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Perennial Philosophy Quotes

Browse 32 quotes about Perennial Philosophy.

Perennial Philosophy Quotes

“One of the major contemporary obstacles to knowledge is the Cartesian mind set that assumes that people are intrinsically capable of knowledge. Most of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment philosophes assumed they were already quite capable of discovering the truth; they just had to find the correct mathematical or psychological stratagem required. They had passed over an entire step toward knowledge taught in the Perennial Tradition: that the seeker must first develop the capabilities necessary for discerning truth.”

TruthKnowledgeLearningPerennial Philosophy
Book:Perennial Tradition: Overview of the Secret Heritage, the Single Stream of Initiatory Teaching Flowing Through All the Great Schools of Mys
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“The men who had inhabited prehistoric Egypt, who had carved the Sphinx and founded the world‘s oldest civilization, were men who had made their exodus from Atlantis to settle on this strip of land that bordered the Nile. And they had left before their ill-fated continent sank to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, a catastrophe which had drained the Sahara and turned it into a desert. The shells which to-day litter the surface of the Sahara in places, as well as the fossil fish which are found among its sands, prove that it was once covered by the waters of a vast ocean. It was a tremendous and astonishing thought that the Sphinx provided a solid, visible and enduring link between the people of to-day and the people of a lost world, the unknown Atlanteans. This great symbol has lost its meaning for the modern world, for whom it is now but an object of local curiosity. What did it mean to the Atlanteans? We must look for some hint of an answer in the few remnants of culture still surviving from peoples whose own histories claimed Atlantean origin. We must probe behind the degenerate rituals of races like the Incas and the Mayas, mounting to the purer worship of their distant ancestors, and we shall find that the loftiest object of their worship was Light, represented by the Sun. Hence they build pyramidal Temples of the Sun throughout ancient America. Such temples were either variants or slightly distorted copies of similar temples which had existed in Atlantis. After Plato went to Egypt and settled for a while in the ancient School of Heliopolis, where he lived and studied during thirteen years, the priest-teachers, usually very guarded with foreigners, favoured the earnest young Greek enquirer with information drawn from their well-preserved secret records. Among other things they told him that a great flat-topped pyramid had stood in the centre of the island of Atlantis, and that on this top there had been build the chief temple of the continent – a sun temple. […] The Sphinx was the revered emblem in stone of a race which looked upon Light as the nearest thing to God in this dense material world. Light is the subtlest, most intangible of things which man can register by means of one of his five senses. It is the most ethereal kind of matter which he knows. It is the most ethereal element science can handle, and even the various kind of invisible rays are but variants of light which vibrate beyond the power of our retinas to grasp. So in the Book of Genesis the first created element was Light, without which nothing else could be created. „The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the Deep,“ wrote Egyptian-trained Moses. „And God said, Let there be Light: and there was Light.“ Not only that, it is also a perfect symbol of that heavenly Light which dawns within the deep places of man‘s soul when he yields heart and mind to God; it is a magnificent memorial to that divine illumination which awaits him secretly even amid the blackest despairs. Man, in turning instinctively to the face and presence of the Sun, turns to the body of his Creator. And from the sun, light is born: from the sun it comes streaming into our world. Without the sun we should remain perpetually in horrible darkness; crops would not grow: mankind would starve, die, and disappear from the face of this planet. If this reverence for Light and for its agent, the sun, was the central tenet of Atlantean religion, so also was it the central tenet of early Egyptian religion. Ra, the sun-god, was first, the father and creator of all the other gods, the Maker of all things, the One, the self-born [...] If the Sphinx were connected with this religion of Light, it would surely have some relationship with the sun.”

