The Perennial Philosophy is a much more natural attitude to me than the exclusivism and tribalism of Christianity, which I find strange and incredible. A quest for wisdom led him, as a young man, to travel out to the Far East. In the Middle Ages, Neoplatonic ideas were integrated into the philosophical and theological works of many of the most important medieval Islamic, Christian, and Jewish thinkers. Steuco preferred Plato to Aristotle and saw greater congruence between the former and Christianity than the latter philosopher. Such cross-cultural exchange was not new to the Greeks; the Egyptian god Osiris and the Greek god Dionysus had been equated as Osiris-Dionysus by the historian Herodotus as early as the 5th century BC (see Interpretatio graeca). While the general concept of a supreme being has been present since ancient times, the exact term "Absolute" was first introduced by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and features prominently in the work of many of his followers. See Furlong, Paul: Authoritarian Conservatism After The War Julius Evola and Europe, 2003. sfn error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFSoares_de_Azevedo2005 (, sfn error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFShipley2015 (, Huxley, Aldous. It states that there is "one principle of all things, of which there has always been one and the same knowledge among all peoples." The Perennial Philosophy is a comparative study of mysticism by the British writer and novelist Aldous Huxley. "Perennial Philosophy and Christianity." The perennial philosophy (Latin : philosophia perennis), [note 1] also referred to as perennialism and perennial wisdom, is a perspective in philosophy and spirituality that views all of the world's religious traditions as sharing a single, metaphysical truth or origin from which all esoteric and exoteric knowledge and doctrine has grown. 2003-08-26T16:42:13-07:00 Whitall Nicholson Perry was born in Belmont, Massachusetts, on January 19, 1920. This notion has influenced thinkers who have proposed versions of the perennial philosophy in the 20th century. [web 3] [web 4]. �� *�5� �p���#z4�#��7���4�\Qfe8��!�S�֍&��"��*�N��&oA��>nf�w�E����?S�1{Ƙ1��9VΒ��^����XxC�E999:�ƒ�r�/�UVN�� K�mc'�$�j|��e+|�L�oy��1��*�;�T��&8��f�|rt,R���"�^-g�7)ɷ"����'�'���;�3�Q��k�q�G�B�߫�Ȝ3FN��,+WE�ls䴪��i��֪���Imt1;܏�G�)r�:�p�g����ESo�@P#�K"�]6^�ZHF����WE��HW�X�&)m����^���Uδ?~�f��ۊu��S�O�V�P�R)ʙ�I8 �}@>�6C��%w��(hR�z���b5m2e���E�d����?�������*J��U�|�ݴ�tMt�`c�^b����6PxX��N-�n|�������,[��-z̭#�y�������t3����������O!Ĩa�g�DKX�tFQ�"��P�$���Z:��A���U1.��.�{��. Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) argued that there is an underlying unity to the world, the soul or love, which has a counterpart in the realm of ideas. 15th-century philosophical idea that views all religious traditions as sharing a single truth or origin, Renaud Fabbri argues that Evola should not be considered a member of the Perennialist School. Further, placing so much confidence in the prisca theologia, turned out to be a shortcoming as many of the texts used in this school of thought later turned out to be bogus. In contrast to the Traditionalist school, Huxley emphasized mystical experience over metaphysics: The Buddha declined to make any statement in regard to the ultimate divine Reality. In spirituality, nondualism, also called non-duality, means "not two" or "one undivided without a second". It was founded by Plotinus, [web 1] and has been very influential throughout history. James Sherman Cutsinger was an author, editor, and professor of religious studies (emeritus) at the University of South Carolina, whose works focused primarily on comparative religion, the modern Traditionalist School of perennial philosophy, Eastern Christian spirituality, and the mystical tradition of the Orthodox Church. Common examples include Melville’s Moby Dick, Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Dickens’s Great Expectations, and Dante’s Inferno. [web 2] The Transcendentalists emphasised an intuitive, experiential approach of religion. The notion of "religious experience" was used by Schleiermacher to defend religion