Perennialist Perspective on Study ofReligions and Interfaith Dialogue

Mohammad Maroof ShahRajbag Colony, Nagbal, Ganderbal, Kashmir, 1900069797187282marooof123@yahoo.com

AbstractInterfaith dialogue as carried today by both

secularists and religionists, suffers from many limitations,conceptual confusions and operational anomalies. The presentpaper tries to argue that it is the perennialist mystico-metaphysical approach to the study of religion that aloneprovides viable orthodox perspective on diversity ofreligions by positing the “transcendent unity of religions”and rejecting exoteric dogmatist, and exclusivisttheological claims which are behind fundamentalism andtheological imperialism.

Perennialist Perspective on Study ofReligions and Interfaith Dialogue

Most modern scholars of religionsubscribe to a varying degree to some of the followingnotions, any of which if correct make interfaith dialoguealmost meaningless, incoherent and academically hardlysustainable or respected enterprise:

*That Semitic religions and non-Semitic religionsadvocate sharply divergent conceptions of Divinity. Theformer are seen as absolutizing concept of Personal Godwhile the latter have no need of personal God or positivelydeny the first hypostasis of Absolute that personal God is.

*That sacred- profane dichotomy characterizes certainreligions and not others

* That there is pantheistic element in non- Semiticreligions such as Hinduism which is incongruent withtranscendentalist theism.

* That theistic religions sustain a dualistic worldviewwhich is irreconcilable with monistic or Unitarian view ofsuch traditions as Vedanta of Hinduism

*That Buddhism is atheist/ agnostic (in the modernsense of these terms) rather than transtheist so has nothingcorresponding to personal God of theistic religions

* That different scriptures make really contradictoryclaims or some are corrupt on historical terms to the extentthat original message is no longer retrievable by any means.

* That religions fundamentally differ in eschatologies.Concept of reincarnation or rebirth and monotheisticconception of single birth and posthumous existence have nocommon 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 oneanother’s terms or subsumable and reconcilable under highermetaphysical and esoteric plane.

*That religions fundamentally advocate different meansor modes for salvation and therefore are exclusive in theirclaims. It implies that if one practices one religion hedoesn’t really practice another one so will not reach theUltimate of another religion

*That essentially symbolical narratives in scripturescould be subject to the principles of higher criticism,historical criticism

*That theology, philosophy and mysticism in traditionalreligious civilizations are not reconcilable or organicallyassimilated by the Traditions in question

*That purely or aggressive secular outlook which merelytolerates religions or discredits all religions equally fortheir non-cognitive character could provide a conduciveatmosphere for carrying interfaith religions.

*That one could prune supraformal essence or esotericcore of religions from the shell of forms and dogmas andpractice the former in defiance of the latter.

*That many (post)modern thought currents and agnosticmodern science make study of religions, their existence andknowledge claims indefensible so if we can’t relinquish(post)modern sensibility ( and we need not according to most(post)modernists) religious discourse is ultimatelynonsensical or even harmful. After the death of God thatmany moderns take for granted religions need to bedrastically reconstructed or wholly done away with.

*That ancient primitive religions which exist besidesthe major world religious traditions need not to beseriously reckoned with in formulation of comprehensiveinterfaith dialogue. They could be ignored

*Religions could be objectively, phenomenologicallystudied without committing ourselves to their respectiveclaims and unbiased dialogue carried out. That one need notbe religious (or ideally should not be following aparticular religious tradition) for carrying the interfaithdialogue

*That religions are primarily reconcilable, if at all,on ethical plane only and not the intellectual/ metaphysicalone.

*That most modern canons of criticism andinterpretation evolved in postmedieval West byanthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, historians,literary critics and philosophers have a great value inunderstanding religious episteme.

All these assumptions and presumptions are rejected byperennialists who also claim to provide the mostcomprehensive, intellectually most sophisticated,universally orthodox and perennially relevant perspective oninterfaith issue. In an atmosphere of fundamentalist/exclusivist and outright rejectionist secularistinterpretations of religion perennialist metaphysicalapproach to religion and comparative religion is somethingquite interesting and indeed plausible and deserves serioushearing from scholars interested in the issue. Ifperennialists are right the problem of religious diversitydissolves and seeming exclusivist claims of differentreligions are neatly and convincingly unified or reconciledfor good. In this paper I propose to discuss the keydimensions of little known but enormously powerfulperennialist approach.

