Perennialist Perspective on Study of Religions and

Interfaith Dialogue
Mohammad Maroof Shah
Rajbag Colony, Nagbal, Ganderbal, Kashmir, 190006
9797187282
marooof123@yahoo.com

Abstract
Interfaith dialogue as carried today by both secularists and religionists, suffers
from many limitations, conceptual confusions and operational anomalies. The present
paper tries to argue that it is the perennialist mystico-metaphysical approach to the study
of religion that alone provides viable orthodox perspective on diversity of religions by
positing the “transcendent unity of religions” and rejecting exoteric dogmatist, and
exclusivist theological claims which are behind fundamentalism and theological
imperialism.
 Perennialist Perspective on Study of Religions and
Interfaith Dialogue
Most modern scholars of religion subscribe to a varying degree to some
of the following notions, any of which if correct make interfaith dialogue almost
meaningless, incoherent and academically hardly sustainable or respected enterprise:
*That Semitic religions and non-Semitic religions advocate sharply divergent
conceptions of Divinity. The former are seen as absolutizing concept of Personal God
while the latter have no need of personal God or positively deny the first hypostasis of
Absolute that personal God is.
*That sacred- profane dichotomy characterizes certain religions and not others
* That there is pantheistic element in non- Semitic religions such as Hinduism
which is incongruent with transcendentalist theism.
* That theistic religions sustain a dualistic worldview which is irreconcilable with
monistic or Unitarian view of such traditions as Vedanta of Hinduism
*That Buddhism is atheist/ agnostic (in the modern sense of these terms) rather
than transtheist so has nothing corresponding to personal God of theistic religions
* That different scriptures make really contradictory claims or some are corrupt on
historical terms to the extent that original message is no longer retrievable by any means.
* That religions fundamentally differ in eschatologies. Concept of reincarnation or
rebirth and monotheistic conception of single birth and posthumous existence have no
common meeting point at any plane.
*That religions are to be identified with theologies; metaphysics doesn’t ground
them or unify them.
*That theologies are not ultimately expressible in one another’s terms or
subsumable and reconcilable under higher metaphysical and esoteric plane.
*That religions fundamentally advocate different means or modes for salvation
and therefore are exclusive in their claims. It implies that if one practices one religion he
doesn’t really practice another one so will not reach the Ultimate of another religion
*That essentially symbolical narratives in scriptures could be subject to the
principles of higher criticism, historical criticism
*That theology, philosophy and mysticism in traditional religious civilizations are
not reconcilable or organically assimilated by the Traditions in question
*That purely or aggressive secular outlook which merely tolerates religions or
discredits all religions equally for their non-cognitive character could provide a conducive
atmosphere for carrying interfaith religions.
*That one could prune supraformal essence or esoteric core of religions from the
shell of forms and dogmas and practice the former in defiance of the latter.
*That many (post)modern thought currents and agnostic modern science make
study of religions, their existence and knowledge claims indefensible so if we can’t
relinquish (post)modern sensibility ( and we need not according to most (post)modernists)
religious discourse is ultimately nonsensical or even harmful. After the death of God that
many moderns take for granted religions need to be drastically reconstructed or wholly
done away with.
*That ancient primitive religions which exist besides the major world religious
traditions need not to be seriously reckoned with in formulation of comprehensive
interfaith dialogue. They could be ignored
*Religions could be objectively, phenomenologically studied without committing
ourselves to their respective claims and unbiased dialogue carried out. That one need not
be religious (or ideally should not be following a particular religious tradition) for
carrying the interfaith dialogue
*That religions are primarily reconcilable, if at all, on ethical plane only and not
the intellectual/ metaphysical one.
*That most modern canons of criticism and interpretation evolved in postmedieval
West by anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, historians, literary critics and
philosophers have a great value in understanding religious episteme.
All these assumptions and presumptions are rejected by perennialists who also
claim to provide the most comprehensive, intellectually most sophisticated, universally
orthodox and perennially relevant perspective on interfaith issue. In an atmosphere of
fundamentalist/ exclusivist and outright rejectionist secularist interpretations of religion
perennialist metaphysical approach to religion and comparative religion is something
quite interesting and indeed plausible and deserves serious hearing from scholars
interested in the issue. If perennialists are right the problem of religious diversity
dissolves and seeming exclusivist claims of different religions are neatly and
convincingly unified or reconciled for good. In this paper I propose to discuss the key
dimensions of little known but enormously powerful perennialist approach.