Ancient EgyptAtlantisAncient CivilizationsSphinxPaul BruntonPerennial PhilosophySecret EgyptAtlantean ReligionReligion Of Light
Book:A Search in Secret Egypt
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“The Sphinx, so old that it had watched the childhood of the world, plunged in unbroken contemplation, had seen civilizations rise to glory and then slowly droop like withered flowers, had watched shouting invaders pass and repass, come and depart, come and stay. And yet it stood its ground, so utterly calm, so utterly removed from all human emotions. Something of that stony indifference to the mutations of fate seemed to have crept under my skin during the night‘s darkness. The Sphinx relieves one of all worry about the future, all burdens of the heart; and it turns the past into a cinema film, which one may watch in detachment, impersonally. (p. 34)”

Ancient EgyptAncient CivilizationsSphinxPaul BruntonPerennial PhilosophySecret Egypt
Book:A Search in Secret Egypt
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“As Thomas Merton correctly observes, “Sufism looks at man as a heart. . . . The heart is the faculty by which man knows God”, and so the supreme aim in Sufism is nothing else than “to develop a heart that knows God”. In the words of Rumi, “I have looked into my own heart; it is there that I have seen Him; He was nowhere else.” This leads Martin Lings to observe in his book What is Sufism?, “What indeed is Sufism, subjectively speaking, if not ‘heart-wakefulness’?”. Illustrating this, he quotes al-Hallâj: “I saw my Lord with the Eye of the Heart.” The Hesychast tradition of the Orthodox Church, for its part, speaks repeatedly of “prayer of the heart”, of the “discovery of the place of the heart”, of the “descent from the head to the heart”, and of the “union of the intellect (nous) with the heart”. (p. 5) – Kallistos Ware, Chapter 1: How Do We Enter the Heart?”

SufismGnosisPerennial PhilosophyThomas MertonWisdom Of The HeartThe Christian Mystical TraditionThe Eye Of The HeartKallistos Ware
Book:Paths to the Heart: Sufism and the Christian East
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“The man who wishes to know the "that" which is "thou" may set to work in any one of three ways. He may begin by looking inwards into his own particular thou and, by a process of "dying to self" --- self in reasoning, self in willing, self in feeling --- come at last to knowledge of the self, the kingdom of the self, the kingdom of God that is within. Or else he may begin with the thous existing outside himself, and may try to realize their essential unity with God and, through God, with one another and with his own being. Or, finally (and this is doubtless the best way), he may seek to approach the ultimate That both from within and from without, so that he comes to realize God experimentally as at once the principle of his own thou and of all other thous, animate and inanimate.”

SpiritualityHinduismEastern PhilosophyPerennial Philosophy
Book:The Perennial Philosophy
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“Anyone who investigates the revealed religions with an open mind and a discerning heart is bound to discover the truth in all of them. Of course, there are notable differences between them. Each faith is distinguished by the personality of its messenger and the circumstances of its revelation. With the passing of time, faith traditions are also subject to the proliferation of distorted interpretations. Nonetheless, to seeing eyes it is plain to see that all of the world‘s great faiths harbor at their core the same message of love […] Through whichever channel Providence pours it out to the thirsty, the divine love that flows through revelation is from first to last a single substance. All fields are watered with one water. (p. 255)”

OnenessSufismSufi WisdomSufi WaySufi GnosisPerennial PhilosophySpiritual PhilosophyPir Zia Inayat Khan
Book:Mingled Waters : Sufism and the Mystical Unity of Religions
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“As long as human beings are unconscious and dominated by selfish and illusory desires, there is no god who will force us to change. But as the history of revelation on earth testifies, guidance has come to all communities and nations. Through masters, saints and prophets, through sacred texts and oral tradition, humanity has been reminded and warned. Cosmic intelligence has continually been in communication with us; now the burden of responsibility rests on each human heart. (p. 164)”

MindfulnessAwakeningRevelationSufi WayPerennial PhilosophyCosmic IntelligenceTradition Of Rumi
Book:Living Presence: A Sufi Way to Mindfulness & the Essential Self
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“Knowledge of the Supreme brings immortality. "The wise one - He is not born, He does not die." For one who has died before death, the death of the body is merely a formality. To live in God is to live an endless Life. (p. 38)”

SufismSufi WisdomSufi WayPerennial PhilosophySpiritual PhilosophyPir Zia Inayat KhanMystical QuestWisdom Sayings
Book:Mingled Waters : Sufism and the Mystical Unity of Religions
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“One has to die to the separate self in oder to find the universal Self or God […] as the mystics everywhere have repeatedly told us, it is only in accepting death that real life is found. (A Universe within, p. 79)”