The phenomenon of diversity of religions has been aproblem for modern scholarship because of its lack ofprincipial knowledge which is the domain of traditionalreligion and metaphysics. Fundamentalism with its attributesof exoteric theological exclusivism, religious bigotry andtheological imperialism – is the unfortunate consequence ofmisunderstanding the significance of diversity of religionsdue to lack of comprehensive approach to the issue.Eclecticisms, sentimental ecumenism, secularistindifferentism, relativism and most version of religiouspluralism and uniformitarianism and certain versions oflibertine-spirituality – all fail to do justice to thephenomenon of religious diversity. Interfaith dialoguecan’t be justly carried out in a perspective that deniesepistemic and cognitive status to faith and is hostile toboth metaphysics and mysticism. Just tolerating religion isinsult to religion. Religion claims the whole of man, whole

of knowledge because it is the knowledge of universalprinciples, of the Origin and the End. There is an urgentneed of a perspective that demonstrates (and not just arguesfor) essential unity of religion ( the unity of Ad-Din orwhhdat-i- Din or unity of revelation or unity of Religion thatis the key claim of the Quran and of other scriptures alsorather than what is popularly called as syncretism, wahdatuladyan, unity of religions), that does justice to all thediverse dimensions and levels of religious discourse, itsmyth, its ritual, its doctrine, that doesn’t commitreductionist and unformitarian fallacies, that doesn’tmarginalize the significance of exclusivist claims ofreligion in the name of vacuous pluralism and inclusivismand that doesn’t reduce unique theological genius of eachreligion to monochoromatic uniformitarianism. In theabsence of adequate metaphysical knowledge, the verydiversity of religious and sacred forms poses a challenge tomodern scholarship concerned with interfaith issue. Thereis a great deal of study of diverse religions in theinterest of finding mutual harmony between them in academicand more popular circles in the West, but there is littleunderstanding of “religious realties as religion and sacredforms as sacred realties.” What is missing in mostscholarly and academic circles is that science which can dojustice to the study of religion by drawing from thatperennial wisdom or philosphia perennis, sophia perennis, sanatanadharma, primordial din, hikmat al–khalidah or javidan khirad which isat the heart of all religious traditions as theperennialists argue. Religions meet only at their sourcei.e., God as Ramakrishna says and it is to the virtuous andthe humble only that the kingdom of God is given and thusonly they and not the scholarship employing profanemethodologies and in the process desacralizing the sacredthat can carry out meaningful interfaith dialogue. Therecan be no interfaith dialogue without faith, without a deepcommitment to the religious universe one belongs to. Modernman who thinks that God is either dead (Nietzsche andSartre) or on leave (Kafka) or absent (Heidegger) or lame(Mill) or fiendish or irrelevant is denied the vision of Himand thus can’t make sense of religion and religiousdiversity.

The perennialist traditionalist approach to interfaithdialogue as expounded in the writing of Rene Guenon,Frithjof Schuon, S.H. Nasr, Huston Smith, AnandaCoomaraswamy and other perennialists is the only approachthat does full justice to this very sensitive issue. It isthe only methodology that could claim orthodox credentials,that applies to all the religions, ancient or primitive andmodern, that studies religion religiously and opposes allthe relativization that characterizes much of the modernacademic study of religion while also opposing thatparochial conception of the truth which sees a particularmanifestation of the Truth as the Truth as such(Nasr,1993:61). It is the only approach that demonstratesthe “transcendent unity of religions” and the fact that “allpaths lead to the same summit” while being also “deeplyrespectful of every step on each path of every signpostwhich makes the journey possible unlike.” It alone amongstso many approaches to comparative religion “penetrates intothe meaning of rites, symbols, images and doctrines whichconstitute a particular religious universe and doesn’t tryto cast aside these elements or to reduce them to anythingother than what they are within that distinct universe ofmeaning created by God through a particular revelation ofthe Logos” (Nasr, I988: 293). It is only this school thatis able to provide “the key to the understanding of the fulllength and breadth of different religions and of thecomplexities and enigmas of a single religion and thus thesignificance of the plurality of religions and theirinterrelationship” (Nasr,1993:55). Its canvas is quitewide and deals with every aspect of religion with God andman, revelation and sacred art, symbols and images, ritesand religious laws, mysticism and social ethics,metaphysics, cosmology and theology. (Nasr,1993:55). Itemphasizes religion in its transhistorical reality but alsotakes note of the historical unfolding of a particulartradition. Rooted as it is in the traditional metaphysicsand condemning pos-medieval rationalism, empiricism andscientism (metanarrative of Enlightenment Modernity) andattempting to speak from the perspective of the Absoluterather than from human (in fact infrahuman) perspective ofhumanism, religion is primary reality for them and from thatDivine Norm they evaluate everything in temporal or secular