The phenomenon of diversity of religions has been a problem for modern

scholarship because of its lack of principial knowledge which is the domain of traditional
religion and metaphysics. Fundamentalism with its attributes of exoteric theological
exclusivism, religious bigotry and theological imperialism – is the unfortunate
consequence of misunderstanding the significance of diversity of religions due to lack of
comprehensive approach to the issue. Eclecticisms, sentimental ecumenism, secularist
indifferentism, relativism and most version of religious pluralism and uniformitarianism
and certain versions of libertine-spirituality – all fail to do justice to the phenomenon of
religious diversity. Interfaith dialogue can’t be justly carried out in a perspective that
denies epistemic and cognitive status to faith and is hostile to both metaphysics and
mysticism. Just tolerating religion is insult to religion. Religion claims the whole of
man, whole of knowledge because it is the knowledge of universal principles, of the
Origin and the End. There is an urgent need of a perspective that demonstrates (and not
just argues for) essential unity of religion ( the unity of Ad-Din or whhdat-i- Din or unity
of revelation or unity of Religion that is the key claim of the Quran and of other scriptures
also rather than what is popularly called as syncretism, wahdatul adyan, unity of
religions), that does justice to all the diverse dimensions and levels of religious discourse,
its myth, its ritual, its doctrine, that doesn’t commit reductionist and unformitarian
fallacies, that doesn’t marginalize the significance of exclusivist claims of religion in the
name of vacuous pluralism and inclusivism and that doesn’t reduce unique theological
genius of each religion to monochoromatic uniformitarianism. In the absence of adequate
metaphysical knowledge, the very diversity of religious and sacred forms poses a
challenge to modern scholarship concerned with interfaith issue. There is a great deal of
study of diverse religions in the interest of finding mutual harmony between them in
academic and more popular circles in the West, but there is little understanding of
“religious realties as religion and sacred forms as sacred realties.” What is missing in
most scholarly and academic circles is that science which can do justice to the study of
religion by drawing from that perennial wisdom or philosphia perennis, sophia perennis,
sanatana dharma, primordial din, hikmat al–khalidah or javidan khirad which is at the
heart of all religious traditions as the perennialists argue. Religions meet only at their
source i.e., God as Ramakrishna says and it is to the virtuous and the humble only that the
kingdom of God is given and thus only they and not the scholarship employing profane
methodologies and in the process desacralizing the sacred that can carry out meaningful
interfaith dialogue. There can be no interfaith dialogue without faith, without a deep
commitment to the religious universe one belongs to. Modern man who thinks that God
is either dead (Nietzsche and Sartre) or on leave (Kafka) or absent (Heidegger) or lame
(Mill) or fiendish or irrelevant is denied the vision of Him and thus can’t make sense of
religion and religious diversity.

The perennialist traditionalist approach to interfaith dialogue as expounded in the

