Saturday, September 6, 2008

Worldly Distortions

"...every sort of 'worldliness', when added by circumstances, is an opening for the spirit of doubt and the denial of the supernatural. Experience goes to prove that no people, however contemplative , is able in the long run to withstand the psychological effects of the modern discoveries, a fact that clearly demonstrates their 'abnormality' in relation to human nature in general; in Europe, the hostility of medieval Church towards the new astronomical theses, does not appear, in the light of subsequent events, to have been altogether unreasonable, to say the least. It is evident that no kind of knowledge is bad in principle or in itself; but many forms of knowledge can be harmful in practice as soon as they cease to correspond to the hereditary experience of man and are imposed on him without his being prepared to receive them; the human soul finds difficulty in coping with facts that are not offered to its experience in the ordinary course of nature".

Frithjof Schuon
In the Face of the Absolute—Preface