domain. It isn’t man but God who is at the center. Itisn’t this world and this worldly peace and equilibrium butthat world, the Eternity and man’s salvation that is ofprimary significance. “Religion for them isn’t only thefaith and practices of a particular human collectivity whichhappens to be the recipient of a particular religiousmessage. Religion is not only the faith of the men andwomen who possess religious faith. It is a reality ofDivine Origin. It has its archetype in the Divine Intellectand possesses levels of meaning and reality like cosmositself” (Nasr,1993:56). The traditionalists refuse to reducereligion to its social and psychological manifestations.The perspective held by them, they claim, is the same as theworldview within which the religions themselves were bornand were cultivated over the millennia until the advent ofmodern world. Modern age is cursed, Iron Age or Kali Yuga andanother stage in the degradation (rather than progress orevolution) of man and history, a second fall indeedaccording to perennialists. Renaissance and thus Modernityis devil inspired movement for them. Against antitraditionalrelativist modern worldview the traditionalists believe that“there is a Primordial Tradition which constituted originalor archetypal man’s primal spiritual and intellectualheritage received through direct revelation when Heaven andearth were still ‘united.’ This Primordial Tradition isreflected in all later traditions, but the later traditionsaren’t simply its historical and horizontal continuation.The anonymous tradition reflects a remarkable unanimity ofviews concerning the meaning of life and the fundamentaldimensions of human thought in worlds as far apart as thoseif the Eskimos and the Australian Aborgines, the Taoists andthe Muslims” (Nasr,1993:57). “The conception of religion inthe school of the philsophia perennis is vast enough to embracethe primal and the historical, the Semitic and the Indian,the mythic and the ‘abstract’ type of religions. Traditionas understood by such masters of this school as Schuon,embraces within its fold all the different modes and typesof Divine Manifestation. The doctrine of tradition thusconceived makes it possible to develop a veritable theologyof comparative religion – which in reality should be calleda metaphysics of comparative religion- able to do justice tothe tenets of religion while enabling the student of

religion, who is at once interested objectively in theexistence of religions other than his own and is at the sametime of a religious nature itself, to cross frontiers asdifficult to traverse as that which separates the world ofAbraham from that of Krishna and Rama or the universe of theAmerican Indians from that of traditional Christianity”(Nasr,1993:57).

The unity to which the traditionalists refer is,precisely speaking, a transcendent unity above and beyondforms and external manifestations as masterfullyforgrounfded by Schuon in his great work The Transcendent Unityof Religions. Distinguishing between external form and theessence which that form manifests or form and substanceexternal forms of a religion are seen as “accidents” whichissue forth from and return to a substance that remainsindependent of all its accidents. “It is only the level ofthe Supreme Essence even beyond the Logos or on the level ofthe Supreme Substance standing above all the cosmicsectors from the angelic to the physical within which aparticular religion is operative that the ultimate unity ofreligions is to be sought…. Below that level each religionpossesses distinct qualities and characteristics not to beeither neglected or explained away” (Nasr,1993: 60). Asagainst various forms of relativism and uniformitarianism,traditionalist school can also speak about truth andfalsehood in this or that religious schools as well asgreater and lesser truth, as it has the torch of Truth withit. This presence of that truth and the basic distinctionbetween Real and illusory which is central to perennialistapproach allows it to be judgemental about a particularreligious phenomenon and speak about authentic andpseudoreligion without falling into a narrow dogmatism onthe one hand or simply indifference to truth and a sort ofpostmodern agnosticism on the other, two alternatives whichdominate much of the religious scene in the modern world asNasr has pointed out (Nasr,1993:61).

The very important problem that man faces in a world inwhich traditional boundaries and borders of both physicaland religious nature are removed is to carry dialogue withother religions sympathetically “without losing the sense of