writing of Rene Guenon, Frithjof Schuon, S.H. Nasr, Huston Smith, Ananda
Coomaraswamy and other perennialists is the only approach that does full justice to this
very sensitive issue. It is the only methodology that could claim orthodox credentials,
that applies to all the religions, ancient or primitive and modern, that studies religion
religiously and opposes all the relativization that characterizes much of the modern
academic study of religion while also opposing that parochial conception of the truth
which sees a particular manifestation of the Truth as the Truth as such (Nasr,1993:61). It
is the only approach that demonstrates the “transcendent unity of religions” and the fact
that “all paths lead to the same summit” while being also “deeply respectful of every step
on each path of every signpost which makes the journey possible unlike.” It alone
amongst so many approaches to comparative religion “penetrates into the meaning of
rites, symbols, images and doctrines which constitute a particular religious universe and
doesn’t try to cast aside these elements or to reduce them to anything other than what they
are within that distinct universe of meaning created by God through a particular
revelation of the Logos” (Nasr, I988: 293). It is only this school that is able to provide
“the key to the understanding of the full length and breadth of different religions and of
the complexities and enigmas of a single religion and thus the significance of the plurality
of religions and their interrelationship” (Nasr,1993:55). Its canvas is quite wide and
deals with every aspect of religion with God and man, revelation and sacred art, symbols
and images, rites and religious laws, mysticism and social ethics, metaphysics, cosmology
and theology. (Nasr,1993:55). It emphasizes religion in its transhistorical reality but also
takes note of the historical unfolding of a particular tradition. Rooted as it is in the
traditional metaphysics and condemning pos-medieval rationalism, empiricism and
scientism (metanarrative of Enlightenment Modernity) and attempting to speak from the
perspective of the Absolute rather than from human (in fact infrahuman) perspective of
humanism, religion is primary reality for them and from that Divine Norm they evaluate
everything in temporal or secular domain. It isn’t man but God who is at the center. It
isn’t this world and this worldly peace and equilibrium but that world, the Eternity and
man’s salvation that is of primary significance. “Religion for them isn’t only the faith and
practices of a particular human collectivity which happens to be the recipient of a
particular religious message. Religion is not only the faith of the men and women who
possess religious faith. It is a reality of Divine Origin. It has its archetype in the Divine
Intellect and possesses levels of meaning and reality like cosmos itself” (Nasr,1993:56).
The traditionalists refuse to reduce religion to its social and psychological manifestations.
The perspective held by them, they claim, is the same as the worldview within which the
religions themselves were born and were cultivated over the millennia until the advent of
modern world. Modern age is cursed, Iron Age or Kali Yuga and another stage in the
degradation (rather than progress or evolution) of man and history, a second fall indeed
according to perennialists. Renaissance and thus Modernity is devil inspired movement
for them. Against antitraditional relativist modern worldview the traditionalists believe
that “there is a Primordial Tradition which constituted original or archetypal man’s primal
spiritual and intellectual heritage received through direct revelation when Heaven and
earth were still ‘united.’ This Primordial Tradition is reflected in all later traditions, but
the later traditions aren’t simply its historical and horizontal continuation. The
anonymous tradition reflects a remarkable unanimity of views concerning the meaning of
life and the fundamental dimensions of human thought in worlds as far apart as those if
the Eskimos and the Australian Aborgines, the Taoists and the Muslims” (Nasr,1993:57).
“The conception of religion in the school of the philsophia perennis is vast enough to
embrace the primal and the historical, the Semitic and the Indian, the mythic and the
‘abstract’ type of religions. Tradition as understood by such masters of this school as
Schuon, embraces within its fold all the different modes and types of Divine
Manifestation. The doctrine of tradition thus conceived makes it possible to develop a
veritable theology of comparative religion – which in reality should be called a
metaphysics of comparative religion- able to do justice to the tenets of religion while
enabling the student of religion, who is at once interested objectively in the existence of
religions other than his own and is at the same time of a religious nature itself, to cross
frontiers as difficult to traverse as that which separates the world of Abraham from that of
Krishna and Rama or the universe of the American Indians from that of traditional
Christianity” (Nasr,1993:57).

The unity to which the traditionalists refer is, precisely speaking, a transcendent
unity above and beyond forms and external manifestations as masterfully forgrounfded by
Schuon in his great work The Transcendent Unity of Religions. Distinguishing between
external form and the essence which that form manifests or form and substance external
forms of a religion are seen as “accidents” which issue forth from and return to a
substance that remains independent of all its accidents. “It is only the level of the
Supreme Essence even beyond the Logos or on the level of the Supreme Substance
standing above all the cosmic sectors from the angelic to the physical within which a
particular religion is operative that the ultimate unity of religions is to be sought….
Below that level each religion possesses distinct qualities and characteristics not to be
either neglected or explained away” (Nasr,1993: 60). As against various forms of
relativism and uniformitarianism, traditionalist school can also speak about truth and
falsehood in this or that religious schools as well as greater and lesser truth, as it has the
torch of Truth with it. This presence of that truth and the basic distinction between Real
and illusory which is central to perennialist approach allows it to be judgemental about a
particular religious phenomenon and speak about authentic and pseudoreligion without
falling into a narrow dogmatism on the one hand or simply indifference to truth and a sort
of postmodern agnosticism on the other, two alternatives which dominate much of the
religious scene in the modern world as Nasr has pointed out (Nasr,1993:61).

