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Where to look to "see God Everywhere"?
William C. Chittick explores "The Sufi Doctrine of Rumi"
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Interview with Frithjof Schuon - on Art
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Exploring "Timeless in Time" - a biography of Sri Ramana Maharshi
Spiritual Masters - East & West Series
World Wisdom's Spiritual Classics series
Treasures of the World's Religions
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  Every Branch in Me — Who are we as "human" beings? Back to the List of Slideshows
    
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In his essay "To Have a Center"  (1), Frithjof Schuon indicates that human beings are by their innermost nature centered on the Absolute; however, it is the plight of most people to be separated from that nature. Thus, the spiritual quest for most of us is to regain a state of being "centered," which is both our birthright and our true earthly vocation.

To be normal is to be homogeneous, and to be homogeneous is to have a center. A normal man is one whose tendencies are, if not altogether univocal, at least concordant; that is, sufficiently concordant to serve as a vehicle for that decisive center which we may call the sense of the Absolute or the love of God. The tendency towards the Absolute, for which we are made, is difficult to realize in a heteroclite (2) soul; a soul lacking a center, precisely, and by that fact contrary to its reason for being. Such a soul is a priori a “house divided against itself,” thus destined to fall, eschatologically speaking.



(1)  Taken from page 1 of Every Branch in Me, this chapter is also found in the book To Have a Center.

(2)  "Heteroclite" means "deviating from common forms or rules."

The Perennialist author, Frithjof Schuon
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