absoluteness in one’s own religion which is a sine qua non ofthe religious life and which reflects the fact that religiondoes come from the Absolute.” (Nasr,1993:61). It isperennialist approach that best answers this problem. Thisthey do by emphasizing concept of universal orthodoxy andthe concept of “relatively absolute” as enunciated bySchuon. Against that sentimentalism that sees all religionsas being the same or that brand of neo-vedantism whichbecame popular after the second world war, perennialistsstress importance of orthodoxy which they don’t limit to theexoteric level but also apply to the esoteric. Exoterictheologies are duly respected at their own level ( and thisdifferentiates them from syncretists and shows theirrespects for exclusive character of theologies) and at thehigher level their exclusivism is transcended also at aplane on which theological approach by its very definitioncan’t reach or encroach being influenced by individual andsentimental elements. Distinguishing between the Principleand manifestation, Essence and form, inward and the outward,it places absoluteness at the level of the Absolute and thismeans transcendence of purely theological plane.Contradictory claims of different religions have a warrantonly at the theological plane. But what is needed is totranscend the theological plane and be at the plane of puretruth that is accessible only at the metaphysical plane. Itasserts categorically that only the Absolute is absolute.It refuses to commit the cardinal error of attributingabsoluteness to the non-absolute, the error which Hinduismand Buddhism consider as the origin and root of allignorance. Every determination of the Absolute (theism’spersonal God is also a determination of the Absolute) isalready in the realm of relativity. “The unity of religionis to be found first and foremost in this Absolute which isat once Truth and Reality and the origin of all revelationsand of all truth. When the Sufis exclaim that the doctrineof Unity is unique (al-tawhid wahid), they are asserting thisfundamental but often forgotten principle. Only at thelevel of the Absolute are the teachings of the religions thesame. Below that level there are correspondences of the mostprofound order but not identity. The different religionsare so many languages speaking of that unique Truth as itmanifests itself in different worlds according to its inner

archetypal possibilities, but the syntax of these languagesisn’t the same. Yet because each religion comes from theTruth, everything in the religion in question which isrevealed by the Logos, is sacred and must be respected andcherished while being elucidated rather than being discardedand reduced to insignificance in the name of some kind ofabstract universality” (Nasr,1988:293). This showsdifference between sentimental ecumenism, syncretist “unityof religions” movement that emanated mostly out of Indiaduring the last decades of the 19th and early decades of the20th century and what Abul Kalam Azad calls whhdatud-din, theunity of Religion or the unity of Tradition in perennialistterms. It is simple fallacy to assert that all religionssay the same thing, the remarkable unanimity of principlesnot withstanding.

We now turn to the notion of “relativity absolute.”This notion concedes the truth contained in relativism, bothmodern and postmodern without sacrificing the crucial notionof Truth or Absolute which is missing in the latter. OnlyAbsolute is absolute and all else is relative. This doesaway with all idolatries and exclusivist theologicalmetanarratives. However one isn’t drowned in relativistchaos and Nasr elucidates the notion of “relativelyabsolute” with an analogy to solar system. “Within our solarsystem our sun is the Sun, while seen in the perspective ofgalactic space, it is one among many suns. The awareness ofother suns made possible by means as abnormal to the naturaland normal human state as the ‘existential’ awareness ofseveral religious universes, doesn’t make our sun cease tobe our sun, the center of our solar system, the giver oflife to our world and the direct symbol of the DivineIntellect for us who are revivified by its heat andilluminated by its light” (Nasr,1993:61). Nasr elaboratesfurther, “In the same way, within each religious universethere is the logos, prophet, sacred book, avatara or someother direct manifestation of the Divinity or messenger ofHis Word and a particular message which, along with itshuman container, whether that be the Arabic language of theQuran or the body of Christ are ‘absolute’ for the religiousuniverse brought into being by the revelation in question.Yet only the Absolute is absolute. These manifestations are

relatively absolute. Within each religious universe thelaws revealed, the symbols sanctified, the doctrineshallowed by traditional authorities, the grace whichrevivifies the religion in question are absolute within thereligious world from which they were meant without beingabsolute as such. At the heart of every religion is to befound the echo of God exclaiming “I”. There is only oneSupreme Self who can utter “I”, but there are many cosmicand even metacosmic reverberations of the Word which is asone and many and which each religion identifies with itsfounders. As Jalal al-din Rumi, speaking as a Muslim saintsays:

When the number hundered has arrived, ninety isalso present.

The name of Ahmad is the name of all prophets”(Nasr,1993:62).

Perennialists criticize most of currentecumenisms for leading to lessening of religious fervor andthe diluting of the Divine Message, making “worldly peacethe goal of religion rather than the Divine Peace whichsurpasseth all understanding.” As Nasr points out: “Thefollowers of the philosphia perennis chart a course that makespossible an authentic ecumenism which can in fact only beesoteric for religious harmony can only be achieved in the“Divine Stratosphere,” to quote Schuon and not in the humanatmosphere where so many seek it today at the expense ofreducing the Divine stratosphere to the human atmosphere”(Nasr,1993:65). The followers of philsophia perennis insistthat one can practice only one religion and stand opposed toall forms of eclecticism and syncretism of religious rites.According to the perennialists if one has lived one religionfully one has lived all religions. Guenon converted toIslam and practiced it in all its details but said that “Ithereby follow all religions.” One can carry a meaningfulinterfaith dialogue only if one practices one’s ownreligion, if one really sees the source from which allreligions proceed, if one realizes in the depth of the SelfGod and everything for which religion stands. In Ramakrishnawe have a parallel to Guenon.