The very important problem that man faces in a world in which traditional
boundaries and borders of both physical and religious nature are removed is to carry
dialogue with other religions sympathetically “without losing the sense of absoluteness in
one’s own religion which is a sine qua non of the religious life and which reflects the fact
that religion does come from the Absolute.” (Nasr,1993:61). It is perennialist approach
that best answers this problem. This they do by emphasizing concept of universal
orthodoxy and the concept of “relatively absolute” as enunciated by Schuon. Against that
sentimentalism that sees all religions as being the same or that brand of neo-vedantism
which became popular after the second world war, perennialists stress importance of
orthodoxy which they don’t limit to the exoteric level but also apply to the esoteric.
Exoteric theologies are duly respected at their own level ( and this differentiates them
from syncretists and shows their respects for exclusive character of theologies) and at the
higher level their exclusivism is transcended also at a plane on which theological
approach by its very definition can’t reach or encroach being influenced by individual and
sentimental elements. Distinguishing between the Principle and manifestation, Essence
and form, inward and the outward, it places absoluteness at the level of the Absolute and
this means transcendence of purely theological plane. Contradictory claims of different
religions have a warrant only at the theological plane. But what is needed is to transcend
the theological plane and be at the plane of pure truth that is accessible only at the
metaphysical plane. It asserts categorically that only the Absolute is absolute. It refuses
to commit the cardinal error of attributing absoluteness to the non-absolute, the error
which Hinduism and Buddhism consider as the origin and root of all ignorance. Every
determination of the Absolute (theism’s personal God is also a determination of the
Absolute) is already in the realm of relativity. “The unity of religion is to be found first
and foremost in this Absolute which is at once Truth and Reality and the origin of all
revelations and of all truth. When the Sufis exclaim that the doctrine of Unity is unique
(al-tawhid wahid), they are asserting this fundamental but often forgotten principle. Only
at the level of the Absolute are the teachings of the religions the same. Below that level
there are correspondences of the most profound order but not identity. The different
religions are so many languages speaking of that unique Truth as it manifests itself in
different worlds according to its inner archetypal possibilities, but the syntax of these
languages isn’t the same. Yet because each religion comes from the Truth, everything in
the religion in question which is revealed by the Logos, is sacred and must be respected
and cherished while being elucidated rather than being discarded and reduced to
insignificance in the name of some kind of abstract universality” (Nasr,1988:293). This
shows difference between sentimental ecumenism, syncretist “unity of religions”
movement that emanated mostly out of India during the last decades of the 19 th and early
decades of the 20th century and what Abul Kalam Azad calls whhdatud-din, the unity of
Religion or the unity of Tradition in perennialist terms. It is simple fallacy to assert that
all religions say the same thing, the remarkable unanimity of principles not withstanding.

We now turn to the notion of “relativity absolute.” This notion concedes the truth
contained in relativism, both modern and postmodern without sacrificing the crucial
notion of Truth or Absolute which is missing in the latter. Only Absolute is absolute and
all else is relative. This does away with all idolatries and exclusivist theological
metanarratives. However one isn’t drowned in relativist chaos and Nasr elucidates the
notion of “relatively absolute” with an analogy to solar system. “Within our solar system
our sun is the Sun, while seen in the perspective of galactic space, it is one among many
suns. The awareness of other suns made possible by means as abnormal to the natural
and normal human state as the ‘existential’ awareness of several religious universes,
doesn’t make our sun cease to be our sun, the center of our solar system, the giver of life
to our world and the direct symbol of the Divine Intellect for us who are revivified by its
heat and illuminated by its light” (Nasr,1993:61). Nasr elaborates further, “In the same
way, within each religious universe there is the logos, prophet, sacred book, avatara or
some other direct manifestation of the Divinity or messenger of His Word and a particular
message which, along with its human container, whether that be the Arabic language of
the Quran or the body of Christ are ‘absolute’ for the religious universe brought into
being by the revelation in question. Yet only the Absolute is absolute. These
manifestations are relatively absolute. Within each religious universe the laws revealed,
the symbols sanctified, the doctrines hallowed by traditional authorities, the grace which
revivifies the religion in question are absolute within the religious world from which they
were meant without being absolute as such. At the heart of every religion is to be found
the echo of God exclaiming “I”. There is only one Supreme Self who can utter “I”, but
there are many cosmic and even metacosmic reverberations of the Word which is as one
and many and which each religion identifies with its founders. As Jalal al-din Rumi,
speaking as a Muslim saint says:

When the number hundered has arrived, ninety is also present.

