity is not a merit; it is a vocation. And to speak of a vocation is to speak of the possibility of failing it.
• Man within the cosmogonic projection — For Schuon, creation is not a past event ("14 billion years ago") but a permanent process: at every instant, the world is projected by the Absolute. And man is, at every instant, the conscious centre of this projection. To understand this changes the very quality of one's presence to the world.
• Man-centre vs. man-periphery — Schuon takes up here the Eckhartian distinction between the inner man and the outer man. The man-periphery passively identifies with his experiences; he is what happens to him. The man-centre, by contrast, can rejoice and suffer in his temporal humanity while remaining impassible in his immortal kernel. The mask weeps or laughs; the face behind it remains at peace.
• Ex nihilo, in Deo — Schuon clarifies the mystery of creation. Ex nihilo (out of nothing): yes, in the sense that no substance external to God precedes creation. But in Deo (in God): for the "nothing" out of which the world arises is not an empty void; it is the infinite possibility contained in God Himself. The world thus arises from the nothing that is, properly speaking, in God — hence the opposite of pure nothingness.
• In the face of contingency — Contingency (the fact that the things of the world could not be) is, for the modern, an anguish. For Schuon, it is on the contrary the key to spiritual freedom: what is contingent can be released. To love a contingent being as if it were necessary is to condemn oneself to suffering; to love a contingent being as contingent is to love it freely.
• In the wake of original sin — Schuon treats the biblical fall not as a locatable historical fact, but as the metaphysical structure of the human condition. Adam represents universal man; his fall is ours, at every instant, each time we prefer the particular to the Universal, appearance to substance, the ego to the Self.
• On intention — The spiritual life is governed by intention (niyya in the Sufi lexicon), not by the mere outward action. The same action can be holy or lost, according to the intention that animates it. But Schuon adds a nuance: intention does not suffice on its own — there must also be the truth of the object, the rightness of the means. Without a right intention, no action is complete; but intention without discernment is merely a sentiment.
• A remark on charity — Charity, says Schuon, is not a sentiment but a quality of being. The saint does not "feel" charity; he is charitable — in the sense in which water is wet. This clarification is liberating for anyone who reproaches himself with a lack of sentimental warmth: true charity can be sober, almost cold on the surface, and far more effective than effusions.
• No initiative without truth — A crucial chapter: Schuon rejects the modern idea that spiritual activism would be a virtue. Before acting, one must know; without knowledge, every initiative is blind, and the good intended produces evil. This position passes for conservative; in reality, it is prudential: hell, says the adage, is paved with good intentions without discernment.
• To be conscious of the Real — The phrase is deliberately simple. The spiritual life is not to seek God (He is not lost), nor to believe in Him (belief is only a stage), but to be conscious of His omnipresent presence. This "consciousness of the Real" is what the Sufis name iḥsān, what Zen calls ordinary satori, what contemplative Christians call the memoria Dei.
• The liberating passage — The final chapter, which closes the book — and almost the work. In it Schuon describes the moment of passage: the exit from the ego, the entry into the Self. This passage is not physical death (although death may precipitate it); it is the inward act by which the soul ceases to identify itself with what it is not. To die before dying, say the Sufis. The book closes on this discreet call.

The architecture of the work

Unlike the previous books, The Play of Masks is not divided into formal parts: it consists of eleven tightly written studies, in a continuity of meditation. Here is the sequence:

1. The prerogatives of the human state — the anthropological foundation
2. Man within the cosmogonic projection — creation as a permanent process
3. The play of masks — the title chapter, man-centre vs. man-periphery
4. Ex nihilo, in Deo — the metaphysics of creation
5. In the face of contingency — accepting the fragility of the world
6. In the wake of original sin — a metaphysical rereading of Adam
7. On intention — niyya and discernment
8. A remark on charity — charity as a quality of being
9. No initiative without truth — wisdom against activism
10. To be conscious of the Real — iḥsān
11. The liberating passage — the final gesture

A few voices

Man-centre is determined by the intellect and is thereby rooted in the immutable; man-periphery is more or less an accident. The Play of Masks, chap. III

There are holy men who laugh with those who laugh and weep with those who weep — which is a way of expressing indirectly the detachment, and directly the benevolence, of the pneumatic man. The Play of Masks, chap. III

The underlying divine substance does not abolish the human mask; no more than the latter prevents the divine manifestation. The Play of Masks, chap. III

To read it

The Play of Masks is a book of spiritual old age. Schuon is 85 when he writes it; he has said everything, argued everything; what remains is to set down. The eleven studies are of an extreme concision — every sentence bears weight. No polemic, no justification; only a voice that says what it knows.

To be read last, among the works of Schuon. When one has gone through The Eye of the Heart (the doctrine), Paths of Gnosis (the controversies), From the Divine to the Human (the systematisation), To Have a Centre (the anthropological application), then The Play of Masks appears as what it is: the teaching set down.

Three chapters deserve to be read on their own and several times over: The Play of Masks (chap. III), To Be Conscious of the Real (chap. X), and The Liberating Passage (chap. XI). This last one can accompany a whole lifetime.

Resonances

• The doctrine of theophany — the world as a divine mask
• The Sufi fanāʾ (annihilation) — see the fanāʾ entry in The Names of Love
• The iḥsān of the ḥadīth Jibrīl — see the hadith of Gabriel
• Eckhart, the inner man, and the Rhenish-Flemish Gelassenheit