Sages have carried interfaith dialogue without usingany dialogue in the conventional sense at all. There are

many reported meetings of sages belonging to differentreligions in which no verbal communication at all occurred.It is only in silence that was before the word or silencein which alone is one in communion with Reality as such asall thought constructions that are infected by time and arein the realm of the representable or in the realm oflanguage or the known are gone. Only in silence is theEternal revealed. All religions have taught silence as thebest form of dialogue, not only with one’s self but withothers of different convictions. Buddhism teaches this inits silence towards all metaphysical questions which aresource of disputation. Jaina syadvada theory amounts to thesame. Islam emphasizes orthopraxy and leaves such questionsthat constitute difference of theologies to be decided byGod in the hereafter. Taoism has characteristicallyemphasized silence as the best dialogue. In fact the problemof interfaith dialogue is a modern problem. It hardly arosein pre-modern traditional atmosphere. Islam encounteredHinduism and interfaith dialogue was carried by the Sufiswithout generating so much heat and confusion and chaos thatcharacterizes its modern form.

The perennialists critique misappropriation ofmysticism by many a scholar and even mystic in so-calledreligious synthesis for limiting their perspective to thatkind associated with love. This oversentimentalizedapproach studies religions on the basis of so-calleduniversal spirituality related to mysticism but devoid ofits intellectual content. As Nasr notes that justifiably areaction has set in against this approach by many a scholarwho point out the differences rather than the similaritiesbetween religions and various sacred forms. But thesescholars have also usually been unable to distinguishbetween “a unity which transcends forms and a supposed unitywhich disregards forms or rather seeks to melt them into asolution whose coagulation can’t but result in thoseconglomerates 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 thereduction of religions to a least common denominator in thename of religious unity of mankind is no more than a parodyof the “transcendent unity of religions” which characterized

the traditional point of view” (Nasr, I988: 288). Authenticmysticism, as perennialists argue, isn’t formless and dulyrespects particularity of a religion and its sacredscripture e.g., one can’t speak about Sufism withoutreferring to the Quran or Kabbala without Torah. Itconsiders crucial significance of the sacred form asnecessary means for the attainment of the formless.However, as Schuon has repeatedly emphasized, one must beaware that sacred form is not only form as a particularityand limitation but also that it opens unto the Infinite andthe formless. Limitations of Osho’s and Krishnamurti’sapproach to traditional religion and sacred forms are thusforegrounded by the perennialists. One must oppose thesentimentalism of the syncretists but must be on guardagainst idolizing the forms also. Perennialists value totalintegrity of a tradition above everything and are criticalof those who place mutual understanding between religionsabove it. So such pleas as that of John Hick) thatChristians should stop believing in incarnation in order tounderstand Muslims and have Muslims understand them areinadmissible. The perennialists would also laugh at theexpectation of many ecumenists that different faiths willget transformed by the very process of carrying out adialogue, their assumption being that better understandingin itself is the final goal rather than understanding ofanother world of sacred form and meaning through thepreservation of one’s own tradition. Nasr’s comments on sucha perspective need to be quoted.

Such a perspective finally replaces divine authority by humanunderstanding and can’t but fall into a kind of humanism whichonly dilutes what remains of religion It is really another form ofsecularism and modernism despite the respect it has for otherreligions and the fact that it is carried out by men and women ofreligious faith. That is why the stronger the hold of religionupon a human collectivity or individual, the less is there usuallyinterest in what is now calledecumenism in that circle or for that person. …. much of modernecumenism has become like an engulfing amorphous which aims atdissolving all forms and removing all distinctions from severaldifferent realities by drawing them within a single or at bestcomposite substance. One can detect in this current movement ofecumenism that same lack of distinction between the supraformaland the informal which results from the loss of an integralmetaphysics in the West in modern times”(Nasr,1988:290).