The name of Ahmad is the name of all prophets” (Nasr,1993:62).
Perennialists criticize most of current ecumenisms for leading to lessening of
religious fervor and the diluting of the Divine Message, making “worldly peace the goal
of religion rather than the Divine Peace which surpasseth all understanding.” As Nasr
points out: “The followers of the philosphia perennis chart a course that makes possible
an authentic ecumenism which can in fact only be esoteric for religious harmony can only
be achieved in the “Divine Stratosphere,” to quote Schuon and not in the human
atmosphere where so many seek it today at the expense of reducing the Divine
stratosphere to the human atmosphere” (Nasr,1993:65). The followers of philsophia
perennis insist that one can practice only one religion and stand opposed to all forms of
eclecticism and syncretism of religious rites. According to the perennialists if one has
lived one religion fully one has lived all religions. Guenon converted to Islam and
practiced it in all its details but said that “I thereby follow all religions.” One can carry a
meaningful interfaith dialogue only if one practices one’s own religion, if one really sees
the source from which all religions proceed, if one realizes in the depth of the Self God
and everything for which religion stands. In Ramakrishna we have a parallel to Guenon.
Sages have carried interfaith dialogue without using any dialogue in the
conventional sense at all. There are many reported meetings of sages belonging to
different religions in which no verbal communication at all occurred. It is only in silence
that was before the word or silence in which alone is one in communion with Reality as
such as all thought constructions that are infected by time and are in the realm of the
representable or in the realm of language or the known are gone. Only in silence is the
Eternal revealed. All religions have taught silence as the best form of dialogue, not only
with one’s self but with others of different convictions. Buddhism teaches this in its
silence towards all metaphysical questions which are source of disputation. Jaina
syadvada theory amounts to the same. Islam emphasizes orthopraxy and leaves such
questions that constitute difference of theologies to be decided by God in the hereafter.
Taoism has characteristically emphasized silence as the best dialogue. In fact the problem
of interfaith dialogue is a modern problem. It hardly arose in pre-modern traditional
atmosphere. Islam encountered Hinduism and interfaith dialogue was carried by the Sufis
without generating so much heat and confusion and chaos that characterizes its modern
form.
The perennialists critique misappropriation of mysticism by many a scholar and
even mystic in so-called religious synthesis for limiting their perspective to that kind
associated with love. This oversentimentalized approach studies religions on the basis of
so-called universal spirituality related to mysticism but devoid of its intellectual content.
As Nasr notes that justifiably a reaction has set in against this approach by many a scholar
who point out the differences rather than the similarities between religions and various
sacred forms. But these scholars have also usually been unable to distinguish between “a
unity which transcends forms and a supposed unity which disregards forms or rather
seeks to melt them into a solution whose coagulation can’t but result in those
conglomerates of religious ideas which characterize the so-called religious syntheses of
the modern world” (Nasr, I988: 288). As Nasr has pointed out, “Metaphysically speaking,
unity lies at the opposite pole of uniformity and the reduction of religions to a least
common denominator in the name of religious unity of mankind is no more than a parody
of the “transcendent unity of religions” which characterized the traditional point of view”
(Nasr, I988: 288). Authentic mysticism, as perennialists argue, isn’t formless and duly
respects particularity of a religion and its sacred scripture e.g., one can’t speak about
Sufism without referring to the Quran or Kabbala without Torah. It considers crucial
significance of the sacred form as necessary means for the attainment of the formless.
However, as Schuon has repeatedly emphasized, one must be aware that sacred form is
not only form as a particularity and limitation but also that it opens unto the Infinite and
the formless. Limitations of Osho’s and Krishnamurti’s approach to traditional religion
and sacred forms are thus foregrounded by the perennialists. One must oppose the
sentimentalism of the syncretists but must be on guard against idolizing the forms also.
Perennialists value total integrity of a tradition above everything and are critical of those
who place mutual understanding between religions above it. So such pleas as that of John
Hick) that Christians should stop believing in incarnation in order to understand Muslims
and have Muslims understand them are inadmissible. The perennialists would also laugh
at the expectation of many ecumenists that different faiths will get transformed by the
very process of carrying out a dialogue, their assumption being that better understanding
in itself is the final goal rather than understanding of another world of sacred form and
meaning through the preservation of one’s own tradition. Nasr’s comments on such a
perspective need to be quoted.
Such a perspective finally replaces divine authority by human understanding and can’t but fall into
a kind of humanism which only dilutes what remains of religion It is really another form of
secularism and modernism despite the respect it has for other religions and the fact that it is carried
out by men and women of religious faith. That is why the stronger the hold of religion upon a
human collectivity or individual, the less is there usually interest in what is now called
ecumenism in that circle or for that person. …. much of modern ecumenism has become like an
engulfing amorphous which aims at dissolving all forms and removing all distinctions from several
different realities by drawing them within a single or at best composite substance. One can detect
in this current movement of ecumenism that same lack of distinction between the supraformal and
the informal which results from the loss of an integral metaphysics in the West in modern
times”(Nasr,1988:290).

Appropriating the much loaded term humanism that evolved primarily as a

reaction and thus rejection of religious worldview, in interfaith dialogue is an insult to the
latter as the former, strictly speaking, eschews all reference to the transcendence, the
transcendent ground of our being and reduces human – the theomorphic being – to
subhuman status by its antimetaphysical, antimystical and thus antireligious orientation.
Using the term humanism approvingly in the religious context is as ridiculous as using
term terrorism in religious context. There can be no Islamic terrorism, for instance, as it is
self contradictory notion. Similarity one can’t use the term Islamic humanism. Modern
Western secular thought has defiled the otherwise innocent and beautiful looking terms.
The perennialists are also critical of numerous attempts that are being made to
create dialogue between two or several religions with political goals in mind because use
of religion in such cases has caused these types of antireligious studies to end in either
diplomatic and polite platitudes or false oversimplifications which have simply glided
over the differences existing between different sacred forms. The perennialist authors are
also critical of modern concept of tolerance and advocates what they call as
understanding foreign religious universes. Although tolerance is better than intolerance as
far as religions other than our own are concerned it implies that other religion is false yet
tolerated. Understanding of different universes of sacred form means we accept other
religions not because we want to tolerate our fellow beings or falsehood but because other
religions are true and come from God. The perennialists are critical of religious
exclusivists not for their strong and unflinching faith in religion or their convictions but
for their lack of principial knowledge, that kind of knowledge which can penetrate into
the foreign universes of form and bring out their inner meaning. In a world