against the growing scientific and secular critique. Prime members enjoy FREE Delivery and exclusive access to music, movies, TV shows, original audio series, and Kindle books. The idea then reached a mass-market through Aldous Huxley’s 1945 book, The Perennial Philosophy, and then in the 1960s it became almost the foundational idea of the New Age, spread through centres like Esalen, the California spiritual community that developed the ‘religion of no religion’. [3] After the deaths of Pico and Ficino this line of thought expanded, and included Symphorien Champier, and Francesco Giorgio. While my adventures in Christianity of the last two years introduced me for the first time to Christian wisdom and grace, I still have a deep sense of the richness of other traditions. The mystic Ramakrishna's spiritual ecstasies included experiencing the sameness of Christ, Mohammed and his own Hindu deity. endstream endobj 93 0 obj <> endobj 97 0 obj <> endobj 99 0 obj <> endobj 98 0 obj <> endobj 96 0 obj <> endobj 73 0 obj <>/ProcSet[/PDF/Text/ImageB]>>/Type/Page>> endobj 77 0 obj <>/ProcSet[/PDF/Text/ImageB]>>/Type/Page>> endobj 81 0 obj <>/ProcSet[/PDF/Text/ImageB]>>/Type/Page>> endobj 85 0 obj <>/ProcSet[/PDF/Text/ImageB]>>/Type/Page>> endobj 89 0 obj <>/ProcSet[/PDF/Text/ImageB]>>/Type/Page>> endobj 1892 0 obj <>stream Indeed, he tends to believe that the truth is lost over time and is only preserved in the prisci theologica. ûè New York: Harper & Brothers, 1945. p.3, Huxley, Aldous. Scholarly approaches to mysticism include typologies of mysticism and the explanation of mystical states. This is a somewhat trippy idea, but I’ve come across it in the last year through the writings of two interesting religious scholars – Tanya Luhrmann and Jeffrey Kripal. A more popular interpretation argues for universalism, the idea that all religions, underneath seeming differences, point to the same Truth. There is no RationalWiki without you. [25]. According to perennial philosophy each world religion or spiritual tradition, independent of its cultural or historical context, is simply a different interpretation of a single universal truth. The perennial philosophy . Disabling it will result in some disabled or missing features. Steuco was strongly influenced by Iamblichus's statement that knowledge of God is innate in all, [17] and also gave great importance to Hermes Trismegistus. Rudiments of the perennial philosophy may be found among the traditional lore of primitive peoples in every region of the world, and in its fully developed forms it has a place in every one of the higher religions. Time and Eternity - An Essay on the Philosophy of Religion is a philosophy book written by Walter Terence Stace. This reminds me a bit of Andrei Tarkovsky’s idea of Solaris or The Zone – the magical force that projects our dreams back to us. In its naïve version, perennialism teaches that “all religions say the same thing,” which is clearly an overreach according to … Since the 19th century, mystical experience has evolved as a distinctive concept. 3 (2003): pp.58-65. He died on November 18, 2005. [20], Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) was a pioneer of the idea of spirituality as a distinct field. The unity of all religions was a central impulse among Hindu reformers in the 19th century, who in turn influenced many 20th-century perennial philosophy-type thinkers. Does he believe there are multiple eschatologies – in some realities Christ comes back, in others Valhalla burns, and so on? This page works best with JavaScript. It may also refer to the attainment of insight in ultimate or hidden truths, and to human transformation supported by various practices and experiences. Adobe Acrobat 8.0 Paper Capture Plug-in The idea of a perennial philosophy, sometimes called perennialism, is a key area of debate in the academic discussion of mystical experience. [16] This single knowledge (or sapientia) is the key element in his philosophy. The book’s called Revisioning Transpersonal Theory: A Participatory Vision of Human Spirituality, by Jorge Ferrer, a professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies.