Paths of Gnosis

The central gesture

First, to clear up a misunderstanding: the "gnosis" Schuon speaks of has nothing to do with the sectarian gnostic movements of the 2nd century condemned by the Church Fathers. The Greek word gnôsis simply means knowledge — in the strong, full sense. For Schuon, gnosis is exactly what Sanskrit calls jñāna (liberating knowledge), what the Sufis name maʿrifa, and what the Greek Fathers (Evagrius, Maximus the Confessor) already called by that name before the word fell into ill repute. It is knowledge by identification — where the one who knows, what he knows, and the act of knowing are no longer more than one.

The subtitle of the central chapter — "gnosis, the language of the Self" — gives the key. Gnosis is not one philosophical opinion among others: it is the inner word by which the Self (Ātman, Spirit, divine Intellect) recognises itself in man. The soul does not fabricate gnosis; it effaces itself enough for gnosis to express itself through it.

The key concepts (made plain)

• Gnosis vs. sentimental mysticism — For Schuon, the spiritual way can be organised along two axes: the way of love (embodied by the bhakti, by the loving Sufis such as Rūmī, by the Christian women saints) and the way of knowledge (Shankara, Ibn ʿArabī, Eckhart). These two ways arrive at the same Real; but their grammars differ. Schuon does not set one against the other: he defends the legitimacy of the way of knowledge, often wrongly suspected of "coldness" by the exoteric religions.
• The Self (Ātman) and the ego (ahaṃkāra) — Taken from the advaita vedānta of Shankara. The ego (the empirical "I") is, in the end, an illusion; the Self (the impersonal-personal Spirit that resounds in each one) alone is real. The whole way consists in passing from the first to the second — not by destruction, but by recognition.
• The doctrine of Illusion (māyā) — Schuon devotes a crucial chapter to it. Māyā is not what moderns believe it to be: an "all is illusion" that levels all distinctions. Māyā, in the authentic Vedantic teaching, is the function by which the Absolute projects the relative — a relative which, taken for the absolute, deceives; taken for the relative, reveals. Schuon insists: the function of the Intellect is to discern, not to level.
• The diversity of revelation — A return to the central theme of the whole Perennialist school: there is not one true religion and several false ones, but several true forms of one and the same Truth — each adapted to a people, an epoch, a temperament. This diversity is not a scandal: it is the very generosity of God speaking to each one in the tongue he can hear.
• Natural mysticism vs. theological mysticism — A question debated since Henri de Lubac: is there a "purely human" mystical experience, without revealed grace? Schuon answers with nuance: yes, in one sense (the intellect is by nature open to the Real); no, in another (every authentic experience of the Real is, by definition, what the theologians call grace — whether one knows it or not).
• The ternary aspect of the microcosm — Man is neither a two-storey being (body/soul) nor a one-storey one, but a three-storey being: body, soul (nafs, psyche), spirit (rūḥ, pneuma). The error of modernity is to have merged the last two into one (so-called "psychology"), thereby losing the organ — the spirit — by which man touches the Real.
• Seeing God everywhere — The culminating contemplative gesture. To see God is not to see Him after having seen the world — it is to see Him through the world, like the light that reveals the colours. All that exists is necessarily the reflection of something that is in God.
• The Christic mysteries — Schuon, although a Muslim, devotes an entire part to Christianity and notably to the Marian mysteries. For him, Christ is not a "man become wise," but a divine Manifestation, and the cross is not a metaphor of renunciation, but a cosmic symbol of the intersection of Heaven and earth.

The architecture of the work

Part One · Controversies

Five polemical studies, in which Schuon clarifies his positions in the face of common misunderstandings: The Sense of the Absolute in Religions (not all religions absolutise in the same way); The Diversity of Revelation; Is There a Natural Mysticism?; The Vicissitudes of Spiritual Temperaments; Concerning the Doctrine of Illusion (which rectifies the modern misreadings of the vedānta).

Part Two · Gnosis

The heart of the book. Four chapters: Gnosis, the Language of the Self (which sets out the doctrine); The Ternary Aspect of the Human Microcosm (body-soul-spirit); Love of God, Consciousness of the Real (the articulation of love and gnosis); Seeing God Everywhere (the contemplative gesture).

Part Three · Christianity

Three chapters devoted to Christianity: Some Observations, Christic and Virginal Mysteries (the Virgin, Christ, the Spirit), and On the Cross. It is here that one measures the depth of Schuon's inner Christianity — which, beyond his Muslim life, never ceased to meditate on the figure of Christ.

A few voices

Truth, by its nature, cannot be democratic;
but no one can prevent it from being universal. Paths of Gnosis

The function of the Intellect is the reverse of levelling: in the very measure in which it unifies inwardly, it discerns outwardly. Concerning the Doctrine of Illusion

Christ is not a man become wise, but a divine Manifestation. Concerning the Doctrine of Illusion

To read it

Paths of Gnosis is a book that is polemical as much as doctrinal — in it Schuon argues, defends, clarifies against frequent misreadings. It is, in that respect, an excellent book to read after The Eye of the Heart, which sets out the doctrine without defending it. The chapters Seeing God Everywhere and Gnosis, the Language of the Self are the contemplative summits; the chapter on the doctrine of Illusion is the most indispensable for anyone who wishes to avoid the neo-Vedantic confusions.

Resonances

• The articulation between love and knowledge
• The doctrine of māyā in the Metaphysics
• The comparative meditation of religions — see also Ibn ʿArabī
• The Intellect and the root ʿAQL