where one is given equally unacceptable choice between an exclusivism which would destroy the
very meaning of Divine Justice and Mercy and a so-called universalism which would compromise
precious elements of a religion; a choice between an absolutism which neglects all the
manifestations of the Absolute other than one’s own and a relativism which would destroy the very
meaning of absoluteness; the choice between accepting the other politely and for the sake of
convenience, or at best for the sake of charity or contend and battle with the other as an opponent
to be rebutted and even destroyed since his view is based on error and not truth,

the perennialist approach alone provides a way of transcending these ugly binaries
without missing the positive significance of either of the terms.
Schuon’s concept of the “relatively absolute” puts exclusivist theological
language in proper perspective. To quote Nasr, one of the best interpreter and follower of
Schuon, again
The concept of the “relatively absolute” permits the traditional study of diverse religions to see the
manifestation of the Logos in each religious universe as both the Logos and yet in its outward form
as an aspect of the Logos as asserted already centuries ago by Ibn Arabi in his Fususul Hikam
(Wisdom of the Prophets) in which each prophet is identified with an aspect of the wisdom issuing
from the Logos, which Sufism naturally identifies with the Muhammaden Reality (Al-
haqiqatal-“Muhammadya) …. In contrast to outward methods of comparison which juxtapose the
prophets or founders sacred books etc. of different religions, the traditional method realizes the
different levels upon which the “relatively absolute” is to be found in each world of sacred forms.
… It neither denies nor denigrates a simple sacred symbol rite or practice in the name of some kind
of abstract universal truth, nor does it create a simple one to one correspondence between various
elements of the different religious universes (Nasr,1988 :297-8).

The perennialists apply various metaphysical concepts which include such

concepts as truth and presence, ternary of fear, love and knowledge and the like which in
various proportions characterize all religion for understanding diverse religious
phenomena.
Who can ideally conduct the interfaith dialogue? Only sages and gnostics
according to the perennialist. This is because principial knowledge can’t be attained save
through esoterism. Only serious esoterists can carry out interreligious studies on the
deepest level without sacrificing either the exoterism or the certitude and absoluteness
associated with a particular religious world. The total religious understanding and the
complete harmony and unity of religions can be found, to quote Schuon, only in the
Divine Stratosphere and not in the human atmosphere (Nasr, I988: 301).
The concept of Tradition is central to the perennialist point of view. That is why
the perennialists are critical of that type of bhakti spirituality practiced and advocated by
some moderns which is based on “vague and emotional universalism,” sentimentalism
“which opposes intellectual discernment,” and “supposed universalism which opposes the
particularity of each tradition on the level of that particularity,” thus fails to understand
respective distinctive character and genius of each form being unable to penetrate into the
meaning of each form (Nasr, I988: 287). Spiritual libertines and syncretists have
misappropriated bhakti and what is loosely called as spirituality. Those who advocate
liberalism, or libertine spirituality and open mindedness in observance of rituals, do’s
and don’ts of religion, mixed gatherings for worship or doing away with doctrines and
dogmas and law (e.g., personal law); and idolize time or progress in historicist terms are
expectedly scorned by the perennialists.
It is only the perennialist approach which being based on the sacred conception of
knowledge itself that can go beyond both polite platitudes and fanatical contentiousness.
Only through an intelligence rooted in the sacred and a knowledge which is of the principal order
and attached to the sacred. can the sacred be studied without desacralizing it in the process….
Only a scientia sacra of religion and not the science of religions as usually understood, can make
available to contemporary man the unbelievable beauty and richness of other worlds of sacred
form and meaning without destroying the sacred character of one’s own world”(Nasr,1988:303).