EnlightenmentAwakeningLife And DeathSpiritual TransformationThe Path Of The BodhisattvaPerennial PhilosophyUniversal Self
Book:Grace & Grit: Spirituality & Healing in the Life & Death of Treya Killam Wilber
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“As Campbell pointed out, in all spiritual traditions the hero must undergo initiation and testing. These rites of passage awaken and develop latent human capacities as they mark and safely ritualize the process of maturity, empowerment, and agency among members of a group. Initiation is a way adolescent naivete and dependency ends as we develop a sense of mastery, meaning, and purpose and are reborn as adults and active, contributing members of the tribe. Vision quests, shamanic journeys, sun dances, ordinations, Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, and confirmations offer access to a time-tested method steeped in a collective body of wisdom and community that mitigates risk and gives reproducible outcome. (p. 18) Regardless of time, place, or culture, the motifs and stages of every initiation are the same. Whether symbolic or actual they include leaving home or separating from the community, facing a symbolic or literal hardship that serves as a psychological catalyst for an altered state of consciousness, and awakening as the nascent hero. The process continues with integrating and embodying wisdom, sometimes with the help of elders, priests, or shamans, and returning to the community as a mature member, active contributor, or leader. Initiation hastens development so the latent hero nature can be realized. (p. 18)”

BuddhismHeroEnlightenmentAwakeningSpiritual TransformationInitiationPerennial PhilosophyHeros Journey
Book:Gradual Awakening: The Tibetan Buddhist Path of Becoming Fully Human
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“It would be wonderful if everyone, everywhere, could slip so easily into the kingdom of heaven, and just as easily stay there forever. But alas! the facts of human nature forbid it. People require teaching, training, purifying, disciplining, and preparing, before they can do so […] Purification of the heart and calming of the mind are necessary prerequisites for penetrating into the Overself […] The attempt to ignore order of development in the Quest, to leap from the lowest to the highest stages, to miss all the intervening ones, is an attempt to get something for nothing. It cannot succeed. For the influx of Spirit needs a chalice clean enough to be fit for it, large enough to hold it. What would happen if the influx were poured into a dirty, cracked, tiny, and weak vessel? […]  the mind, nerves, emotions, and body of the man shall be gradually made capable of sustaining the influx of the Solar Force, or Spirit-Energy.”

EnlightenmentAwakeningKingdom Of HeavenSpiritual TransformationPaul BruntonPerennial PhilosophyPurification Of The Heart
Book:Advanced contemplation: The peace within you
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“The deeper he penetrates into this inner being, the more will he feel inclined to keep the development quite secret. It is becoming too holy to be talked about […] There are some inner experiences which seem too holy to be talked about in public, too intimate even to be talked about with intimate friends, too mysterious to be mentioned to anyone else except a student or a teacher who has passed through similar experiences himself.”

MeditationContemplationSpiritual LifeGnosisPaul BruntonPerennial Philosophy
Book:Advanced contemplation: The peace within you
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“It is true that philosophy is quite aware of the Buddhistic picture of life, of the sorrows and sicknesses which drag him down at times. That is why it makes equanimity a leading item of the inner work upon himself, why it becomes so necessary. But it is also true that moments, moods, and glimpses are also possible when there is uplift, and he can confirm for himself that the human link with the higher power is a very real thing.”

BuddhismEnlightenmentAwakeningIlluminationPaul BruntonPerennial Philosophy
Book:Advanced contemplation: The peace within you
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“It is while working with the Short Path that the man discovers he may apply its principles to his worldly existence, his earthly fortunes too. He learns that the ultimate source of his physical welfare is not the ego but the Overself. If he looks only to the little ego for his supply, he must accept all its narrow limitations, its dependence on personal effort alone. But if he looks farther and recognizes his true source of welfare is with the Overself, with its miracle-working Grace, he knows that all things are possible to it. Hope, optimism, and high expectation make his life richer, more abundant.”