Appropriating the much loaded term humanism thatevolved primarily as a reaction and thus rejection ofreligious worldview, in interfaith dialogue is an insult tothe latter as the former, strictly speaking, eschews allreference to the transcendence, the transcendent ground ofour being and reduces human – the theomorphic being – tosubhuman status by its antimetaphysical, antimystical andthus antireligious orientation. Using the term humanismapprovingly in the religious context is as ridiculous asusing term terrorism in religious context. There can be noIslamic terrorism, for instance, as it is self contradictorynotion. Similarity one can’t use the term Islamic humanism.Modern Western secular thought has defiled the otherwiseinnocent and beautiful looking terms. The perennialists are also critical of numerousattempts that are being made to create dialogue between twoor several religions with political goals in mind becauseuse of religion in such cases has caused these types ofantireligious studies to end in either diplomatic and politeplatitudes or false oversimplifications which have simplyglided over the differences existing between differentsacred forms. The perennialist authors are also critical ofmodern concept of tolerance and advocates what they call asunderstanding foreign religious universes. Althoughtolerance is better than intolerance as far as religionsother than our own are concerned it implies that otherreligion is false yet tolerated. Understanding of differentuniverses of sacred form means we accept other religions notbecause we want to tolerate our fellow beings or falsehoodbut because other religions are true and come from God. Theperennialists are critical of religious exclusivists not fortheir strong and unflinching faith in religion or theirconvictions but for their lack of principial knowledge, thatkind of knowledge which can penetrate into the foreignuniverses of form and bring out their inner meaning. In aworld

where one is given equally unacceptable choice between anexclusivism which would destroy the very meaning of Divine Justiceand Mercy and a so-called universalism which would compromiseprecious elements of a religion; a choice between an absolutismwhich neglects all the manifestations of the Absolute other than

one’s own and a relativism which would destroy the very meaning ofabsoluteness; the choice between accepting the other politely andfor the sake of convenience, or at best for the sake of charity orcontend and battle with the other as an opponent to be rebuttedand even destroyed since his view is based on error and not truth,

the perennialist approach alone provides a way oftranscending these ugly binaries without missing thepositive significance of either of the terms.

Schuon’s concept of the “relatively absolute” putsexclusivist theological language in proper perspective. Toquote Nasr, one of the best interpreter and follower ofSchuon, again

The concept of the “relatively absolute” permits the traditionalstudy of diverse religions to see the manifestation of the Logosin each religious universe as both the Logos and yet in itsoutward form as an aspect of the Logos as asserted alreadycenturies ago by Ibn Arabi in his Fususul Hikam (Wisdom of the Prophets)in which each prophet is identified with an aspect of the wisdomissuing from the Logos, which Sufism naturally identifies with theMuhammaden Reality (Al-haqiqatal-“Muhammadya) …. In contrast tooutward methods of comparison which juxtapose the prophets orfounders sacred books etc. of different religions, the traditionalmethod realizes the different levels upon which the “relativelyabsolute” is to be found in each world of sacred forms. … Itneither denies nor denigrates a simple sacred symbol rite orpractice in the name of some kind of abstract universal truth, nordoes it create a simple one to one correspondence between variouselements of the different religious universes (Nasr,1988 :297-8).

The perennialists apply various metaphysical conceptswhich include such concepts as truth and presence, ternaryof fear, love and knowledge and the like which in variousproportions characterize all religion for understandingdiverse religious phenomena.

Who can ideally conduct the interfaith dialogue? Onlysages and gnostics according to the perennialist. This isbecause principial knowledge can’t be attained save throughesoterism. Only serious esoterists can carry outinterreligious studies on the deepest level withoutsacrificing either the exoterism or the certitude andabsoluteness associated with a particular religious world.The total religious understanding and the complete harmonyand 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 perennialistpoint of view. That is why the perennialists are critical ofthat type of bhakti spirituality practiced and advocated bysome moderns which is based on “vague and emotionaluniversalism,” sentimentalism “which opposes intellectualdiscernment,” and “supposed universalism which opposes theparticularity of each tradition on the level of thatparticularity,” thus fails to understand respectivedistinctive character and genius of each form being unableto penetrate into the meaning of each form (Nasr, I988:287). Spiritual libertines and syncretists havemisappropriated bhakti and what is loosely called asspirituality. Those who advocate liberalism, or libertinespirituality and open mindedness in observance of rituals,do’s and don’ts of religion, mixed gatherings for worship ordoing away with doctrines and dogmas and law (e.g., personallaw); and idolize time or progress in historicist terms areexpectedly scorned by the perennialists.

It is only the perennialist approach which being basedon the sacred conception of knowledge itself that can gobeyond both polite platitudes and fanatical contentiousness.

Only through an intelligence rooted in the sacred and a knowledgewhich is of the principal order and attached to the sacred. canthe sacred be studied without desacralizing it in the process….Only a scientia sacra of religion and not the science of religions asusually understood, can make available to contemporary man theunbelievable beauty and richness of other worlds of sacred formand meaning without destroying the sacred character of one’s ownworld”(Nasr,1988:303).