It is the concept of Supreme Principle as Absolute that is common to all traditions,

religious and mystical and unites different religions. Buddhist transtheistic position is
subsumable under this conception. The Supreme Self is, in perennialist reading, not
denied by Buddhism. God is the name of nirvanic experience itself. Beatific vision,
moksha, nirvana and other salvific ideals are not essentially distinguishable. At the level
of Absolute all contradictions are resolved, the One that has been asserted by all religions,
is realized. At the level of personal God unity of religions can’t be sought as the Absolute
is not identifiable with personal God which is in fact situated at the plane of Divine
Relativity or Maya, in the perenialists view. It is the Absolute-relative rather than the
Creator-created polarity or axis that should be used to understand the relation between the
Supreme and man/ world and that foregrounds unified view. All religions are united in
positing a movement from the present or given state to the Absolute, to man’s true Origin
and End. Apparently different disciplinary/ritualistic methods are geared at achieving the
end of self-denial or surrender to the Absolute. Here Islam and Buddhism are in perfect
agreement. All religions aim at ending of alienation from the Absolute, of realizing the
One that alone is, the land of bliss or no sorrow where no human limitation or pain
affects. Man’s return to God is arranged by all religions though seemingly different
beliefs and commandments. Theological dogmas are a translation of metaphysical truths
and not literally true. Taking a symbolist view of theologies helps to reconcile divergent
claims of them that become operative only if taken too literally. Theological idea of
creatio ex nihilo isn’t contradictory to non-Semitic and Neoplatonic idea of Divine
Manifestation. Anthropomorphism is ultimately transcended by all religions as esoteric
dimension of theistic religions illustrates. God as Reality or Totality of Existence,
transcendent and immanent is what the Unitarian understanding of tawhid is and in this
sense nondualistic Vedanta, Taoism etc. are in agreement with it. If we focus on the
concept of Pure Being or Non-Being that is integral part of all traditions as perennialists
show, Buddhist approach to the Absolute falls in the pripooer perspective. Schuon’s
Treasury of Buddhism and Marco Pallis’s The Buddhist Spectrum demonstrate cogently
equivalence of fundamental notions of Buddhism with other major religious traditions
such as Christianity and Islam. Amin Ahsan Islahi and certain other scholars’ attempt to
trace Buddha and Buddhist community in the Quran and many other scholars’ attempt to
demonstrate the essential unity of Religion and universality of revelation ( to every
community have been sent a messenger) get better substantiated and put in a proper
context by metaphysical approach of perennialists. Schuon subsumes fundamental
enunciations of Christianity and Vedanta in his metaphysical understanding of Islamic
Kalima as “There is no reality but Reality,” or “There is no truth but Truth.” There is no
dualism of any kind at the plane where subject-object dualism is transcended, where
knower becomes known or where knowing and being are one or only the One, the
Beloved of Sufis remains. Samsara is nirvana for a person who has penetrated the veil of
maya, the veil of samsara. God is the essence of Existence.ion Sufism. All is Buddha
nature for a transcendental consciousness. Everything speaks or proclaims and glorifies
God, according to the Quran, Sacred-profane dichotomy is thus hardly there.
We may now take up the perennialist application of these principles to
exotericist’s finalist exclusivist claim – the claim that his is the best of religions or it has
the glory of being the omega. I take liberty to quote Schuon: “The characteristic and
inevitable –misunderstanding of every exoteric is to attribute to God a human subjectivity
and consequently to believe that every divine manifestation refers to the same Divine “I,”
and therefore to the same limitation. This is to fail to realize that the Ego which, in the
Revelations, speaks and gives a law, can only be a manifestation of the Divine Subject
and this Subject itself; one must distinguish in God – always from the point of view of
Revelation – firstly the one and essential Word, and then the manifestations or
actualizations of the Word in view of particular human receptacles. The Divine “I” that
speaks to men – of necessity to “particular men” – could not possibly be the Divine
Subject in a direct and absolute sense; it is the adaptation of that Subject to a given human
“container,” this container, failing which all contact between man and God would be
impossible and failing which it would be absurd to allow that any Revelation, Hebrew,
Arabic or other could be word-for-word of Divine origin.
Admittedly, God cannot contradict himself; but this axiomatic truth concerns the essential,
unlimited and formless Truth, the only one which counts in divinis; the relative enunciations may
perfectly well contradict themselves from one Revelation to another – exactly as human subjects
and material forms mutually exclude and contradict one another – providing that the essential
Truth is safeguarded and made as efficacious as possible. The particular Divine “I” of a
Revelation is not situated in the Divine Principle itself; it is the projection or emanation of the
Absolute Subject and is identified with the “Spirit of God”, that is, with the cosmic Centre of
which one might say that it is “neither divine nor non-divine”’ this revelation-giving “I” “is God”
in virtue of the ray which attaches it directly to its Source, but it is not god in an absolute fashion,
because it is impossible that the Absolute as such should speak a human language and say human
things. This is the meaning of the doctrine of the “descent” of the Quran by successive stages, and
it is this that explains the discussion on the question of knowing whether it is “created” or
“uncreated” (Schuon,1976 :59-60).