GraceMiraclesHigher SelfDivine GuidancePaul BruntonPerennial PhilosophyOverself
Book:Advanced contemplation: The peace within you
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“One of the most valuable forms of yoga is the yoga of constant remembrance. Its subject may be a mystical experience, intuition, or idea. In essence it is really an endeavour to insert the transcendental atmosphere into the mundane life. The method of this exercise is to maintain uninterruptedly and unbrokenly the remembrance of the soul's nearness, the soul's reality, the soul's transcendence. The goal of this exercise is to become wholly possessed by the soul itself. This constant remembrance of the higher self becomes in time like a kind of holy communion […] "Be with IT" is the best advice for those who can understand it.”

AwakeningSelfrealizationPaul BruntonPerennial PhilosophyRemembrance Of GodThe Yoga Of Remembrance
Book:Advanced contemplation: The peace within you
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“As Ouspensky says, it sometimes seems that the Perennial Tradition is reluctant to help seekers, but it only seems that way because, as Meister Eckhart explained in his writings, “If you haven’t the truth of which we are speaking in yourselves, you cannot understand me.” It’s not a matter of the Perennial Tradition making things deliberately arcane; it’s simply the fact that unless you have made a truth a part of your being you have no capability of understanding it.”

Perennial PhilosophyMeister EckhartOuspensky
Book:Perennial Tradition: Overview of the Secret Heritage, the Single Stream of Initiatory Teaching Flowing Through All the Great Schools of Mys
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“In certain ancient civilizations and indigenous cultures there was often a process of initiation that young people would go through before they became adults. In some Native American traditions, for example, the initiate would be put out into the wilderness without any food or any other provisions for survival. He would have to rely on the Universe and his own soul. During the experience, the initiate would fast. He would experience himself confronting the Universe alone. He would be out there for a number of days. This would open up the initiate to a direct experience of something beyond the usual egoic mind and all of its concerns. The initiate would be thrust into an experience that would take him beyond his small, limited self. Such a process existed in our own Tradition going back to the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. What was Muhammad doing in a cave when the first revelations of the Qur‘an began if not going through what Native Americans would call a „Vision Quest“? He received direct revelation and inspiration through this practice. (p. 12)”

SufismSufi WisdomInitiationTreshold SocietySufi PathPerennial PhilosophyKabir HelminskiVision Quest
Book:In the House of Remembering: The Living Tradition of Sufi Teaching
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“It must never be forgotten that for non-modern man - whether he be ancient or contemporary - the very stuff of the Universe has a sacred aspect. The cosmos speaks to man and all of its phenomena contain meaning. They are symbols of a higher degree of reality which the cosmic domain at once veils and reveals. The very structure of the cosmos contains a spiritual message for man and is thereby a revelation coming from the same source as religion itself. Both are the manifestations of the Universal Intellect, the Logos, and the cosmos itself is an integral part of that total Universe of meaning in which man lives and dies.”

SufismSufi WisdomPerennial PhilosophyEcological AwarenessSophia PerennisSpiritual Ecology
Book:Man and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis in Modern Man
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“You have read for years, and where has it got you? Your head is filled with masses of ideas and concepts, and you yearn for experience that others on the path have had. Before your true nature is understood all those ideas and concepts must melt away. No books — the only book is the manuscript of nature, the lesson is life itself. Live passionately! Who said that this path should be so serious that there is no joy in it? This is the most exciting adventure possible, and it should be enjoyed. — Hamid”

SufismSufi WisdomPerennial PhilosophyTasawwufSophia Perennis
Book:The Last Barrier: A Journey Into the Essence of Sufi Teachings
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“An illuminated heart is rare; opinion is all too common. The illuminated heart sees the Divine Reality, the Balance in all things; it sees with the impartial light of Allah. Illumination says: „Let‘s see what God does, what God does is always beautiful.“ when the heart is purified, Truth becomes an objective reality that can be known by human beings. This Truth is not equivalent to the formulations of beliefs and concepts. For the human being, Truth is the direct experience of Divine Presence. Freed from our illusions and enslavement, we can go on to discover the treasure we really are, which will inevitably lead to the sharing of this treasure, a spontaneous service to Life itself. (S. 44 Holistic Islam)”

EnlightenmentSufismPerennial PhilosophyHolistic IslamThe Illuminated Heart
Book:Holistic Islam: Sufism, Transformation, & the Challenge of Our Time
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