  It is the concept of Supreme Principle as Absolute that

is common to all traditions, religious and mystical andunites different religions. Buddhist transtheistic positionis subsumable under this conception. The Supreme Self is, inperennialist reading, not denied by Buddhism. God is thename of nirvanic experience itself. Beatific vision, moksha,nirvana and other salvific ideals are not essentiallydistinguishable. At the level of Absolute all contradictionsare resolved, the One that has been asserted by allreligions, is realized. At the level of personal God unityof religions can’t be sought as the Absolute is not

identifiable with personal God which is in fact situated atthe plane of Divine Relativity or Maya, in the perenialistsview. It is the Absolute-relative rather than the Creator-created polarity or axis that should be used to understandthe relation between the Supreme and man/ world and thatforegrounds unified view. All religions are united inpositing a movement from the present or given state to theAbsolute, to man’s true Origin and End. Apparently differentdisciplinary/ritualistic methods are geared at achieving theend of self-denial or surrender to the Absolute. Here Islamand Buddhism are in perfect agreement. All religions aim atending of alienation from the Absolute, of realizing the Onethat alone is, the land of bliss or no sorrow where no humanlimitation or pain affects. Man’s return to God is arrangedby all religions though seemingly different beliefs andcommandments. Theological dogmas are a translation ofmetaphysical truths and not literally true. Taking asymbolist view of theologies helps to reconcile divergentclaims of them that become operative only if taken tooliterally. Theological idea of creatio ex nihilo isn’tcontradictory to non-Semitic and Neoplatonic idea of DivineManifestation. Anthropomorphism is ultimately transcended byall religions as esoteric dimension of theistic religionsillustrates. God as Reality or Totality of Existence,transcendent and immanent is what the Unitarianunderstanding of tawhid is and in this sense nondualisticVedanta, Taoism etc. are in agreement with it. If we focuson the concept of Pure Being or Non-Being that is integralpart of all traditions as perennialists show, Buddhistapproach to the Absolute falls in the pripooer perspective.Schuon’s Treasury of Buddhism and Marco Pallis’s The BuddhistSpectrum demonstrate cogently equivalence of fundamentalnotions of Buddhism with other major religious traditionssuch as Christianity and Islam. Amin Ahsan Islahi andcertain other scholars’ attempt to trace Buddha and Buddhistcommunity in the Quran and many other scholars’ attempt todemonstrate the essential unity of Religion and universalityof revelation ( to every community have been sent amessenger) get better substantiated and put in a propercontext by metaphysical approach of perennialists. Schuonsubsumes fundamental enunciations of Christianity andVedanta in his metaphysical understanding of Islamic Kalima

as “There is no reality but Reality,” or “There is no truthbut Truth.” There is no dualism of any kind at the planewhere subject-object dualism is transcended, where knowerbecomes known or where knowing and being are one or only theOne, the Beloved of Sufis remains. Samsara is nirvana for aperson who has penetrated the veil of maya, the veil ofsamsara. God is the essence of Existence.ion Sufism. All isBuddha nature for a transcendental consciousness. Everythingspeaks or proclaims and glorifies God, according to theQuran, Sacred-profane dichotomy is thus hardly there.

We may now take up the perennialist application ofthese principles to exotericist’s finalist exclusivist claim– the claim that his is the best of religions or it has theglory of being the omega. I take liberty to quote Schuon:“The characteristic and inevitable –misunderstanding ofevery exoteric is to attribute to God a human subjectivityand consequently to believe that every divine manifestationrefers to the same Divine “I,” and therefore to the samelimitation. This is to fail to realize that the Ego which,in the Revelations, speaks and gives a law, can only be amanifestation of the Divine Subject and this Subject itself;one must distinguish in God – always from the point of viewof Revelation – firstly the one and essential Word, and thenthe manifestations or actualizations of the Word in view ofparticular human receptacles. The Divine “I” that speaks tomen – of necessity to “particular men” – could not possiblybe the Divine Subject in a direct and absolute sense; it isthe adaptation of that Subject to a given human “container,”this container, failing which all contact between man andGod would be impossible and failing which it would be absurdto allow that any Revelation, Hebrew, Arabic or other couldbe word-for-word of Divine origin.

Admittedly, God cannot contradict himself; but this axiomatictruth concerns the essential, unlimited and formless Truth, theonly one which counts in divinis; the relative enunciations mayperfectly well contradict themselves from one Revelation toanother – exactly as human subjects and material forms mutuallyexclude and contradict one another – providing that the essentialTruth is safeguarded and made as efficacious as possible. Theparticular Divine “I” of a Revelation is not situated in theDivine Principle itself; it is the projection or emanation of theAbsolute Subject and is identified with the “Spirit of God”, thatis, with the cosmic Centre of which one might say that it is