Schuon explains the idea of best in religions in one of his works

(Christianity/Islam). He writes that this question is related to general question of religious
oppositions. He asserts that religious oppositions can’t but be, not only because forms
exclude one another but because, in the case of religions, each form vehicles an element
of absoluteness that constitutes the justification for its existence and the absolute does not
tolerate otherness nor, with all the more reason, plurality (Schuon, 1985:151). He further
observes:

As every religion corresponds to a “divine subjectivity”, or to a “ theophanic

individuality”- it can’t be expected of any religion that it be “objective” with regard to another, at
least not a priori or exoterically;for a religion as such – as a form precisely – the data of other
religions are scarcely more than symbols or points of reference which can be used- most often in a
pejorative or negative sensev – within its own imagery and in accordance with its characteristic
perspective.” …. “Certainly God commits Himself to a form issued from his Word, but he could
not commit himself to this form only…He keeps His word “within “ a formal system , without
binding Himsrelf” from without” and without having to account for the modes of hios liberty or
the requirements of His Infinitude. (Schuon,1985:152-3)

Schuon attempts to interpret true significance of claim of finality that in a way

characterizes all major religions and especially Islam and Christianity. Hindu claim of
primordiality amounts to the same. Schuon clarifies it with reference to Islam (and this
should apply to other religions also)

True terminality- the glory of being the omega- is not realized by any one religion as opposed to
another, it is realized by esoterism in relation to all religion; it is in this sense that Sufis interpret
the dogmatic terminality of Islam, and this doesn’t go without an amalgam that strictly speaking is
abusive, but that can be found, quite obviously and mutatis mutandis, within every religious
system (Schuon,1985:178).

He relates the idea of terminality to the message of equilibrium. About Islam (the
tradition to which he eventually converted as did many other perennialists), wishes to
realize equilibrium “between the outward and the inward, the earthly and the heavenly, in
conformity with man’s nature and vocation”(Schuon,1985:171). He similarly understands
the dogmatic assertion that the Prophet is “the best of men” or “of
creation”(khayarikhalq). To quote him:
Firstly, this designation of “the best” refers to the Logos, which is the prototype of the cosmos in
the Principle, or of the world in God;and in this case the epithet doesn’t refer to any man. Secondly
“the best” is Muhammed in as much as he manifests or personifies the Logos, every other
Messenger(Rasul) is equally “the best”. Thirdly, “the best” is Muhammad in as much as he alone –
in accordance with the framework of perspective – manifests the whole Logos, the other
Messengers manifesting it only in part, which amounts to saying that Muhammad is “the best” in
as much as he personifies the Islamic perspective, the man who reveals it necessarily the best but
as much can be said, of course, of every other Messenger within the framework of his own
Message. Fourthly, Muhammad is the best in as much as he represents a quality of Islam by which
it surpasses other religions; but every integral religion necessarily possesses such an unequalable
quality, lacking which it would not exist”(Schuon,1985:160-161)

Thus, from the perennialist perspective we see that the question of interfaith dialogue is
the question of proper understanding of one’s own faith, of practically realizing the higher
or inner reality of one’s own tradition. Religions unite at the apex and it is only the
chosen few who undertake the necessary discipline and cultivate the necessary virtues
who reach this apex. Great sages and metaphysicians have demonstrated this unity and
integrity of primordial Din. The question of interfaith dialogue is the question of taking
seriously one’s God, of being loyal to one’s own Self. One must cease to be a disputant or
rhetorician and be at home in silence that was before the Word to realize what religion or
God is. Ultimately religion is not about Truth but truth itself and it is the truth rather than
any discourse about it or any representation of it that saves. The perennialist approach is
an invitation to experience rather than talk about that “Which alone is.” To one who has
achieved metaphysical realization all disputes, all questions are irrelevant. In a way even
the binary of theism/atheism is transcended. What unites religions is not any doctrine
about Truth but the Truth which is one and the vision of which is the raison d’etre of all
religions. Religion is not an ideology; metaphysics is not a system of propositions. Pure
consciousness, objectless consciousness or what the Sufis would call God consciousness
transcends all talk, all thought, all argumentation. It is an experience and those who have
had their experience alone are entitled to share its fragrance or talk about it. Only a sage
can carry an interfaith dialogue. To the pure in heart only is given the kingdom of God
and those who are there don’t indulge in vain talk.
References
1 Nasr, S.H., The Need for a Sacred Sience, State University of NewYork
Press,Albany,1993
2 Nasr, S.H, Knowledge and the Sacred, Gifford Lectures, 1981, Suhail Academy
Lahore,1988
3 Schuon,F., Christianity/Islam World Wisdom Books, 1985
4 Schuon,F.,Islam and the Perennial Philosophy, World of Islam Festival Publishing
Company,1976