"One must not tire of affirming this: the origin of a creature is not a substance of a material kind, it is a perfect and non-material archetype: perfect, therefore without any need of a transformative evolution; non-material, therefore having its origin in the Spirit, not in matter. Assuredly, there is a trajectory; but this proceeds not from an inert and unconscious substance, but from the Spirit − the matrix of all possibilities − to the earthly result, the creature; and this result issued from the invisible at a cyclic moment when the physical world was still far less separate from the psychic world than in later and progressively more "hardened" periods. When one speaks traditionally of creatio ex nihilo, what is meant, on the one hand, is that creatures do not derive from a pre-existing matter and, on the other, that the "incarnation" of possibilities cannot in any way affect the immutable plenitude of the Principle."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Philosophers from SwitzerlandNon-fiction authorsPoets from SwitzerlandPainters from SwitzerlandSufi poets
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Imported from EN Wikiquote
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Frithjof_Schuon
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Frithjof Schuon
1907 – 1998
Schweizer Religionsphilosoph
179 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Frithjof Schuon →
Related Quotes
"Original man was not a simian creature barely capable of speaking and standing upright; he was a quasi-immaterial bei…"
"The worldly or imperfect man journeys through life as if on a long road; if he is a believer, he sees God above him i…"
"A classic example of a naive dogma is the Biblical story of creation, followed by that of the first human couple: if …"
"To say that man is "made in the image of God" means that he represents a central and not a peripheral subjectivity, a…"
"It is in man’s theomorphic nature that in his capacity as man and in God’s creative intention, he cannot be something…"
"Man is a divine manifestation, not in his accidentality and his fallen state, but in his theomorphism and his primord…"
"Moral liberty and intellectual objectivity constitute a priori man’s deiformity."
"The human being, by his nature, is condemned to the supernatural."
"Objective intelligence, free will, virtuous soul: these are the three prerogatives that constitute man."
"The double mission of man: to know the Absolute from the standpoint of the contingent, and to manifest the Absolute w…"