“neither divine nor non-divine”’ this revelation-giving “I” “isGod” in virtue of the ray which attaches it directly to itsSource, but it is not god in an absolute fashion, because it isimpossible that the Absolute as such should speak a human languageand say human things. This is the meaning of the doctrine of the“descent” of the Quran by successive stages, and it is this thatexplains 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 isrelated to general question of religious oppositions. Heasserts that religious oppositions can’t but be, not onlybecause forms exclude one another but because, in the caseof religions, each form vehicles an element of absolutenessthat constitutes the justification for its existence and theabsolute does not tolerate otherness nor, with all the morereason, 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 anyreligion that it be “objective” with regard to another, at leastnot a priori or exoterically;for a religion as such – as a formprecisely – the data of other religions are scarcely more thansymbols or points of reference which can be used- most often in apejorative or negative sensev – within its own imagery and inaccordance with its characteristic perspective.” …. “Certainly Godcommits Himself to a form issued from his Word, but he could notcommit himself to this form only…He keeps His word “within “ aformal system , without binding Himsrelf” from without” andwithout having to account for the modes of hios liberty or therequirements of His Infinitude. (Schuon,1985:152-3)

Schuon attempts to interpret true significance of claim

of finality that in a way characterizes all major religionsand especially Islam and Christianity. Hindu claim ofprimordiality amounts to the same. Schuon clarifies it withreference to Islam (and this should apply to other religionsalso)

True terminality- the glory of being the omega- is not realized byany one religion as opposed to another, it is realized byesoterism in relation to all religion; it is in this sense thatSufis interpret the dogmatic terminality of Islam, and thisdoesn’t go without an amalgam that strictly speaking is abusive,

but that can be found, quite obviously and mutatis mutandis, withinevery religious system (Schuon,1985:178).

He relates the idea of terminality to the message ofequilibrium. About Islam (the tradition to which heeventually converted as did many other perennialists),wishes to realize equilibrium “between the outward and theinward, the earthly and the heavenly, in conformity withman’s nature and vocation”(Schuon,1985:171). He similarlyunderstands the dogmatic assertion that the Prophet is “thebest of men” or “of creation”(khayarikhalq). To quote him:

Firstly, this designation of “the best” refers to the Logos, whichis the prototype of the cosmos in the Principle, or of the worldin God;and in this case the epithet doesn’t refer to any man.Secondly “the best” is Muhammed in as much as he manifests orpersonifies the Logos, every other Messenger(Rasul) is equally “thebest”. Thirdly, “the best” is Muhammad in as much as he alone – inaccordance with the framework of perspective – manifests the wholeLogos, the other Messengers manifesting it only in part, whichamounts to saying that Muhammad is “the best” in as much as hepersonifies the Islamic perspective, the man who reveals itnecessarily the best but as much can be said, of course, of everyother Messenger within the framework of his own Message.Fourthly, Muhammad is the best in as much as he represents aquality of Islam by which it surpasses other religions; but everyintegral religion necessarily possesses such an unequalablequality, lacking which it would not exist”(Schuon,1985:160-161)

Thus, from the perennialist perspective we see that thequestion of interfaith dialogue is the question of properunderstanding of one’s own faith, of practically realizingthe higher or inner reality of one’s own tradition.Religions unite at the apex and it is only the chosen fewwho undertake the necessary discipline and cultivate thenecessary virtues who reach this apex. Great sages andmetaphysicians have demonstrated this unity and integrity ofprimordial Din. The question of interfaith dialogue is thequestion of taking seriously one’s God, of being loyal toone’s own Self. One must cease to be a disputant orrhetorician and be at home in silence that was before theWord to realize what religion or God is. Ultimately religionis not about Truth but truth itself and it is the truthrather than any discourse about it or any representation ofit that saves. The perennialist approach is an invitation toexperience 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 oftheism/atheism is transcended. What unites religions is notany doctrine about Truth but the Truth which is one and thevision of which is the raison d’etre of all religions. Religionis not an ideology; metaphysics is not a system ofpropositions. Pure consciousness, objectless consciousnessor what the Sufis would call God consciousness transcendsall talk, all thought, all argumentation. It is anexperience and those who have had their experience alone areentitled to share its fragrance or talk about it. Only asage can carry an interfaith dialogue. To the pure in heartonly is given the kingdom of God and those who are theredon’t indulge in vain talk. References1 Nasr, S.H., The Need for a Sacred Sience, State University ofNewYork Press,Albany,1993

2 Nasr, S.H, Knowledge and the Sacred, Gifford Lectures, 1981,Suhail Academy Lahore,19883 Schuon,F., Christianity/Islam World Wisdom Books, 19854 Schuon,F.,Islam and the Perennial Philosophy, World of IslamFestival Publishing Company,1976